October 30, 2012 • 22 mins
Josh and Chuck have been planning this thing since spring and it's finally here! Tune in to hear which listener's scary story won the SYSK Halloween Horror Fiction Contest -- and prepare to have your socks scared off just in time for All Hallow's Eve.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from how Stuffworks
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know
and friends, it is almost folloween. Just do that, then
Jurie doesn't have to do any seventy time.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, just step my mouth making like wind blowing and
Woolve's alley. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good, Chuck. Happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween, buddy. It's good to be back in the
old studio. It feels nice, you know. Yeah, we have
the lighting dim. It's actually a little spooky. No, it's here.
It is Friday's is like twenty eight days later.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Right, Our guest producer Matt, survived the zombie apocalypse. Ye're
still here and still normal, right, Matt? Pretty normal, says Matt.
And so I guess if you hadn't figured out, I know,
what we're about to do is read our annual Halloween
scary story. But this one's a little different.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I know some of you know, but maybe not everybody
knows that we held a Halloween horror fiction contest. We
reached out to our fans and said, hey, scarce, thanks right,
some of them did.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, And hats off to you, my friend, because this
was Josh's idea, and I think it was a great idea.
And we got over one hundred stories and one hundred
and four yeah, and you guys ultimately decided in the
bracket game. But I would have been happy with any
of those sixteen yeah and strong entries. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
There were probably even more than sixteen, because it wasn't
it wasn't easy to pick those sweet sixteen. We got
one hundred and four entries that were qualified. I believe
we had another maybe eight that were disqualified for hundred reasons.
But I appreciate you taking your hat off to me.
I take my hat off to everybody who took the
time to send their stuff in.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Some people sent stuff they had sitting around. Other people
whiped this stuff up just for us. And thank you
to all of you who sent in a story. Yes,
and we want to say that obviously, if you send
us a story, we could tell by the caliber of
the writing that we got that you are professional writers
or aspiring to be professional writers. So if you publish
a book, whether it's horror fiction, short stories, or whether
(02:15):
it is a children's book or anything like that. We
want to show our appreciation to you for entering the
contest by saying, let us know, and we will tell
everybody about it, yep, on social media, on the podcast whatever,
and we can start that little courtesy now, Chuck, because
one of the guys who made it to the Sweet sixteen,
(02:35):
his name is Adam pract and he submitted a story
called Frame Story, which was awesome, and he went ahead
and published it in a book. He's got a book
called appropriately enough Frame Story. It's seven stories of sci
fi and fantasy, horror and humor. It's available in Kindle
(02:57):
as a Kindle e book. I think he's got pretty
much every ebook covered he's got. It's a dot mobi file,
which means that you can use it on just about
any eReader. You can go to uh smash words dot
com and find it. You can find it on Amazon,
and you can find it as a print on demand
(03:20):
paper book if you're not into that whole new fangled
eReader thing at createspace dot com. Slash four zero, two, three, five,
seven six. So Adam Practice Frame Story, seven story collection,
heck of a deal, and it's out there already.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Wow, look at you. Yeah, uh so I guess we'll
explain quickly. We divided the story not by paragraph this time,
but by style, because this story deals with a communica
that someone is sending. Yes, and there's another part of
the story where this man exists, and so I will
be reading that, Josh will be reading the communica. A. Yeah,
and I think that was a good way to do it.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh, I agree, and that was your idea. So let's
continue the pat on the backfest, and we should probably
tell everybody what story we're reading. Yes, this is the
winner of the stuff you should know horror fiction contest.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Ever, I would.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Say inaugural, but that would indicate that there's more to come.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, we haven't decided that. Yeah, and he technically should
never say first annual. People say that a lot, right,
until there's a second year, it can't be annual.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Right, you say inaugural?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Oh, is that what the replacement is? Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Well that's a good point. But the winner is a
guy named Brett s Arnold, and mister Arnold submitted a
story called Sign Forever and Ever, and we think it's
awesome and we're proud of one.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Again, Thank you to everybody who submitted your stories. You
can go to the bogs at HowStuffWorks dot com and
read all of the Sweet sixteen. They're still up there.
They will be in perpetuity and lead some nice comments.
Nice comments. Okay, yeah, okay, so let's read it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Huh, all right?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Henceforth here with here too we read Signed Forever and
Ever by Brett s Arnold.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Edmund thought of holding his breath as another splinter formed
in the window. The creaking of vessel under the pressure
of well, what exactly was it brought to mine images
of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea, and
suddenly he was cold. Some people think all they're doing
in death is returning to the sea, but no, he
thought that's too short sighted. He would be returning to
the stars. For the moment, everything was stable, He exhaled
(05:32):
and returned to his electronic courier.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I never told you the truth because I didn't want
to hurt you. But we're past that now. When she left,
I was destroyed. I didn't know how to raid you.
I feared you would be different without your mother. How
would they treat you at school? What about when you
were older? Her leaving hurt me too, of course, and
very deeply. But it was you that I was worried about, Sarah.
I want you to know I've thought about this every
(06:00):
day since she left. I shouldn't have told you she died.
That was wrong. Still, worse things have happened since, and
I need you to know the real story.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
After she left, I.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Found it was to chase down another man. It makes
me sick to think about, sick to my stomach. Who
was he anyway, some nobody, a drug dealer. Whoever, It's
a good thing he died, Sarah. Bad things happen to
bad people, but that's still not the worst of it.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
He paused to look at the small crescent window, twenty
six inches thick out to the sun. The direct light
hurt his eyes, and when he closed them he saw
small purple streaks. When he rubbed them, there was another
murmur from the vessel, metal compressing in on itself on him.
The vessel turned on its end and threw him in
its courier to the ground. He caught the edge of
(06:50):
the bed frame he was sitting on and steadied himself.
The vessel's course smoothed. The splinter in the window was
longer now with new smaller splinters fracturing away from it
like cobwebs. He was panting and out of breath. He
picked the courier up from the floor and propped it
against the dashboard.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love you, Sarah. I wish I had more time
to say that to you right now, and back at
home too. When I heard that the man had died,
I was at work, sitting at my desk reading the
newspaper about the problems the Mars colony was having and
how the first settlers were facing more challenges than they'd expected.
I received a message via post from your uncle. He
(07:31):
said the man died from disease, a slow moving cancer
whose long treatment bankrupted your mother and him. And then
after she was coming back to the only place she knew.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
He studied his gray standard issue uniform with the red
circular insignia and the numbers five two seven below. This
far passed the Moon. Communications other than electronic courier was impossible,
and even those took hours to transmit across the cosmos.
He had sent one to Cape Canaver forty minutes prior,
only to alert them that a red light on his
(08:03):
dashboard titled relay Valve, was suddenly on and he couldn't
recall from his brief training what that meant. He was
sure it was serious. There's no reason for me to
be here, he thought, or anyone. The world isn't ending.
There's no impending cataclysmic event, no threat to the species
as a whole. It was a just in case. That's
how they'd phrased it to him in training, just in case.
(08:24):
He mulled the words over angry.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I don't know if she was going to try to
contact us. I heard it from a friend that she
was staying at the Late Sleeper motel outside of town.
I like to think that if you had been in
my head then and heard everything I was thinking and
experienced the rush, that you would have done the same
thing I did, and I wouldn't be here. But that's
not how life works. I couldn't stand the thought of
(08:49):
her meeting you after I raised you, or her asking
to come back or coming to take you away. That's
when I took the lumber axe in the yard and
drove to the motel and pushed your mother on the
bed and laid the blade into her, missing the first time,
but not the second, or the third, or fourth. I
(09:11):
lost count That night, I didn't sleep. I thought about
what you would have done if you saw me when
I came home and showered, and grabbed your sheets from
your bed and wrapped them around your mother in the
back seat of our automobile, and drove her to the
lake and dumped her in on the north side, which
was more shallow than I had thought. I watched the
current move her body down to a small pocket of
(09:32):
water lined with rocks that her clothes must.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Have snagged on.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
A tree grew overhead.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It was pretty in its own way.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It was colder the next morning, in overcast I tried
to ignore everything, like I'd done before.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The vessel shook again, sending Edmond to the floor, his
face hitting the side of the bunk he had been
sitting on. From that perspective, he could almost make out
the shape of the milky Way and the landscape of
lights blinking on his dashboard, red and orange and yellow.
He reached to study the sharp pain in his jaw
with his left hand, but jolted when he made contact.
(10:09):
He could barely move it, and when he did, he
could hear a loud clicking sound against his ear drum,
probably broken, he thought. The blood ran thick like half
frozen water down his neck and chest, where it collected
in pools, and the folds of his uniform pants. He
sat as quiet as possible and tried not to think
about the window and its new splinters and fractures. The
(10:29):
silence is good, he thought.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
By the time I thought to move your mother before
anyone else found her, it was too late. The sides
of the river and all the shallow areas had frozen
over in a matter of days. I came at night
and discovered this. I tried kicking through the ice with
my boot. I used the tire iron nothing. The second
time I came was in the day. I walked past
the spot, never stopping, and looked in past to see
(11:00):
if I could see her, if she was still there,
But the ice was like frosted glass. Every few minutes
a truck or some other vehicle would pass on the highway,
and I would croped low to the ground. I let
a week go by and came back at night. I
parked on the shoulder of the highway half a mile
up and walked back to the river with my flashlight off.
I tested the ice with my boot again and walked
(11:20):
out onto it. I laid my head against the ice
and looked down for your mother. I couldn't see her.
I put my ear to the ground, as if testing
for a coming train by listening to the tracks, but
all I could hear was ice splintering in the distance,
a low echoing sound. I turned the flashlight on and
pointed it to where I left her beneath. I saw
the faintest blur of her, the smooth edges of the
(11:41):
structure of her face. Her white sweater was clear against
the brown river bottom. Tiny air bubbles were frozen everywhere
in the ice, but most of them seemed to be
around her head, and I wondered what caused that. From
then on, I came back every night. I waited until
a few hours before sunrise. I put my ear to
the ground and listened to the shifting eye. And I
waited until I had seen no headlights for several minutes
(12:03):
before I turned on the flashlight. Impressed my face as
close to the ice as possible for as long as possible.
The blue moonlight mixed with my yellow flashlight made her
look green. It did not matter what color she was.
I hardly recognized her after all those years. Anyway, I
felt sick at home when the sun came up. But
every night I went back. I think more than anything,
I was waiting for spring, for the ice to melt.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
There was too much blood. He felt light headed and
stood up and immediately fell back down. He felt short
of breath. Outside his window, the red planet was bigger.
He could see individual caverns in the details of ridges.
The color was more vibrant, where Earth was still so
blue in the distance. He could now be sure first
hand and not by a matter of faith, that there
(12:51):
was no water where his vessel was heading. It would
be nice, he thought, if he could fly the vessel
far enough to at least make it into orbit or
the red planet. He remembered setting benchmarks for himself, most
of all as a young man about his death. If
I could only make it until Christmas and die the
day after, if I have to, that would be best.
(13:11):
Then Christmas would come and go, and he would think,
if I have to die now, at least let it
be after vacation, or at the very least during vacation,
so I can go while looking at the beach, or
the cabin or the city lights. He ripped the sleeve
off his standard issue uniform and held it firmly against
his wound. The harder he pressed, the more it hurt.
He put his full weight into it, eyes closed, sweating,
(13:35):
thinking of the window.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
In September, before all of this, I received a letter
thanking me for my application, et cetera, and that yes,
I had been selected to join the second colonizing group
of Mars. I had not decided if I would go
with you going to college. It seemed like the right thing,
a fit, a way to support us while you were away.
I could not protect you anymore while you were away,
(13:59):
but I couldn't do it. I took out loans I
borrowed against the house. I would be there for you
when you needed me.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
He reached for his wallet and took out a small
picture he kept in one of the card pockets. He
could not remember his daughter's eye color. He remembered when
Sarah was four or five, his wife and him had
a fight at a restaurant about what color her eyes
were blue or green. The night ended with them being
asked to leave and Sarah crying all the way home.
Edmund didn't speak to his wife for a month. The
(14:31):
photo was of her on her seventeenth birthday, with two
of her friends at her side at the aquarium, but
her eyes were too small to see the color of
a large blue tank with a school of silver fish
filled the background. Felt trivial now, but also fundamentally basic.
Any other father would know this answer, and probably whispered
it in their sleep. My daughter's eyes are but the
(14:52):
answer didn't come.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I didn't have hopes for the program, knowing they took
a local geologist with my credentials, if you can even
call them that, I'm guessing I was chosen because I
could be spared. Older single men seemed to get that wrap.
The first wave of colonists was mostly hard laborers and
criminals and their elected leaders. But all we were good
for was bringing supplies. We had almost no training. These
(15:17):
vessels fly themselves. I had only a passing interest. The
forms were too easy to fill in and submit. I
was told I would be taking part of the future
of mankind, a planet for tomorrow, one we needed yesterday.
People never change humanity, that is, but as people as
individuals too. It applies both ways. No one cared who
(15:37):
we were, just that we were healthy and willing. I
was still not committed in full to go through with it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Its slow hits began in the machinery somewhere beneath them.
In the vessel, it was quiet at first, then louder.
It stopped. Suddenly the overhead light turned off. Edmond sat
very still, his pulse visible from his jugular, the lights
of his electronic courier illuminating his sweaty face. The air
conditioning unit was no longer functional, and the absence of
his white noise made the silence even more pronounced. He
(16:07):
felt lightheaded. The vessel will not make it, he thought.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I was going to leave town a few days before.
We were set to leave on our individual vessels. By
then spring was coming, and something changed my mind quickly.
There was no moon out one of the nights I
was visiting your mother. The ice had begun to thaw
slowly over the past few nights, and I could make
her out more clearly.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I had no plan for when the ice melted. I
wanted to be there when it did, though, to move
her out of there. I was looking at her then
brown skin and the deep cuts that exposed bone. All
around me. It was black and cold and completely silent.
No cars passed.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I was alone.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
A branch snapped somewhere near the shore. I was laying
down and turned off the flashlight. Had I been followed,
I waited, turned the flashlight on towards the sound's source,
but didn't see anything through the trees. I didn't want
to leave the body there. The sounds could have been anything.
I waited all night with my small pocket knife drawn.
At first daybreak, I walked back to the automobile across
(17:08):
the highway and drove home. I did not go to
work that day or ever again. The next night I returned,
I made sure I was not followed. I wore black
and felt stupid. The ice was thinner. I looked at
your mother, the strands of her hair that were beginning
to break free, and the current swayed back and forth.
The next night I planned to bring a hammer and
break through the ice and move her. The purple rings
(17:29):
on her skin that formed just before I threw her
in the lake were now black. I sat waiting in
the silence for the first time, without meaning to, I
fell asleep on the ice. I awoke with a startle,
covered in cold sweat. Something didn't feel right. I turned
the flashlight on and scanned the trees and saw nothing.
Another branch or twigs snapped under the weight of something
(17:51):
I was too far away to see. I turned the
flashlight off, and another branch snapped closer, then another. Then
there was the sound of ice breaking on the shore,
like metal striking metal. I turned on the flashlight and
pointed it at the sound, like a spotlight. A thin
woman in white stood looking at me, her eyes knee
on yellow in the reflection. She was older and midstep
(18:12):
on the ice, coming toward me. I dropped the flashlight
and ran across the lake in the other direction. I
hid all night in the woods on the opposite end
of the lake, completely separated from the highway. Had the
body been found. When I finally got back to my automobile,
I didn't know where to drive. I headed for home,
turned around, and drove through to Florida. I went straight
to the mission base and waited to go to Mars.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
The vessel was quiet outside the window of the blackness
was almost beautiful. He thought soon he would be part
of it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I wanted you to know the story from me before
anything happens. And you hear about all this from someone else.
You don't have to lie about it if you don't
want to, you don't have to say anything about it,
you won't hear from me again. I want you to
know I don't understand any of this. There was never
a plan, but I can tell you, and not many
people get a chance like this to say it when
they really need to. I love you, Signed Forever and Ever, Edmund.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
He directed his fingers across the glass surface of the
electronic courier to hit send.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
One more thing. If you haven't decided for yourself yet,
let's agree your eyes are blue?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Is that okay with you? And the message was sent
off to the blue planet so far away from him.
His daughter would not receive the message for several hours.
Even if she replied right away, he would never receive it.
This he knew. He closed his eyes and thought about
his actions leading up to this. He realized what he
wrote to Sarah was true. That he didn't understand the
(19:43):
meaning behind anything that had happened. He didn't want to,
and if he didn't understand the past, he thought there
was no way he could comprehend the present or the future.
So he thought of nothing. As the vessel rocked violently
in a gasket? Was it a gasket broke in the
dashboard and shot white smoke into the cabin. The vessel
shook again, and the glass windows splintered more and more.
(20:04):
That fat Lady sings, He thought. It happened very quickly.
There was immense pressure from within his body pushing outward.
His sight was accentuated with purples and blacks, his heart
beating rapidly and then hard and slow. He could hear
it in his ear drums. The wound on his chin reopened,
and the last thing he saw before suffocating to death
was his blood rushing out of the window and then
(20:27):
floating in outer space and tiny red, impossibly beautiful globules
made magnificent by the unfiltered sunlight. Dying this way was,
to his surprise, pleasurable way to go. Wow, that is
a heck of a story.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Signed Forever and Ever by Arnold.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Do you know what it read like to me? Was
a graphic novel? Yeah, the way he wrote it. And
I think some artist out there should get in touch
with us, to get in touch with him and like
make this sing a graphic novel. That would be awesome.
We could be middlemen. Yeah, we get like a cut
of that or something.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, we'll call ourselves collectively.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Colonel to publishers, right, yeah, that's what they call us. So, man,
that was awesome. That was great. Man. Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
There were plenty of other awesome stories yeah uh, and
they are published. You can go onto the blogs at
HowStuffWorks dot com and look for read the horror fiction
Contest Sweet sixteen here yep, I think, and yeah, I
think you'll enjoy all of them. You can, and then
you can email us and be like, no, this should
have been the winner. Well are you two idiots?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah? I almost feel like, I don't know, we don't
even need to have another contest. We can just We've
got like fifteen years worth of episodes. Yeah, we do,
you know, we do. So we'll see what happens next year.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I know. Yet, and maybe we'll even publish one
of the one or two of the others that didn't
quite make it, including like that one disqualifying.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
One that we like. So man, that was good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Uh. Well, in the meantime, everybody, have a very safe
and happy Halloween. From Josh and Chuck agreed all the
people here at how stuffworks dot com and Discovery in general.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can email us, but first you should try us on
Twitter at s y SK podcast, Facebook at Facebook dot com,
(22:19):
slash stuff you should Know, and then if we still
don't respond, try the email at stuff podcast at Discovery
dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from how Stuffworks
dot com.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know
and friends, it is almost folloween. Just do that, then
Jurie doesn't have to do any seventy time.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, just step my mouth making like wind blowing and
Woolve's alley. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good, Chuck. Happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween, buddy. It's good to be back in the
old studio. It feels nice, you know. Yeah, we have
the lighting dim. It's actually a little spooky. No, it's here.
It is Friday's is like twenty eight days later.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Right, Our guest producer Matt, survived the zombie apocalypse. Ye're
still here and still normal, right, Matt? Pretty normal, says Matt.
And so I guess if you hadn't figured out, I know,
what we're about to do is read our annual Halloween
scary story. But this one's a little different.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I know some of you know, but maybe not everybody
knows that we held a Halloween horror fiction contest. We
reached out to our fans and said, hey, scarce, thanks right,
some of them did.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, And hats off to you, my friend, because this
was Josh's idea, and I think it was a great idea.
And we got over one hundred stories and one hundred
and four yeah, and you guys ultimately decided in the
bracket game. But I would have been happy with any
of those sixteen yeah and strong entries. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
There were probably even more than sixteen, because it wasn't
it wasn't easy to pick those sweet sixteen. We got
one hundred and four entries that were qualified. I believe
we had another maybe eight that were disqualified for hundred reasons.
But I appreciate you taking your hat off to me.
I take my hat off to everybody who took the
time to send their stuff in.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Some people sent stuff they had sitting around. Other people
whiped this stuff up just for us. And thank you
to all of you who sent in a story. Yes,
and we want to say that obviously, if you send
us a story, we could tell by the caliber of
the writing that we got that you are professional writers
or aspiring to be professional writers. So if you publish
a book, whether it's horror fiction, short stories, or whether
(02:15):
it is a children's book or anything like that. We
want to show our appreciation to you for entering the
contest by saying, let us know, and we will tell
everybody about it, yep, on social media, on the podcast whatever,
and we can start that little courtesy now, Chuck, because
one of the guys who made it to the Sweet sixteen,
(02:35):
his name is Adam pract and he submitted a story
called Frame Story, which was awesome, and he went ahead
and published it in a book. He's got a book
called appropriately enough Frame Story. It's seven stories of sci
fi and fantasy, horror and humor. It's available in Kindle
(02:57):
as a Kindle e book. I think he's got pretty
much every ebook covered he's got. It's a dot mobi file,
which means that you can use it on just about
any eReader. You can go to uh smash words dot
com and find it. You can find it on Amazon,
and you can find it as a print on demand
(03:20):
paper book if you're not into that whole new fangled
eReader thing at createspace dot com. Slash four zero, two, three, five,
seven six. So Adam Practice Frame Story, seven story collection,
heck of a deal, and it's out there already.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Wow, look at you. Yeah, uh so I guess we'll
explain quickly. We divided the story not by paragraph this time,
but by style, because this story deals with a communica
that someone is sending. Yes, and there's another part of
the story where this man exists, and so I will
be reading that, Josh will be reading the communica. A. Yeah,
and I think that was a good way to do it.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh, I agree, and that was your idea. So let's
continue the pat on the backfest, and we should probably
tell everybody what story we're reading. Yes, this is the
winner of the stuff you should know horror fiction contest.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Ever, I would.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Say inaugural, but that would indicate that there's more to come.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, we haven't decided that. Yeah, and he technically should
never say first annual. People say that a lot, right,
until there's a second year, it can't be annual.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Right, you say inaugural?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Oh, is that what the replacement is? Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Well that's a good point. But the winner is a
guy named Brett s Arnold, and mister Arnold submitted a
story called Sign Forever and Ever, and we think it's
awesome and we're proud of one.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Again, Thank you to everybody who submitted your stories. You
can go to the bogs at HowStuffWorks dot com and
read all of the Sweet sixteen. They're still up there.
They will be in perpetuity and lead some nice comments.
Nice comments. Okay, yeah, okay, so let's read it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Huh, all right?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Henceforth here with here too we read Signed Forever and
Ever by Brett s Arnold.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Edmund thought of holding his breath as another splinter formed
in the window. The creaking of vessel under the pressure
of well, what exactly was it brought to mine images
of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea, and
suddenly he was cold. Some people think all they're doing
in death is returning to the sea, but no, he
thought that's too short sighted. He would be returning to
the stars. For the moment, everything was stable, He exhaled
(05:32):
and returned to his electronic courier.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I never told you the truth because I didn't want
to hurt you. But we're past that now. When she left,
I was destroyed. I didn't know how to raid you.
I feared you would be different without your mother. How
would they treat you at school? What about when you
were older? Her leaving hurt me too, of course, and
very deeply. But it was you that I was worried about, Sarah.
I want you to know I've thought about this every
(06:00):
day since she left. I shouldn't have told you she died.
That was wrong. Still, worse things have happened since, and
I need you to know the real story.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
After she left, I.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Found it was to chase down another man. It makes
me sick to think about, sick to my stomach. Who
was he anyway, some nobody, a drug dealer. Whoever, It's
a good thing he died, Sarah. Bad things happen to
bad people, but that's still not the worst of it.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
He paused to look at the small crescent window, twenty
six inches thick out to the sun. The direct light
hurt his eyes, and when he closed them he saw
small purple streaks. When he rubbed them, there was another
murmur from the vessel, metal compressing in on itself on him.
The vessel turned on its end and threw him in
its courier to the ground. He caught the edge of
(06:50):
the bed frame he was sitting on and steadied himself.
The vessel's course smoothed. The splinter in the window was
longer now with new smaller splinters fracturing away from it
like cobwebs. He was panting and out of breath. He
picked the courier up from the floor and propped it
against the dashboard.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love you, Sarah. I wish I had more time
to say that to you right now, and back at
home too. When I heard that the man had died,
I was at work, sitting at my desk reading the
newspaper about the problems the Mars colony was having and
how the first settlers were facing more challenges than they'd expected.
I received a message via post from your uncle. He
(07:31):
said the man died from disease, a slow moving cancer
whose long treatment bankrupted your mother and him. And then
after she was coming back to the only place she knew.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
He studied his gray standard issue uniform with the red
circular insignia and the numbers five two seven below. This
far passed the Moon. Communications other than electronic courier was impossible,
and even those took hours to transmit across the cosmos.
He had sent one to Cape Canaver forty minutes prior,
only to alert them that a red light on his
(08:03):
dashboard titled relay Valve, was suddenly on and he couldn't
recall from his brief training what that meant. He was
sure it was serious. There's no reason for me to
be here, he thought, or anyone. The world isn't ending.
There's no impending cataclysmic event, no threat to the species
as a whole. It was a just in case. That's
how they'd phrased it to him in training, just in case.
(08:24):
He mulled the words over angry.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I don't know if she was going to try to
contact us. I heard it from a friend that she
was staying at the Late Sleeper motel outside of town.
I like to think that if you had been in
my head then and heard everything I was thinking and
experienced the rush, that you would have done the same
thing I did, and I wouldn't be here. But that's
not how life works. I couldn't stand the thought of
(08:49):
her meeting you after I raised you, or her asking
to come back or coming to take you away. That's
when I took the lumber axe in the yard and
drove to the motel and pushed your mother on the
bed and laid the blade into her, missing the first time,
but not the second, or the third, or fourth. I
(09:11):
lost count That night, I didn't sleep. I thought about
what you would have done if you saw me when
I came home and showered, and grabbed your sheets from
your bed and wrapped them around your mother in the
back seat of our automobile, and drove her to the
lake and dumped her in on the north side, which
was more shallow than I had thought. I watched the
current move her body down to a small pocket of
(09:32):
water lined with rocks that her clothes must.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Have snagged on.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
A tree grew overhead.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It was pretty in its own way.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It was colder the next morning, in overcast I tried
to ignore everything, like I'd done before.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
The vessel shook again, sending Edmond to the floor, his
face hitting the side of the bunk he had been
sitting on. From that perspective, he could almost make out
the shape of the milky Way and the landscape of
lights blinking on his dashboard, red and orange and yellow.
He reached to study the sharp pain in his jaw
with his left hand, but jolted when he made contact.
(10:09):
He could barely move it, and when he did, he
could hear a loud clicking sound against his ear drum,
probably broken, he thought. The blood ran thick like half
frozen water down his neck and chest, where it collected
in pools, and the folds of his uniform pants. He
sat as quiet as possible and tried not to think
about the window and its new splinters and fractures. The
(10:29):
silence is good, he thought.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
By the time I thought to move your mother before
anyone else found her, it was too late. The sides
of the river and all the shallow areas had frozen
over in a matter of days. I came at night
and discovered this. I tried kicking through the ice with
my boot. I used the tire iron nothing. The second
time I came was in the day. I walked past
the spot, never stopping, and looked in past to see
(11:00):
if I could see her, if she was still there,
But the ice was like frosted glass. Every few minutes
a truck or some other vehicle would pass on the highway,
and I would croped low to the ground. I let
a week go by and came back at night. I
parked on the shoulder of the highway half a mile
up and walked back to the river with my flashlight off.
I tested the ice with my boot again and walked
(11:20):
out onto it. I laid my head against the ice
and looked down for your mother. I couldn't see her.
I put my ear to the ground, as if testing
for a coming train by listening to the tracks, but
all I could hear was ice splintering in the distance,
a low echoing sound. I turned the flashlight on and
pointed it to where I left her beneath. I saw
the faintest blur of her, the smooth edges of the
(11:41):
structure of her face. Her white sweater was clear against
the brown river bottom. Tiny air bubbles were frozen everywhere
in the ice, but most of them seemed to be
around her head, and I wondered what caused that. From
then on, I came back every night. I waited until
a few hours before sunrise. I put my ear to
the ground and listened to the shifting eye. And I
waited until I had seen no headlights for several minutes
(12:03):
before I turned on the flashlight. Impressed my face as
close to the ice as possible for as long as possible.
The blue moonlight mixed with my yellow flashlight made her
look green. It did not matter what color she was.
I hardly recognized her after all those years. Anyway, I
felt sick at home when the sun came up. But
every night I went back. I think more than anything,
I was waiting for spring, for the ice to melt.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
There was too much blood. He felt light headed and
stood up and immediately fell back down. He felt short
of breath. Outside his window, the red planet was bigger.
He could see individual caverns in the details of ridges.
The color was more vibrant, where Earth was still so
blue in the distance. He could now be sure first
hand and not by a matter of faith, that there
(12:51):
was no water where his vessel was heading. It would
be nice, he thought, if he could fly the vessel
far enough to at least make it into orbit or
the red planet. He remembered setting benchmarks for himself, most
of all as a young man about his death. If
I could only make it until Christmas and die the
day after, if I have to, that would be best.
(13:11):
Then Christmas would come and go, and he would think,
if I have to die now, at least let it
be after vacation, or at the very least during vacation,
so I can go while looking at the beach, or
the cabin or the city lights. He ripped the sleeve
off his standard issue uniform and held it firmly against
his wound. The harder he pressed, the more it hurt.
He put his full weight into it, eyes closed, sweating,
(13:35):
thinking of the window.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
In September, before all of this, I received a letter
thanking me for my application, et cetera, and that yes,
I had been selected to join the second colonizing group
of Mars. I had not decided if I would go
with you going to college. It seemed like the right thing,
a fit, a way to support us while you were away.
I could not protect you anymore while you were away,
(13:59):
but I couldn't do it. I took out loans I
borrowed against the house. I would be there for you
when you needed me.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
He reached for his wallet and took out a small
picture he kept in one of the card pockets. He
could not remember his daughter's eye color. He remembered when
Sarah was four or five, his wife and him had
a fight at a restaurant about what color her eyes
were blue or green. The night ended with them being
asked to leave and Sarah crying all the way home.
Edmund didn't speak to his wife for a month. The
(14:31):
photo was of her on her seventeenth birthday, with two
of her friends at her side at the aquarium, but
her eyes were too small to see the color of
a large blue tank with a school of silver fish
filled the background. Felt trivial now, but also fundamentally basic.
Any other father would know this answer, and probably whispered
it in their sleep. My daughter's eyes are but the
(14:52):
answer didn't come.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I didn't have hopes for the program, knowing they took
a local geologist with my credentials, if you can even
call them that, I'm guessing I was chosen because I
could be spared. Older single men seemed to get that wrap.
The first wave of colonists was mostly hard laborers and
criminals and their elected leaders. But all we were good
for was bringing supplies. We had almost no training. These
(15:17):
vessels fly themselves. I had only a passing interest. The
forms were too easy to fill in and submit. I
was told I would be taking part of the future
of mankind, a planet for tomorrow, one we needed yesterday.
People never change humanity, that is, but as people as
individuals too. It applies both ways. No one cared who
(15:37):
we were, just that we were healthy and willing. I
was still not committed in full to go through with it.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Its slow hits began in the machinery somewhere beneath them.
In the vessel, it was quiet at first, then louder.
It stopped. Suddenly the overhead light turned off. Edmond sat
very still, his pulse visible from his jugular, the lights
of his electronic courier illuminating his sweaty face. The air
conditioning unit was no longer functional, and the absence of
his white noise made the silence even more pronounced. He
(16:07):
felt lightheaded. The vessel will not make it, he thought.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I was going to leave town a few days before.
We were set to leave on our individual vessels. By
then spring was coming, and something changed my mind quickly.
There was no moon out one of the nights I
was visiting your mother. The ice had begun to thaw
slowly over the past few nights, and I could make
her out more clearly.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I had no plan for when the ice melted. I
wanted to be there when it did, though, to move
her out of there. I was looking at her then
brown skin and the deep cuts that exposed bone. All
around me. It was black and cold and completely silent.
No cars passed.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I was alone.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
A branch snapped somewhere near the shore. I was laying
down and turned off the flashlight. Had I been followed,
I waited, turned the flashlight on towards the sound's source,
but didn't see anything through the trees. I didn't want
to leave the body there. The sounds could have been anything.
I waited all night with my small pocket knife drawn.
At first daybreak, I walked back to the automobile across
(17:08):
the highway and drove home. I did not go to
work that day or ever again. The next night I returned,
I made sure I was not followed. I wore black
and felt stupid. The ice was thinner. I looked at
your mother, the strands of her hair that were beginning
to break free, and the current swayed back and forth.
The next night I planned to bring a hammer and
break through the ice and move her. The purple rings
(17:29):
on her skin that formed just before I threw her
in the lake were now black. I sat waiting in
the silence for the first time, without meaning to, I
fell asleep on the ice. I awoke with a startle,
covered in cold sweat. Something didn't feel right. I turned
the flashlight on and scanned the trees and saw nothing.
Another branch or twigs snapped under the weight of something
(17:51):
I was too far away to see. I turned the
flashlight off, and another branch snapped closer, then another. Then
there was the sound of ice breaking on the shore,
like metal striking metal. I turned on the flashlight and
pointed it at the sound, like a spotlight. A thin
woman in white stood looking at me, her eyes knee
on yellow in the reflection. She was older and midstep
(18:12):
on the ice, coming toward me. I dropped the flashlight
and ran across the lake in the other direction. I
hid all night in the woods on the opposite end
of the lake, completely separated from the highway. Had the
body been found. When I finally got back to my automobile,
I didn't know where to drive. I headed for home,
turned around, and drove through to Florida. I went straight
to the mission base and waited to go to Mars.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
The vessel was quiet outside the window of the blackness
was almost beautiful. He thought soon he would be part
of it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
I wanted you to know the story from me before
anything happens. And you hear about all this from someone else.
You don't have to lie about it if you don't
want to, you don't have to say anything about it,
you won't hear from me again. I want you to
know I don't understand any of this. There was never
a plan, but I can tell you, and not many
people get a chance like this to say it when
they really need to. I love you, Signed Forever and Ever, Edmund.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
He directed his fingers across the glass surface of the
electronic courier to hit send.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
One more thing. If you haven't decided for yourself yet,
let's agree your eyes are blue?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Is that okay with you? And the message was sent
off to the blue planet so far away from him.
His daughter would not receive the message for several hours.
Even if she replied right away, he would never receive it.
This he knew. He closed his eyes and thought about
his actions leading up to this. He realized what he
wrote to Sarah was true. That he didn't understand the
(19:43):
meaning behind anything that had happened. He didn't want to,
and if he didn't understand the past, he thought there
was no way he could comprehend the present or the future.
So he thought of nothing. As the vessel rocked violently
in a gasket? Was it a gasket broke in the
dashboard and shot white smoke into the cabin. The vessel
shook again, and the glass windows splintered more and more.
(20:04):
That fat Lady sings, He thought. It happened very quickly.
There was immense pressure from within his body pushing outward.
His sight was accentuated with purples and blacks, his heart
beating rapidly and then hard and slow. He could hear
it in his ear drums. The wound on his chin reopened,
and the last thing he saw before suffocating to death
was his blood rushing out of the window and then
(20:27):
floating in outer space and tiny red, impossibly beautiful globules
made magnificent by the unfiltered sunlight. Dying this way was,
to his surprise, pleasurable way to go. Wow, that is
a heck of a story.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Signed Forever and Ever by Arnold.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Do you know what it read like to me? Was
a graphic novel? Yeah, the way he wrote it. And
I think some artist out there should get in touch
with us, to get in touch with him and like
make this sing a graphic novel. That would be awesome.
We could be middlemen. Yeah, we get like a cut
of that or something.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, we'll call ourselves collectively.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Colonel to publishers, right, yeah, that's what they call us. So, man,
that was awesome. That was great. Man. Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
There were plenty of other awesome stories yeah uh, and
they are published. You can go onto the blogs at
HowStuffWorks dot com and look for read the horror fiction
Contest Sweet sixteen here yep, I think, and yeah, I
think you'll enjoy all of them. You can, and then
you can email us and be like, no, this should
have been the winner. Well are you two idiots?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah? I almost feel like, I don't know, we don't
even need to have another contest. We can just We've
got like fifteen years worth of episodes. Yeah, we do,
you know, we do. So we'll see what happens next year.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, I know. Yet, and maybe we'll even publish one
of the one or two of the others that didn't
quite make it, including like that one disqualifying.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
One that we like. So man, that was good. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Uh. Well, in the meantime, everybody, have a very safe
and happy Halloween. From Josh and Chuck agreed all the
people here at how stuffworks dot com and Discovery in general.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can email us, but first you should try us on
Twitter at s y SK podcast, Facebook at Facebook dot com,
(22:19):
slash stuff you should Know, and then if we still
don't respond, try the email at stuff podcast at Discovery
dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com
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