Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. There are two stories in this episode, and
the first one is called on the Other Side of the Building, and then
our feature story coupons. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story.
One of my co workers had gotten away with another prank and everyone was
laughing, but it wasn't anything serious. A toy fake mouse had been left
on my desk and no, I don't mean the computer kind, I screamed,
just as my manager was coming through the door, and she chuckled with
some co workers not knowing whether to laugh or not in front of her.
She knew what was going on right away because it hadn't been the first time.
It was normal around her off it would make jokes about anything and everything,
and part of it came with the job. We wrote for different publications
and we used to find ourselves getting distracted often. It wasn't the most exciting
job. After work, my manager called me into her office to talk about
a project we were working on, when at the end she asked if everything
was all right if I considered myself an anxious person. I didn't know how
to answer it, obviously, and she had seen me freak out over every
prank under the sun. I didn't want to be the one person that she
felt she needed to protect or whatever, so I simply told her that I
would get startled easily, only because I wasn't expecting stuff like that at the
workplace. I didn't mean for it to sound like a complaint, but I
guess now I was a complainer. She sighed and agreed with me, and
then asked me if there was anything she could do. Eventually, we changed
the topic. I went back to talking about the project, and eventually I
left her office with lots of stuff to process. I had been afraid of
so many things all of my life. When I was younger, i'd avoid
going out to the yard to clean after my dog because I was afraid of
the tree. It was large and likely dead, and my brother told me
that he had seen a witch coming out of it when he got home from
school. The habit never left me. I would check the back seat of
my car before getting in, and I would dread having to walk along the
parking structure on my way back to the car. When I would stay late
at work, the elevator would creak and it would always be empty, but
the few other cars scattered across the enormous concrete floor. For some reason,
I thought it would be worse if another soul would be up there with me,
But the habits continued. I thought back on the bathtub woman, the
ghost that lived in the bathtub, which was why we were never supposed to
keep the shower curtains shut. I know I was to stop mold from growing
on it. And even though no one else told me about the bathtub woman,
I grew up thinking that she was the reason why Mom was so strict
about those curtains. But I was not going to be scared anymore. There
was one way I could prove it to myself. My apartment building was on
the other side of town, not the best area, but also not the
worst. It was a tall building and made of bricks, likely built before
my parents were born, and the hallways showed it. There was a section
of it where the shoot for the trash was That was at the end of
the hall by the fire escape. I used to bring the bag of trash
with me all the way down the stairs, though, just to avoid going
to that area. It was justified. I had a good reason this time,
and I didn't want to go there, but I needed this one for
me. I wanted to stop being afraid of everything. The last time I
was there, I swear I had seen him. The little boy from the
eighth floor, as the maintenance man used to call him, just another prank,
I used to tell myself until I saw him. He was coming out
from the apartment doors from a unit that has been under maintenance for years before
I ever moved in. I didn't talk much to my neighbors, so there
would be no way of knowing exactly how long. The place was easy to
spot. The doors had been kicked in at one point and had a large
gash on the side of the doorknob. The little boy stepped out with even
footsteps, not slowing down and not speeding up. I stood at the end
of the hallway, a black, dripping trash bag in my hand about to
burst. Eye were fixed on this little boy, looking to be about five
or six years old, and walking straight toward the door across from the broken
one. Despite him looking like a regular kid, there was something dead about
him. His arms as he walked across the hallway simply dangled by his sides,
and his legs seemed to walk in front of him before he stopped.
I stood there, frozen as he smiled at the wall, and from the
side I could see his many teeth going almost all the way to his ears.
His head began to turn toward me, and I lost it. I
dropped the bag and turned the corner and back to my side of the building.
I locked the door behind me, my heart beating faster than ever before.
I felt sweat dripping to my eyes as I searched my pockets for my
phone, but couldn't seem to find it. I didn't know who I was
going to call, and yet I felt unsafe without it. I pressed my
hand against my chest as I leaned to the door, looking up at the
counter of my kitchen. I had never seen that part of my apartment before.
That's when I heard my cell phone ring from the hallway. It was
right outside. I opened the door, trying to quickly reach my hand through
the gap and bring it back inside with me. The door creaked open,
and the raintne became louder. It was right there. I must have dropped
it when I reached for my keys to get through the door. Reliving those
moments made me doubt myself and what I was about to do. But I
had this trash bag in my hand, and I was going to make it
to the other side of the building this time. The floor creaked below me.
As soon as I got past the staircase and into the other side,
I saw the fire escape at the end of the hall and the flickering light
in the middle. The walls were thick with layers of wallpaper, some with
flowers and some with stripes, and every single one of them was faded.
It took a step closer to the door on the wall, the shoot where
the trash goes, and I nearly changed my mind before I got to the
second door. I had never met any neighbors or had ever seen this area
occupied. I made a mental note to ask the maintenance man about it next
time I saw him. Up Ahead was a door with a gash by the
door knob, and I picked up my steps as I passed another door before
getting to the slot where you put your trash bags. I opened it,
dropped it, and closed it shut. It didn't take long before I heard
a whistling hum climbing up the chute. It echoed and vibrated with a haunting,
burying itself deeply inside my head. I was shaking now and ran to
the end of the hallway. And this had been a mistake. I froze
in place when I heard a door open from that side of the building.
I couldn't help it and turned around to see a father and his son walk
out of the door and toward the little door on the wall where the trash
goes. The father opened it and the son dropped a bag of trash on
it, and the slot clothed shut. I heard that haunting echo once again.
Climbing up the chute, the man looked toward me, he waved and
opened his door, smiling. I could see the teeth up to his ears.
So that's what the garbage shoots sounded like. Relieved, I turned around
again and smiled to myself. I had to stop being afraid of everything.
I met the maintenance man by the front door, and I asked him about
the hum casually mentioned me that I finally met some neighbors, and that's when
I learned that there were no tenants living on that side of the building.
Made sense, because there was something dead about them too, coupons. I
looked at my phone once again three am. The conversations ran in my head
like little hamsters inside of plastic ball in every direction, getting nowhere at all.
She told me I was too stubborn, that I would never understand her.
That she was glad I was getting what I deserved, But who in
the right mind would wish such things to another. She was the one that
stopped. She was the one that told me that maybe we should spend some
time apart. I thought of the thoughts. At one in the morning,
not quite as bad, but also not better. The moon barely visible on
the corner of my window now, I thought it was impossible for it to
get through those trees. By four in the morning, it was gone,
and by five it had been scared away completely, the sky now turning a
light shade of purple. Another clear day outside and another dark one inside my
apartment. I don't know how many days passed exactly. My friend said that
it was a couple of weeks, but I just remember telling myself that it
was enough to get fired, and enough to earn a record breaking twelve phone
calls missed ones on my phone. I got back to those who mattered via
message. Though I'm not a psychopath. The kitchen counter was lined with empty
cans. One of my favorite comfort foods that had somehow turned into a sour
tasting gravy and a metallic cranberry sauce. No chicken, no turkey, no
beef. There was no time to waste lighting up the stove because I still
hadn't cleaned out the kitchen sink. It had been a long time since then,
and yet I can somehow still remember every single detail of those nights,
every single one of those phone calls. Thank you for calling Oiger Foods.
May I get your name? They asked me, Sir, this as kind
of gravy was sour? I paused awkwardly. The kind man on the other
end apologized and asked me for a number on the can. If I couldn't
tell the cans apart anymore, how was I supposed to be able to decipher
a number written in blue dots? Give me one second, I said.
I looked at the phone, twirling its cable through my fingers, and then
I pressed a button on the holder. But then the kind man called back.
I was looking at the mess I had made last week, thinking of
ways to get rid of the dark hair now growing through the tiny doors under
the sink. Hello, sir, it looks like we have gotten disconnected.
Can you please tell me your address? Why would the warm hand dress?
Who was this guy? And why did he want to know where I was?
After a long pause, I simply told him that I had to go.
Or disappointed whispers in the background, as if they knew something that was
impossible. Coupons, I thought to myself, he wanted my address to send
me coupons to try some more of their products. Just the thought of the
paper with the barcodes that you couldn't even bend before the cashier at the register
would tell you that they weren't accepting them because you had cut them right at
the black dotted line, or that you couldn't see the expiration date on it,
or that it wasn't that specific kind of sauce you were buying. Had
enough of those coupons, the same ones that Kathy brought along after every single
visit to the grocery store or the mall or the mailbox, the same ones
she bothered me about whenever I forgot them. It reminded me of the way
she used to ask me to get the carrots that were somehow always wrong,
too dead, or too twisted for her taste. Sounded a lot like.
The phone rang once again, I would let it go to the answering machine.
Now I was tired of holding that phone up to my ear. My
arms had been sore from the blunt knife. Have you tried to cut meat
with one of those? Have you tilted downwards or cut with the backside of
it? It was supposed to work, but I gave up, and in
a rage, I simply broke the bones in half. The blood dripped through
the base of the doors, beneath the sink, all on the corner,
and it dripped for only a little while before it became sticky and easier to
handle. I grabbed the open cans and placed them carefully to catch the viscous
streams. Nineteen cans and more to go. It was tough to empty them.
I couldn't eat the contents fast enough. Before I knew it, the
liquid stopped dripping. Hello, sir, I would like to send you some
samples and our sincerest apologies. The answering machine played back, stopping right at
this part. It would appreciate a call at your earliest convenience. I forgot
when nightfall came, but it did, and once again I expected Kathy to
come through that door, bogging for something I had forgotten to clean. Sure
of what I would tell her, but sure that I would be able to
get away with it now, if I could only get some sleep. Eight
at night and nothing to do. Once again looked out the window to look
for the moon, but it wasn't there. The phone kept ringing, and
the answering machine kept beeping, and I thought of disconnecting it too. A
wave of emotions ran over me, desperately looking for that moon, the same
one that had been a part of that window for enough time to get me
fired. But now it was no longer there, and that phone wouldn't stop.
The rings came and they left, like the thoughts of Kathy and the
way she screamed, the way she told me that I deserved to get sick
and that I should have gotten help earlier. And then she had the audacity
to tell me to go through the grocery store for her. Oh, I
would get those cans she needed for dinner, all right. Then I would
put her inside of them. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me
Edwin Kobar Rubez. For story ideas or suggestion, send me an email at
Hello at scarystorypodcast dot com, or find my contact information over on the website.
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