Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I
heart radio, Blumhouse television and grim and mild from Aaron Monkey.
Headphones recommended. Listener discretion advised. Good morning friend, I trust
(00:29):
you slept well. No interesting dreams? Well, no matter. After
today's exploration you're sure to be riddled with visions. Step
lively now. While we were in the old bathhouse, I
(00:51):
warn you not to breathe too deeply. You'll notice that
this is one of the only stores of the manner.
That's more for the protection of our guests inside than
for anyone else. m deep breath now, mm HMM. This
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bathhouse was constructing atop an old hot spring, but it
wasn't into a completion that the architect realized the psychological
effects of the ever rising guesses. At first it's only
a mild lightheadedness, but then things change. You can hear
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whispers of something of the beyond, see movements in every shadow. Once,
while tidying up, I swear I saw the walls breathing.
One unfortunate guest was trapped inside overnight and by the
morning he claimed to have witnessed the construction of the
(02:00):
dire universe. Saw The future edged in Obsidian. Allegedly, he
met with death himself and declared him a nice fellow
who couldn't seem to shut up, just name dropping who'd
he'd taken. Normally we would not put a guest yet
to stay, but if anything, the vapors seem to have
calmed ricky. Perhaps they remind him of his past, who knows? Ah,
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speak of the devil. Hello, Ricky, this is my friend
who wishes to speak with you. Ah Ha, there we are,
there we are. Take special note of the markings on
his arm and need you to draw them from memory.
No pressure, but it's important. So well, you to enjoy
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your visits. I'll come back for your friend before you've
breathed the vapors too long. If you do happen to
start drifts, well, just enjoy it. Dah, yeah, uh, Hey,
he told me I could have a smoke if I
(03:09):
talked to you. You got one, I mean, they won't
let me keep no lighter here, right, no smokes, no lighters,
no nothing. Thanks. So I thought I found a real
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reason to be alive. At least that's the way she
made me feel. So we started out with needles right
out of the GIG. I mean it's how we met.
She danced, I worked the floor. She thought I was
cute and she liked what I could get for her.
We were at it a real long time, keeping our
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heads above water. You know, I felt like the Lucky
Skuy in the world, with the sexy witch junkie girl
all my but it wasn't enough. It isn't ever enough
the longer you're in the ship. She wanted something bigger,
said she wanted something that could make her taste the
other side. Do you ever do anything crazy just to
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make a girl smile? Well, that was my whole damn existence.
So I did what I could. I had a guy
who was selling jackpot papers. Easy, peasy, no worries about
mixing up too much. When we cooked, it's just simplest,
dropping acid right. We've done that lots of times. Her
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and her candles and her weird drawings and herbs and ruins,
a brush with the beyond, that's what she kept calling it.
We made a date of that night. We lit some candles,
got as Frisky as we could and I let her
write things on me. I always let her write things
on me and put them stupid little paper tigers on
(04:55):
each other's tongues, the whole thing. Let's get wild and
weird together, you know. except I passed right the hell
out and she was left to her own devices, and
those devices included eating more papers, a lot more, and
she always did go harder than me, and she was searching.
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She said so herself. I mean she found it and
when I came to, she was sprawled out on the
floor next to me, ice cold, and I'm telling you,
she was so cold her her preface was laying in
her own vomit, papers still stuck on her damn tongue,
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her lips. Man, I haven't, I haven't seen anyone goes
so blue before. It was like looking at a doll,
and those gorgeous green eyes were all rolled up in
the back of her head. I'm not an idiot, you know.
I mean I had an emergency stash of subs and
I turned the whole damn apartment upside down looking for
the dose, and I found it and I I did
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of it to her, and I mean it isn't like
I just let her die. It was just it was
too late. It was way way too late. There she
was dead, ask one forever, all on account of a
few micrograms, too much oblivion, or so I thought, and
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I did not call the cops. Now I cried a lot,
I paced, I shot up, but I didn't call no cops.
I dragged her to the bathroom, I washed her up
and brushed her hair, and then I nodded out, right
there on the side of the TUB. It was just
a dream at first. She stood there looking beautiful sweet,
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batting those lashes at me like reaching out. Don't let
me go, I can be here with you. Don't let
me go, hold on. I didn't want to let her go.
I also couldn't be keeping a whole damn body around
the apartment. You know, I'm not a serial killer. I
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cut off her braid. I didn't know why then, but
it seemed important to keep something like like, like the
victorians did. She told me about that, you know, Memento
Moriy she called it, and then I went about getting
rid of the rest. You don't want to know about
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all that. And the dreams did not go away. Every
time it was more and more vivid. I took to
falling asleep with that braid, with their clothes. Everything smelled
like her, felt like her. I lit her candles and
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I brewed her tea. I left her favorite books in
her favorite spots, played the music she loved. I did
not touch those papers ever again. With what was left,
at least, I couldn't bear it, I left him on
her little alter. I didn't really know what else to do.
It really really popped off the night that I got
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ship faced and braided some of her hair into mine. Right.
I got no idea why I did it. It ain't
like I believed all the weird stuff she did. It
just it just seemed right. I wandered it close to me.
I laid on her side of the bed, you know,
drunk and crying and drooling all over her pillow. And
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then I smelled her. Okay, not the memory of her mind,
you her. And there was, there was like this, this touch,
a voice, her voice. I told you not to let
me go, Ricky, I told you not to give up.
She was not a ghost, all right, I gotta really
really stress that. She touched me, she moved my hair.
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I fell asleep with her wrapped around me, though I
couldn't see her, not yet at least right. But that changed.
So when I woke up, there she was, standing front
and center at the end of my of our freaking bed, naked,
a little blue, her hair hacked off, just like she
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looked before. I reached out to her and she came
to me like this junkie angel, blue, lipt and glowing
and whispering all the lovely, sweet, filthy things she used to.
I mean, it seemed like a resurrection. She was just
as warm and as firm as she'd ever been. And
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the more we were together, I mean the more I
told her I loved her, the heavier she was, the
more real. I mean, it was like heaven, man. Everything
I ever needed come right back at me, as if
that awful night had never happened. She didn't even talk
about it. At first. I could hardly bear to leave
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the house, I mean I didn't want to let her
out of my sight. I thought maybe she just disappear.
So we talked about the old days. She drew those
signs all over me, all over the walls, and told
me they were for remembering. And funny enough, man, I
guess they were. And she wanted to know all sorts
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of things, like what did I look like when I
was dead? Did you kiss me? Where am I now?
Why didn't you let me die? I didn't let her die.
I didn't know how to say that without sounding and
she hit the table with her fists and her face
got all twisted up and I felt my guts get
all cold, like when you know a situation is about
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to go real sideways. Answer me. She slapped the Blue
Hell right out of me. I shoved her. I don't
know what else to do. I mean, she was screaming
how I let her die and how I wasn't no
good junkie bastard and that her mama wouldn't even know
what happened to her, that she didn't deserve that. But
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she was right. It ain't like she was lying. I
had thought every single thing. She screamed at me a
million times. She threw a chair and I was too
damn stupid to duck. You gotta you gotta understand. I
wasn't used to this. We we hadn't been like this.
This was ugly and I told her so and she
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just laughed at me. told me I'd made her this way,
I'd made her ugly inside, just like me. And I
ran out of the apartment then, hoping what I worried
about before would be real, that that without me there,
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she just go go wherever the hell she came from.
And I stayed, gone to a few days. Uh Hey, uh,
let me get another one, please. You don't have to
light it for me, it's fine. So so I came
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back hungry and and not hungry and dope, sick and
smelling like a damn dead animal. And soon as I
opened the door I saw her sprawled on the freaking ceiling,
same as she'd been on the floor, eyes rolled up white,
hissing at me. You killed me, you killed me, you
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kill me, you killed me, you killed her. Mouth was
bluer this time, covered in vomit. The whole apartment smelled
like it, like like worse, an Outhouse, a slaughterhouse, like bleach,
like it did then. Oh my God man, we fought.
We fought like a couple of game dogs out for blood,
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out for souls. I mean she was screaming like a
bandh and I was crying at her to just go
the hell away and leave me alone. And she crawled
down the wall towards me, all back bent and white eyed,
whispering words that didn't even make sense, and the ink
on my skin, it burned, I mean it burned like
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fire and I screamed at her to stop. I told
her I loved her. She kept coming right up over
the table hissing at me, and I reached up and
yanked that hair I braided from my head, pulled out
a huge damp chunk of my own too. I didn't
I didn't know what else to do, but it sure
seemed like a start. You think, wow, that's it, Huh,
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break the spell, smash up the Junkie Witch Magic. Hell now,
life ain't ever that simple. She jumped at me and
we went to the ground and she was beating my
head against the floor, calling me a lying, murdering loser
of failure, every damn thing she could think of. And
she was strong man, stronger than any figment of anything
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had a right to be. But how do you kill
the memory of a person with a knife, with that Shair,
and not with that baseball bat? I set fire to
her altar and I threw it out the window and
she didn't go nowhere. I ripped up her clothes. She
called me a coward. I lost track of how many
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times I had things from at me. How many times
this skittering awful thing that wasn't my girl anymore bounced
off the wall and landed on me and beat me
into the floor. H You're never gonna get rid of me,
she held, and you're gonna remember what you did for
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the rest of your filthy, useless life. And that's when
I realized I couldn't kill them memory of a person,
but I sure as hell could kill the person who
remembered the Jackpot papers. They had fluttered to the floor
when I flung everything else out the window. So I
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stuffed the papers into my mouth and I told her
to go to hell. She wasn't anything with me dead,
and it was. It was the last good idea I
ever had. Uh Oh, well, it wasn't a perfect idea
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and I still don't know who got to me before
I was gone, but I woke up here, wherever here is,
all scribbled up with this. Those are her symbols. I
still see pieces of her sometimes. I mean when I
look in in the mirror. When I closed my eyes,
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somebody sure as hell carving all this ship on the walls.
I didn't do it. He won't let me have any NIES.
He won't let me finish US off, not yet. But
now you know what I did, what I can do.
MM HMM. Hey, Um, if you would mind, I'd really
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appreciate you doing me a favor. Let me let me
hold that lighter, just just for tonight. I mean, what
could be that? Hey, wait, hey, hey, man, come back.
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All right, ricky, we'll visit a gid soup. How are
you feeling? H different? Did you see the blueprints of
the universe? RECOGNIZE ANYTHING IN THE SHADOWS? Have no fear,
the effects will dissipate soon enough, though. Tonight you will
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dream of it further. Oh, did you get a good
look at the markings? I myself have only seen flashes,
but they seem to match symbols left in one of
the architects old journals. We are getting close, my friend.
Ascension is around the corner, but for now you must
go and take ink to paper and record what you've seen.
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Show no one. This remains between us. Tomorrow, my friend,
there's a special set of stairs that require a visit.
Are you thirteen days of Halloween was created by Matt
Frederick and Alex Williams and executive produced by Erin May key,
(18:00):
starring Keegan Michael Key as the caretaker. Today's story was
written by led West over performed by Adam Laborde and
directed by Alex Williams, with editing and sound designed by
Josh Thain, additional writing and script supervision from Nicholas Dakowski
casting by Jessica loser. Only five days remain. Tomorrow another story.
(18:27):
The low light still tinted the room orange when I
woke disoriented, my heart pounding with such force I could
feel it in my back and in the thick red
quilt beneath me. I lay waiting for the nightmare or
whatever had shunted me from sleep to fade until calm,
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until I realized that it was not my heart knocking,
but something below, something inside the bed. Thirteen days of
Halloween is a production of I heart radio, Blumhouse television
and Grimm and mild, from Aaron Mankey. For more podcasts
from my heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP,
(19:10):
apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
and learn more about thirteen days of Halloween at Grimm
and mild dot com.