I Dream of Men and Solutions

This is our first episode featuring a few short stories instead of one long one. All of these were written by Max Lobdell, or as you might know him from Nosleep, u/iia. 

Transcript

You spent more time and money renovating your basement than on the entire rest of your house combined. When it was finally done, for the first time in your life, you felt a sense of peace, even excitement for the future. The final touch was the fake door outside your real door. The fake door was to hide the five different locks you had on the real one behind it. Behind the locks, with five different keys, was your masterpiece. The stairs were booby-trapped with tac strips along the outsides. Avoidable if you knew what you were doing, but in the dark or in a rush they provided another obstacle. The entire basement was soundproof, of course, and also waterproof. It was all concrete and steel with a drain on the floor. It was important you didn’t have anything there that could be ruined by blood or spit. The chains at the far wall were iron, unbreakable themselves but the other precautions were needed in case they were pried out of the walls. And of course, you had cheap books down there, disposable in a mess but they’d provide some entertainment during downtime, that was important. When the night finally came to test out your room, you were beyond ecstatic. It was a full moon and you started getting ready two hours before sunset just in case. You picked out a copy of your favorite book, made a drink, in a plastic cup of course, and went inside. You locked all the locks, the keys useless in the absence of human hands. You got cozy in the cheap bean bag chair that would certainly be destroyed by morning, but that was okay, you could afford one a month. And finally, you chained yourself in for the night, feeling certain that this time would be different. That with your new room, you would never hurt anyone ever again. You couldn’t see the moon rise, but you could feel it, and as your hands started turning into claws, you put down your paperback copy of The Podcast Inside Your House. 

Today’s episode is a bit different this week. Instead of one long story, we’re bringing you three short ones by Max Lobdell, or as you might know him from Reddit i.i.a. For those of you unfamiliar with his work we highly recommend checking out his website; UnsettlingStories.Com. He’s also got a book out on Kindle under the name Max Aaron called Transfigurations, which we cannot recommend enough. We hope you enjoy our first bits and pieces episode. 

Story Number One: Not All Men

“Not all men are rapists,” my Dad would grunt as he scrolled through his friends’ Facebook profiles and read the articles about sexual assault they’d posted.

“Not all men are abusive,” my Dad would mutter as he did research to disprove the domestic violence statistics that bothered him so much.

“Not all men are like him,” I’d mouth to myself, as Dad threw Mom across the room for having the temerity to contradict something he’d said.

After hurting her one night, he came to my room a few hours later. “You’re a sweet boy,” he told me. “I know you’d never harm a woman, no matter how much she deserved it. Not all men are like me. You don’t have a temper.”

I did have a temper, though. And I seethed.

Years later, I left for college an angry, confused young man.

I started off as a good student, but things began to decline as news from home trickled into my inbox. “Mom had to get stitches,” my sister wrote one day. “I’m off to the dentist to have a tooth capped!,” Mom wrote another time, leaving out all context about why. I knew.

I started drinking. My grades slipped. Depression spiraled, and while my rage remained internalized, I knew things were getting bad. I resented the women who turned down my advances. I’d say things about them behind their backs - terrible, unforgivable things. My loneliness and isolation worsened. I sought out violent, misogynistic pornography. I hated myself for enjoying it as much as I did. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what turned my father on, too.

At the end of the semester, I was looking forward to Christmas. I’d hoped the break from school would help ease the tension I felt. I wanted to be home with my family. I knew I’d be going back to the source of all my problems, but I didn’t care. Familiarity was preferable to being alone.

It turned out things had only gotten worse. Without me there, my father was out of control. Somehow my presence had been a kind of mediator without my knowing it. In some ways, he hadn’t wanted to disappoint me, his only son, by acting like how he truly wanted to when I had been living at home.

There were no brakes on that ride anymore.

Dad drank more than ever. Raged more than ever. And it seemed almost like second nature for him to push my mother or my sister out of his way with little regard for the force he used or where they’d end up as a result. At Christmas dinner, we were gathered around the table. The family seemed to be in a decent enough mood after a day of Dad being on his best behavior. They were using the opportunity to enjoy the day. They were laughing and joking and celebrating. I couldn’t, though. I was overwhelmed by the stress. Stress from school. Stress from loneliness. Stress from my family. For the first time in my life, I felt like I might be losing control.

I did my best to put on a facade of good humor. I smiled and faked my way through dinner and most of dessert. Then my sister said something that I couldn’t laugh off. Something that stuck with me.

“I heard your ex Kayla is with Kevin Davis now. Talk about an upgrade, right?” She, and everyone else, laughed.

In any other situation, I would’ve laughed too. Kevin Davis was gorgeous. I had no residual feelings for Kayla, and I should have been happy that she’d gotten with such a good-looking guy. But all my feelings of rejection from the past few months bubbled to the surface. I started to breathe heavily. The room spun. Years of constant stress and anger and fear condensed in a wave, and everything went white.

Seconds later, when my vision returned, my mother was screaming. Dad had backed away from the table and was staring at me with fear and bewilderment. I looked at my sister. The remains of my sister. Half her head had been sheared away. Brain matter oozed onto the table and mixed with her plate of Christmas cookies.

Mom was hysterical and had rushed to my sister’s side. She was trying, with no success, to push the brain back into her daughter’s skull.

I felt hollow. Confused. The whole thing was so surreal that part of me thought I was in a nightmare. But then my father started to speak. Reality rushed in with a sickening jolt.

“You have a gift, Frank,” he told me. He spoke slowly. Methodically. I realized he was frightened. I’d never seen him like that.

“I didn’t know you had it,” he continued. I don’t. But your great grandfather did.” He paused. “Not all men can do that,” Dad whispered. “Not all men are like you.”

“Not all men.” The words swirled in my head and I thought back to every time he’d uttered those words. I felt nauseous. I flashed back to him sitting on the side of my bed, knuckles bruised from hitting my mother, saying that not all men were as horrible as he was. Yet here I was. Even worse. I closed my eyes and everything went white again. I felt a warm spray hitting my face. In the distance, there was another shriek from my mother.

I opened my eyes. My father had disappeared. The room was dripping with his blood. Steaming entrails stuck from the ceiling and, piece by piece, fell onto the table and saturated carpet.

Mom was huddled in the corner, sobbing. I got up from the table and she shrank back, muttering “get away from me” over and over and over between ragged breaths.

I surveyed the carnage. Then I left and never looked back. I’ve been on the run ever since. All day, every day, I hear my father’s voice echoing in my mind. “Not all men are like this,” and “not all men are like you.” I had believed him. Now, no matter where I go, when I see mens’ faces, I can’t help but wonder.

Story Number Two: The Only Solution

Whenever I see him on the screen, I feel my fingers clenching. It’s as if they’re practicing the motion for when I squeeze the life from his small body. And it will happen soon. Finally.

I’ve watched the boy for years. Watched him grow from an infant to a toddler to the preteen he is now. He smiles easily. His heart is innocent and carefree. I will make sure it stops beating.

One of my recent breakthroughs took me beyond the viewing screen and allowed me to transport into his room as he slept. I hadn’t perfected my technique to be there physically at that point, but that was coming. Just my consciousness would travel. I floated over his bed and gazed down. My hatred seethed, and, for a moment, I feared he sensed my presence because his eyes flew open and he gasped.

If he did detect me, he couldn’t have known. He probably assumed it was just a bad dream. I watched as his eyelids grew heavy and he drifted off again. My acorporeal self smirked as I pictured those eyes never opening again.

Through these encounters, I’ve missed my wife. The love of my life had been taken from me by the hated creature so blissfully sleeping in his bed. He had no idea what kind of monster he would become in the future. Memories of my beloved’s soft touch flooded my mind as I estimated how many times I could stab the boy through his face before I’d be forced to stop.

Yesterday, I managed to solve the missing part of my experiment. The first few years I was limited to the view screen. A year ago, I conquered the problem of mind movement. Now, finally, I can physically bridge the span of time. My mind and body can cross over. I can stand, strong and powerful, over the murderer in his bed. His strength will be no match for mine. If he sees me and screams, it won’t matter. Help will be too far away.

I write this now as I prepare to make that temporal journey to bring my wife back into the world. I glow with sadistic glee as I imagine how I’ll do it; how I’ll destroy her murderer. Will I strangle him, as I’ve so often fantasized? Will I cut his soft throat? Will I decorate his pillow with smeared clumps of the brain that later made the decisions that annihilated the woman I loved?

All of it is up for grabs. The most important thing is that the boy must die. He cannot, under any circumstances, grow up. In these last moments, the glee has grown bittersweet. When it’s all over, my loved one will have been brought back. Her life can resume as if nothing had ever happened.

She’ll never know, though. She’ll never learn about the sacrifice I’m making. Her death had been an accident – a terrible, careless one by a young scientist too egocentric and arrogant to use caution. But that accident is about to be reversed. In a few seconds, I’ll be going back in time to ensure it will never happen. The thought of her reappearing somewhere, safely, when I’m finished, helps make the prospect of killing the child all the better.

Even though it means my wife will have never known me at all.

Even though it means I will blink out of existence.

It’s time to go. Everything I’ve worked so hard to do is coming to fruition. Should this note remain, let it be the only record of my life after the age of 11 — the age I was murdered by my future self.

Story Number Three: I Dream of Names and Cancer

When I was four, I killed my first ant. It didn’t have a name. Of that, I was absolutely certain.

My own name isn’t important to you right now, although it’s likely you’ll learn some version of it soon. I think you’ll end up learning a lot about me in the coming days; some will be true, most will be false. There is a crucial element that will be missed, simply because it’s unknowable to anyone else. Anyone but me.

But I’m going to share it with you.

At the age of 19, as a soldier, I killed my first person. He had a name. Of that, too, I was absolutely certain. And he changed me.

My act of violence led me to learn who he was and what he meant to others. And, at the same time, I learned something essential about myself. Something I was unprepared for. I recoiled in profound, uncomprehending terror.

Today, I work in a hospice. No one there knows what I’ve done. No one there knows who I really am. They think I’m there to work, which is technically true. But I have more tasks than those given to me by supervisors. One particular task - one I’ve prepared for and dreamed about - is to be done today.

Today is when I learn whether or not I’m going to die.

Today is my 522nd birthday. Believe it, don’t believe it; it doesn’t matter to me. When I killed my first person the age of 19, I did more than take his life. I assumed parts of him. He was a left-handed blacksmith’s apprentice named Pierre Gaultier. The moment he breathed his final breath, my left hand lost its sinister clumsiness. I instantaneously understood the basics of metalworking. And I learned his name. I felt his name. It was as familiar to me as my own.

It was the most horrifying moment of my life. The most disorienting. And that night, using my newly dextrous left hand, I tried to cut my own throat. The blade passed over my skin as if it were iron. I later hanged myself from a beam in an abandoned abbey, only to dangle uselessly for three days before I was found and cut down by a local derelict. I begged him to help me take my life, but I didn’t have enough money to make it worth his while. When I killed him in a rage of frightened and confused desperation, I absorbed his alcoholism.

The following centuries were a haze of blood and drink. I’ve absorbed countless talents. Countless traits. Countless vices. But the names - the names aren’t countless. There are 7,339 names inside me now. 7,339 clusters of memories to haunt me.

This all leads to today. For 500 years, I’ve stayed under the radar. I’ve hidden in the shadows and killed and killed and killed, hoping to absorb any knowledge someone might have of another man like me. Another man who shares my curse. But I’m unique. No one is like me. Every open throat and subsequent transfer of name and ability has yielded nothing useful.

Nothing useful, that is, until last month. He was a man called Gustav Brennerson and along with his name, he transferred to me his influenza. It was the first time I’ve ever been sick.

The hospice here has 44 beds. 41 are filled.

41 opportunities.

I dream of names and cancer every night while I’m taunted by the false death of sleep. Tonight, wherever it is I lay my head as it seethes with 41 new names, I pray it seethes with something new. Something malignant. Something terminal. Something that will end these centuries of hideous wandering.

I dream of being eaten alive.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and X. And Until Next Time; we hope your New Years resolutions have been going well, whether it’s to be more productive, get in shape, or stop murdering quite as much. Be proud of yourself, whatever you’re accomplishing.