Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. I've been getting more and
more ideas from you on stories, and this one's based
on an idea submitted by Sienna on a comment on Spotify.
It was a story of a reflection in a mirror.
Of course, there's a slight twist to it, both in
the format and the style. In this one, a man
is feeling trapped by his evil choices in life, and
he shares his last days on earth. My name is
Edwin and here's a Scary Story seventeen. Sometimes you just
know subtle hints, like the way people greet you on
the street. When many on the train choose to ignore you,
but not the children. They lock eyes with you with curiosity.
Though every time they looked at me they could tell
that I did something wrong. It's like they were trained
in some other life that they still remember three or
four years in. It would only be a matter of
time before, like I did, soon forget. But for now
it bothers me because it wasn't just one thing. Imagine
these decades upon decades, and the many times I chose
to be selfish, the times I asked the wrong people
were things for help, money, fame, power, They all came
and went with such simple requests. None of those things
chose to stay, with the exception of the ones that
gave them to me. They look at me from the
corners of the rooms, the bottom of the stairs, and
the instant the lights go off at night. I've stayed
awake longer than I should have many nights before, thinking
of them, feeling their cold breaths against my face, in
that deep sense that someone's about to pounds with a
knife against my chest, memories I presume of a guilty conscience.
Sixteen The sun was already out when I woke up,
another late night of nothing. The smell of these days
has gotten worse. The large mirror Emma gave to me
still in the corner of the room, not so much
as a wipe down. Since she left. These dumb choices
of mine now haunt me like the woman from the mirror.
She thinks I can't see her from between the curtains
on the opposite side, and when I turn, she isn't there.
But that mirror wouldn't lie to me, just like Emma didn't.
The punishment I received was to look at myself every day,
something I deserved. Fifteen I found my old journals today,
full of a smug type of writing that I hated
to read. And yet I know that if I could
go back, I would do it again. I deserve this,
but oh did I live it. Women and the rubbing
of shoulders with those who you may also recognize names
that aren't yet on tombstone and haven't yet found their punishment.
I doubt anything will find them anytime soon. Too bright,
too well known. I read of the time I lost
my cousin well quote unquote lost him on our hiking trip.
Everyone was waiting for him at the cabins. Vaguely I
wrote about it. There was no way I would incriminate
myself through these if I happened to go unexpectedly too,
like everyone was made to think. After my cousin left.
I wrote it in hints, enough words on paper for
me to remember what happened, how he showed up, how
he set up the fires and the materials everyone brought,
the chants and the books where they came from. The
frightened ranger that found us in the middle of one
of those ceremonies. There were no camera phones back then.
It took a total of forty three minutes for the
police to arrive, and by that time we were gone,
some of us back on the road, and others, like
my cousin, literally gone, never to be found again. Nobody
and nothing made the news. They would lose too much money,
just some long lost ranger's report, likely old and moldy
in a cabinet somewhere in the woods. Fourteen. The journal
was in my lap this morning, that was sure. I
had placed it back on the bottom bookshelf by the
boxes of nick knacks Emma left behind things I couldn't
get rid of. I looked toward it just to make
sure I wasn't holding another book by mistake, and I
caught a glimpse of the woman in the mirror. She
shifted back into the curtains. Her reflection was dim this time,
but a little more daring. I saw her face again.
This time nobody I recognized, but oh, she was disgusting.
Her eyes were bloody around the white part and a
perfect outline, one drop holding on from the bottom and
about to land and on her pale purple face in
shock is what I would describe her as, eyes wide open,
a loose jaw, long dark hair coming down the sides
of her face, and over her shoulders toward her chest.
She was gone now thirteen. The knives weren't where they
were supposed to be. When I went to grab some
of the stale bread and peanut butter, my hands had
a rough time grabbing it off the jar. Already, Perhaps
it was time to switch or something easier, maybe marmalade.
But then I thought, and then remembered of how fast
my head would spin from the sugar. I stopped caring
about what the doctors told me near the end, though
this one was coming. I was too young to look
like this, to feel like this. There's no explanation, at
least not medically, for what was happening to me. My
face got a thousand wrinkles, folds like a crumpled paper,
almost overnight. Stress. They said it was stress, but I
knew it wasn't. I realized it was too late. My
idea was never to live forever. But perhaps I should
have chosen that twelve. I was never possessed. I certainly
thought it could be being so close to names from
fallen angels or entities pretending to be dumb creatures. They were,
but they stuck to their word. Give them a life,
a sacrifice, of their choosing, and they will follow through,
but they don't get it, never how I wanted it.
I wanted power, and I got it, along with knowledge
of things no other human being should ever know. The
game we play when we walk around the street with
targets on our foreheads. I just takes one slight sprinkle
of envy or hate to bring us out of the crowd.
You can be gone, like my cousin who I loved
less because of a fight we had in middle school.
That was it. He counted as a relative. When I
was given the cost of my prize, I wanted this house,
but the lender was stubborn with the income and made
me look bad in front of Emma eleven. I kind
of feel bad for myself and that lonely thing in
the curtains. It's only us two here without Emma. But
I saw how fast I was going and needed to
stay alive for just a little bit longer to get
everything in order. Looking back at it now, I know
it makes no sense. Everything was taken care of with trusts,
nobody to leave it to. Not even the charities would
accept the connection with the name such as mine. Word
had already spread about my deals but these other worldly beings.
Somehow I blame Emma's family. They knew something was up
with me. I could tell when I sat around the
table with them, the way they looked at me like
those children, curious and accusatory. I know what you did.
I could hear the woman's voice in my head. I
needed to leave the house a jar of softer peanut
butter and bread, maybe some apple juice and milk. I
didn't want to store too many things. Now. Things were
darker around the house, and the thing the woman from
the mirror, was losing her shyness. The rooms were darker,
and the smell, the damn smell, was everywhere. But the children,
the way their eyes followed me as they were dragged
along by their mothers on the street, like little monsters
merged with a larger human by the hand. And I
was sure that a child's head could turn around much
more than an adult's neck could allow. I knew about
it firsthand, softer bones. I think there was nothing left
to ask before these figures and thoughts to go away,
my own version of hell, before the real one. Ten
The moon was right by the window when it looked
toward the corner of the room in the middle of
the night night she stepped out of the curtains, dragging
that heavy dress behind her. She moved closer and closer
toward the mirror. Her expression on's in shock was now vengeful.
Her eyes wouldn't leave mine through the mirror. I looked
toward the curtains, but she wasn't there anymore, her image
gone there and in the reflection. I stayed awake the
whole night, watching past the curtains and through the window.
As the moon left the frame, the sky turned a
cold blue. My hands were colder now, a sudden heavy
feeling in my chest that I only remembered after the
gifts came. It's easier to believe somebody if they're dead.
It's why our lives are filled with quotes of those
who have passed, corpses, skeletons, and ashes. We admire them.
And yet I know nobody will believe me even after
I am gone, because of everything that I've been hiding.
But I have no more time left. It's time for
me to tell you what I've done. Nine. I was
nine or so when a man approached my house to
talk with my mom while my dad wasn't home. It
took me a long time to realize what talk meant,
and I was angry at Mom for what she did
to my dad, and then angry at Dad for being
the way he was. How could he be so dumb?
And Mom? How did you let me live with this
secret for so long? Dad? Weren't you more successful? Why
did we have to live like this? I was in
my teenage years when I started learning about how things
worked in the world. Money comes easy to those who
are willing to break the rules. You know, for some
the rules are the same as a law, But for me,
I knew that there was something else that gave us
power beyond beliefs. I know you won't believe me, and
it doesn't matter now, But there are rules that don't
care about government or the state police, Rules that take
away our lives, like the one I became familiar with
when I was at my parents funeral and I simply
looked at them in that dual burial, feeling nothing. It
was like watching your hair on the floor of the
barber shop being swept away by someone else. The anger
hadn't left me, and it wouldn't. It was one of
these rules. Nothing stays here forever, although you can risk
it and ask for it. I'm glad I never did,
but some have. And these are the things that have
been surrounding me at the house, the things that took Emma.
They have chosen to stay. And this is what eternity
looks like to them, the gift of forever, but now
living in the shadows, as monsters deformed in ways no
eyes should ever see. But when they're called, they come,
and by the time they get to you, you have
already gotten the gift you asked for. And they're here
to collect the things that gave me success in my business,
and the election results that angered many people, the movements
of the pencil, as I wrote on those many essays
and dissertations. Again, I was never possessed, just abled. It
was like looking at the writings of a researcher, shifting
the way people read them, even myself. But I would
see them in the walls, crawling like spiders and scurrying
away when Emma showed up. One day, a tall man
came to my door with a check for a sale
we had made from a property I had never heard of. Congratulations,
he said, as he shook my hand, promising to come
back once a fourth property sold, and that should arrive soon.
I was excited for the checks for a little bit,
but then Emma didn't wake up the next day. She
was still warm that morning, and then she started cooling
down eight. I changed my mind right then when Emma left.
She had done nothing wrong, nothing like my cousin who
fought me over some girl nobody remembers, and then wouldn't
talk to me until our uncle got us to shake hands.
And I remember that evening they both came knocking at
the door. But wait, from this desk, I can see
the woman approaching. Her back is hunched now, as if
trying to quietly step on the wooden floorboard ands that
don't creak because of the sound of her dress is
too loud. It scratches as she moves only in the mirror,
but she's getting closer and closer to it to me,
But there's nothing there in real life. Again, I continue.
Those in my group shared no names. Out fires like
we call them, were usually in places nobody knew up
until minutes before we all met up, parking lots, taken
in cars to places nobody had ever imagined in their
worst nightmares. Tall structures made for fires, caves with relics
said to be from many years ago, writings and translators
who would read and then explain texts to us, some
that spoke of humans doing the worst things imaginable. Again,
that image of playing with strands of hair on the floor,
things that are part human hair, nails, traces of a person,
but not quite death was only a part of the price.
Our minds were the most valuable, the energy we gave
to them, and those restless nights, several at a time,
in a state of half asleep, that reminded you that
there are worse things out there than dying. And although
painless physically, the thoughts and the images I would get
to you after the fifth hour or so, the realities
of what stands next to you while you lay in bed,
or when you hold that razor in the bathroom mirror.
They were supposed to be enough to scare us out
of existence. But no, they weren't. But they should have been.
Seven enormous spiders from the walls now, five or four
legs at a time, unaware of which is a neck,
in which are the legs, even if it has those,
They move quickly from that mirror and onto the floor
in front of it. They get closer as I have to
poke on my shins in an evil game of tag
before scurrying back to the mirror. I think I can't
see them, or perhaps they don't care, but I know
that if I lift my head, they will disappear back
into the darkness where they came from. Six. The woman
is stepping closer to the glass of the mirror. Now.
I saw her for an instant when I woke up.
This time. She must have moved fast, because the curtains
were still moving at this time, despite the window being shut.
The cold air is a real thing many people don't
mention when they're dying. I heard that nurses speak of
the smell of death, the body giving away the rotten
parts of you, releasing them into the air. I walked
to the phone in the corner of the room by
the mirror, maybe to call my lawyer, maybe one of
my uncles, or anyone that needed to know that I
was going to go. But then again, I deserve this
to be found dead. One or two weeks after my
mail filled the box in the front of the house
by the yard, I hadn't checked it in weeks, giving
up room for it to build up. Monthly bills could wait.
No point in paying them now. But as I stood
there by the phone, I saw the curtains move. This
woman separated from them, and with her eyes directly beaming
at mine, she rushed toward the mirror and stepped down.
She got closer. As a phone rattled in my hand.
I saw the sleeve of her dress rise up toward
her cold face. The smell. That smell is what I
remember most from this day. She stretched out her hand
had rotten nails. She held it up in front of me.
Five days left me faster from here on out. The
end of the loaf of bread was on the counter.
I remember picking off the crumbs from it. I put
my clothes in the washer, but never took them out.
Four I was in bed when I saw the spider
people and the woman coming toward me. A familiar voice
was calling my name, from the voice of children in unison,
I know what you did, did, And then to the
mixed voices of the things that could see me through
the fire in those ceremonies, things that I knew could
not be real because they only lived there, being called
specific by name, the faces with teeth so large you
could bite through your neck, eyes that drop too far
below the eyebrows, horns sometimes but not all of them.
But those animal features, both from the fur and the
attitude of a thing that didn't care about you, one
that was well aware of the fate of living things
being eaten and shred apart by something much more powerful
at any moment, even while you sleep, if you miss
the signs. They approached together, while the woman stayed behind
in the mirror, watching everything happen. As I try to
scream and show them away, but it was no use.
How was in that state again, unable to move, unable
to rest, forced to see these things around me, and
reminding me of everything my life had been about. Three.
The woman was standing by my bed now she looked
at me as though sniffing the covers, a cat with
no sense of boundaries. I shut my eyes again. Two.
I looked up at the ceiling. As the spiders grew
enough to cover the white paint that Emma had chosen.
I could hear her voice now, one of disappointment, my cousin,
the many people who I had taken advantage of the
requests that were still being fulfilled with the paychecks and
envelope somewhere in the mailbox, maybe on their way in
the briefcases of the men in suits instructed to bring
them to me. Payments were still being made, the cost
of them was still pending, still had to be paid.
I couldn't remember how I agreed to pay. It didn't matter.
I wanted this to be over. I made my mistakes
already one. I can hear them louder and louder they scream.
I'm sure if it's a celebration or maybe just pain.
This this is my last note from the mirror. I
can see what's left of me Seventeen days before some
one found me. The smell reached the neighbors. In two days,
what was left of my place was empty. Emma isn't here,
nobody's here, but these things that surround me. I'm not
sure if I'm one of them now as I look
at the living with such envy from every reflection. Scary
Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kovaruyez.
It was so happy and overwhelmed by the responses I
received from our last stories. Thank you for that. Seriously,
your comments and everything you do to support my stories
means a lot. It also shapes the podcast over time.
This format you just heard as an attempt at trying
a mix between the old and new styles of story
with a twist. Not sure if you picked up on
how there's a lingering question at the end. Was he
dead this whole time watching his own body? Just a
thought anyway. The idea for this mixed format was submitted
by rock Stein Brusnik on Spotify, as well as an
idea for a future story like a Slavic monster kind
of like the Witcher. Sounds really good to me, so
it might be coming up in a future episode. Thanks
for this. As always, you can support my show by
dropping some stars and sending it to someone who's a
fan of scary stories. Links to everything, including how to
get in touch with me or in the description of
this episode. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it
scary everyone, See us soon.