This episode is for mature audiences only. It is rated for profanity, suicidal language, and graphic violence. Listener discretion is advised.
Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo. Tonight I have for you two very eerie stories from the Creepypasta library. These two stories will make you think twice about going to the doctor’s office any time soon.
First, I’d like to invite you to listen to Midnight Monsters on Sunday nights where I take calls about true paranormal activity and experiences. Visit https://www.midnightmonstersradio for more information. Considering supporting my podcasts by joining the Spooky Boo Club where you can get a monthly newsletter, commercial-free episodes, and other fun spooky stuff. Check it out at www.spookyboo.club.
This Saturday I’ll be chatting with my friends in the Creature Features chat room on YouTube where we’ll be watching the horror host Vincent Van Dahl and talking about the campy horror movies and great guests. Come by and say hi. Get the links and info at www.creaturefeatures.tv.
Now let’s begin.
STORY ONE
TITLE►► In My Own Skin
AUTHOR►► Uncredited Creepypasta
LINK►► https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/In_My_Own_Skin
As many people come to realize in their lives, high school can be a difficult time. People can be cruel, unforgiving, and ruthless. And if you’re any different from the crowd, they’ll cast you out like a freak. I was one of those people. I never really had any friends, but more like people who decided to sit with me at lunch out of pity. You know, the do-gooders who feel some sort of self-righteousness after simply eating their food in my general vicinity.
I didn’t care about them. They all scorned me when I wasn’t looking, anyway, and I wasn’t about to give them fake kindness back. Whenever anyone would come up to me like a dangerous animal, I’d give them a reason to, by snapping back at them to leave me alone.
That doesn’t mean I never liked or wanted friends. In fact, I felt horribly alone. You can tell me that beggars can’t be choosers, but, if you were lost, would you go through the colorful flowery field or the dark, dangerous forest?
True, I wanted friends. I was never really a people person, I guess. A few months ago, my parents took me to a psychiatrist where I was diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder.
Go figure.
On top of that, my anxiety was about to kill me. I’ve found that it’s harder than people bring it up to be to not care about what people say. I’d hear words like “freak”, “psycho”, “vampire”, “creep”, and the like all the time. And so, I turned to self-harm. I know it was never good, but I felt like it was another way to express my emotional pain. Plus, I always thought of my skin as a canvas. The lines I’d draw with a pushpin would usually make some cool design, and although it hurt, I liked it.
People noticed. And they cast me out further. I hated that they did. I felt so ultimately worthless in life. It seemed to me like suicide was the only option. What did they know? What did they care?
Not a fucking bit.
I decided I was going to simply overdose on a bottle of my mom’s prescribed pain medicine, and then I’d just be gone.
Like that.
But it was while I was writing my suicide note that I got the call.
I felt my cellphone buzz in my pocket. Can’t hurt to answer it one last time, I thought.
It was the suicide hotline.
I would’ve thought I’d be the one calling them.
The sound on the other end of the line didn’t sound like any other 1-800 hotline. It sounded like a faint hustle and bustle of a hospital ward. The only discernible sound that could be heard was a heart monitor, beating steadily, but slowly.
Then, a voice started talking to me. It sounded like any old automated phone service, but with more emotion and tone. I could tell it was a human, but whoever it was sounded like a robot anyway.
“Hello. Are you happy with your life?”
No…
“Are you happy with your body?”
No. I hated my body. I always thought I was too fat for friends, on top of the scars.
“Do you want to just escape it all?”
I noticed in the background that the heart monitor was beating faster, and so was mine. They seemed eerily in sync… This was the one question I decided to answer.
“Yes.”
The heartbeat was beating much faster than mine now, at a steadily increasing pace.
For about ten seconds, there was no talking, just the sound of the heartbeat getting faster and faster.
I think it was also getting louder. My ears were starting to hurt.
Then the voice spoke up.
“That’s all we needed to hear.”
The heartbeat stops, and the stereotypical elongated beep followed, indicating that the heart was no longer beating- did I just hear someone die?
The hell?
I felt dizzy, like the kind you get with a migraine headache. My vision started to blur, and I reached for the prescription drugs. Yet, as I did, my balance would fail me, and I’d slip away from it.
I heard three pounding knocks on the front door of the house. Odd. It was 9:30 at night. We don’t usually get visitors.
Then, it sounded like someone busted the door down. Was I being robbed? I was home alone that night; my parents were wherever doing I don’t care.
Footsteps throughout the house. Yes, there was an outsider in the house. I was too dizzy and disoriented to do anything about it. I simply stumbled around my room, trying to gain my balance.
Then, a foot through my door.
Then, no more door.
The door was on the floor.
Five men, all dressed in black, stormed in, each armed. Their outfits were all black, except for what looked like a surgical mask on all of them.
I cowered in the corner. Who were these men? What were they doing here? They reached for me, and I screamed. I tried to punch, but again I was too dizzy, and they were too quick. Two of them seized my arms, and two seized my legs. I kicked, and squirmed, but to no avail.
Before I knew it, I was being forcibly strapped to a stretcher, like the ones they load into ambulances.
I screamed “No! NO! Don’t take me!”
It seemed like none of them would listen.
My screams continued as they pulled me downstairs, and out the front door, where a black van was waiting.
Again, I screamed “NO! NO! NO! YOU CAN’T TAKE ME!” and through my tear streamed eyes, I saw two figures I recognized.
My parents.
I screamed “Mom! Dad! What the hell is going on?”
After finishing a conversation with one of the men in black and surgical masks, my mom said, calmly,
“This is for your own good, honey.”
Then, I felt a sharp pain in my arm. An injection needle.
What the fuck were they doing to me?
Next thing I know, my muscles start spazzing out.
My arms are convulsing, my legs contorting, my heart beating.
I had no control. I was having a massive seizure.
After a minute of pulsing violently in the stretcher, it stopped.
They loaded me into the van, and I blacked out.
When I woke up, everything was white. A bright light shone above my face, nearly blinding me. All I could remember from the night before was that I was being taken and had a seizure. As my vision adjusted, I could see that now, I was tied to a hospital bed. And the men in black were now in white.
But their surgical masks were black now.
I couldn’t really move any of my limbs, but I could tell my legs were sore. Probably from struggling last night, I assumed.
Then came the heart monitor sound.
I noticed on my hand, the usual sensor and wires that hooked me up to a heart monitor. I was hearing my own heartbeat. Just like on the phone call. All of the men, who were now in white, were hustling around, until one with a clipboard stopped at the foot of my bed and spoke aloud:
“Begin the procedure and removal.”
Removal? The fuck? First of all, what the hell were they going to do to me? I never consented to this.
I asked him precisely that, and I received no answer.
I asked again, but almost screaming, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!”
The man with the clipboard spoke again,
“Proceed with the sedative.”
One attendant hooks me up to an IV in my arm. Little prick in the arm, no big deal. But when I look where the cord is going, the heart monitor speeds up. It didn’t end in some fluid baggie on top of a pole. It went into a tank. Which I’ll guess was full of whatever sedative they were using on me. I heard the flick of a switch, and I felt a surge of liquid through my body. It felt stimulating at first, like I was getting drunk or high, but then I realized:
I can’t feel anything anymore.
I can’t move.
I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t open, nor would my vocal chords produce any muffled sound.
My eyes wouldn’t close either. And I could hear everything.
No control. My only choice was to let them do whatever they were doing.
No stopping them at this point.
My thoughts were my only screams at this point.
I saw one man, or doctor at this point, pull out a long, shiny, metal object.
No, no, no, no, no. This isn’t happening. This is a dream.
Shit. This isn’t a dream.
The doctor with a clipboard said “Execute first removal.” He lowers the object towards my body, and I feel a forceful tugging on my right leg. I can’t feel anything, but I see blood spurting everywhere.
My own blood.
I want to vomit, but I can’t use any muscles to bring anything up.
More forceful tugging on my right leg. Then, a sharp crack, like snapping a branch underneath your foot. I look, and to my horror, my entire right leg is being carried off’before my eyes. My internal screams could not be heard, yet the only fear I could physically express was through my eyes. What the literal fuck? My right leg was now gone, forcefully cut from my body in front of me.
They’re fucking dismembering me.
The process continues with my left leg, and so I’m left there, a bleeding mess, without any lower half to convulse, kick, or run away with. All I see are two bloody stumps, with bone protruding, where my legs used to be.
Oh my fucking god.
I see one of the doctors inject another IV into my other arm. Coming from another tank with a visibly red substance. They’re feeding me blood, so that I can stay alive throughout this entire process.
My pelvis is still there, perhaps if I escape, I can still live in a wheelchair, I thought. Then, the clipboard doctor commands,
“Proceed with laser removal.”
A switch goes on. A bright red light on top of my midsection. I can’t feel it, but I know it’s getting hotter and hotter and hotter.
I’m not sure the heart monitor can go any faster before I have a heart attack.
He wasn’t kidding when he said laser removal. Next thing I know, from where my diaphragm meets my pelvis, there are scorch marks. And a line, going across. After it finishes drawing across the other end of my midsection, two doctors grab on to it and yank.
This was more forceful than feeling my own fucking legs being taken off me. I can see my own intestines stringing out in front of me. And more gushing blood. Most of the hospital bed that was going to be my death bed was a dark shade of red instead of white now.
With a puddle of my own entrails in front of my diminishing figure, I was becoming silently delirious. I still couldn’t speak.
How the fuck was I alive at this point?
The doctor says, “Execute chest cavity removal.”
Oh my god. They’re pulling out my organs, one at a time. One of them reaches for a scalpel, and then at me.
All the while I’m thinking, “Fuck you! Fuck you all! Why the fuck are you doing this?”
He makes a small incision, just above my left nipple, then cuts all the way across my breast to the opposite side. He then goes down, about to the length of my belly button. I guess I never realized just how skinny I was. He cuts with precision to the left across my belly, and up again where he started.
He has to tug a little bit, but I can feel it ripping off of me.
He pulls the skin, and little by little, it tears away from my ribs, stomach, and intestines, which nearly spill out in front of me due to lack of support.
I have no choice but to accept this now.
No skin is left over my chest, and I can see my lungs, protected by my rib cage, and my heart, which is still miraculously beating.
The doctor reaches for my chest again. I try to consciously look away as I hear snap, after snap, after snap, until a pile of white sticks, which at this point I assume are my ribs, are carried away from me. My lungs are pulsing in front of me, as I breathe, and I would feel nauseated if I had any stomach left.
I hear the same voice that’s been commanding my execution, saying
“All vitals remain. Proceed with extraction.”
I see them out of the corner of my eye stick a needle in my head. My vision is now blurred, but I can make out what looks like a spoon, and a hand reaching for my face.
Oh god, no.
Just as my vision went black, I felt a tool insert itself behind my right eye, tugging, a snap, and then nothing. The same with the other eye.
They scooped out my eyes.
And although I couldn’t see anything, I mentally blacked out on the order of “Begin vitals transplant.”
I woke up after an indefinite period of time, which I assumed was many hours, considering the massive sedative I thought I was under. I was still in a hospital bed.
Thank god, it was all a dream.
I had full movement of all my limbs, and I wasn’t even hooked up to any IV’s or heart monitors. I felt whole again. Still dazed and confused, I stumbled around the white hospital ward, until I found a bathroom. I tried to wash off my face with cold water, so I’d wake up and come to my senses. And then I looked in the mirror.
That was not the face I recognized. At least I thought I was a scrawny, blond-haired fifteen year old, with a head that slightly resembled a pickle jar.
The face I saw was more round, brown haired, with a more pointed nose.
I lifted my hands to feel my face, to confirm it.
Then I noticed the scars.
But first, the absence of scars.
My arms were completely clean.
But there was one big scar, lined with stitches, that ran all the way up the underside of my arm. As I visually followed it, I noticed it ran down my side.
And down my leg.
And back up my leg, into my thighs.
I finally threw off the hospital gown I was in. The scar, which was lined with stitches throughout, ran the same direction on the other side of my body.
It was like it separated me in half.
I stood there, naked, and screamed.
This was not my body.
STORY TWO
TITLE►► Think Thank
AUTHOR►► The Vesper’s Bell
LINK►► https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Think_Tank
“Damn it, Jess, you told me this place was abandoned! I’m out,” I cursed as I turned my back to the stately, well-kept house that was very obviously not abandoned, making me lose whatever nerve I thought I had.
Jess and I were what you might call ‘disenfranchised youths’. Our prospects for the future were pretty bleak, and we were pissed about it. With things only getting worse for us this year, we had decided we were finally pissed enough to do something about it. Or, at least pissed enough to do something that made us feel like we were doing something about it.
Our plan was to raid what we believed to be an unoccupied home of our town’s wealthiest resident, taking anything of value we could carry while tearing the place up to ‘send him a message’. Ostensibly, anyway. Looking back on it, we were just lashing out, with no real reason to believe one act of petty theft and vandalism would be the impetus for any great social change. It would more likely be the impetus for us spending the rest of the pandemic in prison.
“I never said it was abandoned. I said it was unoccupied,” Jess insisted as he grabbed me by the shoulder. “It’s a guest house, where Chamberlin keeps any out-of-town guests when his mansion is overflowing with pussy.”
“I’m pretty sure Chamberlin’s gay, actually,” I muttered disinterestedly, turning my attention back to the house to see if there was any merit to what he was saying. It was a squat, stone, rectangular house that looked to be about fifty feet by forty. Two stories, plus an attic and basement. That gave it at least four thousand square feet of living space, and twice that if the attic and basement weren’t just for storing wine and antiques.
But it was the spacious, well-landscaped lawn that really made me doubt it was vacant. Weeded flower beds, trim bushes, and grass that had clearly been mowed within the last week were enough to make any hooligans looking for an easy target think twice.
“You’re missing the point, Az. It’s a guest house, and he can’t exactly keep his Illuminati bros somewhere shabby, now can he?” Jess asked. “If it will make you feel better, we can stake the place out for a bit, but I’m telling you; no one’s home.”
I let out a reluctant sigh, folding my arms across my chest as I considered the admittedly quiet house.
“Even if no one’s home, there’s no way it’s not monitored by security,” I insisted.
“It isn’t. Chamberlin values his privacy; as anyone who’s into as much messed up shit as he is would,” Jess claimed. “There’s no live monitoring, just security cameras that feed into an encrypted, onsite hard drive.”
“And how would you know that?” I asked skeptically.
“There was a news story about it a while back,” he replied. “There was a whole court case or investigation or something trying to get access to his surveillance footage. It wasn’t about this place in particular, but it’s how he operates. Look, this is the safest of his properties to target because he doesn’t waste his bodyguards here when there are no guests. What the fuck does he care about the maid and gardener popping in to keep everything looking swanky? No one’s going to be watching the camera feed, and even if they do look it over, we’re covered since we got these.”
He gestured to his now completely non-suspicious bandana, which he wore because he thought that the nose wires in face masks were 5G antennas meant to increase adrenochrome production, or some bullshit like that.
“Even if no one’s watching the surveillance cameras, there will still be motion detectors and entry sensors that will alert Chamberlin’s goons to a break-in,” I argued. “They’ll be here in minutes.”
“Not without video confirmation they won’t. They got other priorities,” Jess countered. “Chamberlin’s got his mansion, his villa, his financial firm, his luxury apartment building, his hotel, his country club, I think the strip club, and probably shit we don’t even know about. His security isn’t going to be in a rush to check out what might just be a false alarm on what for him is basically a spare mattress. They’ll take their sweet time, which means we can take ours.”
I sighed, trying to figure out if anything he was saying made any sense. He really was piling a lot of assumptions on top of each other, and for all we knew we’d already been spotted and flagged as suspicious by the most advanced security AI money could buy. But the news report he mentioned did ring a bell for me, and it made sense that Chamberlin wouldn’t risk anyone spying on him through his security cameras. He also owned a lot of real estate, so it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that a comparatively small guest house would be a low priority for his security force. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t come running right away.
The thought of the Dragon Smaug, exploding into a murderous rage upon noticing a single chalice had been stolen from his massive hoard, suddenly injected itself into my mind.
“Let’s find someplace we can watch the house unnoticed until after dark. If we don’t see any lights on, we’ll go for it,” I proposed. I was actually trying to save face, since even if no one was home, I was sure the lights would be automatic. An unlit house like that would be way too tempting to burgle. Jess agreed, and we faded back into the trees that shrouded the entirety of the property, mostly shielding it from public view.
Sunset came, and daylight faded, and yet not one light in, on, or around the house was lit up. It became so dark it was actually hard to make the nearly mansion-sized house out in the gloom.
“What did I tell you, man? Nobody’s home,” Jess declared as he started heading towards the stone fence. I started to object, but couldn’t think of anything to say. If Chamberlin didn’t even care enough about this place to put the lights on a timer, then Jess was probably right about the security being lax. I jogged over to him and together we hopped the fence and sprinted across the spacious lawn.
“Watch out for the koi pond,” Jess warned as we narrowly avoided walking into the decorative pool. “That’s more of what I’m talking about right there. Chamberlin’s real mansion’s got peacocks and flamingos and shit, and he has riding horses at his villa. A koi pond is some cheap ass landscaping for someone as loaded as him.”
“Jess – have you been to Chamberlin’s houses?” I asked curiously.
“What? No. What the hell would someone like me be doing in places like those?” he scoffed. “As far as he’s concerned, people like us aren’t even qualified to scrub his toilets.”
“It’s just that, this is starting to sound kind of personal, and I thought we were just trying to ‘stick it to the man’ or something,” I explained.
“That is all we’re doing; grabbing what we can and shitting on the rest from someone so rich they wouldn’t give a damn if we burned the whole house down,” Jess claimed as we reached the back door. He tried turning the knob, but it turned out that the maid did lock up on her way out. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to be a pair of improvised lock picks he’d learned to make from a YouTube tutorial.
“You’ve done this before, right?” I asked skeptically.
“I’ve been practicing, yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll have this open in a couple of minutes,” he assured me. I sighed, and as the seconds ticked by, I started to wonder if bashing the door down or breaking a window would make enough noise for a neighbour to call the police. Fortunately, it seemed I’d underestimated him, and he had the door open in barely a minute.
I froze, expecting some kind of alarm siren to start blaring, but there was nothing but silence and a dark hallway before us. Far from being emboldened by our level of success so far, a feeling of dread began to wash over me.
“Call me paranoid, but this is starting to feel too easy,” I said, the anxiety knotting in my stomach, pushing me to the verge of vomiting.
“Az, how many times do we have to go over this? Chamberlin not springing for decent security on this place is no weirder than an average guy leaving a tool shed unlocked,” he insisted, his tone growing irritable and impatient. “Get your flashlight out and let’s go! We’re wasting time!”
With a reluctant nod, I fumbled with my flashlight and followed him into the house.
The back hall led directly into a large living area, with furniture arranged in a way that reminded me more of a ski or hunting lodge rather than someone’s house.
“Holy shit, check out that TV! It’s almost a hundred inches, and probably 8K!” I said in an excited whisper. Without saying a word, Jess unsheathed his crowbar and started smashing it. “Dude, what the hell! Do you have any idea what we could get for that?”
“We can’t smuggle a hundred-inch TV out of here. Use your head!” he chastised me as the television fell off its mount and crashed to the ground. He moved his way into the kitchen and started smashing what I could only assume was antique bone china, something which was definitely transportable and pawnable.
“Not personal, my ass,” I muttered under my breath. Rather than join him in whatever catharsis he was trying to achieve, I slowly moved my flashlight across the living room in the hopes of finding something worth pocketing. My beam settled on a large, 19th-century portrait above the mantle, depicting three well-dressed businessmen. The one in the middle looked like Chamberlin – tall, slender, and handsome with dark brown hair, dressed all in reds, and that same punchable smug smirk on his face. I assumed it was his great-grandfather or something. I knew he had roots in Sombermorey going back a couple of hundred years or so.
The frail man to his right was older, with bushy white hair, pale greyish skin, and a pointed beard and nose. The only thing about him that didn’t look old and fragile were his vibrant green eyes. I got an odd sense of déjà vu then, like I had seen people who looked like that before, but I had no idea where.
The man on the other side of the portrait was the shortest of the three, but also the heaviest, looking to weigh more than the other two put together. There didn’t appear to be any neck connecting his round head to his pear-shaped torso, and he had a moustache and hat that were both small enough to be slightly comical.
It suddenly clicked in my head that these must be the Crow, Crowley & Chamberlin that Chamberlin’s financial firm was named after. It seemed that the Chamberlin line was the only one still around – an idea that made me more than a little uneasy.
“Jess! Hey Jess!” I hissed, hoping his little temper tantrum in the kitchen was drawing to a close.
“What?” he gasped between breaths.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, and right now I don’t care, but I came here for loot,” I reminded him. “Let’s go upstairs and check the bedrooms for jewellery or something.”
Jess nodded and sheathed his crowbar. He didn’t look sated, just resigned to the fact that what he was doing wasn’t actually going to make him feel any better about whatever was bothering him.
We crept quietly up to the second floor, though I don’t know why. Since Jess’s little rampage in the kitchen hadn’t brought anyone downstairs, it seemed safe to assume the house was deserted. Once we were upstairs, I just turned the first doorknob in front of me, expecting to find nothing more extraordinary than a neatly kept spare bedroom.
Instead, what I stumbled into was some kind of 19th-century laboratory. It ran most of the length of the second floor, and I suspected that maybe it had at one point been multiple adjacent bedrooms, since there were a couple more exits into the hallway further down. There were tall bookshelves holding well over a thousand hardbound tomes, alongside shorter, sturdier shelves for jars and vials of strange liquids, preserved specimens, and unsettling looking artifacts. There was a writing desk, a telescope, and three workbenches, none of which had any chairs by them. A section of ceiling was missing at the far end, enabling a mechanical lift to ascend into the attic, and likely down to the lower floors as well. Throughout the room was a haphazard collection of steampunk looking contraptions of all shapes and sizes, the crown jewel of which was an actual brain in a vat.
The brain, along with a little bit of its original spinal cord, was buoyantly suspended in a clear, bubbling liquid. The vat was mounted on a wheeled podium made from dark oak and polished brass. The front side sported several closed panels and an analogue interface of glass dials and ebony knobs. Beneath and beside the panel was a pair of shelves, each of which supported a folded-up, mechanical arm with a claw grasper. To one side of the vat itself was a polished gramophone horn, and on the other side was a miniature Tesla coil. On the backside there was an accordion-like bellows, constantly rising and falling, which was presumably what was aerating the vat.
Strangest of all, perched on top of the vat was a vintage bowler hat.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as I stepped into the room, taking in the bizarre scene as quickly as I could. I spun around to Jess, who looked just as confused as I was. “Did you know about this?”
“No way man, I swear. This is some Jules Verne shit or something,” he replied, slowly stepping towards the brain in the vat. “I’m not a doctor, but this brain looks real to me. This thing isn’t just some Halloween decoration or something; it’s an actual preserved human brain.”
“That is so fucked up, man. Why would someone preserve an actual person’s brain like that?” I asked, shirking away from the abomination in mortified horror.
“Like I said, Chamberlin’s a fucked-up dude,” Jess replied, a devilish grin spreading across his face.
“Jess, dude, what are you thinking?” I asked, already know what he was going to say.
“Only that this freaky thing here must be a hell of a lot more irreplaceable than a TV and some dishes,” he answered, raising his crowbar to smash the vat to smithereens.
Before I could object, the Tesla coil sprang to life and shot him with a bolt of indigo electricity, sending him tumbling backwards and crashing to the floor.
“What the fuck!” he screamed, clutching his torso in agony. The brain began to glow with a ghostly blue aura, tendrils lapping out at the vat like a plasma ball, and the podium rolled itself on creaking wheels towards us.
“Well lads, I was hoping not to have to play my hand, but you’ve gone ahead and forced the issue,” a monotone voice boomed from the gramophone horn.
“Jesus Christ, you’re alive!” I screamed.
“Better! Alchemically Reanimated!” it boasted. “A proprietary concoction of protoplasmotic rejuvenatives and protectorants was all that was required to keep me from the Dread Persephone’s realm.”
I told myself that it couldn’t be real, that it was some remote-controlled prop someone was using to scare us, but… the brain, the undeniably real, human brain, was able to move about inside the vat with the ease of lively fish. It was moving itself with that inexplicable aura that flickered when it spoke. I tried to think of everything I knew about cryogenics and brain-computer interfaces to find some possible rational explanation, but there wasn’t one. I was staring at a glowing, disembodied, still conscious brain in a vat that was telepathically controlling a clockwork, lightning-shooting automaton.
“Az, run,” Jess gasped, pleading with me to leave him behind. I wasn’t ready to leave him just yet though, so I tried dragging him towards the door. Another bolt from the Tesla coil not only slammed the door shut but locked it as well, demonstrating far more precision than should have been possible.
“Sorry gents, but I’m afraid an Irish Goodbye is quite off the table,” the brain informed us. “Allow me to properly introduce myself then; I am Professor Whitaker C. Crowley, or at least what’s left of him; occult scholar, alchemical consultant, and silent partner in the enterprises of Seneca Chamberlin.”
“Silent partner?” I scoffed. The thing had the volume control of a Dalek.
“I am aware of the irony of that title!” it screeched. “Your friend is dying, so I’d advise you to watch the sass if you expect any help from me!”
I looked down to take a good look at Jess, and saw that the brain was right. He was bleeding out, no doubt about it. I nodded my head in somber agreement, slowly rising to my feet and lifting my hands over my head.
“Can you help him?” I asked softly.
“No, Az, please. I know what this thing does to people. I won’t be one of its experiments!” Jess ranted as he coughed up blood.
“You make it sound like I’m some sort of mad scientist,” the glowing brain in the vat chuckled through its gramophone, the pattern of arcing light forming the outline of a smile. As horrifying as it was to look at, the implications of what Jess had just said sunk in nonetheless.
“You know what this thing does?” I asked him coldly. “Jess, what the fuck have you gotten us into?”
“I know. I lied. I’m sorry. I was in pretty deep with Chamberlin, but that’s over now, and I swear to God I didn’t know that this was where he kept that thing!” Jess screamed as the red splotch on his chest grew larger.
“Struggle all you want boy; you’ll only bleed out faster,” Crowley said as he wheeled over to his shelf of potions. His bronze graspers unfolded, and began preparing a syringe. “Do you feel him yet? Cold Hades grasping at you, pulling you down to his Underworld? You don’t want to spend eternity there. Trust me, I know. But one shot of this to your brainstem and your consciousness can stay bound to your central nervous system forever. Granted, if you’ve yet to master astral projection, the experience seems to be… less than idyllic, but I’ll leave it to the philosophy majors to debate if it’s worse than literal Hell.”
“Az, don’t let him stick me with that stuff man!” Jess pleaded, tears of existential terror streaming down his cheeks. Crowley was coming straight at us now, his Tesla coil already crackling, ready to put either of us down in an instant if he needed to. My eyes darted around wildly for any possible weapons, but the only things within reach were monstrous deformities preserved in formaldehyde.
I grabbed one and held it out like a crucifix between us and Crowley, hoping he was smart enough to realize what I was threatening him with.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, though the fact that he backed up a bit while turning down his Tesla coil suggested he knew exactly what I was doing.
“This is formaldehyde. It’s flammable, even explosive, right?” I asked. “You pull any more of your Palpatine crap on us and your whole lab goes up in flames!”
Crowley made a sort of sighing sound with his bellows, and shut his Tesla coil off completely.
“Now drop the syringe!” I ordered. This time, Crowley hesitated. “Drop it!”
“I’ll set it down; it would be a shame to waste it,” he said as he placed the needle onto the nearest table. Jess started to laugh, and with his last remaining strength brought himself to his feet.
“Now, my friend and I are leaving, and you’re staying here, got it?” I asked authoritatively.
“No Az, you’re the only one getting out of here,” Jess said, picking up a jar with a pickled Polyphemus inside. “I’m dying no matter what, and I’m not going to die for nothing.”
Before I could say anything, he charged at Crowley, smashing the jar right over the Tesla coil. I watched in horror as the two grappled each other, Crowley’s graspers crushing Jess’s hands, but Jess slamming Crowley against another shelf, bringing multiple jars of formaldehyde down on both of them. Either in panic, desperation, or just a short circuit, Crowley fired his Tesla coil, immediately sparking a blaze that engulfed them both.
“Run!” was Jess’s final word to me. There was nothing I could have done to save him then, so I ran. I ran past them and out the next door down from the one we came through, down the hall, down the stairs, and out the back as the second floor burned behind me. I’m not sure how I managed to jump the fence without Jess’s help, but I did. Adrenaline, I guess.
The next day, the news reported that Jess had died in the fire. They said the fire was arson, that Jess was the arsonist, and made no mention of a secret laboratory run by a floating brain.
I don’t know if Crowley survived the fire. I don’t know if he managed to inject Jess with whatever that stuff was, or if it really did what he said it did. I also don’t know if Chamberlin knows I had anything to do with the fire or break-in, but I left town in a hurry anyway. I’ve gotten pretty far north, pretty remote, but maybe not remote enough. There’s a real nice gold sedan parked across from where I am right now, probably too nice for anyone who lives nearby.
If the worst happens to me, I want to make sure that a public record of what really happened exists somewhere. Jess wasn’t an arsonist; he died trying to kill an abomination that never should have existed in the first place.
I only hope for both of our sakes, for all of our sakes, that he succeeded.
This is Spooky Boo. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed these stories, please head on over to my website at www.creepypastascarystories.com for more information and links to the authors and to make a comment. You can also comment by following me on social media at spookybooscarystorytime on Instagram and facebook or spookyboorhodes on twitter. Be sure to check out the spooky boo merchandise at www.scarystorytime.com. Be sure to tell your friends about the podcast. The more people who listen, the more stories I can write and tell.
That’s all for tonight. I’ll see you in your nightmares.
That’s all for tonight…
I’ll see you in your nightmares.
MUSIC/BACKGROUND AMBIENCE
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