As part of a Tommy Bird production. Tales is a podcast created to bring
short stories to life. These stories will be brought to you by a number
of authors and narrated by yours truly, with some help from other amazing voice
actors and actresses. So bunker in, start that fire, hold your loved
one close, and AhR storytelling. I have a story to tell you.
It's a dangerous one to listen to. I have to give this one in
before I continue. I know it sounds stupid, but by the time you
understand why, it would be too late. I know this would not do
her many of you, but without the simple wanting to ease my conscience,
I may not be able to go through with this, and I desperately need
to go through with this. Let me start at the beginning. I have
an old friend, Joe, who I've known since grade school. I'm in
my late twenties, so is he, and he's been my friend for at
least half of that time. I'd say that we knew each other pretty well
after all that time. This may seem irrelevant and uninterested, but I have
to stress this. I know him, and I know him well. What
he did was it was nothing he ever, could have done without some outside
influence. On the night of Friday, January twenty third, I was driving
to his apartment to pick him and his roommate up. We made plans to
go out, hit up a couple of bars, and generally have a good
start to the weekend. When I arrived, there were a number of police
cars and ambulance outside the complex. I of course was curious, as I,
like many people, rarely see such sights. As I got closer,
I noticed a body covered in a bag in the street, surrounded by glass,
and no more than a few feet from a badly dented car. I'm
rather horrified, coming to the conclusion, as someone was hit by a car
and killed right outside the complex. As I finished gawkin, I made my
way inside and up the stairs to the third floor. That's where my friend's
apartment is, and that's where I found it wasn't a simple accident. The
police were upstairs as well, talking to residents and taping off one of the
apartments my friend's apartment. Panicked, I asked one of the officers what happened.
Why my friend's apartment was taped off? I told him I was supposed
to be meeting them for drinks and asked if they were. The officer told
me that it appeared that Jode had butchered his roommate with a kitchen knife and
thrown himself through the plateglass sliding door into the street below. I was a
ghost, shaken so badly I could barely answer the simple questions the officer asked
me. Upon finding that I knew the victim, my mind couldn't process it.
I knew him, he'd never do such an atrocity. It didn't make
sense. I made my way back to my car in silence and drove home
as though on autopilot. I couldn't get the shock of it all out of
my head. My wife asked me what happened, and I explained it to
her. She was shocked as well, but she didn't know him like that.
I told her I needed a bit of time and went to my room.
She let me be lost. I found myself at my computer. I'm
not really sure why I did it, but I found myself checking his email.
I know the password he commonly used, so it was hardly an issue
to find the right one. I thought perhaps he had friends online who I
needed to tell, or maybe I thought i'd find a window into what caused
this. If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have done what
I did. I scrolled through his inbox looking for familiar names. Joe I
and several friends kept in touch online, and I instantly recognized several of those
names. In the last few days. The most recent open email was what
looked like a spam email when an attachment and no other information. Curiosity got
the better of me and I opened it. The file itself was a picture
named nothing but a seemingly random string of numbers. It was simply a man,
seemingly normal at a glance, but the longer I stared at it,
the more disturbed I became. He stood staring with a grin, sinister and
unsettling, with eyes that were both vacant and focus. The same time,
that terrible grin seemed to widen the longer I stared, and for minutes I
was fixated at the horrible face, eyes burden as they stared back at me
with equal intensity. Finally, I tore my gaze away to find the only
other thing in the email, A single word, A word I can't repeat,
not yet. I need to tell my story. I couldn't take the
sight of it any more. I had to close it. The face was
still looking at me. I swear I could still feel his grin and stare
as. I went to lock out of his email and put that horrid thing
out of my mind. I noticed the time it arrived January twenty third,
five thirty five p m. We were supposed to meet at six. He
likely saw this less than an hour before he died. For the next several
days, I tried to get it out of my mind. I attended my
friend's funeral. I tried to go on with my life, but I kept
feeling uneasy. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt like someone was
watching me. At night, I started to have unsettling nightmares. I couldn't
remember much of them when I awoke, but they all had the same elements
that horrible grinned man, blood, violence, and death. I couldn't get
a good night's sleep. I was struggling at work. I kept feeling tense
and on edge. I needed to know what was going on. It was
hard to really know what to look for. At first. All I had
to go on was that image and the single word that accompanied it, grit
and man. Is hardly a descriptive search, and haunting Grin and Man or
curse Grin and Man wasn't really any better. Still, I did what I
could with my limited recas I actually found a reference to it, or what
I thought was it, on a website dedicated to conspiracies and paranormal things and
other things I normally dismissed as utter bullshit. Still, this wasn't natural,
and I was willing to try to open my mind to any explanation since this
seemed to defy anything conventional. What I uncover about this Grin and Man was
that it was an image that seemed to circulate among image boards and forums a
few years back. The article said that the picture was harmless, if not
a bit creepy, though I strongly disagree on a term a bit, but
it seemed that something about it, when coupled with a key word that was
unknown, could trigger extreme psychotic bouts, irritability, nightmares, and hallucinations.
It seemed so utterly stupid, simple texts and pixels causing such harm, and
yet I was sitting there realizing that I was experiencing in those same nightmares,
irritability, and hallucinations. Joe obviously experienced this psychosis, evidence by his sudden
murder suicide. I was stunned. I thought it had to be a joke,
some kind of bizarre hoax. But I knew there was more to it
than that. I knew what I was feeling, and I knew my friend
that picture and that word it had to be the key word what triggers everything?
Oh God, was this going to happen to me too? Was I
going to kill my wife and then myself? I started to panic, but
my rational mind went over. If it was just paranoia and hallucination, those
couldn't hurt me, right, They only had power if I gave them power.
I decided that I would end this, put it out of my mind,
rationalize it a way. Each time, I felt that would be the
end of it all. As much as my rational brain helped me through the
day, it couldn't protect me at night. My dreams continued to degrade,
ending in me waking in the middle of the night, cold sweats and heart
pounding. I started taking sleeping pills, though I refused to tell my wife.
I didn't want her to worry, though I knew she could tell something
was wrong with me. The pills did nothing, though in fact, they
seemed to make my dreams more vivid. I could remember everything when I awoke,
every horrible, bloody detail that grinnin inhumane face I found. I started
sleepwalking the first night I awoke curled in the bathtub, then in the kitchen
three days later, with a knife in my hand and the bloody remains of
our black lab at my feet. I can't even remember the next thing that
happened after that. I know I cleaned up our dog, hit him in
a trash bag, and said he ran off in a night and got lost.
I was terrified. I had no idea what to do. I tried
to medicate myself heavily. I locked up all the knives in the house.
My wife knew there was something terribly wrong, but I refused to say anything.
I don't even know if I could. At that time. The only
thing I could still remember clearly was the dreams. I was. I rate
and easily spooked at the littlest of things. I thought it had to just
be my nerves from all of this and lack of sleep, but I remembered
my friend the website. I knew I was getting worse. The thing I
remember most about the dream, aside from the horrible gritted man, is the
emotions I felt. Each death that was inflicted in the dream like it was
real, Like it was my own hand, disemboweling my friends, my family,
and random strangers against my own will. Like each death, each vision
of terror he showed me was not just a vision, but my own work.
Each horrible death in the dream made him grin a little wider. He
wanted me to snap. He wanted me to become exactly what he was showing
me. He wanted me to become him. So I come here to tell
you this because I'm desperate. I need help. You see, I can't
bear the thought of harm in my wife, the woman I love most in
this world. Yet I know it's inevitable. He's always there, watching and
grinning, knowing I'm close to break in, and nudging me ever closer to
the edge. I know what he wants. I can't let him have that.
I don't know any other way. I'm reaching out to you in hopes
that he'll leave me alone. Maybe if you are careless listener, who I've
warned away, will give him what he wants. He'll let me be.
I have to try. I don't know what else to do. I'm so
sorry. I hope you can forgive a man for acting and desperation. If
you're wondering if the word was said, then it's already too late. But
on a lighter note, this episode of Tales was written and edited by an
anonymous author and narrated by Dee Madison. If you like this podcast, please
hit that follow button and give the podcast a five star review. Remember,
if you want your short story on the podcast, you can email me or
hit me up on my social media. You can find that information in the
episode's listener's note. Also in the listener's note other links to the author's website
where you can support and or read some more of their amazing short stories.
As always, thank you for your support and to those who have continued to
listen. I am a small podcast and so every listen follow review matters,
and so I truly appreciate it. Remember, we are the storytellers.