Speaker 1: This single day added on to my sentencement the difference
Speaker 1: between a normal jail and the unending nightmare of pen
Speaker 1: being a prison. I was supposed to get three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty four days, that was the deal, but the
Speaker 1: judge didn't like my attitude that of the hell that meant,
Speaker 1: so he made it three hundred and sixty five boom.
Speaker 1: One year was the minimum for prison. My lawyer made
Speaker 1: a stink and a half, but it didn't do any good.
Speaker 1: That's my fault. In fact, he's the one who's going
Speaker 1: to release this statement to the press or leak it
Speaker 1: online if the Guardian Corrections Group GCG tries to get
Speaker 1: an injunction on us. People have to know what happened
Speaker 1: pen being a prison. I'm gonna put it right out
Speaker 1: there and tell you that it was haunted. I think
Speaker 1: I'm joking nuts lying, but you have no iye, Haunted
Speaker 1: prisons aren't anything like you imagine those places that advertise
Speaker 1: themselves and give people tours. Those are a sick joke
Speaker 1: compared to the real thing. It got so bad that
Speaker 1: you can actually look up GCG's official filing for Chapter eleven.
Speaker 1: That shit put them out of business in their very
Speaker 1: first prison, and right there on the briefs using an
Speaker 1: early statute from North Dakota law from eighteen fifty seven
Speaker 1: to file an insurance claim. It says site of penbin
Speaker 1: a prison confirmed by Governor's office and two notary publics
Speaker 1: witnessing in person to be afflicted by the supernatural such
Speaker 1: that continued business is impossible. It wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: the prison was closed for that reason, either, but leeches
Speaker 1: keep buying it and reopening it, hoping to make a
Speaker 1: buck off the common man. And I was shoved into
Speaker 1: that hell hole without knowing the history even a single bit. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. The building itself wasn't so bad,
Speaker 1: especially for something straight out of eighteen fifty three. It
Speaker 1: was a big stone cube that was squat heavy, cramped,
Speaker 1: but way less sealed off than modern prison. We could
Speaker 1: see a lot of the cells around us. There's only
Speaker 1: one main hallway per floor. We were close enough for
Speaker 1: passing things between the bars. I have some real human interaction,
Speaker 1: and it could have been worse. There were five floors
Speaker 1: capacity for five hundred prisoners. When I first got there,
Speaker 1: I had a bunch of cell mates. I heard there
Speaker 1: were two thousand guys locked up. I believed it that
Speaker 1: soon changed. I didn't talk to anyone for the first
Speaker 1: three weeks. I never been to a real prison before.
Speaker 1: I was messed up over it. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: accept that I would be in that place, stuck with
Speaker 1: three other guys in myself, for an entire year. The
Speaker 1: whole prison seemed full of feral men. Bottom floor would
Speaker 1: start screaming and hollering and panicking in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night. We were on the top floor, but we
Speaker 1: could hear their screams echoing through that open old layout,
Speaker 1: like they were right there with us. I just thought
Speaker 1: the prisoners and the bottom floor were all nuts until
Speaker 1: the guards weren't there to wake us up. The first
Speaker 1: day of my fourth week, Now, when I woke up
Speaker 1: in my little corner without some asshole guard banging on
Speaker 1: the bars of our cell, I finally finally had to talk.
Speaker 1: I asked one of my cellmates, Dante, what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget the fear in his voice. So
Speaker 1: he said something that should have made us all incredibly happy.
Speaker 1: The guards are gone. Man. The prisoners were talking quietly
Speaker 1: between the cells, loudly between the floors through various whispers
Speaker 1: and shouts. The most we could figure out was that
Speaker 1: something on the first floor it made them all quit
Speaker 1: in protest. Sure it must have been the crazy screaming
Speaker 1: like that during the night, right, except none of us
Speaker 1: could get any word from the bottom floor. It was
Speaker 1: dead silent down there. Guys on the second floor called
Speaker 1: out for hours as someone was down there. They said
Speaker 1: they could hear shuffling footsteps walking around it random every
Speaker 1: so often, but whoever it was, they never said a
Speaker 1: single word. That was the first time Dante mentioned the
Speaker 1: crazy stories from the first floor. He muttered that he
Speaker 1: hoped none of that was true. When I asked about it,
Speaker 1: he just shook his head. Nothing, man, nothing, None of
Speaker 1: it ever made sense. Now, we were a little worried
Speaker 1: as the day wore on and nobody came to let
Speaker 1: us out for breakfast, and nobody came to let us
Speaker 1: out for lunch, and we usually got to spend outside
Speaker 1: in the yard. Came and it went. You began getting restless,
Speaker 1: you know, and the cells to our left. Dante's friend
Speaker 1: Will began telling guys to pass the word. We should
Speaker 1: all calm down and start sharing any food that we
Speaker 1: had hold away. I remember asking Dante's Is it really
Speaker 1: that bad? Why they've denied us meals and yard time
Speaker 1: for a day or two before? He told me. But
Speaker 1: the other two guys in ourselves didn't look convinced. One
Speaker 1: of them said, but not like this. They made damn
Speaker 1: sure we knew what we did. They never just up
Speaker 1: and left. Someone hands in us pieces of crusty old
Speaker 1: bread through the bars. It's much appreciated. The new guards
Speaker 1: that didn't show up for work for another full day.
Speaker 1: We got plenty of yard time that day from the
Speaker 1: new guys, but they seemed more confused than us. We
Speaker 1: all watched from a distance as Will asked a guard
Speaker 1: about what happened. I don't know. GCG was paying a
Speaker 1: premium for fast hires, so I just signed up. What
Speaker 1: about the prisoners on the first floor, We'll ask. We
Speaker 1: could still hear them shuffling around down there. We looked
Speaker 1: on the way out into the yard, but we couldn't
Speaker 1: see anyone. Mm. The guard frowned. Nobody in there. They
Speaker 1: all got transferred, transferred The hell does that mean? It
Speaker 1: means DOCR took him back, returned to state custody since
Speaker 1: the company couldn't handle him. That made sense I mean,
Speaker 1: if the floor had been full of nut jobs, then
Speaker 1: North Dakota's first local private prison company hardly had the
Speaker 1: experience to handle them. But these new guys didn't even
Speaker 1: have the skills to handle us. But they were half
Speaker 1: as many guards as before. They didn't know the routines
Speaker 1: or who the dangerous ones were among us, and as
Speaker 1: a result, they were distant, scared, forceful. I mean all
Speaker 1: except one guy, Kellen. Kellen wasn't the first guard to
Speaker 1: treat us like human beings, but then he was the
Speaker 1: only one around. Traded jokes while in the yard, never
Speaker 1: hit us, looked us in the eyes when he talked.
Speaker 1: He went and found some paperwork to confirmed the crazies
Speaker 1: had actually been transferred, but took three months to get
Speaker 1: that info out of GCG, and by the time he
Speaker 1: told us he'd heard back, we sort of forgotten the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Two nights later, maybe two hours passed lights out,
Speaker 1: the guys on the second floor began screaming. Dante leaped up,
Speaker 1: fell on one of our cell mates by accident, before
Speaker 1: shouting shit, shit must be a fire. I think. Guys
Speaker 1: in our robe began banging on the bars, shouting for
Speaker 1: the guards but the uniforms charged past and headed downstairs
Speaker 1: without talking to us, and he gave them shouting orders
Speaker 1: down below, and then yelling and confusion. The prisoner's screams
Speaker 1: were clearer coming from the second and it sounded like
Speaker 1: they were terrified of something in particular, and they wanted help.
Speaker 1: That sounds of gates being slammed. The people running reached
Speaker 1: us after about ten minutes of shouting, and then who
Speaker 1: was silent. We sat in the dark, waiting and listening
Speaker 1: until morning, and when the new shift came, they were
Speaker 1: surprised and confused, and Kellen came by to ask what
Speaker 1: had happened. We told him what we knew. He'd shown
Speaker 1: up and found open gates at empty second floor. There
Speaker 1: was no indication what had happened, but he promised to
Speaker 1: check with corporate and figure out if the absent prisoners
Speaker 1: had all been rapidly transferred. Again. A Dante gripped the
Speaker 1: bars and made sure Kellen was looking at him. Please
Speaker 1: find out what the hell is walking around down there night?
Speaker 1: Kellen blinked at that, I mean on day's shift, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what I could do. What do you
Speaker 1: mean prisoners are gone? Then they told him fiercely but quietly.
Speaker 1: But the guys on the third floor said they still
Speaker 1: hear someone, maybe two or three, someone's shuffling their feet
Speaker 1: every hour or so till morning. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I can go look right now. Dante reached through the
Speaker 1: bars and grabbed his uniform, something which usually got us
Speaker 1: a beating. Hear me, do not go in there by yourself.
Speaker 1: Stay in the stairwell as someone is with you. Kellen
Speaker 1: nodded fearfully. It looked like he finally understood how spooked
Speaker 1: we all were. He waved another guard off and Dante
Speaker 1: let go, but nothing more came for a whole season.
Speaker 1: The night shift had quit and more guards got hired
Speaker 1: at an even higher pay. Callen, in another uniform, scoped
Speaker 1: out the first two floors, but they found nothing. Dantes
Speaker 1: thought it was because they were looking during the day,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't about to ask our only friend to
Speaker 1: risk himself. It was maybe three months later. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was halfway through my sentence. I had taken up drawing,
Speaker 1: so I had a pen and paper when we woke
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night to everyone on
Speaker 1: the third floor screaming in absolute panic. By this time
Speaker 1: we were less scared during the event itself. We'll offered
Speaker 1: a guard racing past five hundred bucks from his commissary
Speaker 1: account if the man could come back and tell him
Speaker 1: what was going on. Dante listened intently, trying to hear
Speaker 1: individual screams from the third floor over everyone else's shouts
Speaker 1: and confusion, and I wrote down any words he thought
Speaker 1: he heard, and I wrote down, was Jesus Christ killing him?
Speaker 1: God let us out coming this way. We weren't scared
Speaker 1: when it was happening because we'd lived through it twice before,
Speaker 1: but this time the long term fear was much deeper.
Speaker 1: Now we knew for sure that it was going to
Speaker 1: happen again, and any prisoners that had the means began
Speaker 1: loyering up and doing everything they could to transfer to
Speaker 1: other prisons, even if it meant worse conditions. The problem
Speaker 1: was the North Dakota prison system was already overflowing, which
Speaker 1: is the whole reason GCG got started in the first place.
Speaker 1: So every guy that got out meant it was just
Speaker 1: that much harder for the rest of us. Both of
Speaker 1: our cell mates transferred, giving us space. That was nice,
Speaker 1: but it was a small consolation. Apparently, word had started
Speaker 1: to spread on the outside. In GCG's solution, instead of
Speaker 1: paying the guards even more, was to stop having a
Speaker 1: night shift altogether, except for just one poor guy. The
Speaker 1: callan was a bit miffed he hadn't gotten raised out
Speaker 1: of the whole thing, but he was starting to believe
Speaker 1: us that something was going on. By then, he'd been
Speaker 1: around a while, he knew that we weren't bullshitters, and
Speaker 1: too many other prisoners had told him that they heard
Speaker 1: someone walking around the first, second, and third floors at
Speaker 1: random during the night, just a few steps, sometimes as
Speaker 1: many as twenty. But it only happened every so often,
Speaker 1: and only once had it been long enough that you
Speaker 1: thought it had stopped for good. One guy in the
Speaker 1: fourth floor said that he'd heard a full run from
Speaker 1: one end of the third floor hallway to the other,
Speaker 1: clear enough he'd expected a guard to come charging up
Speaker 1: the stairwell, but nobody. Nobody appeared. He slid his wrists,
Speaker 1: got transferred out on medical leave the next day, So
Speaker 1: I mean we took him seriously. All that was enough
Speaker 1: to get Kellen to start doing some research on the outside.
Speaker 1: Came to us in the seventh month of my sentence
Speaker 1: with a pale face beside us. The bars will ask
Speaker 1: what's the word? A calend seemed grim. A lot of
Speaker 1: bullshit out there, but this place is mentioned a lot.
Speaker 1: It's been closed before, but I keep getting a stone
Speaker 1: wall when I ask for the historical documents. Thing is,
Speaker 1: I don't think the prison it solves the problem yet
Speaker 1: this He pulled out a notepad for reference. Two Canadian priests,
Speaker 1: father Norbert Prevencre and Severn de Molin, visited Pembina in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighteen. For it was even an official township. And
Speaker 1: I was back when the Hudson Bays Company was big
Speaker 1: around these parts. That's how long ago it was. Well,
Speaker 1: Pembina was the biggest town in North Dakota then, so
Speaker 1: trading post was full. The priest chose to sleep outside
Speaker 1: by where the Pembina River meets the Red River. Folktale
Speaker 1: has it that a vision of a rotting woman came
Speaker 1: in the night stole Prevencer's life. Two men bartered with
Speaker 1: her to split the remaining life between them, consigning both
Speaker 1: to live only thirty five more years instead of the
Speaker 1: seventy sever had left. The sever got an extra month
Speaker 1: and twenty days as a guar from his friend for
Speaker 1: his sacrifice. He paused as if he might guess the
Speaker 1: obvious outcome, and they both died thirty five years later.
Speaker 1: I knew pembin A Prison had a horrible problem, but
Speaker 1: that didn't mean I had to believe everything. So let
Speaker 1: me guess a month and twenty days apart. Kellen nodded.
Speaker 1: Dante snorted, it's true, dude. Kellen insisted. The dates of
Speaker 1: death are right there on Wikipedia. But get this, thirty
Speaker 1: five years after eighteen eighteen made their death year eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, the year the prison was built, and the
Speaker 1: place they camped that night by the meeting of the rivers.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what it meant, but I was beginning
Speaker 1: to feel very uneasy. I'm guessing it's right here, isn't it.
Speaker 1: He was dead serious. I think there's some shit here,
Speaker 1: ancient shit, I asked a guy I know. He's got
Speaker 1: Chippewa relatives over at Turtle Mountain. They know the history
Speaker 1: of the Red River better than anyone else. He said.
Speaker 1: His uncle told him to never sleep at the meeting
Speaker 1: of the Red River and the Pembina River. He said,
Speaker 1: something lives here under the ground. It awakens with the
Speaker 1: changing of the seasons. We were silent for a beat
Speaker 1: after that. I mean, it was folktale nonsense, but it
Speaker 1: was as good a theory as any. Whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it was going to come back, and it wasn't friendly.
Speaker 1: Will talked to Kellen for another few minutes, but Dante
Speaker 1: was silent. After he was gone, I asked him, that's wrong.
Speaker 1: He sat on one of the now unused bunks and
Speaker 1: told me, and I got another five years in here.
Speaker 1: You had no money for a lawyer. Your sentence will
Speaker 1: be up before it reaches us, and then then I'll
Speaker 1: be here alone, will it. There's no way to be
Speaker 1: sure it'll be back in two months for the fourth floor,
Speaker 1: and three months after that for us. I could get
Speaker 1: out a week before, A day too late. Doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be exact. He just looked at the floor. What
Speaker 1: I mean is I do hope. I do hope that
Speaker 1: you get out before it comes. Oh. I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what else to say after that, so I just sat
Speaker 1: in my corner like I always did. It wasn't too
Speaker 1: much after that that we heard GCG was going under.
Speaker 1: The mad rush for transfers had pissed off the state
Speaker 1: and lost the company a vital contract for a second
Speaker 1: location and investors had pulled out something like that. The
Speaker 1: number of guards was cut and slashed, and Kellen took
Speaker 1: a pay hit stay on as the only guard in
Speaker 1: the day shift. There's only two prisoners left on the
Speaker 1: fourth floor, the twenty of us remaining. As the general
Speaker 1: week we expected it to happen approached, I feel like
Speaker 1: I should stay just to see what the hell is
Speaker 1: going to go down there. Former guards I asked about
Speaker 1: it are all terrified as hell or refused to talk.
Speaker 1: Some got violent, and just because I asked, it's cool,
Speaker 1: Well told him you got a kid at home. They'll
Speaker 1: be here for it. The twenty of us left on
Speaker 1: the fifth floor sat in ourselves once night fell, praying, listening.
Speaker 1: On Monday night, nothing happened. The two guys below occasionally
Speaker 1: shouted up to us that everything was clear. On Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: nothing happened. The strain was growing, though, and we could
Speaker 1: sometimes hear them breathing rapidly down there. Could only imagine
Speaker 1: the adrenaline rushing through them every minute. Until Dawnay night,
Speaker 1: nothing happened. Yet something had changed in the air. The
Speaker 1: prison was much quieter now than two thousand men had
Speaker 1: become twenty two. I thought I could feel a subtle
Speaker 1: sort of heartbeat in the air, pounding against reality, like
Speaker 1: it was a thin sheet of paper. It's just your imagination,
Speaker 1: Dante whispered. None of us were willing to speak louder
Speaker 1: than that. On Thursday night, that heartbeat became a feeling
Speaker 1: of footsteps approaching from a great distance. Guys, Bill shouted
Speaker 1: from a cell You good down there? Still here, one
Speaker 1: responded from down below, But I could feel it at
Speaker 1: the door. It's knocking. The hell's that supposed to mean? What?
Speaker 1: The man below and respond? Friday night? That was the night.
Speaker 1: It would happen all day. The two guys on fourth
Speaker 1: pulled and clanged on their bars, begging to be let out.
Speaker 1: Kellen was torn. After two hours of listening to that pleading,
Speaker 1: he came up with an idea and transferred both of
Speaker 1: them up to our floor. If nobody's on four, he said, happily,
Speaker 1: then we'll all be safe, right, not loud, We agreed,
Speaker 1: but you're kidding ourselves. When the night guard showed up,
Speaker 1: he freaked out, took the two men back down. He said,
Speaker 1: out loud, what we were all thinking. If nobody's on
Speaker 1: floor four. They'll just come right up to five and
Speaker 1: get us all. How was Kellen thinking? I had to
Speaker 1: listen for hours sobbing that evening. It was the hardest
Speaker 1: trial of life. I wanted to call out to the
Speaker 1: night guard. I wanted to ask him to get those
Speaker 1: men out of there, but if I did, I knew
Speaker 1: whatever was coming would find all of us instead. The
Speaker 1: moment it happened was like a cold hand on my shoulder.
Speaker 1: What's going on down there, Dante shouted. The man who
Speaker 1: was not sobbing called back. It's changing, Will demanded, what's happening?
Speaker 1: Tell us when it's read. What's red? Will yelled insistently,
Speaker 1: goddamn it, what's red? Who stared down the hallway at
Speaker 1: the night guard, who stood listening with fear. The screaming
Speaker 1: began a few seconds later, this time only one floor above.
Speaker 1: We could clearly hear their every word. The sobbing prisoners shrieked, there,
Speaker 1: it's there. The man who'd been communicating with us began
Speaker 1: incoherently raging with fear against his bars. Then strangely, he stopped.
Speaker 1: The twenty of us clung to our bars, unable to help,
Speaker 1: unable to flee. Many of us, cried, but we were
Speaker 1: otherwise silent, for the yell would be to drown out
Speaker 1: the last words of the men below. But they were
Speaker 1: eerily quiet. For nearly two hours, we waited and strained silence,
Speaker 1: as random footsteps traversed the fourth floor every so often.
Speaker 1: What was happening? For the first time, the victims of
Speaker 1: whatever was going on down below had chosen to be
Speaker 1: quiet instead of yelling for help. Why would that make
Speaker 1: things different? At long last, the sobbing man broke the silence.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's coming your way. Shut up, it'll
Speaker 1: see you distracted. Hit your bars. The sound of clanging
Speaker 1: echoed up the stairwell. The sobbing man said, with terror,
Speaker 1: it knows, it knows, Jesus Christ, do something. We were
Speaker 1: no longer silent, echoed that sentiment, louder and repeating to
Speaker 1: the guard do something. He just stood there, literally quaking
Speaker 1: in his boots. Will screamed at him, Snap out of it.
Speaker 1: The other guards and prisoners got away. You can too,
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, he won't follow you if you let
Speaker 1: them out and leave, I shouted, They're gonna die down there.
Speaker 1: Dante threw his shoe and the impact Finally snapped the
Speaker 1: man out of his terror. The guard ran to the
Speaker 1: stairwell and descended. The first thing we heard him say
Speaker 1: was a taken aback, merry Mother Christ. The sobbing man
Speaker 1: again over here, for God's sake, let us out. The
Speaker 1: other prisoner wasn't talking for some reason, but we could
Speaker 1: hear his gasping terror. But that too went quiet. Then
Speaker 1: we heard a buzzer, and all the gates on four
Speaker 1: slammed loudly open. The sounds of panting, running and someone
Speaker 1: dragging something followed. The prison went silent, just like that,
Speaker 1: Just like that, we were alone again. The formerly crowded
Speaker 1: prison now felt terrifyingly large and empty, with only twenty
Speaker 1: of us and no guards. That night, the unmistakable sound
Speaker 1: of footsteps echoed from down below. I counted time as
Speaker 1: best I could. Forty five minutes then someone took three
Speaker 1: steps out of a cell and into the hallway. An
Speaker 1: hour and six minutes, someone ran ten steps along the
Speaker 1: hallway and stopped abruptly. Twenty eight minutes, the footsteps approached
Speaker 1: the stairwell, but then turned into a cell and went silent.
Speaker 1: The thing was, whoever it was, sounded barefoot, and the
Speaker 1: starting and stopping of locations didn't match where they ended
Speaker 1: was often nowhere near where they began again. Later. By
Speaker 1: the time dawn came, we were scared into motionless, terrified silence.
Speaker 1: Took Kellen's arrival for us to begin stirring again with
Speaker 1: GCG and bankruptcy court. We no longer had a night
Speaker 1: guard at all. If it came for us, there'd be
Speaker 1: nobody to let us out of ourselves. Like everyone else,
Speaker 1: we hardly talked, we hardly ate. Each passing day. It
Speaker 1: was a grain of sand falling from an hour glass
Speaker 1: marking our executions. Our fellows began confessing to crimes they
Speaker 1: hadn't even committed, just to get transferred to supermacs out
Speaker 1: of state, the only option left of that and the
Speaker 1: suicide attempts. One by one, Kellen escorted or dragged guys
Speaker 1: out of our floor. Twenty became fifteen, and then ten.
Speaker 1: Then it was just me and Dante, with Will still
Speaker 1: in the cell to our left, the three of us
Speaker 1: and Kellen, four men waiting for doom. We sat playing
Speaker 1: card games in the weeks leading up to it. It
Speaker 1: would be one full year for me in that place,
Speaker 1: but I could swear i'd spent a lifetime in that cell.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think. I couldn't remember life before, couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: surviving after. Every day I prayed for a transfer to
Speaker 1: come in. But North Dakota had gotten sick of our shit,
Speaker 1: and the judges had stopped hearing cases from Pembine in prison.
Speaker 1: They didn't know there was only three of us left.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew. We contacted the media, we phoned the governor's office.
Speaker 1: We made a ruckus. And that was worse than nobody knowing,
Speaker 1: because it turned out nobody cared. There was nobody higher
Speaker 1: up at GCG following the situation. Kellen couldn't get anybody
Speaker 1: on the phone. Payroll meaning just his paycheck was being
Speaker 1: handled by a third party disbursement company, couldn't answer questions
Speaker 1: about ongoing proceedings. The week approached. On Monday night, nothing happened.
Speaker 1: We were like statues in ourselves alone, waiting for a
Speaker 1: sign of the executionist approach. When dawn came, we sighed,
Speaker 1: We began moving again. Dante asked you get out Friday.
Speaker 1: I nodded. If things went like before, I'd be released
Speaker 1: the day of. As long as I left before sundown,
Speaker 1: I'd be all right. On Tuesday night, nothing happened. Two
Speaker 1: for two. It's one more, one more day. I sat
Speaker 1: through that darkness till no The feeling of the prison
Speaker 1: had changed around us, a subtle, a subtle heartbeat, some
Speaker 1: depulse against our faces and ears and eyes. It had
Speaker 1: come a day earlier in the week than the last time.
Speaker 1: That morning, Will patted my arms. We both leaned out
Speaker 1: of the bars. I'm sorry, man, Dante just shook his
Speaker 1: head angrily. I wasn't going to get out in time.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday night, the heartbeat became the sound of footsteps
Speaker 1: approaching from some unfathomable distance. I think I stood there
Speaker 1: at the bars of our cell that entire day, fingers
Speaker 1: wrapped around metal with force to match the tension in
Speaker 1: the air and in our minds. This couldn't happen, This
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen. My lawyer would walk in and tell tell
Speaker 1: me he'd gotten the judge's unfair addition of an extra
Speaker 1: day removed. One day, one goddamn day. Even if I'd
Speaker 1: spent the whole year in this prison, one day still
Speaker 1: meant life or death. Let me out, Let me the
Speaker 1: hell out, for God's sake. Nobody cared, and nobody would listen.
Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you that Kellen stayed late that night.
Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you that when the entire floor
Speaker 1: began to glow red, the hallways that sells the stone itself,
Speaker 1: whatever ungodly abomination on the earth, began to wake upon
Speaker 1: the changing of the season, as distant footsteps became a
Speaker 1: traveler at the door of our minds. I'd like to
Speaker 1: tell you that Kellen was there, and he hit the button,
Speaker 1: and he opened the gates, and he let us all out.
Speaker 1: I like to tell you that I didn't see anything,
Speaker 1: and that I'm not permanently a broken man. I didn't
Speaker 1: I fought the walls of my cells that approached, slowly,
Speaker 1: moving a few steps every twenty or seventeen minutes. I'd
Speaker 1: like to tell you that all three of us were
Speaker 1: able to run away and escape that horror upon reality,
Speaker 1: with its rotting hands and blind eyes radiating crimson light
Speaker 1: as it searched for us at random. But I can't
Speaker 1: give you a satisfying end of this story. The disbursement
Speaker 1: company fired Kellen, changed the locks on the property. According
Speaker 1: to their paperwork, all the prisoners had been moved, and
Speaker 1: they thought they thought he'd be getting paid for guarding
Speaker 1: an empty prison. They left us in there for eleven
Speaker 1: days before the error was found, which meant eleven nights
Speaker 1: with that thing. For eleven days, we starved. For eleven nights,
Speaker 1: we sat absolutely still, not daring to move or breathe,
Speaker 1: or even look left or right. It knew where we were. Generally,
Speaker 1: it stood right outside ourselves for hours, and sometimes walked
Speaker 1: right through the bars and grasped at the beds around us,
Speaker 1: daring us to make even the slightest motion. When you
Speaker 1: spent six hours staring into the blind crimson eyes of
Speaker 1: a rotting demon, unable to blink your eyes for fear
Speaker 1: that it would hear you, it would hear the air
Speaker 1: your lashes move. When you've seen what it's seen, the
Speaker 1: worlds it's walked, reflected and hellish red, you'll understand no
Speaker 1: one cares. I'd like to tell you that Kellen actually existed.
Speaker 1: I'd like to tell you we had a friend amongst
Speaker 1: the guards, and that it wasn't all bad. I'd like
Speaker 1: to tell you that I wasn't traumatized by the hell
Speaker 1: I went through, being left to rot, left to die
Speaker 1: as nothing more than a number on some corporation's books,
Speaker 1: but no one cares either. Kids, It's me, mister creepy Pasta.
Speaker 1: I just want to say thank you guys for watching
Speaker 1: Connec's video listening to tonight's episode of the podcast. Also, I
Speaker 1: want to give a huge thank you to everybody on
Speaker 1: this list of patreons. If you'd like to join this
Speaker 1: list of names that I frequently mispronounced, you could check
Speaker 1: the description in the link down below, which I really
Speaker 1: appreciate because this helps me one keep the lights on
Speaker 1: and two helps me pay authors for the stories that
Speaker 1: you hear on this channel. Also, I want to give
Speaker 1: a huge thank you to everybody on this list of patreons.
Speaker 1: Some of these amazing folks are Diana Kraus Asset System,
Speaker 1: Blake Rattler, Brandon Mendoza, Redda Crowe, Heltuna Chicago hit Man,
Speaker 1: Corey Kenchen, Crusader joke about the Coda best, Daniel Paulson
Speaker 1: not taking Kaid enchanted buns as to be in Katie's
Speaker 1: Nephew Himbo, Jerry how a Minute Second, Ingergirt Salstrom, Jay Kurns,
Speaker 1: jett Is, Pat mcmob, Mister Marcus Splitz, Psycho mel Plant
Speaker 1: pis Red, Shadow Cat, Remember the Sun, Salty Surprise, samorrowl
Speaker 1: in Seclude, Simbas, Bloody Moojo, Sky, Harper Smiley, The Psychotic
Speaker 1: Sully Man, Tolly Sue, Team LAO seventy six, the Demended
Speaker 1: Voice in your Head, the Chavez Brothers, the Judger Brus,
Speaker 1: Tommy Walters, Vice, Roy Scorn, William Wellington, You're bro Keegan
Speaker 1: Zubub and Shadow Gardens. A huge thank you to you guys,
Speaker 1: everybody who shows up in the description down below, and
Speaker 1: honestly anybody who can pledge even just like one dollar
Speaker 1: a month. You guys are absolutely amazing. I cannot continue
Speaker 1: doing this channel without you, and your support means the
Speaker 1: world to me, and that goes to everybody, not just
Speaker 1: on Patreon, but honestly just you guys out there who
Speaker 1: just subscribe, those guys out there who are just listening
Speaker 1: or putting on the NonStop radio live stream while it's
Speaker 1: running in their sleep. I appreciate you guys greatly, especially
Speaker 1: during this kind of rough time for me having you
Speaker 1: guys around, and I mean this wholeheartedly. It is incredibly Sokay,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for being here, thanks for being
Speaker 1: a part of this, and as always folks, sweet dreams,