Speaker 1: This program is intended for mature audiences only.
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tinkering away at season two. If you'd like to see
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and on our website. Tonight's story is about a person
who never consciously knew she wasn't at home in this world,
but lived her life going through the until something profoundly
strange happened to her. But first, a word from the
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Speaker 5: Radio turning over. There was something stuck in her throat.
She was no stranger to tonsilstones, those nasty, calcified bits
of food debris that got caught in her tonsils. But
typically she could get them out on her own, just fine.
A vigorous cough here, a poke with a cute tip there,
and she was good to go. She even got so
used to the process that sometimes she could dig them
out with her finger, not even looking in the mirror.
It was disgusting, but it worked. This this felt different.
She tried to ignore the fact that she had the
sore throat for days with no relief, no matter what
she tried. She was now on day fourteen of salt water,
gargling a rigorous hydration schedule and possibly brushing her teeth
a little too often. Never before had she found herself
so distracted by something that was usually a non issue.
She forced herself to swallow saliva, as though that would
bring any relief, and tried to put it to the
back of her mind. She had completely zoned out the
last fifteen minutes of her meeting with the regional director,
who was looking to her for an answer to a
question she never heard. The pain in her throat throbbed
that evening. She widened her mouth as much as possible
and hit the usual angles with her phone's flashlight so
she could peer right into the crips of her tonsils.
A doctor once told her that they were exceptionally large.
She thought it somewhat amusing that this would be the
one area in her life where she could be considered exceptional.
As she looked down her throat, she couldn't see the whitish,
yellowish lumps that she expected. In fact, for the most part,
her tonsils looked normal. As she slowly moved the light
to see between the fleshy crevices, something unfamiliar caught her eye.
She almost dropped her phone. There, toward the back of
one of her tonsils was a dark spot. She felt
like she stared at that spot for hours, but no
matter how hard she looked, she was unable to identify
this odd form. It definitely seemed solid, not like a scab.
On the surface of her tonsil. She could feel her
heart beat quickened, fighting tears and the urge to look
up dark spot on tonsil is at cancer on the Internet.
She quickly washed her hands and went straight to bed.
After an hour of lying in the dark, she finally
felt herself drifting off to sleep. She heard faint whispers
of her name, which she ignored. Just like the tonsil stones,
she was used to the hypnogogic hallucinations that came to
her from time to time. She had experienced them for
as long as she could remember, long before she even
knew that they could be considered scary by some folks.
By the time she was old enough to have that understanding,
their phantasmic visitations happened so frequently that she saw them
as completely benign. They were nothing more than the brain
getting its wise crossed. After all, the whispers faded to
nothing as she sank into the dark of a dreamless sleep.
For the next few days, she tried to ignore the
growing soreness in the back of her throat. She maintained
her tried in true Antitonsilstone regime, but it didn't seem
to help at all. Her sleep became more and more
restless every night, and she grew exhausted from sleep deprivation.
One night, she woke up in a panic. It was
still dark outside, Her heart was racing a mile a minute,
and she could see a figure standing at the foot
of her bed. It was a being that appeared skeletal
at first, towering above her at six or seven feet tall.
As she stared, she realized that it was not skeletal,
but an entity that was made of twigs and sticks.
Speaker 2: It appeared to be.
Speaker 5: Bound at the joints with twine or some other fibrous material.
Its triangular hair tilted down at her her with ampler
like bows jutting upwards and nearly scraping the ceiling. Its
arms reached out toward her, gnarled fingers widespread. She could
hear the creaking of wood straining against movement as the
being extended its limbs in her direction. A low rumble
accompanied its presence, like an earthquake, rattling only inside her
ear drums. She sat up and blinked, expecting it to disappear,
but the vision of the being lingered, its limbs still outstretched.
After a few moments, the being and the rumble finally vanished,
but she found it difficult to allow herself to breathe.
It was just another hallucination, she told herself, attempting to
soothe her nerves, But as she reorientated her body under
the covers, she was afraid to turn her back to
the corner where the entity stood moments ago. The next morning,
the pain in her throat was agonizing. It was worse
than the strip throat she remembered having as a child.
She called in sick to work and stood in front
of the bathroom mirror, stealing herself for what she might see.
She slowly brought the flashlight to her lips, afraid to
part them. She reminded herself doing nothing fixes nothing, and
allowed herself one more deep breath before dropping her jaw.
The dark spot was larger, It was more solid. Dread
resonated in her rib cage. Carefully, she stuck a cue
tip in her mouth to poke it. The spot was hard,
but it moved. It moved like a tonsilstone. That was
some small measure of relief that meant it could come out.
She took the cue tip and gently pushed the object
out toward the front of her mouth. It caught on
some of her tonsil flesh as it moved. Inducing a
terrible coughing fit. She hoped she wouldn't accidentally inhale the thing.
She had coughed violently, she managed to spit something out
into the sink. Through tears, she could see the object
sitting in the white porcelain. It looked like a raisin.
She picked it up to inspect it. The object unexpectedly
had a very rough texture that felt somewhat familiar. As
she examined it closely, she was shocked to discover that
it was a piece of bark, like tree bark from
the outside. She dropped it in surprise, and it tumbled
down the drain. She was simultaneously thankful that it was
out of her sight and angry that she had lost
her only physical evidence of this strange situation. On the
bright side, there didn't seem to be anything else in
her throat, aside from the slight redness and irritation from
poking at her tonsils. She went to bed, thinking she
could rest easy now the object was gone. She was wrong.
That night, she dreamt. She dreamt about a forest. It
was dark and warm and damp. She was inside this forest.
She heard shuffling in the trees around her. She moved slowly,
like she was wearing heavy weights on her legs. What
little dapple sunlight made it through the leaves above only
made it harder to tell where she was going. She
had to move forward deeper. She couldn't breathe, or she could,
but these lungs were not her own. They were foreign, borrowed.
Each breath felt like she was inhaling through a damp cloth,
straining to fill her chest with air. Her hum rumbled
in the forest around her, deep and thrumming. She knew
this noise. She knew it from a time when she
was too young to know to be afraid more, moving, more, shuffling.
She strained against the resistance of the thick air. It
was here, she could feel it. She made it to
the clearing. It was waiting for her, its limbs reaching
out toward her, its triangular head tilted at her. The
antlers appeared to grow before her, reaching higher and higher.
The shuffling grew louder and louder, until it crashed around her,
combining with a hum that was now so rich and
so heavy, creating such a clamor that it sounded like
boughs breaking above her head, until finally it was on
top of her, and it was all she could do
to nod do. She woke up in her bed, sweating
and crying. Her throat was dry. She forced herself to
work every day, knowing that she didn't have enough paid
time off saved up to stay at home rest. Her
hair started falling out by the handful in her showers,
and she stopped wearing make up. Her wardrobe shifted from
carefully planned outfits to barely meeting dress code as she
wore the most casual and comfortable clothes she could get
away with. She noticed that people stopped making small talk
with her in the office. Some of them even avoided
eye contact with her. She was too tired to care.
The dream became reoccurring, sapping her of her rest and
energy day after day. Every night, she stayed up later
as she dreaded returning to that clearing and hearing the
droning and the crashing. Strangely, she was never afraid in
the dream. It was almost like she was excited. But
the terror flooded back to her bones upon waking as
she ruminated on the fact that she did not know
what was happening to her or why her skin started
breaking out with what appeared to be black heads, not
just on her face, but across her limbs and torso.
There was one particular bump on her forearm that she
found herself picking at often. The sensation wasn't pleasant, but
it wasn't painful either. She knew she should leave the
bump alone, but she couldn't help it. One day, as
she absent mindedly picked at the bump, she noticed that
something was moving inside the enlarged paw every time she
poked it. She squeezed it, and it was clear that
the thing inside was much larger than the small opening.
It reminded her of the video she had seen of
butterfly lava, except it didn't move on its own. She
dug her nails into the flesh around the opening, coaxing
the object closer to the surface. She was surprised to
find something green coming out. It was still attached to
the inner layers of her skin, but it was clear
that whatever this was, it was rolled up in there.
She grabs some tweezers from her desk and got a
fur grasp. Pulling slowly and steadily, She could feel it
heavily anchored inside her arm as it resisted her but
she didn't stop. The dull pain barely registered in her
mind as she concentrated on the excavation. Relief overpowered this
stinging sensation. As the object was freed from her flesh,
she uncurled it and found that it was a leaf.
She was thoroughly unsure as to whether or not she
was hallucinating, and found herself giggling loudly at this bizarre veal.
Her manager called her into the office and gave her
information on stress related leave, encouraging her to consider taking
a break. The words bounced around meaninglessly, sounding as though
they were traveling to her ear drums through water. She
responded as though she was powered by a motor, going
through the motions of expressing gratitude and nodding. Though she
felt like some one else was guiding her through it.
She was too focused on the smell of damp moss
that seemed to come from nowhere. She lost track of
time even more. At home, she vaguely remembered a life
of paperwork. Was that yesterday, five weeks ago? She lost
her phone somewhere in the apartment. The battery was probably
long dead. Who knows if any one had been trying
to reach her. She didn't care. She was exploring her body.
Since she had found the leaf, she discovered other oddities
growing out of her paws. Some of them bore leaves,
just as the first one did. Some appeared to be
the start of twigs. Those wouldn't come out, no matter
how hard she tugged on them. In fact, pulling at
those seemed to make them stronger. Some of these growths
started happening in impossible places. She found a thorn on
one of her knuckles. Her teeth started to loosen. In
her gums, all of the flesh inside her mouth shifted
from pink to a sort of faint shade of green,
not quite as sickly green, more like something that seemed
to need sunlight to feed. She couldn't remember when she
stopped eating, but she kept showering. She spent more and
more time showering and letting. The bathroom become humid and foggy.
As the water ran over her, she found it nourishing.
One day, as she massaged her hair, she felt something
come loose. She expected another clump of hair, and she
was mostly right. Within the tangle, she found some kind
of vine. She smiled as she traced her fingers over it,
touching the delicate leaves attached to the stem. She was
delighted to find a small yellow flower near the end
of the vine. When she wasn't showering, she was dreaming.
She returned to the clearing over and over again. Now
she was earnestly trying to get close to the entity,
but she was never able to reach it. Before the
dream ended, what used to be tears of fear upon
waking were replaced with tears of sorrow. Every time she woke,
she found her body to be more stiff than before.
She struggled to bend her joints a little more every day.
Her skin was no longer as pliable as it once was,
as it slowly became a rough, protective shell. She felt
like her internal structure was somehow different with these still
bones inside her. Did her heart still pump blood? Did
it matter? Somewhere in the back of her mind, she
knew her days of exploration were coming to a close.
She knew that if she indulged too long, she would
be stuck and all of this would have been for nothing.
The day she left, she didn't bother closing the door
to her apartment. She simply found her keys and walked
to the car. She still had a full tank of gas. Good.
She knew she was moving slowly, but she was sure
that she left with plenty of time. She did not gps,
she knew exactly where she needed to go. She drove
until she met the tree line. She left the car
off the side of the highway, partially covered by some bush.
This time it was not a dream. She made her
way through the plants, each one a familiar sibling to her.
There was no man made path, but this did not
stop her. She did not need it. She made her way,
her limbs stiffening slightly more with every step. Her hands
were nearly frozen in place, her fingers now no more
than small branches, slightly twisted with lively green leaves bouncing
at the tips. She tried not to rush her pace
lest she break something and be unable to move entirely.
She could hear her limbs groaning in protest with every movement,
she willed them to keep pushing her forward. She could
hear the faint droning, and made her way in its direction.
The shuffling, she now realized was only her. She felt
a bit silly now, looking back at her initial reaction
to the dreams. If only she knew, if only she
could have seen back then, how freeing this would be.
Every step brought her closer to home. She approached the clearing.
The entity stood there, beckoning her with an outstretched arm.
As she made her way to it, ancient knowledge surfaced
from the depths of her mind, delicate blooms of story
and pictures that had been buried for so long. Such
an understanding would have been impossible to conceive of in
her lifetime before, But here and now there was nothing
but comprehension and acceptance. The entity guided her to a spot,
her spot there in the clearing, the remains of her
feet melted away as roots quickly grew over the spots
of flesh that were left. She stretched the limbs that
used to be her arms upward and tilted her face
to meet the sun. She could feel the roots penetrating
the soil beneath her, reaching the nutrients and moisture that
she craved, and she felt strong. An ancient song echoed
in her mind, and something within her clicked into place.
Speaker 2: She made it.
Speaker 5: She was here. She settled into her spot as the
song grew louder within her spirit, reverberating through her and
connecting her to her surroundings. Her body fully hardened in
its position, she was comfortable and at peace. Here she
could grow, and here she would be.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to Observable Radio. Tonight's episode, Turning
Over was performed by The Ensemble featuring Maria Corcobado and
Jason Smith. Written by Perporina, produced by Cameron Suey, Phil
Van Hest, Perperina and Wendy Hector. Edited by Cameron Suey.
Turning Over was originally published June fifth, twenty twenty one,
on Gaily Dreadful for the twenty twenty one Gaily Helpful fundraiser.
Big thanks to Terry Minard for initially hosting the story
and supporting. Our psychology consultant is doctor Elissa Leal. Art
by Krinn Fletcher. Our theme is the back Rooms, performed
by Mew. Additional music from this episode provided by Christian Anderson,
Blue Saga, Lennon Hutton, Tim Kool, Polar Nights, Ethan Sloane,
and August Wilhelmson. Observable Radio is listener supported thanks to
all of our patrons and listeners, including Kathleen John tid Russ,
Rick Callison, Brianna Zach and Jasper. Patrons fund the production
costs of the show, as well as get access to
behind the scenes information, extra production material, a discount at
the Observable Radio Company Store, and an ad free early
release feed of this show, all at patreon dot com
slash Observable Radio. With the help of our patrons, we've
launched the Observable Radio Company Store at observable radio dot
com slash store. There you'll find stickers, enamel pins, and
our very first shirt on sale and shipping anywhere in
the work. We'd be grateful if you stop by to
take a peek. Thank you for listening, and stay tuned.