August 1, 2025 • 21 mins
A young man awakes in a dream due to the call of Mother Nature only to encounter a strange phantom at the end of the hallway, next to the bathroom, eating a sandwich 🥪
DJ4AM and Jason Nevermind (The Creepy Podcast) bring you three stories from the troubling imagination of JP Lovecraft.
The Vampire on a Pony Network presents its first audio book: The Sandwich: Tales of Fantasy and Delusion by JP Lovecraft.
Written by JP Lovecraft
Sounds by DJ4AM
Narration by Jason Nevermind
Get the full audiobook at:
https://dj4am.bandcamp.com/album/the-sandwich-tales-of-fantasy-delusion-by-jp-lovecraft
Album art by Collage Fromage:
www.instagram.com/collage_fromage/
DJ4AM and Jason Nevermind (The Creepy Podcast) bring you three stories from the troubling imagination of JP Lovecraft.
The Vampire on a Pony Network presents its first audio book: The Sandwich: Tales of Fantasy and Delusion by JP Lovecraft.
Written by JP Lovecraft
Sounds by DJ4AM
Narration by Jason Nevermind
Get the full audiobook at:
https://dj4am.bandcamp.com/album/the-sandwich-tales-of-fantasy-delusion-by-jp-lovecraft
Album art by Collage Fromage:
www.instagram.com/collage_fromage/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Vampire. I'm a pony Network. Greetings and salutations through
(00:22):
all the earth bound spirits having a physical experience here
on this planet we call Earth. This is Jason Nevermind
aka DJ four a m aka JP Lovecraft aka Flatty
and Hailer. Yes, it's all me, It's all within me. Anyways,
thank you for showing up to this grand experiment, my
first audio book. For the past few months, I have
(00:44):
been working here and there writing satirical lovecrafty in fiction
lovecrafty and of course based on the work of HP Lovecraft,
who invented a genre of horror that most people mirror nowadays,
where someone comes across something and then they fall down
a rabbit hole and things start to accelerate and pretty
soon they're screwed. So that's essentially the style of writing
(01:07):
of horror that we're dealing with right here. So thank
you for tuning in, thank you for checking this out.
First story is called the Sandwich, and it's also the
name of the book I'm writing and the name of
this program. So the inspiration for this story came from
I was listening to a podcast and it was, you know,
true scary story type podcast, and the protagonist said something
(01:30):
along the lines that he left his bedroom and down
the hall because he was on his way to the bathroom.
There was someone standing there, you know, just someone's standing
at the end of the hallway. And to me, the
way my weird little brain works because I have to
make a joke out of everything, I'm like, all right,
what was he doing? I walked out of my bedroom,
looked down the hallway, and there was a guy standing
there eating a sandwich. For some reason, I found that
(01:54):
quite amusing. So that's the basis for this first story.
There's a guy at the end of the hallway and
he's eating a sandwich. What's in the sandwich? Who is he?
Who is she? Who is they? There? Them? Who knows?
Why are they there? Why are they in my house
eating a sandwich? Is it real? Is it a dream?
Who knows? They're gonna have to stay tuned and find out. So, yes,
(02:17):
story number one in our program is called the Sandwich.
The dream was always the same, Well, eventually it changed evolved,
(02:38):
I mean, but for I don't know how long, like
a really long time, I mean years, the dream was
always the same. I was in bed in my dreams,
I mean, well in reality too, because I was dreaming.
I was dreaming that I was asleep. It was a
good sleep too, The kind of sleep you get after
you spent all day with your friends out of the
(03:00):
swimming hole, you know, getting down to your skivvies with
your close, non judgmental friends and just getting all up
in that beautiful wet hole. Yeah, the kind of sleep
you get after a big meal of donut gapes and
burnt campfire weenies on a gnarled stick with your non
judgmental friends. The kind of sleep you get after a
brief nodding off in bed pre sleep during puberty. The
(03:23):
kind of nap where you thought you completely soak your sheets,
but for some reason they were dry. Yes, a beautiful
sleep after a beautiful day, a sleep you can only
get in a dream. That part of the dream was
always great, the best part of the dream. I never
wanted that part of the dream to end. To sleep
and dream within your dream, after the best imaginary day
(03:43):
that you never really had with your amazing non judgmental
friends that never really existed, hooting and hollering all up
in that inviting, wonderful hole that was just perfect for swimming. Yeah,
it was always the same dream until it wasn't. For years,
I would be happy asleep in that dream until the
(04:04):
night it changed. I woke up in my dream, happy,
feeling that I was in that perfect world. Not a
strange thing to feel, considering I was dreaming, but still
suddenly it felt less than perfect. I woke heating the
call of Mother Nature, like whoa like? Mother Nature was like,
you need to get up before you soak your sheets,
(04:24):
still still in the calm of sleep in my chaota
confusion and bladder strain. The bathroom in my house, as
well as in my dream, was down the hall A
small seashell night light was always on in the bathroom,
casting a frail light on the hallway mid level, illumining
a three or four foot high section of the wall,
enough to show a person's midsection, but not their face.
(04:48):
A strange detail, right, not really, not a strange detail.
Once I reveal this detail, there was a person standing
at the end of the hallway. Holy cow, Why would
anyone stand at the end of the hallway. It wasn't
my folks. I could see their forms in their bed asleep,
never touching. Having kids had taught them never touch, never
(05:12):
touch ever again. I was a tough berth. My brother
was away at school or else I would have thought
it was him. He was a weirdo that kind of
gets so stoned on edibles that he would just nod
off in the hallway on the way to the bathroom.
But no, he wasn't home, So who was in the hallway?
I woke up? I woke up in reality as well
(05:35):
as the dream. That dream haunted me. It haunted me
to the point that I felt the need to do research.
I read dream books, I went to websites looking for
dream symbols. What did it mean? It couldn't be meaningless.
It was too intense. It impacted me too intensely. What
the hell if everyone in that dream is a version
of me? What version of me? Was that hallway lurker?
(05:56):
Why would I lurk in the hallway? Was that version
of me stoned on edibles? I don't even like weed.
I'm more of a monster energy drink kind of guy.
For weeks, the same dream, Then one night I woke
in my dream, got up to go to the bathroom.
Then I saw him her. I don't know, they them,
(06:17):
that person in the hallway, except there was something different, strange.
They they they were eating they were eating a sandwich.
WTF question mark exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Whomever
this person was, they were lurking in the hallway just
(06:38):
past the bathroom, eating a sandwich methodically slowly bite crunch
nam nam two to too weird, not weird, still weird?
Why should that be weird? I mean, they them, That
(06:58):
person was just eating a sandwich. But still it seemed
that with every bite that I heard a strange whimper.
With every bite, I felt a strange sting in my skull.
With every bite, I heard a faint scraping sound. It
was weird. Plus, if everyone and everything in my dream
was a facet of me, Well was I the sandwich too?
What kind of sandwich was I? Why would I eat
(07:21):
myself as a sandwich? Was I delicious or mediocre? Like
I felt in real life? I'm not even a big
sandwich type person. I've always been more into soup, sushi, burritos, tacos, hell, yeah, tacos.
I woke up with a headache. This happened for weeks, months, shit,
I don't know. A while. Then one night I found
(07:42):
myself half asleep watching this documentary about this guy who
was out camping in the woods. He fell asleep and
had a dream, a dream where he was eating a
huge eminem, his mouth encompassing the huge eminem, biting, licking,
scraping in the candy exterior, attempting to break through to
the chocolate center, lick ringing through his own skull, every boy,
(08:03):
crunching his soul, his own teeth, scraping his memories. He
awoke in his tent, confused. Then he realized that he
wasn't alone. There was a bear in his tent. The
bear was eating his head. A bear was chewing on
his skull, eating his flesh, scraping his skull with his
huge bear teeth. I screamed, fell asleep and screamed in
(08:27):
my dream. Woke up in my dream screaming, I had
to pee so bad. I felt a strange melody in
my head, a strange rhythmic scraping, a dragging of something
sharp across my skull. I woke up like for real,
my head hurt. I felt a tiny bit dumber, weird, right,
it's strange. For a moment, I felt that this dream
(08:48):
tied into my fate, my purpose for life, my future,
my undoing. I became obsessed with sandwiches. I wasn't obsessed
with eating sandwiches. I'm way more of a meat loafer,
curry kind of guy. However, I fell down the sandwich
rabbit hole. The history, the structure, the versatility, the indelible
nature of the concept of the sandwich. They were everywhere, lunches, dinners, snacks, playgrounds,
(09:15):
bus stations, seven elevens, strip malls, diners, movies, rap songs, magazines,
my dreams. Still, no sandwich affected my mood, arrested my
attention quite like the sandwich in my dream. The sandwich.
I could not get a good look at the sandwich
that haunted me. As time marched on, my dream progressed slowly,
(09:39):
slowly revealing details. It was a big sandwich, packed with meat, rounded,
Not sure from what was it? The shape of the meat,
the bread. Was it a round bread full of flat
meat or vice versa. Was it more of a calzone? Nah,
it had crust. It was definitely meat between two slices
of bread. With every progression of the dream, they them
(10:03):
eater of the sandwich ate more loudly, the crunching, smacking
mouth moisture, Oh, that agony, Every nam nam nam seemed
to rip my head to ribbons. My sandwich obsession, combined
with lack of sleep and mannic farting due to countless
monster energy drinks and curry coated meatloaf tacos, caused me
(10:24):
to lose all of my friends, so I had to
start hanging with the creepy kids at school, kids that
wore black and read strange poetry and smoked close cigarettes.
They were truly non judgmental, though, like the kids in
the good part of my dream, except they were freaky
and morose and spoke incessantly of how Taylor Swift was
brainwashing the masses. They seemed riveted by the details of
(10:46):
my dream, especially the mystery of the strange sandwich. They
seemed to not mind my farts. They always had a
spare energy drink for you. Boy. One day after school,
one of my new friends, the short one with a
super pale skin and the mush shaped hair, the one
that smelled like wet dirt and stale smoke, the one
that spoke incessantly about the cure, a cure for what
(11:07):
I often wondered. She insisted that I consult a professional
about my haunted sandwich haunting. A haunted sandwich professional was
that a thing. Was there an ancient sub shop somewhere,
haunted by ghosts of lunches passed? Was it run by
a bread exorcist? Perhaps there was a lunch picnic museum
on the outskirts of town. I had no idea what
(11:28):
she was talking about, but my lack of sleep had
rendered me strangely trusting. So we went to a professional.
We jumped in her car and sped down the freeway,
windows down close, smoke wafting from the windows, a song
about some girl named Mary Anne blasting from her once
functional car speakers. We finally arrived at a small house
around twenty miles out of town. I jumped out of
(11:49):
the car and kissed the ground. I had never experienced
anyone that drove with their feet while they ate cold
chow Maine. How did she work the pedals? Immediately I
had to watch my step. There were cats everywhere. Cats
in the driveway, on the porch, in the road, in
our car, in the mushroom, girl's trench coat, in my hair, everywhere.
(12:12):
There was a neon sign shaped like a hand in
the window of the house. It was not holding a
sand which we knocked on. A cat oops, then on
the door. An elderly woman dressed like cap and Jack
Sparrow answered our knock. Come in, She suggested, no, not you.
She then screamed. We stopped short as she suddenly looked defeated.
Ten cats storm the entryway, taking up all the available
(12:34):
space they could find. Sorry to startling you, sweeties. These
darn cats are just everywhere. I try to keep more
of them from coming in, but there's such crafty little murderers.
They truly are everywhere, in my kitchen, my bed, my toilet,
and all my cereal boxes. I had to check my
driver's license yesterday to make sure they weren't on that too.
(12:54):
Me and my mushroom headed friend stood silent. That was
a joke, you know about my driver's license. Never had
a driver's license. Any who, what brings you two seekers
to my humble energy vortex. My friend here is haunted
by sandwiches, said my stale mushroom acquaintance. Is that so well?
That is quite peculiar? What kind of sandwiches might they be?
(13:18):
I wish I knew, said I wishing out loud. I
dream of them every night, and the strange man slowly
consuming them. At the end of the hallway. Whenever I
wake up to urinate in my wonderful dream world that
turns into a shite sandwich whenever I wake up in
my dream. Well, you two strangely clad seekers should come
inside and we'll see if we can get to the
bottom of this. You're not Quakers, are you? What's a quaker?
(13:39):
I asked, Oh? Nothing, white people that make oatmeal or something. Forget,
I asked, Please sit. We took seats around a round
table that was covered with some kind of halloween tablecloth.
A huge illuminated marble rested on a wooden base in
the center of the circle. A strange deck of cards
sat next to the clear sphere. Damn, that was a
(14:00):
big marble. You'd never lose with that son of a gun.
The pirate lady sat, shuffled the deck of cards and
started to turn them over one by one upon the table,
arranging them like she was playing a made up version
of Solitaire. The cards were weird too. They were big.
It had strange pictures on them, no numbers or royalty,
(14:20):
just dudes with lots of swords and cups and skeletons
trying to get suntans. Strange, the pirate lady stopped short
on her last card. She gasped. What the she creaked? Impossible?
She shuddered and slid the card to me. It was
a picture of a skeleton wearing a hooded robe. The
skeleton seemed to be looking straight at me, almost taunting me.
(14:43):
The strangest detail of all, though, the skeleton was eating
a sandwich. That's a strange card, even for that deck,
I observed out loud. I have never seen that card before,
and I've seen all these cards many times before. The
words seemed to fall from her twisted mouth. I've never
seen a death eating a sandwich card. Death? Oh did
(15:04):
I scream that out loud? Yes? Death. I've never seen
death eat anything, especially a sandwich. This is a dark omen.
I don't know what to tell you, young sir. Just
trust in the loving universe to provide truth and comfort.
Oh and yes, you should get an emotional assistance animal,
perhaps a cat. I can get you a good deal.
(15:26):
We did our best to drive away without squishing any cats.
The drive back was quiet, somber. My mushroom friend expressed worry.
She spoke of omens and death and lyrics to songs
that weren't by Taylor Swift. She dropped me off at home.
It was late. My parents were asleep so far apart
in their bed, A big improvement, though at least my
(15:48):
dad was allowed to sleep in the bed with my mom.
Legend has it that my head was so big when
I was born and my dad had to sleep on
the couch for fifteen years after my birth. Sad. No
needed to disturbed them, Let them slumber. Just walk quietly
down the hall towards the bathroom. That's it. Let the
seashell nightlight guide my mission. Look through the medicine cabinet. Ah. Yes,
(16:12):
my mom still kept a few sleeping pills around. Tonight
was the night time to get to the bottom of things.
No waking up in real life. Until I found out
who was lurking in my dream hallway, and most importantly,
what kind of goddamn sandwich they were eating, sleep came easy.
The wonderful dream was the most wonderful ever, My wonderful
(16:33):
non judgmental friends, my warm, wet swimming hole, the gaping
doughnuts and burnt wieners. I truly never wanted it to end.
But of course Mother Nature screamed. She screamed a terrifying scream.
I really had to piss. I woke up in my dream,
found my slippers and headed towards the peepee room. The
night light in the bathroom at the near end of
(16:54):
the hall shone intensely. The light was colored differently than usual.
Instead of a buttery yellow, it was a deep crimson,
yet somehow bright yet dark, illuminating yet profoundly confusing. The
hallways seemed longer and wider than usual. The walls seemed
to breathe sweat, glisten like they were slathered in ky jelly.
(17:18):
The floorboards creaked in pain to mirror the discomfort of
my forlorn seemed to be overflowing crotch fudge. Oh, I
need to go. The walk to the bathroom seemed endless.
My pulsating bladder, the screaming floorboards, the listening distance between
(17:39):
my sleeping parents, the asthmatic walls went Oh oh shit,
There they them were. The person at the end of
the hall just passed the poop room, standing there holding
a huge sandwich. I was done years of this torture,
this insanity, This was it, the moment of truth. To
(18:01):
hell with my bladder. It was time time to get
me a sandwich. I sprinted towards the shadowed figure. The
person looked shocked. I grabbed the sandwich from their bony hands.
Wait what bony hands? The person looked shocked, startled, skinny, gaunt, pale,
(18:22):
bony skeleton. It was a skeleton, a shocked skeleton, just
like on that crazy card the Pirate Lady showed me.
This was more insane than I was expecting. A skeleton,
just like the card. Really skeletons eat sandwiches. I felt bad.
I knew nothing about the skeleton, yet I had stolen it. Sandwich. Well,
(18:45):
too bad. It's my dream. All parts of my dream
are parts of me. I meant to learn something in
this experience. I meant to resolve this, to solve this puzzle,
to put things to rest. To eat this freaking sandwich.
I took a huge bite. The skeleton gasped. Oh god,
(19:06):
the pain was insane. I wet myself. Oh well, just
a dream, right, Oh god? The pain, the pain and
the taste, not a flavor, but experience, memories, places I've been,
people I've known, my piano lessons, my earliest memories, my
(19:28):
huge head trying to force my way through that damned
birth canal? What was in this god forsaken sandwich? I
held the sandwich in front of my eyes and looked
at it hard. Oh how is this possible? Between the
two slices of bread? Was my head missing a few bites?
(19:52):
I screamed. The skeleton person looked at me. Dude, I
don't know what's going on here, but I can't hang.
This is toxic, man. I was just trying to hang
in a random hallway and hold a sandwich. I sincerely
hope you get the help you need, all the best,
(20:14):
but I'm out, dude. I was dumbfounded, flabbergasted. I had
no conception of what I was doing and why. Still,
it was too late. I was committed. I bit and
chewed and swallowed, and bit and chewed and swallowed, and
bit and chewed and swallowed, numb afternum after noumb until
(20:35):
the pain finally numbed and everything went dark. When I
finally awoke, all I saw was white, white walls, white sheets,
white people in white uniforms fluttering around me like little
white ghosts. I was in a bed with rails. I
couldn't move. A machine seemingly hooked up to me would
(20:56):
beep every so often I couldn't move. I don't know
how long I've been this way, feels like forever, maybe
a day. The people that come and go seem not
to know whether I'm conscious or not. I can't speak
or move. A machine breathes for me, and tube feeds
me and passing. I've heard what I assume our hospital
(21:16):
staff referring to me as a vegetable laughable. Come on, now,
that's not true. Death knows. I'm not a vegetable. Shit,
I'm a head betwixt two slices of bread. I ain't
no vegetable. I'm a goddamn sandwich.
The Vampire. I'm a pony Network. Greetings and salutations through
(00:22):
all the earth bound spirits having a physical experience here
on this planet we call Earth. This is Jason Nevermind
aka DJ four a m aka JP Lovecraft aka Flatty
and Hailer. Yes, it's all me, It's all within me. Anyways,
thank you for showing up to this grand experiment, my
first audio book. For the past few months, I have
(00:44):
been working here and there writing satirical lovecrafty in fiction
lovecrafty and of course based on the work of HP Lovecraft,
who invented a genre of horror that most people mirror nowadays,
where someone comes across something and then they fall down
a rabbit hole and things start to accelerate and pretty
soon they're screwed. So that's essentially the style of writing
(01:07):
of horror that we're dealing with right here. So thank
you for tuning in, thank you for checking this out.
First story is called the Sandwich, and it's also the
name of the book I'm writing and the name of
this program. So the inspiration for this story came from
I was listening to a podcast and it was, you know,
true scary story type podcast, and the protagonist said something
(01:30):
along the lines that he left his bedroom and down
the hall because he was on his way to the bathroom.
There was someone standing there, you know, just someone's standing
at the end of the hallway. And to me, the
way my weird little brain works because I have to
make a joke out of everything, I'm like, all right,
what was he doing? I walked out of my bedroom,
looked down the hallway, and there was a guy standing
there eating a sandwich. For some reason, I found that
(01:54):
quite amusing. So that's the basis for this first story.
There's a guy at the end of the hallway and
he's eating a sandwich. What's in the sandwich? Who is he?
Who is she? Who is they? There? Them? Who knows?
Why are they there? Why are they in my house
eating a sandwich? Is it real? Is it a dream?
Who knows? They're gonna have to stay tuned and find out. So, yes,
(02:17):
story number one in our program is called the Sandwich.
The dream was always the same, Well, eventually it changed evolved,
(02:38):
I mean, but for I don't know how long, like
a really long time, I mean years, the dream was
always the same. I was in bed in my dreams,
I mean, well in reality too, because I was dreaming.
I was dreaming that I was asleep. It was a
good sleep too, The kind of sleep you get after
you spent all day with your friends out of the
(03:00):
swimming hole, you know, getting down to your skivvies with
your close, non judgmental friends and just getting all up
in that beautiful wet hole. Yeah, the kind of sleep
you get after a big meal of donut gapes and
burnt campfire weenies on a gnarled stick with your non
judgmental friends. The kind of sleep you get after a
brief nodding off in bed pre sleep during puberty. The
(03:23):
kind of nap where you thought you completely soak your sheets,
but for some reason they were dry. Yes, a beautiful
sleep after a beautiful day, a sleep you can only
get in a dream. That part of the dream was
always great, the best part of the dream. I never
wanted that part of the dream to end. To sleep
and dream within your dream, after the best imaginary day
(03:43):
that you never really had with your amazing non judgmental
friends that never really existed, hooting and hollering all up
in that inviting, wonderful hole that was just perfect for swimming. Yeah,
it was always the same dream until it wasn't. For years,
I would be happy asleep in that dream until the
(04:04):
night it changed. I woke up in my dream, happy,
feeling that I was in that perfect world. Not a
strange thing to feel, considering I was dreaming, but still
suddenly it felt less than perfect. I woke heating the
call of Mother Nature, like whoa like? Mother Nature was like,
you need to get up before you soak your sheets,
(04:24):
still still in the calm of sleep in my chaota
confusion and bladder strain. The bathroom in my house, as
well as in my dream, was down the hall A
small seashell night light was always on in the bathroom,
casting a frail light on the hallway mid level, illumining
a three or four foot high section of the wall,
enough to show a person's midsection, but not their face.
(04:48):
A strange detail, right, not really, not a strange detail.
Once I reveal this detail, there was a person standing
at the end of the hallway. Holy cow, Why would
anyone stand at the end of the hallway. It wasn't
my folks. I could see their forms in their bed asleep,
never touching. Having kids had taught them never touch, never
(05:12):
touch ever again. I was a tough berth. My brother
was away at school or else I would have thought
it was him. He was a weirdo that kind of
gets so stoned on edibles that he would just nod
off in the hallway on the way to the bathroom.
But no, he wasn't home, So who was in the hallway?
I woke up? I woke up in reality as well
(05:35):
as the dream. That dream haunted me. It haunted me
to the point that I felt the need to do research.
I read dream books, I went to websites looking for
dream symbols. What did it mean? It couldn't be meaningless.
It was too intense. It impacted me too intensely. What
the hell if everyone in that dream is a version
of me? What version of me? Was that hallway lurker?
(05:56):
Why would I lurk in the hallway? Was that version
of me stoned on edibles? I don't even like weed.
I'm more of a monster energy drink kind of guy.
For weeks, the same dream, Then one night I woke
in my dream, got up to go to the bathroom.
Then I saw him her. I don't know, they them,
(06:17):
that person in the hallway, except there was something different, strange.
They they they were eating they were eating a sandwich.
WTF question mark exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Whomever
this person was, they were lurking in the hallway just
(06:38):
past the bathroom, eating a sandwich methodically slowly bite crunch
nam nam two to too weird, not weird, still weird?
Why should that be weird? I mean, they them, That
(06:58):
person was just eating a sandwich. But still it seemed
that with every bite that I heard a strange whimper.
With every bite, I felt a strange sting in my skull.
With every bite, I heard a faint scraping sound. It
was weird. Plus, if everyone and everything in my dream
was a facet of me, Well was I the sandwich too?
What kind of sandwich was I? Why would I eat
(07:21):
myself as a sandwich? Was I delicious or mediocre? Like
I felt in real life? I'm not even a big
sandwich type person. I've always been more into soup, sushi, burritos, tacos, hell, yeah, tacos.
I woke up with a headache. This happened for weeks, months, shit,
I don't know. A while. Then one night I found
(07:42):
myself half asleep watching this documentary about this guy who
was out camping in the woods. He fell asleep and
had a dream, a dream where he was eating a
huge eminem, his mouth encompassing the huge eminem, biting, licking,
scraping in the candy exterior, attempting to break through to
the chocolate center, lick ringing through his own skull, every boy,
(08:03):
crunching his soul, his own teeth, scraping his memories. He
awoke in his tent, confused. Then he realized that he
wasn't alone. There was a bear in his tent. The
bear was eating his head. A bear was chewing on
his skull, eating his flesh, scraping his skull with his
huge bear teeth. I screamed, fell asleep and screamed in
(08:27):
my dream. Woke up in my dream screaming, I had
to pee so bad. I felt a strange melody in
my head, a strange rhythmic scraping, a dragging of something
sharp across my skull. I woke up like for real,
my head hurt. I felt a tiny bit dumber, weird, right,
it's strange. For a moment, I felt that this dream
(08:48):
tied into my fate, my purpose for life, my future,
my undoing. I became obsessed with sandwiches. I wasn't obsessed
with eating sandwiches. I'm way more of a meat loafer,
curry kind of guy. However, I fell down the sandwich
rabbit hole. The history, the structure, the versatility, the indelible
nature of the concept of the sandwich. They were everywhere, lunches, dinners, snacks, playgrounds,
(09:15):
bus stations, seven elevens, strip malls, diners, movies, rap songs, magazines,
my dreams. Still, no sandwich affected my mood, arrested my
attention quite like the sandwich in my dream. The sandwich.
I could not get a good look at the sandwich
that haunted me. As time marched on, my dream progressed slowly,
(09:39):
slowly revealing details. It was a big sandwich, packed with meat, rounded,
Not sure from what was it? The shape of the meat,
the bread. Was it a round bread full of flat
meat or vice versa. Was it more of a calzone? Nah,
it had crust. It was definitely meat between two slices
of bread. With every progression of the dream, they them
(10:03):
eater of the sandwich ate more loudly, the crunching, smacking
mouth moisture, Oh, that agony, Every nam nam nam seemed
to rip my head to ribbons. My sandwich obsession, combined
with lack of sleep and mannic farting due to countless
monster energy drinks and curry coated meatloaf tacos, caused me
(10:24):
to lose all of my friends, so I had to
start hanging with the creepy kids at school, kids that
wore black and read strange poetry and smoked close cigarettes.
They were truly non judgmental, though, like the kids in
the good part of my dream, except they were freaky
and morose and spoke incessantly of how Taylor Swift was
brainwashing the masses. They seemed riveted by the details of
(10:46):
my dream, especially the mystery of the strange sandwich. They
seemed to not mind my farts. They always had a
spare energy drink for you. Boy. One day after school,
one of my new friends, the short one with a
super pale skin and the mush shaped hair, the one
that smelled like wet dirt and stale smoke, the one
that spoke incessantly about the cure, a cure for what
(11:07):
I often wondered. She insisted that I consult a professional
about my haunted sandwich haunting. A haunted sandwich professional was
that a thing. Was there an ancient sub shop somewhere,
haunted by ghosts of lunches passed? Was it run by
a bread exorcist? Perhaps there was a lunch picnic museum
on the outskirts of town. I had no idea what
(11:28):
she was talking about, but my lack of sleep had
rendered me strangely trusting. So we went to a professional.
We jumped in her car and sped down the freeway,
windows down close, smoke wafting from the windows, a song
about some girl named Mary Anne blasting from her once
functional car speakers. We finally arrived at a small house
around twenty miles out of town. I jumped out of
(11:49):
the car and kissed the ground. I had never experienced
anyone that drove with their feet while they ate cold
chow Maine. How did she work the pedals? Immediately I
had to watch my step. There were cats everywhere. Cats
in the driveway, on the porch, in the road, in
our car, in the mushroom, girl's trench coat, in my hair, everywhere.
(12:12):
There was a neon sign shaped like a hand in
the window of the house. It was not holding a
sand which we knocked on. A cat oops, then on
the door. An elderly woman dressed like cap and Jack
Sparrow answered our knock. Come in, She suggested, no, not you.
She then screamed. We stopped short as she suddenly looked defeated.
Ten cats storm the entryway, taking up all the available
(12:34):
space they could find. Sorry to startling you, sweeties. These
darn cats are just everywhere. I try to keep more
of them from coming in, but there's such crafty little murderers.
They truly are everywhere, in my kitchen, my bed, my toilet,
and all my cereal boxes. I had to check my
driver's license yesterday to make sure they weren't on that too.
(12:54):
Me and my mushroom headed friend stood silent. That was
a joke, you know about my driver's license. Never had
a driver's license. Any who, what brings you two seekers
to my humble energy vortex. My friend here is haunted
by sandwiches, said my stale mushroom acquaintance. Is that so well?
That is quite peculiar? What kind of sandwiches might they be?
(13:18):
I wish I knew, said I wishing out loud. I
dream of them every night, and the strange man slowly
consuming them. At the end of the hallway. Whenever I
wake up to urinate in my wonderful dream world that
turns into a shite sandwich whenever I wake up in
my dream. Well, you two strangely clad seekers should come
inside and we'll see if we can get to the
bottom of this. You're not Quakers, are you? What's a quaker?
(13:39):
I asked, Oh? Nothing, white people that make oatmeal or something. Forget,
I asked, Please sit. We took seats around a round
table that was covered with some kind of halloween tablecloth.
A huge illuminated marble rested on a wooden base in
the center of the circle. A strange deck of cards
sat next to the clear sphere. Damn, that was a
(14:00):
big marble. You'd never lose with that son of a gun.
The pirate lady sat, shuffled the deck of cards and
started to turn them over one by one upon the table,
arranging them like she was playing a made up version
of Solitaire. The cards were weird too. They were big.
It had strange pictures on them, no numbers or royalty,
(14:20):
just dudes with lots of swords and cups and skeletons
trying to get suntans. Strange, the pirate lady stopped short
on her last card. She gasped. What the she creaked? Impossible?
She shuddered and slid the card to me. It was
a picture of a skeleton wearing a hooded robe. The
skeleton seemed to be looking straight at me, almost taunting me.
(14:43):
The strangest detail of all, though, the skeleton was eating
a sandwich. That's a strange card, even for that deck,
I observed out loud. I have never seen that card before,
and I've seen all these cards many times before. The
words seemed to fall from her twisted mouth. I've never
seen a death eating a sandwich card. Death? Oh did
(15:04):
I scream that out loud? Yes? Death. I've never seen
death eat anything, especially a sandwich. This is a dark omen.
I don't know what to tell you, young sir. Just
trust in the loving universe to provide truth and comfort.
Oh and yes, you should get an emotional assistance animal,
perhaps a cat. I can get you a good deal.
(15:26):
We did our best to drive away without squishing any cats.
The drive back was quiet, somber. My mushroom friend expressed worry.
She spoke of omens and death and lyrics to songs
that weren't by Taylor Swift. She dropped me off at home.
It was late. My parents were asleep so far apart
in their bed, A big improvement, though at least my
(15:48):
dad was allowed to sleep in the bed with my mom.
Legend has it that my head was so big when
I was born and my dad had to sleep on
the couch for fifteen years after my birth. Sad. No
needed to disturbed them, Let them slumber. Just walk quietly
down the hall towards the bathroom. That's it. Let the
seashell nightlight guide my mission. Look through the medicine cabinet. Ah. Yes,
(16:12):
my mom still kept a few sleeping pills around. Tonight
was the night time to get to the bottom of things.
No waking up in real life. Until I found out
who was lurking in my dream hallway, and most importantly,
what kind of goddamn sandwich they were eating, sleep came easy.
The wonderful dream was the most wonderful ever, My wonderful
(16:33):
non judgmental friends, my warm, wet swimming hole, the gaping
doughnuts and burnt wieners. I truly never wanted it to end.
But of course Mother Nature screamed. She screamed a terrifying scream.
I really had to piss. I woke up in my dream,
found my slippers and headed towards the peepee room. The
night light in the bathroom at the near end of
(16:54):
the hall shone intensely. The light was colored differently than usual.
Instead of a buttery yellow, it was a deep crimson,
yet somehow bright yet dark, illuminating yet profoundly confusing. The
hallways seemed longer and wider than usual. The walls seemed
to breathe sweat, glisten like they were slathered in ky jelly.
(17:18):
The floorboards creaked in pain to mirror the discomfort of
my forlorn seemed to be overflowing crotch fudge. Oh, I
need to go. The walk to the bathroom seemed endless.
My pulsating bladder, the screaming floorboards, the listening distance between
(17:39):
my sleeping parents, the asthmatic walls went Oh oh shit,
There they them were. The person at the end of
the hall just passed the poop room, standing there holding
a huge sandwich. I was done years of this torture,
this insanity, This was it, the moment of truth. To
(18:01):
hell with my bladder. It was time time to get
me a sandwich. I sprinted towards the shadowed figure. The
person looked shocked. I grabbed the sandwich from their bony hands.
Wait what bony hands? The person looked shocked, startled, skinny, gaunt, pale,
(18:22):
bony skeleton. It was a skeleton, a shocked skeleton, just
like on that crazy card the Pirate Lady showed me.
This was more insane than I was expecting. A skeleton,
just like the card. Really skeletons eat sandwiches. I felt bad.
I knew nothing about the skeleton, yet I had stolen it. Sandwich. Well,
(18:45):
too bad. It's my dream. All parts of my dream
are parts of me. I meant to learn something in
this experience. I meant to resolve this, to solve this puzzle,
to put things to rest. To eat this freaking sandwich.
I took a huge bite. The skeleton gasped. Oh god,
(19:06):
the pain was insane. I wet myself. Oh well, just
a dream, right, Oh god? The pain, the pain and
the taste, not a flavor, but experience, memories, places I've been,
people I've known, my piano lessons, my earliest memories, my
(19:28):
huge head trying to force my way through that damned
birth canal? What was in this god forsaken sandwich? I
held the sandwich in front of my eyes and looked
at it hard. Oh how is this possible? Between the
two slices of bread? Was my head missing a few bites?
(19:52):
I screamed. The skeleton person looked at me. Dude, I
don't know what's going on here, but I can't hang.
This is toxic, man. I was just trying to hang
in a random hallway and hold a sandwich. I sincerely
hope you get the help you need, all the best,
(20:14):
but I'm out, dude. I was dumbfounded, flabbergasted. I had
no conception of what I was doing and why. Still,
it was too late. I was committed. I bit and
chewed and swallowed, and bit and chewed and swallowed, and
bit and chewed and swallowed, numb afternum after noumb until
(20:35):
the pain finally numbed and everything went dark. When I
finally awoke, all I saw was white, white walls, white sheets,
white people in white uniforms fluttering around me like little
white ghosts. I was in a bed with rails. I
couldn't move. A machine seemingly hooked up to me would
(20:56):
beep every so often I couldn't move. I don't know
how long I've been this way, feels like forever, maybe
a day. The people that come and go seem not
to know whether I'm conscious or not. I can't speak
or move. A machine breathes for me, and tube feeds
me and passing. I've heard what I assume our hospital
(21:16):
staff referring to me as a vegetable laughable. Come on, now,
that's not true. Death knows. I'm not a vegetable. Shit,
I'm a head betwixt two slices of bread. I ain't
no vegetable. I'm a goddamn sandwich.
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