Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo Rhodes here to tell you the tales of the internet while I sit overlooking the beautiful and mysterious beach from the lighthouse in Sandcastle, California. I’ll be honest with you, Sandcastle is a beautiful place to live but the cost of taxes are high like everything else here in the Golden State. It’s also hard to leave. A bit like Hotel California but worse. You can’t leave until you’re dead.
Which brings us to tonight’s episode of Death and Taxes. Each story has a unique spin of death and taxes starting with my story The Tax Man Cometh.
First I’d like to thank the listeners and the Patreon members including madjoe, Ivy Iverson, P.A. Nightmares, John Newby, Patrick, and 933TheVolt.com. If you would like to support the show, please visit my website at www.scarystorytime.com/support to find out how to get a commercial free version of the podcast, t-shirts, blankets, pillows, and other ways of support.
Now let’s begin…
by Spooky Boo Rhodes
Sometimes, late at night on the rare nights of absent nightmares, I dream about all of the good times we had. My husband and I were so excited to be together. Everything was fun and carefree.
I remember dancing in the moonlight in our happy neighborhood without a care in the world. It was so beautiful and the love was there. We lived in the best area of the suburbs. People helped each other and we all got along. Until we saw the flash on the horizon, it was one big party. Then came people screaming and sirens were everywhere.
They didn’t hit our cities first, they hit our food and water supply. As we went for days and then months without food, we began to barter everything we had for a simple meal. A large black utility truck that screamed government would cruise our neighborhood daily offering food for goods or money but money was scarce. No one was working after the cities were hit. There were no more jobs to have except for helping hands and trades around the neighborhood.
We thought the truck might be the feds at first but there was no paperwork or exchange of information. The man in the truck never asked for money. It started with our belongings like jewelry then shoes and socks. Then came our clothes and blankets. They never wanted our defunct electronics. We didn’t know where it all was coming from but the supply of meat was steady as long as we had goods to barter with.
I guess we got greedy because we had a lot of clothes and junk but the moment came when we had almost nothing left. Our bellies were full but our shelves were bare and the nights were cold. We didn’t think of winter. Summer and spring went by so slowly with nothing to do that we thought it would never end or real jobs would even come back. I guess we should have paid attention.
When the delivery truck came by that late December day, we asked where the food came from. “Your fellow neighbor!” The fat man bellowed as he tossed the boxes of frozen stew and meat on our porch.
I didn’t know what that meant at the time until a few days later while eating a warm stew on a foggy coastal night. They must have forgotten to remove the wedding band from his hand for right there in the bowl of stew was a gold ring wrapped around a finger. I pulled the ring off and noticed the initials JER stamped on the inside.
I lost it, my stomach recoiled into heaving spasms as I threw up whatever was left of JER on the sidewalk.
“You killed these people and fed them to us?” I tried to scream but it came out as a sobbing shriek through all of the bile forming into a giant spit bomb from my lower lip.
The thought washed through my head like a cheap cannibal horror movie. The months of how long we had been eating this slop went around in circles. When was the last time we saw a cow in a field or a garden growing? Since the flash came that day and the sky turned to ash. Nothing was growing, not even the grass. Of course! It all made sense now.
The next few weeks I spent fasting upon only the water from the stream. I had no idea where these food sources were coming from but I couldn’t let it continue. I didn’t trust the food nor did I trust that man who delivered it weekly to our doorstep. My husband kept eating like it was nothing. He didn’t believe my theory.
“The government would never do that to us!” he spouted with his mouth full of what they called meat stew on the label.
The ingredients of “meat stew” were a simple list of some non-descript meat, garlic, mushrooms, and potatoes. I can see the mushrooms, garlic, and potatoes growing easily without the sunlight but the meat of an animal requires certain substances like grass and grains. This stew was without fat which indicated to me the livestock used was not eating grains or grass. Where are they keeping such creatures?
And where was this government my husband asked about? They didn’t seem to exist anymore. There were no police or ambulances about. People fended for themselves and protected their own. After the flash, my job ceased to exist and anything electronic stopped working including all of our new cars, televisions, computers, and radios. We were living in dystopian hell.
Still, people worked together. There weren’t any looters or criminals scoping our area. People were trying to help each other or just survive. I guess when survival skills begin to kick in and everyone is affected on an unknown sublevel people just try to help. Maybe. But where were the criminals? They seemed to be the first to vanish.
The man came around again with the frozen meat, but when he asked us what we had to offer for the stew, I blurted out that we had nothing left. We no longer had jobs and all we had were the shirts on our backs.
“Are you sure?” he yelled, waving a package of stew in front of my face and as he did, I noticed that his ring finger was missing.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Jason Earl Ringly, why?”
“I do have something left. You lost it making your stew!” I tossed the gold wedding ring at him.
He caught the ring and studied it. The shock on his face was obvious but not enough to tell me what happened.
“Did you lose it in an accident making the stew or are you killing people for food? Where are all of the cows?” I screamed.
His laughter bellowed from his huge belly as he looked down at me. People began to gather around. Up until that moment, I hadn’t noticed something very peculiar about the residents in the area. Many were missing fingers and toes. Some were even missing hands and even whole arms. One man who normally wore his blanket around his body was missing his entire leg! The old lady next door pushed her husband out to the crowd. I hadn’t seen him for months and now I knew why. Both arms and legs plus an ear were missing but he smiled at the large man in front of him just the same.
Jason looked at me while pulling out a large butcher knife. I’m not sure if the gleam coming off his eye was just plain happiness or the glint of the knife, but as he spoke, he smiled. “The Tax Man Cometh! It’s time to collect. Don’t worry, no one has to die.”
A creepypasta by WhiteHoleRifter102
I live far from city limits, alone. As far as the eye can see lie trees, grass, and wheat fields. There is one small road, which forms the border between my property and the wheat. There are also girders. Lots of steel girders. Each of them are about twenty feet long. I don’t know why they’re here. They just are. Maybe there used to be a building here, and they left them behind when they destroyed the building. But I don’t mind them. Well, that’s only because I can’t move them. They must weigh about 500 pounds a piece. Just me, my small house, and the girders. And my pig. I’m still not entirely sure why I even kept the pig. It just showed up at my doorstep one day. But I enjoy its presence. It gets lonely here sometimes.
It was only a week ago when it started. I woke up that morning to find something very odd. A few of the steel girders had been moved. About ten of them were put into a line in front of my house and went on the other side of the road, which is pretty close to my house. What I didn’t understand is how anyone could have moved the damn things. Maybe some punks from the city got a forklift and moved them that way. I did see a model once that doesn’t make any sound. Maybe they found it, and that’s what moved them.
The day after, I found a similar sight. All across the west of my house, ten more girders were lined up, just like the others from the day before. I assumed those punks were just trying to freak me out. It didn’t work. This was nothing more than some kids that like pissing off an old man. I thought nothing more about it and went back inside.
The next day, ten more girders were lined up in the back of my house. Nothing unusual. Wow, even after it happened, this surprises me. Nothing unusual. But even worse, my pig was dead in the front of the house. It hung from the awning on the porch. Its legs were all cut off and it was gutted. At the bottom of the steps, I found an even more unsettling sight. Three of his legs were formed into an “N”, and his intestines made an “O”. His final leg with hoof cut off, located slightly below the leg, made an exclamation point. All together, it made an ominous “NO!” I decided to sit outside that night to find the kids doing that crap.
I wish I didn’t. Then I could go on with my life, ignorant of what was really going on. I stayed up that night, rifle in hand, and coffee pot on the table. My rifle could drop an elephant from a mile away. But I didn’t dare fire at what I found. At around two o’clock in the morning, a dark figure came out of the forest. It took all ten girders that weren’t lined up at once, and then lined them up, completing a square around my house. I was amazed. I could barely lift one of those alone. And it just lifted about two and a half tons with one arm by itself. It then swept its head around, getting a view of the wheat fields and my house. I guess it either didn’t see me, or it didn’t recognize my rifle as a threat, because it just darted off into the trees. I’m no expert in speed. When I had a car, I could barely ever keep the car within the speed limit. But that thing had to have been going over 100 miles an hour.
The next morning held the most horrific event that I have ever witnessed. A car came across the road from the distance. I decided that I could just make a run for it. Jump into the back seat and tell the driver to gun it. Before I even got the chance though, itpounced. Straight out from the trees, it jumped high into the air and smashed down on the ground behind the car. This is the first time I could see it clearly. I didn’t like what I saw. It was hunched over, but still looked like it was about twenty feet tall. Its legs were bent. I’m not good at anatomy either, but I think those are tendons made for high jumping. If I hadn’t seen it last night, I would think it was starving and emaciated. You could see all its bones through its skin. And it had six eyes. Six red eyes, lined up across the front of its face.
It took one slash at the car, and it flew into the marked-off area that is now the boundary of my house. Upon impact with the ground, the thing was over there. It tore apart the metal hull of the car with ease. Before the driver could even finish his scream, the thing brought his fist down on his head. You could see the blood splash out from the porch. The thing then proceeded to eat the body, and then dashed back into the trees.
That was when I understood. I was that thing’s captive, and the girders are my cage. And I am permitted no visitors. I didn’t particularly like being its canary, but at least that meant I didn’t have to pay taxes any more. When the police came, the thing would just tear them apart. And I wasn’t restricted at all. The only thing I couldn’t do was pass the girders. But I’m getting tired of it. Even though the thing can tear my entire body into bite sized pieces in a second and use my bones as toothpicks, I think I’m going to make a run for it. I have no more purpose in life except being the beast’s pet. I won’t stand for it. I’m gonna run.
A creepypasta by Creepycheetah
I could hear someone talking about all the time I could save with his new contraption. I must have fallen asleep. I groggily opened my eyes, and I could see the faint multicolored glow outlining everything in the living room, and directly in front of me I saw the clumsiest person trying to cut a tomato, but crushing it instead, and a red “X” overlaying the scene. To the right of that scene, I could see out the windows of my sliding glass patio doors, and the faint outline of the tree in my backyard. That’s when I heard what sounded like the knocking of wood. The rest of the house was completely silent, and I could not imagine who would be up at this hour besides myself. It seemed like it came from the front door. Perhaps it was an emergency.
I wearily pulled myself up from the chair I was in, and dragged my feet one in front of the other, and over again. I walked towards my right past the patio doors, and the vacant table in my dining room, and towards the foyer with the front door.
One thing I should note about this house is that I got it for dirt cheap. The real estate agent said that she too was baffled why should could not sell it for a higher price, except for the fact that it was on the market for over two years, but she also said that she tended to forget about it. For as beautiful as it was, for some reason it seemed to be forgettable, or rather that it wanted to be forgotten. I had nearly missed the “For sale” sign myself if it had not been for the small accident I had out in front. Some kid rode out into the road from a driveway while I was driving along the street in front, and I was forced to swerve out to avoid hitting him, and instead, I hit the “For sale” sign. In a way, I am grateful towards that kid for I would have never bothered otherwise.
To be honest, it is better than even my dream house. It has faux stone panels all around with an enormous glass window in the front leading into the secondary living room adjacent to the foyer. The panes on the window were of such a strange design. They were arranged in such a manner that it looked like a person with long tentacle like limbs. It was the only flaw I found in the house, and I had already planned on replacing them. There were three bedrooms in this house—two upstairs, and the one I use downstairs. Nearly all the walls and the ceilings in the house were painted an off-white, except for the wall around the large circular window in the secondary living room which was painted pitch black. An unusual design decision, but it actually looked pretty for some reason, so I decided to leave it. I might look into repainting some of the bedrooms, though.
The front door was a little unusual as well. It was white—not an off white like the walls—just white, and when looking at it very carefully, the word “SILENCE” could be made out on both sides of the door in just a slight shade of gray. At the least, I am pretty certain it is there. No one else has seen it, but then again, I have not had many people over.
The house has a strange history to it—at least so far as the real estate agent told me. It was built in 1958 by one Samuel L. Enderman. Apparently, the construction company that built it only existed for six months—just enough time to build the house—and it was the only building it built. When the mortgage had finally been fully paid off, payments for property taxes soon stopped after that, and so the city seized it. They tried to track down Mr. Enderman, but could not find any evidence that he ever existed except for the payments that were made which came from an account that had also ceased soon after the mortgage was paid off. When assessors came in to assess the place, they could find no evidence that anyone ever lived here. In fact, when they spoke to the utility companies, no one apparently had ever turned on the electricity or the water. There was no furniture or anything in the place. Oddly enough, the lawn was maintained throughout all these years.
I have not met any of my neighbors yet since I had only just moved in, but I noticed that whenever they are going past it from the road or the sidewalk, they seemed to take extra effort to avert their eyes. It made me wonder if perhaps I just have bad taste in houses, but then again, the real estate agent said she quite liked the house too, but maybe she has bad taste too. On the other hand, she has the reputation for being one of the best real estate agents in the city.
Through my blurred vision and half-awake state, I could see the solid white door as I entered the foyer. I clumsily put my left hand onto the wall below the staircase to the second floor to steady myself as I walked towards the door. As I passed the staircase, I reached out to the door handle, and felt the cold metal on my hands, and a chill ran down my spine. There was something that did not seem right about all of this suddenly, but I turned the handle, and pulled the door open. I could not see anyone outside – it must have been kids playing a prank, or maybe it was just my imagination that heard the knock. I did, however, notice a strange looking tree in my neighbor’s lawn across the street. I could not recall seeing one in their yard, but perhaps I had just not been paying attention. Although it was dark outside, and the street lights did little to illuminate it, it looked like it had two main branches sticking out opposite of each other.
I decided it was just a prank by some neighborhood kids, so I shut the door, and began to head back. It was late, and I was tired, so I decided that now is a good time to head to bed. As I was half-way through the main living room, I noticed the television was off. I did not think that I had turned it off, but I guess I did, which was fine by me as I just wanted to head to bed. I heard it again though, the knocking. It seemed louder this time. If it is kids playing a prank, I decided I would give them a piece of my mind this time. I headed back to the front door.
I was a little more awake this time so I reached the door a bit quicker, and I hoped I could catch the brats before they ran off. I grabbed the door handle again, and I got that same chill down my spine, and that feeling that I should not open the door. I hesitated for a moment, but proceeded to open the door nonetheless. Again, I saw no one outside. I was about to open the screen door to yell at the brats that I was certain were hiding in in some bushes somewhere when I noticed the tree from my neighbor’s yard seemed to be closer to the road this time, and now that I was a bit more awake, it looked less like a tree, and more like a very tall man with long spindly limbs with his arms reaching out into the darkness. I got the creeps, and decided the kids were not worth it.
I closed the door and began to head back. As I entered the main living room again, I noticed the television was on. I could swear it was off the last time I was in there. That same infomercial was still on, but I noticed it was muted. I sighed, and figured I was more tired than I thought. Perhaps I did not actually turn it off before, but simply muted it. I reached into the chair to grab the remote, but then I noticed it. My neighbor’s tree was in my backyard. No, that could not be it. It is just my tree and I am imagining things. I grab the remote, turn off the television, and drop it back into the seat. I turned back towards the hallway leading to my bedroom when I heard scratching on the patio door window. I looked towards the door, and in the faint moon light, it looked like one of the branches was leaning on the window, but that could not be since the tree was too small and too far away for that, and besides, there was no wind outside, right? It must be my tired mind playing tricks on me.
I shrug it off, and continue on towards my bedroom. As I enter my bedroom, that feeling of discomfort continues to linger, and as I lie down, I find it difficult to sleep. I kept wondering about that tree…that man outside. In my head, I could see him walking towards the house…slowly with each step so carefully taken as his long spindly legs plodded forward. I imagined him walking around the house to the back, and reaching the patio door. He reached out with one of his hands, and grabbed the handle, and I could hear him open it with my mind’s ear—at least so I thought, but I realized that was not in my head.
I was going to get up to investigate, but then I heard it—the steps, slow and plodding like I imagine, and loud. I could feel the vibrations go through my body. I heard the door knob to my room being turned, and that feeling I have been having kept getting stronger, and so I curled inside my blanket closing my eyes as tight as I could like a child. I could hear the slow creak of the hinges on the door, and then a loud step into my room, and then another—closer. I then felt something touching me through my covers like tentacles slithering all over my body. A voice, unlike any I heard before, rang out like the growl of distant thunder saying, “You will become one of us.”
I had to confront this what ever it was, and I had to do it now. I threw my covers off and bolted upright in my bed screaming, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?!!” I found myself surrounded by daylight intruding from the windows of my room, and a loud blaring alarm clock. I could hear voices outside my room. I turned off my alarm clock, and walked out. I did not seen anyone immediately, and as I walked into my living room, I saw that the television was on again.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed tonight’s episode, head on over to my website at www.scarystorytime.com and make a comment. You can also make a comment on social media by searching for Spooky Boo Rhodes. Saturday nights these stories are told during the Saturday night livestream starting at 9:00 PM Eastern. For more information on YouTube check out the Spooky Boo Rhodes channel.
That’s all for tonight. I’ll see you in your nightmares.
