The Dead Girl In My Yard | CreepCast

38:16The bats took flight, rising in clouds. Moonlight shone through their membranous wings, throwing their bones into sharp relief. Something roiled in my chest and bubbled up my throat. I thought it was a scream, but when I opened my mouth, laughter exploded. Wendy joined me as the bats swooped around us. Wind moaned through the branches. Leaves roared like the tide. In the distance, coyotes howled. Wendy threw her arms around me and together we kept laughing. I visited Wendy every evening. Each night I discovered that I needed to sleep a little less. By November, I didn't need to sleep at all. And thank God, sleep would have forced me to miss out on our adventures.

38:59We climbed oak trees, crawled through the bracken with its tangles of thorns and late-season wildflowers, raced each other through the hills, and napped in the miner's lettuce. And then there were the animals. Every animal in the hills obeyed Wendy's commands. Hawks alighted on our hands, talons nicking soft skin. Deer crept through the tall grass and touched their soft noses to ours. large eyes so wide they reflected the entire landscape. We pet black bears, became roost for bats, ran with coyotes, rooted the dark earth with wild hogs, and cuddled every feral cat that crossed our path. In my memory, those days are warm and golden and the nights are cold and clear, with a blast of icy wind that woke me in a way nothing has before or since.

39:46Like everything to do with Wendy, it made me feel alive. I was happy and utterly, completely myself, untethered to the quiet, bitter tragedy of my mother and brother. I had a magical wildness that transcended freedom itself, a state I could only enter when I was exploring hills, trees, and mountains with Wendy. The only place we did not explore was the forest. It seems insane in hindsight, but everything was insane. Not just Wendy herself, although she was plenty insane on her own, but the way wild animals came to us. Tamer than dogs, or my metamorphosis into an odd lost boy who didn't need sleep.

40:26My mother's illness was insane too. That she had to be alive while rotting from the inside out wasn't just insane, it was monstrous. So was Noah's prognosis. The fact that I would be an orphan at 12, that my disabled brother and I would be placed into different foster homes, perhaps never to see each other again was insane. And the reality that my mother would be dead before my 13th birthday, less than half a year was insane. The fact, the truth that nobody cared, that no one would remember us, that my mother, my brother, and I were already forgotten was the most insane thing of all. Compared to that, Wendy's forest didn't even register.

41:05But did they say what Noah's prognosis was? I'm not sure. I just think it's some, I mean, obviously some mental disability, I'm pretty sure. Well, they said earlier caring for a dying son, right? So does he have some kind of like chronic condition that will eventually lead to death? Like maybe some kind of nerve disorder or something? Oh, I, oh, I thought maybe I thought that it was a mental disability. I guess not. I mean, it could be both. I mean, like, you know, there's a lot of mental conditions that are like body and vice versa. But just making sure I hadn't missed it. on a frigid evening when the sky was clear and bright and snow crowned the moonlit mountains i prepared to go see wendy as usual but on my way out i felt a tug on my coat i looked down and saw noah go back to bed he shook his head anger stirred but quickly died noah would be an orphan too at four not twelve you might not even remember mom what would be worse to remember an ache for her until he died or to forget her altogether.

42:09What if he forgot me? What if he ended up in a bad foster home? What if it ended up being hell? And what if he never remembered anything else? For the first time in weeks, a lump formed in my throat as reality came to roost, and with it a bitter truth. If anyone needed a fairy tale, it wasn't me. It was Noah. Okay, let's get your coat. We went out into the frosty night, dead bracken crunched under our feet the moon shone high and cold drenching the darkness in a film of silver bats flew overhead growing thin unsettling shadows I have a really bad I have a really bad feeling well first off can I just interject real quick yeah I have to the Noah does seem like he has a prognosis that he is going to die like you were saying it feels like Wendy is a like is death or something like it feels like Wendy is the monster or whatever it seems like wendy is like an active nature that can't be controlled or something that like it feels like to be like yeah go ahead sorry no it's okay i was just gonna say the i'm the reason i wanted to say this is that my toes are curling because i'm nervous that since noah is like dying that wendy is going to take him or is going to attack him or something that It's like the inevitability of death and Nate, you know, just like that kind of thing, these animals coming up and even like paying, like almost paying respect at its whim or whatever.

43:42It's like this, it's this powerful nature that Wendy has. I don't know. And I was just sitting there. And as soon as I was like, oh fuck, he's going to take his brother out there. It's the same thing where I wouldn't, you know, wouldn't be curious if Wendy ends up taking the mom too or something. Well, it's like,

44:01if it is a representation of death and it's kind of like our character is safe right our narrator well that's what i'm saying he's not defending the healthy but he who's marked for death his younger brother maybe won't be as lucky you know he may be a target um this is also something i like is that in the first description wendy is given such an imposing form i'm imagining her as like several feet long, this like giant lanky thing with these massive eyes, like a horrifying creature. But he's made peace with her, but something that could just as easily become violent and a killer if it wanted to, right?

44:40A monster. It's uncanny for sure. Like a surrealist kind of thing for sure. Not to meme it because it's kind of been like an overdone image, but like you remember the old Momo statue that went around the internet? Yeah. kind of similar on the skin and hair, but like a more pulled apart face, darker eyes, you know, something like that. Yeah. I'm very curious to see people, people that are listening to this. I'm so curious to see, like to, to hear what they think this, because it's, it, it's gives us, it gives us a description, but I feel like everybody's going to have a slightly different version of what they are envisioning, you know, which is pretty fun.

45:18Yeah. Well, let's see if no, it gets absolutely blasted by this giant. I hope not. Just straight. If it happens, it's your fault now. I knelt down by the burrow. Noah looked at me curiously and followed suit. Wendy, are you awake? Silence. Then two golden lens flares blinged to life. Oh. Noah whispered. The light reflected off his face as he reached out to touch them. The long fingers, thin, cracked, bright as the moon slid out of the burrow and took his hand. Who is this? my brother inside the burrow something curved and pale glinted under her lens flare eyes a crescent smile noah froze as wendy slid out and unfolded before him his gauge tracked upward along her arm to her shoulder finally settling on her face his eyes widened reflecting the nightscape then he spoke his first full sentence but is that noah he shook his head and tried to pulled back but wendy didn't let go oh no no no no i know i fuck hunter what did you do hunter what did you do hunter no no no no it echoed through the night so maddeningly shrilled that the coyotes yipped in response then he bit me his teeth felt sharp and electric somehow rotten I let go and he ran okay all right Wendy didn't kill him that's a good thing that's something I thought that you just pushed on us in the story but you didn't so that's good he probably make our protagonist should have taken into account this giant demon monster vision dragon lady uh who's also dead probably not the best thing to show a three-year-old with like a developmental disorder he's changing to our our protagonist is fundamentally changing i mean he he hasn't slept he doesn't sleep anymore you know he is that's true in all in all you know i mean like everything is pointing to him being i mean mentally going mentally insane not like saying that he's psychotic but i just mean that like it's become so normal that of course he'd be like oh yeah let's just go see my friend you know oh you want to go see wendy wendy's cool like he doesn't even register what he's doing yeah exactly what he is yeah i chased him for what felt like hours screaming at him to come back that just spurred him on small legs carrying him faster than even i could hope to run he moved farther and farther ahead a dark shape glossed in silver speeding towards the forest edge i watched helpless as he finally disappeared among the trees The forest loomed before me, a monstrous tangle of shadow and starlight in thick, menacing darkness.

48:17I hesitated, craning my neck as I listened for Noah, but I heard nothing. So I plunged in, because a hero who can't clean up his own mess is no hero at all. As soon as I ducked under the canopy, the world changed. Stars bled through the dying leaves, pale mist curled through the branches, a delicate sheen of silver covered the entire forest. I thought of my old nightmare a pale cougar with silver eyes eating the coyote that spoke in Wendy's voice I shivered and kept walking I wondered vaguely where I might find Wendy's scum blanketed pond on the heels of that came thoughts of Wendy's monster I wondered whether it had silver eyes like the cougar fear suddenly took root and exploded upward I was too old to believe in monsters but I was in a dark forest on an enchanted night how can I believe in anything else okay all right all right okay I I want to apologize because in the previous story that we read by dopamine I had some crit we had some criticisms but I had criticisms in the beginning about some of the events happening too fast or the characters being like they were speaking in the real world about their job and stuff or doing things that I thought were too unrealistic or too quick.

49:37I want to apologize because I was not familiar with your game. Um, these, this is not like trying to be as hyper specific with like, Oh, well, a person would say this, the purple would do this. And I feel like the reason dopamine doesn't care is because it's not as interesting. What is interesting is like making these narratives, these fairy tales out of it. And these like the references that keep going back are hitting so well it being a childhood almost like a dream this kids having each night but it's being described with things like I was in a I was in the dark forest on an enchanted night how could I believe in anything but monsters stuff like that is just hitting so hard dofa bean doesn't need to hyper fixate on writing all the characters to be hyper realistic when they can just write a story this good when it's this fun it's this engaging they they are cooking I have looked into the kitchen I can confirm it is delicious so anyway yeah need to get that out of the way leaves and twigs crunched underfoot patterns of broken moonlight danced over my skin I sidestepped roots and rocks silently reassuring myself there are no monsters they aren't real there are no monsters they aren't real there are no monsters I hopped over an upraised root but instead of touching the ground my foot went down and down and down spilling me to the forest floor disintegrated leaves and fine silky dust exploded in a cold cloud it tasted old and rich combination of oak sage filth and dirty fur that melted into mud on my tongue i set up gagging and turned behind me i saw an earthen ledge that formed a high lopsided step snake through with roots.

51:25I spat out the mud and stood up. There, in the trees behind the tree root stair, were eyes like murky starlight. There are no monsters. Something shifted. They aren't real. Something bony and broken and long, long as a tree. A fallen, bug-infested tree exploding with rot. There are no monsters. They aren't real. But that thing was very real. I ran. Behind me, leaves crackled and twigs snapped under rapid footfalls there are no monsters no monsters no monsters no monsters no monsters no monsters a low roar bored into my ribcage and thumbed so shockingly powerful it paralyzed me i was sure my bones would disintegrate i would collapse a puddle of flesh and clothes and powdered bone someday a tree would grow from my bone mill and i would be a part of the forest part of the monster forgotten by the world as i grew web-like branches and sprouted leaves that would host pendulums of mistletoe.

52:24Then the roar cut off. So did my transfiguration. I was no longer a tree, just a boy. A frightened boy, running from the monster in the deep dark woods. I ran until I heard birdsong underscored by the hoarse commentary of crows. A cat darted across my path, fur shining in the sunlight. I sobbed and glanced over my shoulder before I lost my nerve. A doe stared back, half hidden in the trees. What are you doing here? I spun around in a panic. It was windy. Come on, we have to get off the trees. I hate them. The sun shafted weakly through the forest canopy, throwing patterns of light and shadow that moved over our skin as we ran.

53:08I glanced uneasily at the trees, branches like great drooping webs spread overhead, bleeding dusty beams of sunlight. Finally, in the distance, I spied the shaded patch of miner's lettuce. On the hill behind it stood my house. When we crossed the tree line, reality crashed over the world, dismantling the dark spell of the forest and its silver-eyed monster, before I could even draw a breath when he turned on me. How could you go in there? I had to. Dread exploded as I remembered why I'd gone to the woods in the first place. What kind of hero abandons a sick little boy to the mercy of a monster?

53:45no hero at all I turned back as the shadows of the trees fell across me I felt their pull like fishing lines reeling me in my brother she grabbed me and spun around slamming me to the ground with such force I could barely comprehend it no I told you I tried to stand but my limbs wouldn't obey I can't let him I told you there was a monster but my brother's in there I couldn't leave him you didn't leave me her face crumbled she looked uglier than ever too ugly to be real yes it's bad it's bad to abandon your brothers she wiped her eyes pushing up folds of loose dry skin i need to show you something but noah is safe i made sure i always take care of my brothers follow me interesting the other thing this reminds me since this episode has just become me going wow this is cool and the name in an IP that I also think is cool it also reminds me of Coraline a lot going down the well to the Beldam's world it's the same thing with Switch and all that then she got down on all fours and crawled into her burrow I looked up at my house then down at the burrow windy or home despite my fear and the marrow deep exhaustion weighing me down the choice was surprisingly easy i dropped to my belly and slid in after her the burrow was wet and cold mud squished under my fingers pale roots dangled like the legs of ghostly spiders a large earthworm glistened briefly before diving into the earth then darkness engulfed me i saw nothing at all i crawled blindly.

55:32The hiss of Wendy's bony form sliding ahead was the only thing that kept panic at bay. By the time I emerged into the sunlight, my bones ached with cold. Every inch of skin was numb. My clothes were muddy, those thin, pale roots tangled around my fingers like waterlogged hair. I closed my eyes against the light. It felt painfully bright, but I knew it wasn't. I sensed the gloomy, muted quality of the sun and knew that we were back among the trees. I frowned. Why did Wendy, who hated the forest, have a home that spilled directly into its heart? Open your eyes. I did. Directly before me, perched an inch or two off the dark earth, was a discolored bulb shot through with cracks and two large, dark holes-like eyes.

56:19Only when I noticed the jaw beneath, small, malformed, with less than a dozen teeth, did I understand what I was seeing. my head felt light my chest pressurized as though a rapidly inflating balloon had replaced my heart i looked around there were so many they carpeted the earth sprouting from the dead leaves like obscene flowers small and large dark and pale some whole some broken some with smashed in faces some little more than lopsided jaws or jagged skull caps these are my brothers no one remembers them, or the monster who killed them. The balloon in my chest inflated sharply, pressing painfully against my ribs and throat.

57:02Eyes like dirty silver pools filled my head. Monsters aren't real. This one is. It lives in the trees. You have to listen, or you'll end up like them. I'm not your brother. Her face was changing, fading, bleeding away like light bleeds from the evening sky. I couldn't look at her for long. When you forget a monster, you allow it to thrive, to take over. Why didn't you tell me you had a brother too? I shrugged defensively. Tell me about him. Of course you wanted to know about Noah. All anyone cared about was Noah. Why would Wendy be any different? He's sick. With what? Something he was born with.

57:46He's retarded. He won't live very long because his organs aren't growing right. He can't form memories very well, and when my mom dies, he might not even remember her. Tears stung my eyes. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. Or me. I'll have to go to a special foster home. I won't be able to come. He'll think we left him. Why does he have to go? Why can't he stay here with you and your mother? How amazing, I thought. How bitterly, selfishly amazing that I hadn't yet told Wendy of Noah or my mother. Everything came out of me. I could almost see it flooding the forest, an infected pool rising around the Garden of Skulls.

58:28It's like Mom and Noah existed for nothing. No one cares that they're here, and no one will care when they're gone. No one will even remember them. They don't matter to anyone, and I can't change that. Nothing I do is enough. Wendy sat, motionless in my periphery. She looked terrifying in silhouette, absolutely gut-wrenchingly, incomprehensibly horrifying. But when she spoke, she sounded gentle. So very, very gentle. Why didn't you tell me? Because I didn't want to think about it. You didn't want to remember? I shook my head and continued to cry. Silence followed, broken only by the wind and the steps of tiny animals picking through the dead leaves.

59:16Then Wendy spoke. I expected her to tell me about her brothers, but even though the skulls of a hundred dead boys surrounded us, she told me about crows and red ants and condors, all of which eat dead things. Once the scavengers have their fill, the carcasses of the dead animals rot into the soil. They be drawn up through the roots of jealous, hungry trees and eaten. I remembered the dust in my mouth, how it tasted of oak and rot. My gorge rose. Living things are alive because they eat dead things. Wendy turned her bone pendant over and over in her hands. That is the only way living things can live.

1:00:00She looked up at the sprawling web of branches. Especially the trees. They are more alive than any of us know. I finally looked at her. Her skin was thinner and older than I'd ever seen it. Her eyes looked flat yet endless, with dim, cloudy spots under the surface, like dead things drifting under murky water. If you could be like me, would you? Yes. A thousand years of cold, clear nights filled with bats and deer and laughter would be a dream come true. No worries, no sickness, no future. Only magic. what if it meant you had to eat something that was alive but you still do it she's gonna have him eat his fucking brother dude

1:00:49wait a minute she's gonna have him eat his mom and brother you know what something else from the buds specifically like well not just specific northwest West, like Northern forest that if you eat another human, you become.

1:01:16the wind to go like a what we like a wind to go whatever yeah the wind to go and what's her name Wendy she's a Wendigo that makes sense to me I think that's what it is because with that mythology you eat if you give into this like the temptation the you know gluttony of cannibalism a spirit possesses you and you become these twisted amalgus forms that makes so much sense the big yellow eyes the broken movements it's like the traditional depictions of the Wendigo and like an early like Native American culture before like you know Stephen King's influence of deer skull and stuff like that right I is this story like a completely because normally the window goes like either like a haunting spirit in the woods or like a hyper violent cannibalistic monster right is this like it's a temptress in the woods kind of thing is that what he's saying because if so that's super cool Not to diminish, not to diminish like all the, you know, different themes and stuff the story has by just describing it as super cool.

1:02:25But that notion alone gets me hyped. Dude, this is, I stepped into the kitchen. Not only is it good, but they made it just for me. This is my order. Let's go. Oh, man. It was made for me. Yeah. It's calling to me. This is my Winnicott narrative. It was made for me. oh man gosh I hope dude what if you all of this build up all this like perfect majestic world I was so curious where it was going where the whore comes in and then that do you want to be like me what if you had to eat something that's alive it's like it's been seducing him for months at this point oh oh oh I'm gonna punch something I'm fired up right now okay uh this is wrong whispered a small voice in the back of my head all of it was wrong her way with animals how she made them behave even when their bodies quivered and their eyes rolled her cold burrow her skeletal thinness her wormy movements the broken desiccation of her skin and her eyes were clouded, dead eyes.

1:03:44I shot to my feet. I have to go. I know. I walked as fast as I could without running, shuddering when I passed her burrow. I didn't dare go through it again. The thought of being trapped, of being chased by a skeletal girl monster whose dry body rasped against the walls nearly sent me into a panic. The forest surrounded me, all dusty green and golden gloom. I thought of monsters, warped inhuman bodies blending with the twisted branches, spidery hands stretching out of the shadows, mottled skin camouflaged in the dappled light. I took a deep breath. There are no monsters. Wendy's cracked, dead face filled my mind's eye.

1:04:25They aren't real. The trees finally thinned. The brittle sunlight grew brighter, and green glimmered through the trees. The miners let us. Boundary between my world and Wendy's. Behind it, my house. I broke into a run and didn't stop until I burst through the door. My mother was waiting. Emaciated face, twisted in fury. Noah, who was napping on the love seat, didn't stir. Oh, cool. Noah made it. Okay. Noah's alive. He's okay. What? What were you thinking? Her words crushed me, so I crushed her. That would be good to get him out of here and away from you for a little while. He doesn't have to die just because you are.

1:05:07Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Excuse me, young man. What was that? Oh! The words hung in the air, echoing, reverberating until they broke what was left of my world, like magic words spoken by a monster instead of the hero. I regretted them instantly, but it didn't help. Nothing I did or could do or whatever do could help. I looked at Noah. His hands were scraped raw. His little palms looked filleted, coated in papery scabs and raw flesh. I thought of the forest. Its hungry roots and jagged rocks had withered. Mom, go. She looked a hundred years old, papery skin stretched over a skull, eagerly anticipating the day it would escape her.

1:06:03Just go. I looked at my brother again, flopped bonelessly over the cushions. Only the rise and fall of his chest gave any indication that he was alive. Wendy's voice echoed in my ear. Living things are alive because they eat dead things. An image exploded in my head, my mother arranging freshly butchered pieces of my little brother on the kitchen table as she prepared to eat him while his eyes, flat and discolored with cloudy pale things flickering in their depths, bored into mine. I burst into tears. That night, for the first time in months, I slept. There's so much more to tell of Wendy, what she was and what she did, that I am so tired, far too tired to remember any more monsters tonight.

1:06:51End of part one. What a banger, man.

1:06:58Kind of like that it's going over multiple days is because each one of these, like part two and part three, they're each labeled something different. It kind of reminds me of the voodoo store, just the way it's like recollections of these different memories or experiences he had versus it being just like a, you just straight linear thing, which I'm sure it will be linear, but I do like how each one is just piece. Like part two is the dead girl in my yard told me the most awful stories, but it just seems like, you know, like I like the way that ends. I had a couple of questions for you. Juan, the motifs, the continuous motifs of gold and silver.

1:07:40What do you think that has to do?

1:07:45I want to apologize for any negative comment ever made to dopamine. If as what are you talking about? You can have my car keys. I have them here. It's, it's not, it's a Toyota. What reliable? What bad? What? You didn't say anything. Cause in the last, in the last part, at the beginning of the last part, I was like, Oh, you know, stuff, this stuff. I feel like the setups a little quick and stuff like that. I just, I w I w I was out of my depths. I apologize. And the other story, I'm just saying dopamine can have my car if they want it. Anyway, the other story. Yes. I think, I think this criticism is still, that doesn't take away from the story.

1:08:26I mean, it's like, I think they're valid criticisms. I, you know what? I can agree with that at the same time you can have my card that's all I'm saying

1:08:37okay the gold and silver so now that this is a Wendigo story or it always has been since I've realized it silver is used in a lot of early traditions around like Wendigo hunting and stuff like that because Wendigos are seen as like an unclean spirit right so a lot of like the settlers that went to go hunt like what was his name Jack something. I want to go a hundred there. Like there was stuff about using silver bullets or stabbing it with silver, keeping silver near you as similar to vampires. The idea is it's like silver's a pure material. And the thing you're going up against is an unpure spirit.

1:09:13So purity scares it off. So it could be referenced to that. It could also just be that like, you know, she has the golden eyes, you know, gold sign of wealth. It's temptation, right? It's like a similar, like think of like Midas mythos, right? Like gold is good. You want to give into it, but it can be too good. It can be too much. That silver is kind of like a purifying color. I don't know what the Mount Lion is yet. What the Mount Lion might be in the dream because in the dream, the coyote was Wendy, right? That's what Wendy spoke through. No, I think the coyote is supposed to be the mom. I think the mom was the princess.

1:09:51The mom was the princess. Oh, the princess. I see. And then it says that Wendy spoke through the coyote. Wendy's voice said, please come back. And the silver eyed mountain lion stepped between them and as he's running through the woods he's thinking of the silver eyes of the mountain line. And very specifically, Wendy has gold eyes. The mountain lion or the cougar, whatever, having silver eyes. I always at least could be a Wendigo hunter. I totally could be wrong, but I thought it was the protagonist in the dream. I think that it's supposed to represent him. That certainly could be. It's kind of what I was thinking.

1:10:29I, cause I pictured the half, because even the princess, I understand the mom, it looks like the mom, but even the coyote is represent. I mean, like it's just this half, I mean, it's like half a carcass. It's a dying thing. So just associated that with the mom as well. It's just this, this kind of just the imagery of death and the decay. It's all. I mean, you're right. It is supposed to be Wendy, but I also just saw this, like the mom and even the brother, you know? And then now Wendy is this like tempting voice. that is speaking through it being like come back and she's trying to basically uh create another friend or create another like wind again wind again wind again keeps wanting to say wind again wind again that uh she can hang out with you know but it's gonna have to be you have to uh there's just a lot of stuff like it seems like the motifs here the gold silver that kind of thing the tempting nature of that and then also uh forgetfulness or like you know the the continuous thing of you know people forget about these things to where it almost seems like once someone dies it's it's almost like the way that i mean i'm i'm just reaching right i don't so take all this with a grain of salt whatever but it seems like through death and all this thing in like through tragedy the best way to move on from it is to forget it or to not not face it so it seems like basically there's just these the motif of forgetting things uh the forgetful nature gold and silver i just it's interesting how those kind of pound bounce back and forth not like an egregious way but like every time we saw something in the forest there was a golden light on the fur you know the eyes glisten with gold which at first when we were talking about death and stuff i was like oh i wonder if that's supposed to be because it was always very specified on gold on the eyes and i kept thinking of the coins you put on uh people's eyes you know the rivers to cross the river sticks yeah yeah and i kept thinking about that um which i don't know how you know they there's just there's so much you can take away with it very strong first part really love the setup love that's one thing that dopamine even did in the last story too which is leading us on getting us well established with these characters and then there's just like one little moment that i think is just great and I love that thing of, do you want to be like me?

1:12:54And then it just immediately, it's just a switch to where you're like, oh, this is threatening. Like now I'm afraid of when would you do it? If you have to eat something alive, what a great, what, what, how one line, what a stellar way to completely turn, turn, heal the entire story's direction in a sentence by her saying that every contextualized everything and it changes the direction. It makes our character immediately. And the reader afraid, at once. Like, what if you had to eat something that's alive? And it made so many things click, but the imagery and stuff. Also, okay, I thought of this while you were talking.

1:13:29So for one, to go back to the dream, the phrasing it uses is it says a white mountain lion prowled murky silver eyes cutting dim swaths through the darkness nearby a half-eating coyote with golden eyes whimpered as it bled to death. So coyote is windy and then the silver is the mountain lion. The thing I said about gold being like a, you know, greed. It's like, oh, well, you can, you know, people want to give, people want to have money, but they lose themselves to it. King Midas, blah, blah, blah. But what I think is especially interesting is like when you think of gold as like the vessel of greed, right?

1:14:10Like, you know, all the gold in the world, that's what people want. What greed is there more than immortality at the cost of a life, right? Like I want to live forever. I never want to die. Someone surrounded by death being tempted with the idea of never dying. But all he has to do is take a life. That's already on its way out the door, a life he already can't stand. And maybe he can have that for his mom as well. It's like that. It's like the, it's you were talking early about Wendy being like a vessel of sickness or death. It's almost like, again, with the golden eyes, it's greed or it's like the gluttony of staying alive, being presented to him like this offering a lust almost for immortality.

1:14:49immortality and he just has to hurt someone forever to do it yeah no i mean i i think i think you're right i mean i i think that makes total sense also to death always you know that's the three fucking uh that's that death always gets its due you know what i mean it always takes like there's no way to avoid it and i think that that parrot like that that kind of correspondence you're saying with the gold is just it feels like it fits really well i think that um i'm curious to see how this temptation is going to roll out and if wendy keeps this composure i think is going to be really interesting as we go into act two part two the dead girl in my yard told the most awful stories after i left wendy in the forest i slept for the first time in weeks my dreams were filled with headless boys, crippled princesses with flesh so thin it split across their cheekbones and a pale cougar eating a golden-eyed little girl whose blood flooded an endless field of miner's lettuce.

1:15:52The mountain lion snapped the child's bones and its blood-stained jaws with a rhythmic crack, crack, crack that jerked me out of the nightmare. Cracking sound followed me out of my dream, only it wasn't cracking, of bones or of anything else, it was tapping. I shot up and faced my window. Sure enough, I saw a pale hand wrapping the glass and behind it, a small, star-silvered silhouette. Anger overtook my fear. I stalked to the window and threw it open. What do you want? The monster saw you. It's going to come for you and your brother. Her eyes glimmered dimly. Our brother. My heart fell down to my feet.

1:16:33Fear bloomed in its place. To hide it, I snarled at her. How would you know? Her eyes looked dim yet terribly bright, like cloud-shrouded moons. I know everything the monster thinks. The flower in my chest continued to bloom, thick black petals unfurling one by one. No, you don't. I know because the monster is the forest. And I used to love the forest more than anything. Even more than I loved my brothers. That's how I know. She reached for my hand. Her skin was cracked and dry and so terribly thin. Moonlight filtered through it, revealing the mummified musculature and delicate bones beneath. Come with me.

1:17:16I recoiled. No. Her eyes blazed for an instant, fluorescent moon yellow flaring to gold. Then she relaxed and folded her hands on the sill. Alright, I'll stay with you instead. I don't want you to, I almost spat. what kind of hero would that make me no hero at all of course only a resentful brat who made his mother cry who hated helping his family who abandoned his baby brother to the beast in the deep dark woods but i also chase away my best friend my only companion my fairy tale for the crime of simply trying to help me how foolish would that be i knew she wasn't human so that made her something else.

1:18:01Maybe an elf or fairy or a creature no one had ever even heard of. And what if she needed my help? What if she was cursed? For all I knew, she was some kind of princess. But no matter what she was, I loved her, didn't I? Yes. And I must have loved her for a reason. Surely my instincts weren't wrong. She was scary. But she was good. She had to be. Okay. What do you want? To tell you about my first brother. Curiosity surged. What about him? She smiled, frog-like mouth opening over small, fine teeth. The important things. She looked down. Spidery lashes shaded her moon-yellow eyes. He was littler than me.

1:18:49He loved cats. Petting cats and going fishing were his favorite things in the world. He got a fish hook stuck in his hand once. and it left a big, lumpy scar like an earthworm. But that didn't put him off from fishing. She sure did love fishing. A single tear rolled down her cheek. I waited. He wanted to build a little house by a river. A river that froze in wintertime and shone like glass. He'd fish in the river every day and cooked the fish in his fireplace. The cats would eat first because he loved them so much. He was going to plant an apple tree so he could pick the apples and teach wild deer to eat them out of his hand.

1:19:32What was his name? Wendy's eyes darkened. I don't remember. The moon rose behind her, obscured by the twisted branches of the valley oaks. Crickets and night insects sang, Peculiar Orchestra that pulsed through the night. After a while, Wendy continued. My brother didn't believe in monsters. That's why it was so easy for the monster to catch him. Because he didn't believe in it. He loved the monster and didn't believe anything he loved could be evil. Not when the monster hurt him. Not when it pulled his arms and legs off. Not even when it tore his head away. The monster pulled so hard that parts of my brother's spine came out.

1:20:17I saw it. It looked like a root. I don't want to hear anymore. The monster took my brother's arms and his legs and his body, but left his head behind. So when the monster left, I took my brother's head out into the forest. The spine was sharp and slippery. I cut my hands. She held her hands out. Small, pale scars glinted all over her fingers. Stop. I got lost. It was a nightmare. My brother's little cat followed me and cried and cried like a kitten who lost its mother. I cried with it while the owls watched. I was so scared they would swoop down and carry it away and pull its head off and eat it like the monster did to my brother." She paused, sniffling.

1:21:06"'I got lost, but finally found a pond. It's dried up now, but wasn't back then. There was scum on it and no fish inside. But there was water. I dug a little hole in the shore and put my brother's head in it. I covered his spine root with dirt and leaves and left his head above the ground. Then I scooped up the pond water and watered him. The scum got in his eyes. Stop it! I stayed with him for days. So did his cat. I ate acorns and drank from the pond, and I watered his head every morning and evening, but it didn't grow back. He just rotted. His eyes turned gray and sank into his head. His hair fell out.

1:21:54His skin turned bad colors and then swelled and split and slowed away. I didn't want to live without him, so I went home and waited for the monster to kill me. But he didn't kill me. Instead, he gave me food A delicious stew with thick brown gravy and corn and meat I was so hungry I ate it all Except the last bite I didn't eat that last bite Because when I scooped it up with my spoon and the gravy drained off I saw it was a soggy piece of skin with a big lumpy scar on it Just like an earthworm Shut up! No I have to tell you about the monster because I can't fight him alone. He stepped away from the window sill.

1:22:42Go to sleep now. Man. Brutal. Oh god. I love how it really does feel like a fairy tale doesn't it? Like it feels like a witch would do that or like it feels like a Hanson Gretel kind of thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah it feels like a Grimm's fairy tale like the two kids ventured out in the woods. So I'm guessing at that time wendy was a human right and this was the event that turned her into a wendigo or what she is now uh the monster killed her but ripped him to pieces pulled his spine out and then the monster comes and gives her stew and then she gets the last bite and it's the scar her brother got from the fish hook right so she realizes she's eaten her brother and that's what made her into what she is now yeah I bet.

1:23:29Man, that is haunting. But now Wendy's saying we can fight the monster. I need your help to fight the monster. So maybe she's not necessarily evil. Maybe it's like a vampire thing, right? Like I became a vampire and now I resent it. And maybe you can help me fight it. Or we can be together forever if you eat of something that's alive. like there's kind of this regretfulness to wendy's position yeah i i don't know i feel i mean i think that she's insane i think that uh the forest she feels is playing tricks on her to me that story read like she killed her brother she regretted it and in her madness she ate oh oh yeah i didn't really think about that yeah it could just be because she just says the monster is the forest.

1:24:20Yeah. And, uh, it tore him limb from limb. It pulled his spine apart, but that could just be referring to like decomposition or animals tearing him apart or something like that. Interesting. Yeah. That could be a good point. It's either that, which I like your idea more. Now that I think about the other idea I had was maybe it's like, again, with vampires, um, there is like one vampire and that makes like offspring, you know, like it bites other people they become followers and it's one of those things where it's like well you have to kill the leader of the vampires whatever I think I'm not sure about the Wendigo specifically or it would normally be that there was someone like possessed by a spirit in a lot of like the Native American legends but I don't think there was I mean it was a core spirit it was like the spirit of it that would possess you but I don't think it was like one person got infected and then it would infect others, but they could be adapting that for the story.

1:25:18But honestly, I like your idea better. It's the force that's the monster that killed her brother and then she ate her brother. It's hard to say right now. It's still so cryptic in nature of how she's talking about everything. Also, she's the only visible monster we've seen yet. Yeah. I want to trust her, but I can't. It's hard. It's hard. She went away. I lay awake and thought of her brother's head rotting away under the silver moon. dead eyes forever locked on a stagnant pond while bugs crawled up his spine root and ate him from the inside out the next morning my mother asked me to spend the day with her and noah i wanted to more than anything the idea of placing my head filled as it was with wendy's nightmares beside her and noah made me sick what if the nightmares sloshed out of my head and into theirs what if i contaminated them gave my dying mother bad dreams for the remainder of her painful life instead I stayed in my room with the blinds shut and the curtains down emerging only to cook meals and clean when my mother vomited up her lunch when night fell I locked every door turned on every light piled my bed with every blanket I could find I lay awake petrified and suffocating until morning came only then did I drift into an exhausted sleep Wendy didn't come the next night or the one after that or even the night after that I just began to convince myself that she was some kind of bizarre recurring nightmare Delusion brought on by my inability to cope with my own grief and fear When a loud tap startled me from a twilight sleep I curled up immediately and covered my ears It did nothing to muffle the sound of Wendy's withered fingertips I gripped my teeth One tap, two taps, three taps, four, five, six, ten, twenty, thirty-five, fifty-one Finally I shot up Go away!

1:27:09Tapping ceased. I sat there, breathing heavily and waiting for the glass to shatter, for Wendy to crawl in like a giant broken spider and pull my head off before I could even scream. I had read that heads were conscious for up to a minute following decapitation. Would I be conscious? What would it be like to scream without a body? Then her ragged voice emanated from the corner. Why are you so mean to me now? see it's so frustrating because she presents herself as like a young girl who like this happened to a victim of the forest yeah and i want to feel bad for her but i don't know that i can trust her you know no i mean so much changed with that one sentence in the last in the first part the what if you had to eat something alive man i reared back as her bony shadow unfolded from the shadows it took several seconds to draw enough breath to speak how did you get in here?

1:28:05Through the trees. She stayed in the corner, as indistinct as the pale things floating in her eyes. There aren't trees in here. Trees grow under your house. Little ones. Sick and small and fighting with mushrooms. But they're there, and they're enough. Why are you here? To my immense shame, my voice thickened and broke. I'm no hero, I thought miserably. No hero at all. You scare me! The monster should scare you. She drifted out of the shadows and halted at the foot of my bed. I'll tell you about him soon. But first, I'm going to tell you about my second brother. I covered my ears and began to hum.

1:28:49She struck like a viper, smacking my hands away. Her skin was extraordinarily hot. I yelped and flinched. He was older than me. How can your second brother be older than your first brother? I snapped, rubbing my hands as blisters began to rise. He was an orphan who lived in the forest by himself. He didn't believe in monsters either. He loved everything. No matter what happened to him, he saw the best in the world. He taught me to climb the oaks and cut the mistletoe away. He loved to be in the trees, and he loved to be there with him. He would climb the oaks and stay on the branches all night, singing to the bats and watching the moon.

1:29:33He taught me about chamomile tea and acorn paste and bobcats and coyotes. He made friends with raccoons and gave them presents. Shiny bits of metal that he sanded smooth so the raccoons wouldn't cut their hands. He made friends with the crows too. He fed them, even when he was starving. Skin, meat, and bones. They loved bones the best. When he taught them to speak, the first word they learned was bone. They knew how to count to nine. They knew hello and yes and no and please. They even knew his name. Your eyes flashed cold, dull, yellow. But I don't. Not anymore. I don't remember it. I realized I wasn't breathing.

1:30:24Took the deepest, quietest breath I could manage. My oldest brother said monsters aren't real. Monsters are evil, he told me. Timber of her voice became deep, fast and silly. The voice of a sweet fool. I could almost see him. Tall and painfully thin. Dirty hair and an earnest, homely face. nobody's really evil windy sometimes they're scared or stupid or confused or hurt sometimes i guess they're bad but no one is evil so no one can be a monster her voice broke she uttered a soft sob and angrily wiped her murky eyes i thought of the forest of the preternatural silence and those molten eyes burning in the gloom monsters didn't exist i knew that, that thing did, if it wasn't a monster, what was it?

1:31:21The monster didn't want to be called scared or stupid or confused or hurt. He wanted to be powerful. It was. To prove it, the monster slaughtered all of my brother's friends. The crows, the raccoons, the woodpeckers, and the squirrels. I brought them to my brother, fur and feathers and all. My brother screamed and I've never heard such a scream. We should have split the world apart. Then the monster broke my brother's arms and legs and threw them in the well and left them there for days. My poor brother begged for food. The monster ignored him until one morning he grabbed one of my brother's dead friends, The little raccoon with maggots in its eyes.

1:32:11I threw the raccoon down to my brother. My brother pounced on it like a starving rat. Then he screamed again. Wendy's voice broke. The monster laughed and threw all the animals into the well. Some of them hit the stones and split in half. Others exploded when they hit the bottom. My brother lay there, broken and dying, screaming as the corpses of the things he loved best buried him in fur and wet stinking rot my soul the smell is still in my mouth it hides under my tongue and clings inside my nose and fills my lungs reminding me always reminding me I waited both hands over my mouth because I was afraid of what would come out useless words childish sobs, endless screams or laughter The monster left my brother to rot in the well.

1:33:06And I went to him one night. It was the kind of night my brother liked most. Clear and cold, full of bad and bright with moonlight. The smell. Oh, the smell. I wanted to go down and see him and all of his friends. They were my friends too and I loved them, but there was no way down into the well. So instead, I ran into the forest. And even though it was night and the petals were all furled, I picked up every flower I could find. An armload. So many they kept slipping away and left the trail behind me. I carried the flowers back to the well and dropped them in. And even though it was night, even though they were picked and dead, they blossomed as they fell in the morning.

1:33:56that old dry well was overgrown. Vines and wildflowers exploded out like a fountain, covering every last stone. I loved those flowers so much. I sat by them often, especially on the cold, clear nights when beds swooped low. On those nights, I would look into the flowers and see eyes. The bright, curious eyes of raccoons and the small, dark star eyes of crows. Even though I searched, I never saw the eyes of my brothers. She wiped her face again. Where's the well? Under the house. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't even think. I went to the well every night. When they started to build this house, I got scared.

1:34:46I thought of my brother and his friends. Trapped in an old well under a house in the dark, forever forgotten. So I ate them. All the vines, all the flowers, all the thorns, all their eyes. Then I crawled down into the well and pulled up the roots. There were so many. Some went deep, some went shallow, some were big and some were small. Every last one of them looked like backbones. I meant to eat them, but I couldn't. Anymore than I could have eaten my first brother's backbone, so... I pulled them out of the well and carried them into the forest. The monster ruled the forest by then, but I could think of nothing else to do.

1:35:33I wandered the trees with roots until I found a place I knew. The pond was dry, but the rest was the same. My brother's head was there, attached to a stalk of polished bone. His eyes were fused shut, and his head had grown enormous. It was flat on one end and just like a pumpkin that's grown on its side. But he smiled when I knelt beside him. He smiled even wider as I dug a hundred holes for roots of my second brother and all of his friends. My brother didn't say anything. He couldn't because he was just a head. But he smiled because he remembered me. He covered her eyes. I don't even remember his name.

1:36:20She began to cry. I watched her helplessly. Each sobs in a pulse of overwhelming sorrow through my own body. Waves of grief on a shore of flesh and bone. You were a good sister. I know it. No. Nothing I did was good enough. She turned away, pale form melting into the shadows. Wendy, don't go. Don't! a single soft sob emanated from the corner and all was silent i lay awake for a long time thinking of the forgotten well filled with the bones of slaughtered animals of the boy who screamed so loudly the world should have split apart as i finally drifted off to sleep i heard the echo of a terrible heart-rending well echoing from under my bedroom floor the next morning i ventured out and searched for Wendy.

1:37:15When I couldn't find her, I retreated to the patch of miner's lettuce and waited for hours. In the distance, the forest drew my eyes like a magnet. A smear of gold and green. Magical. Monstrous. At some point, I thought I saw bright eyes burning through the trees. I swallowed the lump of my throat and went home. I... I... My brother and all the things he loved were down there and I ate it all. I couldn't eat the bones. I put them in the forest. Boys scream should have split them. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This is just so heat. It's so good. Okay. Man. This is right up my alley. Like the fairy tale and like how it's almost like in another world.

1:38:09it's almost like Wendy is both the monster and the victim like it's like the spirit that has possessed her is the monster she's afraid of and she carries it with her where she goes so she wants to do these good things but it always results in her like eating the people her brothers because we know anyone that comes to the forest is considered her brother because earlier when talking about Noah she says your brother our brother so it's like that that's her that's what a brother means to her someone that comes to the forest so it's like everyone that steps in the forest falls victim to her and the spirit within her but she's remorseful of it almost she can't remember their names but she wants to yeah well i mean there's a parallel with i mean i i was thinking at first i was like oh i wonder if our protagonist is actually her brother he just doesn't know if it's like a forgotten thing but if not even noah is representative of her younger brother and now our protagonist is representative of her older brother yeah is is is just a very interesting thing and for the house to be built on this well is uh i i think it's going to be something where we're going to get like a big reveal at the end and it's just going to like really pop yeah yeah oh man okay eight nights later i'd given up reality had already swept windy half away my mother was sicker closer to death than ever no one must have sensed it he was so wild his behavior barely qualified as human and it took everything i had to handle him still wasn't enough even hours past dark he regularly burst into miserable screechy wailing but kept me awake i was happy that i didn't have to deal with it that was one good thing about my mother lavishing all of her attention on him.

1:39:53At least I didn't have to soothe his night terrors. I stayed up, listening in case you needed help, but everything remained quiet. After a while, I drifted. A familiar tap, tap, tapping roused me. Before I was even fully awake, I rose and stumbled to the window. Frozen air gusted in, smelling of snow and dark earth. Wendy stood there, looking dead. deader than she had the day i saw the skull of her brothers shambling monument to old dry rot are you here she slung a withered spidery leg over my sill and climbed into my room her bone pendant swung back and forth dirty and jacket as ever i've come to tell you about my third brother her sparse dry hair caught the moonlight blazing warm silver that glanced off her crumbling flesh and threw her ruined features into sharp relief.

1:40:49I could see the dim suggestion of bones within her desiccated limbs. It reminded me of the bats, how the moon had shone through their wings making the bones look so beautiful and fine. He was the youngest of all. Barely more than a baby. Sick, frail and slow. Just like your brother. Very slow, but smart enough to listen to me. she lurched forward with a series of soft clicks exposed bones of her feet tapping the floor he never went into the forest he never tempted the monster he did exactly what i told him my heart ached for this tiny slow boy of course he had listened to wendy this ancient shambling horror whispering dire warnings of monsters and dead brothers and eyes and flowers grown from carnage.

1:41:43What could a tiny boy do but listen? I saved him from the monsters. She rasped, dull yellow eyes glinted in her face. From my monster. But my brother had its own monster. His monster tried to starve him, so I fed him. Berries, acorn paste. He didn't like it. But he was so hungry that he ate it anyway. Chamomile tea, roasted mice. But when my brother didn't die, this monster dashed his head against the wall and hid him under the house. He was cold when I found him. Cold and dead. Brains leaking from his broken head. I couldn't leave him there. Not by the well. Not forgotten in the dark until the end of time.

1:42:36So I ate him. I opened my mouth like this. Her jaw clicked. Stretched, stretched, stretched. Contortion I could barely comprehend. I covered my eyes. I ate his arms. His legs, his guts, his bones. But I didn't eat his head or his spine. I took those into the forest. I found the dried up pond. I found the dried up pond. It was not a pond anymore. but a green pit filled with eyes and flowers. My first brother smiled at my approach, and he was enormous by then, the size of a cottage with a mouth like a cave. His head was so smashed, so flat, that one of his eyes had bumped into the other. They bulged now, displaced and scarred with old infections.

1:43:31Looking at them made me cry. How stupid I'd been. How very stupid. Planting him with such a small root. I would not make that mistake again. I planted my third brother in a deep hole with his entire spine so he might grow properly. Big and strong. With a healthy body and mouth that could speak. Instead of filling the hole with earth, I vomited up his body. The skin, the muscle, the bones. And I packed a layer of dirt over it. And kissed his ruined head. Did he grow? Yes. Didn't you see him? I thought of the skulls. So many boys. So many tragedies. All of them forgotten. I began to cry. She came closer.

1:44:26I steeled myself for a mummified horror. But no. It was only Wendy. Dear, wrinkly, lovely Wendy. Do you want to meet him? Do you want to meet them? My brothers? I felt like a deer trapped in the headlights of an onrushing monster truck. She took my hand. Her skin felt dry and scratchy and burning hot. Please. I know they'll love you. Real heroes do difficult things. Terrifying things. And it's easy. Because in fairy tales, everything turns out right in the end. So I climbed out the window. followed Wendy into the night. Oh shit, here we go. End of part two. Alright, one more part left. Part three, Wendy's taking him into the forest by the pond, I'm just seeing him meet this giant amalgamation.

1:45:19I'm wondering if she's going to lead him into a cave and all these things are representative of the brothers that have grown, you know? Yeah. Yeah, like all the... Probably the trees. Because there's the mention of like there's trees under your house. They fight the mushrooms. It's like she's a spirit of the trees almost, right? It's like because she said I can appear here because there's trees under your house. So maybe she can be wherever the trees is and maybe, you know, the spirit inside of her, that's where the monster came from. It's something of the trees. That's why she's afraid of the forest.

1:45:53Man, all right. You ready? Yep. This is so good. This is so good, man. Oh. Part 3 The dead girl in my yard wanted me to be a hero. Owls watched as we trekked through the yard. A bat dived and landed on my shoulder, squeaking affectionately before taking off again. Raccoons lumbered through the grass, dark eyes shining. Wendy and I reached the miner's lettuce, dropped to our bellies and crawled through the burrow. It was even colder now. Delicate layers of ice covered the mud and crunched under my weight. the walls felt dangerously narrow around my shoulders with the panicky pink i realized i would soon be too big too old for the burrow oh that's interesting only the young only like kids can slip through it it's very neverland right like you know i mean very fairy tale for sure yeah very fairy tale wendy's stiff wrinkled dress dress oh she's wearing a dress i didn't realize she was wearing clothes yeah he's talking about like her her skin okay windy stiff wrinkled dress rasped against the walls until it grew sodden with mud and half melted frost when it began to squelch i preferred it to the dry hiss because the dry hiss reminded me of long rotten limbs unfolding in the winter forest after a timeless span that could have been 10 minutes or ten years, we emerged into the clearing of brothers.

1:47:24I crawled out with a relieved sigh. The night was cold, but warmer than the tunnel had been. I rubbed my arms and looked around for Wendy. A great rumble sounded behind me. I spun around with a shriek, expecting to see the silver eyes and the sleek white form of a cougar. It was a head. An incomprehensibly gigantic head. Oh. Oh, brother. This is so cool. Squashed on one side. The eyes had merged into a great lumpy orb covered by thin flesh. An infection split the eyelid, revealing dim, murky light, the color of lamplit pus. Its mouth, thin, frog-like, ugly, tragic, split apart, widening until it was the size of a cave.

1:48:16A thin, moon-pale form slid down the side, whooping happily, and hit the ground in a puff of dead leaves and dirt. Wendy, of course. She stood up, dusting herself off, and spread her arms. Meet my brothers. There were so many. Heads, mostly, but bodies, too, varying states of wholeness. Some were little more than face and throat. Some had their shoulders, some had entire torsos, and some had arms. all sprouting from the leaf-strewn earth many looked rotten a few fleshless one had a twisted spine a strongly muscled torso and a small head that had been smashed in nevertheless his eyes shone with joy those that did not have eyes had wet sockets that glistened and cracked lips that opened in wide happy smiles their heads twisted excitedly jaws clicked behind them and a great pit exploding with vines and flowers, I saw something else.

1:49:19Long and horrifically thin, covered in what looked like a thousand eyes. They're always so happy to see me. I love them so much. Dread and horror were eating me alive. How are they living? Wendy's face fell. Because I feed them things that are alive. I don't want to, but I have to. I feed the mice, the squirrels, the birds and the animals that live in the forest. It's alright, because those things are all a part of the forest. And the forest is the monster. It isn't enough to grow them, especially not now, since I have no more pond to water them with. But it keeps them alive. And one day, when the monster is finally dead, I'll cut him up and feed a piece to each of them.

1:50:06And that will make them all whole again. Her brother sent up What cheers they could from the rumbling roar of the great head to the chattering of baby teeth and fleshless tiny jaws. How many brothers did you have, Wendy? I don't remember, but they're all here now. I looked around the clearing, tears stinging my eyes. There were so many, so very, very many. Did the monster kill all of them? Not all. I killed some. Sometimes to feed my other brothers, but only if they weren't going to be alive for long anyway. And then I planted them here so they wouldn't really die. Sometimes I killed them to keep them from being swallowed up into the hungry trees and becoming the monster.

1:50:54Their chatter grew louder, swelling into a deafening crescendo. Now sit down and listen, because I'm going to tell you about the monster now. Boy, boy. Boy. that thing i said about like maybe there's one spirit or like the vampire example maybe it's like she is the offspring of some greater entity it was the other way around she's the entity she's the thing that like i mean is bringing these boys in killing them and now they're like the subjects of her her brother i thought that it was going to be that she was going to like want a friend and she was gonna be like you should eat your brother but now i just realized that she was getting her his trust to where i think she's going to eat him she's he's going to to be one of these many brothers yeah yeah he's gonna join the the garden all at once her brothers fell silent i felt their eyes the bright ones the rotten ones the gray decayed jellied ones empty sockets fixed on me i wanted to run but if a hero is to succeed he must learn everything he can even from someone who might be a monster so i lowered myself to the ground starlight streamed the trees bathing me in a net of shadow and dim silver wendy sat too fold into the ground like a monstrous insect he was my father i watched paralyzed as a single tear slid from the infected slit in the eye of the great head everyone knew what my father was but they didn't care because he was so powerful too powerful for anything but all in adoration so they let him do what he wanted Even me and my brother did not care about us because we were not powerful.

1:52:41We were only tainted. Blood of the monster, but with none of the monster's power. But they were wrong. She wiped her eyes. I was tainted, yes. But my brother wasn't. He was good. He was perfect. And I did everything I could to protect him. But it wasn't enough. It's never enough. You did everything you could. That word sounded like dead leaves stirring. That was enough. While I was away at the pond, blending my brother's spine in the earth, my father cleaned his carcass and polished his bones. And after I ate the stew, he grabbed my brother's ribs and stabbed me. He slid all the way through me and came out the other end.

1:53:28It hurt. I didn't feel like I was dying. Even as my blood spilled over me and flooded my lungs, drowning me, I didn't feel weak. I felt strong. I hid my face, a shudder after shudder crawled down my spine. I went to the pile of clean bones and found one of my brother's strip fingers. Her hand crept to her chest with the bony pendant hanging there. He was smaller than I expected, and sharper, and I put it through my father's eye. Then I dragged him into the forest, pulled the rib out of my chest, and put it into his other eye. Then I went home. I killed him. I said to everyone, I killed the monster.

1:54:09I told him of my brother and how I'd saved his life by planting his head in the earth. But instead of welcoming me, they cut my stomach. All of my guts slid out, hot and reeking. They steamed in the night under the cold moon. Then the people dragged me to the forest, leaving me in the snow to die. I put my hands inside my stomach where my guts had been kept warm. But it didn't keep me warm. Not even a little. I remember what it felt like when my fingers froze. When I tried to uncurl my hand, they cracked and broke. I lay there in the snow, frozen and gutted, staring at the stars. And I was so angry.

1:54:49So very angry. Why did they do that to you? Because I was unclean. a desecrator of corpses murder of my own blood a monster to them the people had known my father who had known what he was I was the monster she looked down at her cracked fragile hands I lay there rotting all through the winter until I became a pale broken bloodless tears coursed down my face my heart ached Even though they loved him enough to kill me for defeating him, they forgot him. Murky eyes flared to blinding gold. She began to cry. They forgot him and left him. His body stayed in the forest and fed the scavengers, building the bones and meat for their young.

1:55:44His hair lined burrows and filled nests. Flies fed on his rot and spawned. maggots hatched in the guts in his eyes I know I saw stood right there and watched it all crows took flight startled cries filled the night and their glossy wings blocked the cold stars I watched his bones crumble into soil I was so very very satisfied that he had rotted but that was because I didn't understand I didn't understand that he hadn't rotted away he had only changed Changed into something else. Into everything else. Now the trees grow out of him. He gets to be in the trees. My trees. He's dead and forgotten and beautiful.

1:56:34With more power than he ever had in life. I am dead and hated and ugly. Weaker than I've ever been. I'm forgotten. And so is he. Now I'm the only one who knows. I'm the only one who remembers. But I know now. He always kills my brothers. Soon I'll have to have more heads to plant beside the pond. Tell someone. Make them burn the forest down. Tell everyone. No one will listen. No one will care. No one ever has. I have. I can't even fight him because I'm trapped. She spread her desiccated arms, slender and delicate as the bones of bats. I'm cursed. He cursed me. I was never strong, never. But every year I grow weaker.

1:57:29Every season there's less of me. Soon I will crumble and fade and be drawn up through roots of the trees. He will eat me, and I will die, and he will live on. He will win. There it was. My redemption. My quest. My chance to be a hero. I won't let him. I'll fight him. Wendy's fingers spread, feeling a single eye, bright and deep and golden. We can fight him together. In that moment, it was the only thing I wanted. To live for untold centuries, ageless and immortal. Years of golden days and cold, clear nights in which to befriend bats and raccoons and crows. No school, no sick mother, no Noah. No unbearable, soul-crushing fear of what would become of him.

1:58:15No more fear of days and nights and seasons and years of an entire lifetime without the people I loved most. Instead, I would have untold lifetimes with new people to love at every turn. People I could help. People I could save. People I could be a hero for. I could finally be enough. No. Haven't you been listening? To be with me, to be like me. You have to eat. She told me miserably. You have to eat something alive. My stomach churned, but I gripped my teeth and resolved to do it. Because a hero always does what needs to be done. I would eat birds, bats, coyotes, mice, worms, owls, beetles, or anything else, because I had to.

1:59:05And I didn't even have to be sad, because all of those things were part of the forest, which meant they were part of the monster. I will. I'll eat anything. You don't have to eat anything. Just one thing. What? She wiped her eyes. When the monster fed my brother to me, he cursed us both and bound us. No one can fight me with... No one can fight me unless they're bound to me. How can I do that? I can't tell you. Not unless you promise to do it first. You have to promise. No matter what. It's the only way I can tell you. It's the only way to break the curse. The only way to help me. I promise something.

1:59:52Whatever it takes to help you, I promise I'll do it. She finally lowered her hands. Her eyes were so bright, so golden, molten, full of tears. Promise me. I promise. How do I do it? By feeding yourself to us.

2:00:11I frowned. Sure I'd misheard her. what do you mean wendy grabbed my hand and pulled ah man wendy grabbed my hand and pulled me across the clearing to the grass choked pit that had been a pond so long ago and pointed i looked carefully frowning shadows thick and impenetrable but some of the shadows look thicker than the others substantial somehow as i watched the darkness coalesced, solidifying into something I recognized. Someone. Noah was in the pit, sleeping fitfully. His breathing was irregular and wet, as if he'd been crying. It felt like my heart had stopped. Why is he here, Wendy? I'm keeping him safe.

2:00:59I told you. I always keep my brother safe. No. I won't. You promised. my father will kill you anyway he kills everything my brothers love best I wish it could be you but you don't want to fight you want to run away you want to forget your brother my brothers don't forget each other we won't forget you neither will I I promise comprehension dawned tears flooded my eyes as all my jealousy all my anger all my resentment flooded my heart scorching all-consuming a flood of golden lava burning me alive I shook my head she nodded all silver moonlight and rich darkness and eyes like suns you are my brother and you are his brother you alone can bind us my eternity of moon silvered nights and velvety bats of gloom golden mornings and shattering crows of dark burrows and oaks with canopies like giant spider webs of people who needed me people i could help people i'd been enough for fell away.

2:02:05Noah would have that life, that eternity of animals and trees and magic. Noah, who was my mother's favorite. Noah, who got everything she could give even though he did nothing, even though I did nothing. Noah was enough. I wasn't enough. I was only the oldest, paving the way for the youngest. You look so angry. So very, very angry. Just like me. She reached out and stroked my face. Her finger was papery and hot, like ashes. It has to be this way. You'll still be the hero. You'll die to make sure we can kill the monster. And then you'll rest. No sadness to drown you. No hate to eat you. No future to frighten you.

2:02:55Only a long, dark wait. But it won't last forever. Because I'll follow one day. After I've taught our brother everything he needs to know. Then we'll be together. Maybe we'll come back here again. But for joy, not for anger. We won't have to be angry. Because Noah will remember. No. I stepped back. Wendy slipped forward. An undulating nightmare of rot and night. My father will kill you anyway. And then where will your brother be? When your mother dies, he'll linger in the house for days. crying and cuddling her wet, rotting body, holding her eyes open each morning until they sink like wet jelly in her sockets, stuffing food into her yawning mouth until all the food is gone.

2:03:45They don't die too, alone, starved, frightened, without even the brains to comprehend that she's dead, wondering why you've left him. Is that what you want? Or do you want him to live, to see the moon rise and the sun rise more times than he could ever count? And years of snow and wind and sun. Do you want him to climb trees and sing to the moon? To befriend the bats and speak the language of the crows? I want that! The words echoed, rolling back at me like dying waves. I want that. I want... I, I, I. Wendy's golden eyes burned. I know. She looked down at Noah, sleeping peacefully in her dead arms.

2:04:27But there's only one way. tears streamed down my face the wind gusted stinging my raw cheeks if you won't do it then he has to and he could you're not wrong he could bind us then you'll have everything you want felt like I'd been hit by a train I stared up at her praying I'd misunderstood as her eyes blazed pits of golden fire and his life will have meant something you're the monster wendy the pain in her face the grief and rage cut me to my core the pain twisted her into something else and her face split apart bearing teeth some broken some perfect all overgrown and sharp like the fangs of a mountain lion monsters eat for eating sake i eat to live i live to remember so that one day i will keep i can kill the monster forever What would you eat for?

2:05:26She shook her monstrous head and spat. You would eat to forget. What was she, really, this withered horrific nightmare before me? A ghost? A demon? A trapped spirit so hellbent on vengeance she drove herself insane? Was she a liar all along? Or was she broken? Had her own hatred, her own misery, warped her into something beyond comprehension? had her father her monster bled into her over untold centuries corrupting her possessing her was she old and lonely and sick and just too hurt too angry too sad to die or was she right i was so weak a child broken and helpless all i had was love when the monster took that from me all I had was anger until I found love again when he took that my anger grew again and again ten times a hundred times a thousand times no matter what I did for my brothers no matter what I did to the monster all my love and all my anger wasn't enough it was never enough glanced at Noah nestled in her arms he was enough he was always enough I'm trapped And my brothers, all of them are trapped.

2:06:45I am the keeper, in more ways than one. I tend them, yes, but I keep them here too. They are as trapped as me, trapped by me even. You will be trapped too, and you will have to trap yourself, but only until I am free. And when I am free, I will rest. Rest until I'm strong again. Then I will burn the forest. I will salt the earth. I will slaughter the animals. I will drown the burrows. I will crush their nest. And I will tear every root out of the earth. And at the end of it all, I will find you and lead you into the hot summer sunlight. Together we will burn and everything that's in will die. But I can only do that if I'm free.

2:07:31I can only be free if there's something left behind to remember. This is how you will remember. you promised you promised me i didn't promise to eat my baby brother then he will eat you what if you must eat with me i thought of bones cursed human heads grown to the size of houses scarred and infected and unable to speak i thought of broken babies dashed to death by cruel parents i thought of sad sweet orphans cast down dry wells to die and rot i thought of rotting mothers and forgotten brothers of monsters that could be fought and monsters that always won and i thought of flesh and hair and burrows and bones bones in the well bones in the ground bones and eyes i met wendy's gaze i promised i'd do whatever it took to help you golden eyes narrowed face was white or mummified horror of human and lion yes you did okay i'll keep my promise her face white and warped a horror of human and lion yep she was she was both monster and the victim she is both the mountain lion and the coyote yep she held my brother out he whimpered and curled i looked at him my heart ached for him for her for her brothers my mother and for me my mind ached everything ached everything would always ache this was not fair nothing was fair nothing was ever enough and this would be no different i looked up at wendy and raised my hands before she could tip my brother into my arms i ripped the pendant from her dry bony neck and plunged it into her eye it bulged and exploded spewing boily yellow ichor all over my face the pain was exquisite overwhelming volcanic the smell of burnt fat and frying meat filled my nostrils.

2:09:26Wendy's eyes darkened as golden blood slid down her crumbling face. Somewhere, far away from the pain and the terror, and now, my baby brother began to cry. Wendy folded down to the earth. Shadows exploded out of her, each one full of a thousand blinking eyes, round and pale, bright, small and dark, wide and light, rich, gold and bright, hot silver. Darkness roiled, receded, turned pale and snapped back into the form of a dead wrinkled girl wendy seized once just once a dim yellow glimmer flickered in her eye sockets like faraway stars don't forget and then her eyes went out

2:10:13oh i promised i would do whatever it took to help you and he had the realization that wendy is trapped by her hatred. Yeah. And that she's, she's, she's never leaving this forest as long as she hates. And the thing she hates is it's the forest. It's nature. It's like, I'm going to what, what would that solve it? If she burned everything to the ground? No, it's just going to be a bigger and bigger body count until she feels satisfaction. So in that moment, for the first time in the story, our narrator becomes the hero. He's like, I, if I'm going to save her and I'm going to save my brother and I have to keep everyone safe i've got to release her i have to take her from this hatred so she uses he uses the same pendant she used to kill her father to kill her and in it like the brother was never even there no it was never in there he awakes far away it was just the representation like a lot of the stuff with the story there's the the spiritual and the physical um but he kills wendy and in her final words she says don't forget he became the hero yeah I mean the forest is it's almost like the forest is Wendy too the forest is everything she loves it's like there's such a great parallel there with Wendy is alive and dead there's such a great parallel with the protagonist and Wendy because at the beginning of the story the protagonist clearly does not He hates himself.

2:11:37He hates the situation he's in, all this stuff. Wendy is the direct result of never being able to move on or let go from the tragedy of loss. Yeah. And I think that like, it's just kind of interesting. I mean, like even the protagonist, it's just kind of interesting. Like Wendy is, it's like whenever people die and through these like natural tragedies and stuff or like sickness and everything, you yourself die. Like you kind of lose a bit of yourself every time too. So to her being representative of being like half dead and half alive and kind of just like existing purely through hatred is really interesting.

2:12:18It's also just kind of, it's like a direct parallel of like, that is what the protagonist is supposed to become. But he sees like, he kind of like, I don't know, sees it. And is able to reconcile that like this is like no way to live. Like the best thing that could have happened for Wendy is to slip away. Like let go kind of thing. Yeah, if he's going to save the princess and he's going to slay the monster, he has to do both at once. I woke in the morning. Frost attacked me to the ground. And it was so cold my bones ached. Tried to fall asleep again, but Noah was crying. Then screaming wells that echoed as though from a distance.

2:12:59I grimaced and sat up I saw him wandering through the yellow grass My heart jolted I shot up and stumbled back, falling Wendy lay there, empty and pale and so very, very dead Her bone pendant jutted from her socket I touched her stiff, dry hair nervously Gone, forgotten along with her brothers and the monster who had destroyed them i stared at her for a long time as the sun crept high and noah continued to cry noah facing a life without his family left in a broken system and lost forgotten i wondered about myself as the sun strengthened and filled wendy's dry empty sockets with light again i realized i didn't know myself i knew about myself i knew i was hurt angry prone to resentment and drowned in fear.

2:13:53I knew I would become angrier and sadder and meaner as the years wore on. I would become less and less and less until I didn't even remember the meaning of enough, until the desire to be enough, to be a hero, was forgotten. I wondered about my mother, mom who cried for hours each day because nothing she did would be enough to protect Noah and because she was too sick to be a mother. Forced to exist as a living corpse rotting away her last days while her doomed toddler giggled beside her one of millions just another poor careworn dying mother forgotten by everyone but her children who would be forgotten too i wondered about wendy what she was what she'd want if what she wanted was good or right or if it mattered at all and i wondered about her curse binding if brother could bind sister and father or sister to brother could sister bind brother to brother and could brother bind mother to son i spent the morning chasing noah it was hard my burned blistered face terrified him but i managed to catch him and take him to the house my mother wasn't awake yet so i sang him to sleep and left him on the sofa then i returned to wendy and her patch of miner's lettuce and pulled her limbs off It was easy.

2:15:16They were dry and light, like termite-eaten planks left in the sun. I wrenched her head off and snapped her papery torso into pieces. She smelled foul and rich and terribly old, like oak and sage and dirty fur and rot and bones left to dry in the sun. I made a stew of her. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh. Oh, he's like, now that she's gone, maybe sister can bind brother to brother, mother to son. Oh, no. I made a stew of her. All our pots were small, so I could only use her fingers. I've broken her apart for nothing. My eyes stung. Tears tripped into the pot before I could wipe them away. Wendy's stew was foul.

2:16:02Gray sludge that reeked ash, bad meat, and roadkill. Noah screamed and flailed when he tasted it. when I pretended it was good. So delicious. It's healthy. It'll make you big and strong. Noah, it'll make mom happy. He acquiesced. Though he gagged and choked, he drank it all and didn't throw up. Then, momentarily grateful, the pot was so small, I took a cleaver and, with an earth-shattering scream, chopped two of my fingers off. The pain was awful, almost too great for me to comprehend. but compared to the wildfire burning of Wendy's eyes it was nothing my head was clear as I bandaged the stumps and then proceeded to make a stew of myself I made Noah drink half he ate it gratefully I suppose because it was far less disgusting than Wendy's stew then carried the remainder to my mother's room I had no idea how to make her eat it I'd have to force her she'd think I was insane.

2:17:03She'd think I'd hated her. But that was all right, because even though she didn't know it, this would save her. This would finally be enough. She would have her eternity of crows and bats, of battling monsters and befriending feral cats. She would protect my brother until the end of time. I pushed open her door. Odor erupted like a jack in the box. Blood and bile, vomit and urine and feces. I set the bowl on the floor and tried to shake her awake she was thin a flesh-covered skeleton bones as fine as bat wings and cold as cold as windy was warm the room tilted sunlight bled through the curtains murky and golden i tried to pick her up my fingers sank into cold congealed vomit and i let go her face was dark and purple where she'd lain on her side her lips nose and eyes were flattened just like a pumpkin's that had grown on its side i wrapped my arms around her and snuckled down beside her blood and shit smeared my clothes my arms my face i didn't care i only hurt when noah finally wandered in wailing and crying so hard he was gagging i came to my senses and forced him out then i picked up the bowl of finger stew and dribbled it into my mother's mouth came right back out again so i I propped her up and tilted her head back, shuddering when another cloud of stench burst out of me.

2:18:32I poured the soup in carefully, watching as mouthful after mouthful drained as slowly as a clogged bathtub. The meat would not go down, so I reached in. The inside of her mouth was cold, slimy, and puffy. The sensation made me gag, but I pushed until every speck of meat and bone had disappeared down her throat. and I closed her mouth and laid her back, pulling the soiled blankets to her chin. I leaned in and kissed her forehead. Faint taste came away on my lips, something that reminded me of ashes, dirty fur, sage, and cold, clear nights. Then I left her room and closed the door behind me. I sang Noah to sleep in his own room and went back to the miner's lettuce with a garbage bag.

2:19:19It was unceremonious, but I intended to gather Wendy's remains and dragged them to the other end of her burrow. I wanted to lay her to rest with her brothers. And if she rotted, if her bones crumbled, if the hungry trees took her up through the roots, so be it. If she became part of the forest, perhaps she could finally take her trees back from the monster. But when I got there, she was gone. Terror and joy rised in my chest. I dropped to my knees to peer into her burrow, praying to see her yellow lens flare eyes. But her burrow was empty. it was madness but i crawled in anyway the walls felt smaller than ever and i knew in my heart that this was the last time i would ever pass through it after an eternity in the dead claustrophobic dark i found the clearing i drew a sharp breath and dragged myself out something glistened my periphery a skull of course old discolored heartbreakingly small supported by a single vertebra protruding from the ground grass and wildflowers grew around it next to it was a jagged gleaming stake not a stake spinal column topped by a broken skull fragile shattered leaving only a jaw and the right cheekbone beyond them spreading through the glade were too many skulls to count but no heads certainly no bodies why have you come back i shot up with a scream expecting to see eyes, which would be worse, silver eyes or gold.

2:20:45I saw neither. Before me was another monster I'd already seen, tall and horrifically thin with enormous glossy wings like a crow. Feathers and fur coated his narrow body. Black feathers, thick golden fur, and among them, glistening through the strands, eyes, too many eyes to count. Is Wendy here? Our sister's with you. Isn't she? No. behind me something rumbled i spun around it was a giant head but it wasn't smiling anymore its mouth thin frog-like ugly tragic split apart and began to cry silently the world shuddered when it became still again the spinal column had transformed into the twisted torso of a man attached was the head of a baby the back was smashed in blood and brain glimmered at the edges.

2:21:37He looked at me dimly, distrustfully, fearfully. My lip trembled. She wanted to eat me, did she? No, I ate her. We ate her. The great lopsided head opened its mouth in another silent well. All of her? I shook my head. And our sisters in the trees? The feathered monstrosity said. Will the monster eat her? Looked at me with its countless eyes, the round, curious eyes of raccoons, the bright black orbs of crown squirrels, the dark star-eyed of crows. Our sister will eat you if she finds you. No, no she won't. She loves me. Yes. She's angry. So very, very angry. And she should be. For an instant, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, elongated and twisted, with teeth exploding from a long, broken jaw and papery flesh the color of buttermilk.

2:22:33She knows you're here. another multitude of eyes blinked open gleaming among the fur and feathers run instead i began to cry i sat down covered my eyes with my free hand only dimly aware of the raw blisters under my fingers and waited and waited and waited when i opened my eyes her brothers were gone all that remained were the skulls with a thicket of flowers in the center i knew then that wendy was too angry to kill me too angry to plant me in her field of brothers was too angry to keep me with her forever while i waited the whole night the skulls did not come alive again i left as dawn filtered through the trees bathing the clearing and dim shadowed gold i walked through the forest making as much noise as i could trying to attract the monster with silver eyes but it didn't come for me when i got home again noah was gone i understood somehow he had been deemed suitable for the field of brothers of course he was he was the youngest it was enough it was always enough i ran back to the burrow so sad and so very very angry angry enough to demand my place beside my brother no matter the cost if wendy killed me for it that would be fine my blood would water the ground and help our brothers grow but the burrow was gone i curled up in the miner's lettuce and cried i hope that a bat or a crow or a raccoon or perhaps a sad little cat would join me none did no one ever did i returned to the house sobbing and screaming so loudly the earth should have broken apart because i was no hero i was only the oldest brother arrogant and selfish and unforgivably foolish the door to my mother's bedroom was open i thought of noah crawling into bed with her and trying to wake her and feed her just as i had and wept harder.

2:24:22I would crawl into bed with her, I decided. Crawl in and hug her, just as Wendy said Noah would do, and hold her until her eyes turned to jelly and her skin turned to foul liquid that drenched the bed. Maybe I would die too. When I entered, her bed was empty. I checked the floor, then with fear jumping in my guts under the bed and inside her closet, nothing but clothes that were far too big for her now and makeup she would never wear again. then i went to know his room half expecting to see that noah dragged her there that he wasn't in wendy's field of brothers after all just holding our mother in his room and crying neither of them were there either seized with an instinct i did not understand or analyze i bolted out of the house and out the back door i scanned the yard its sparse trees its familiar rocks its rolling slope all the way down to the miner's lettuce there in the deep golden twilight half hidden among the growing shadows was my mother next to her was noah tiny as ever and rubbing his eyes relief flooded me so overwhelming i nearly sank to my knees but i couldn't if i did i would never get up in time to catch them so i kept going dipping so low i almost fell and lumbering toward them it was like running in a dream no matter how hard i tried each step took an eternity then something long and thin unfolded in the miner's lettuce rising in a single boneless movement a terribly skinny girl with buttermilk skin and dry stiff hair my mother and oa looked at her and up the slope at me their eyes had changed they were bright and strange now shining in the falling dark like golden lens flares took another shambling step forward but Wendy turned to face me and shook her head.

2:26:09Then she took my mother by the hand and led her away. Out of the miners' lettuce and into the rolling hills beyond to their first cold, clear night of eternity. I stayed behind because I was the oldest brother, because my purpose was to pave the way, and because this was not my fairy tale. Oh. Oh, dude. Oh. Oh.

2:26:34Oh. it's fun transitional mode of like people passing away and like saying like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like the whole story. I mean, the, the fairytale motifs come up and he's kind of been earlier. Like I want this to be my story. This was supposed to be my success. And it's like at the end, he doesn't want, he's like, maybe this can bind them together, but he only wants that if he's a part of it and it worked, he made his brother and his mother into the same entity, his mother, who it seems was dead. He came to his mother's body and like force fed it. and it made them into the entity that Wendy was.

2:27:10And now they get to live that out, but it's without him. He was just a piece in the story. It was never his story. Yeah. And it's like, it goes to speak of like his own personal greed and the greed of like the spirit of the window being the nature of gluttony and greed and like all consuming and stuff. And he had that spirit, but it got away from him. He gave it to someone else. He won. He gave someone else the gift that he was so desperate to have that slipped through his fingers because he squeezed too tight. Yeah, I almost see it too. It's like him realizing that these people dying isn't about him.

2:27:45You know, like it's for them. It's not his tragedy. It's their story. Like their passing is their story. It isn't him. Like I think he kind of understands, I guess, how selfish he was by thinking how much this is affecting himself and all this stuff and how resentful he felt versus I guess just trying to be helpful or supportive in that time for their transitional stage, you know, for their story. Yeah. It's like, because he's so resentful, he almost, he doesn't hate his mother, but he like almost resents her for being so sick. What was that thing he made? He was like, uh, you're going to die anyway, or just cause you're dying doesn't mean he asked you or something like that.

2:28:28Like he, he resents the position he's in, but he hates his brother. He hates that his brother gets all the attention. He hates that his brother doesn't understand things. He refused. He refers to his brother derogatory when describing his mental illness, something his brother can't help. And like his brother dying is his problem. It's not his brother's problem, you know? Yeah. Well, I think it's just something to that. Like, if you look at it, selfishness. Yeah. If you look at it too, it feels like his brother even gets to share this illness thing with his mother, like even connected. Yeah. And even Wendy talks about her curse, you know, being like, I was cursed and stuff.

2:29:08My father cursed me. Wendy is very representative of Noah as well of, uh, like a sick father passing down something to that. It almost feels like the curse is representative of like illness or like, I don't know, some like genetic thing. It's almost like whenever it's like my mother died, I'm more prone to getting heart disease or all this other stuff that your family passes down, this hereditary thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's representative of they're all suffering, but at least the two of them get to share something. It's like he was almost jealous of his brother's condition because that's what led to his attention.

2:29:47That's what led to his mother coddling him all the time. it's like he wanted so it's like there was never an appreciation for what they're going through it was only how it affected him and in his inability to see that the gift he wanted slipped to them it passed on to them instead of him he was never the hero of the story many years later long after I'd grown I returned to the house it had fallen into disrepair and was up for auction for the third time my squat brooding castle now had a ruined roof haphazardly patched by cascades of dead leaves and abandoned bird nests and holes in the walls large enough to accommodate small cars inside cascades of dead leaves covered the floor crows lived in the kitchen and a family of raccoons had taken up residence in my old room that's also cool how there was like there's trees under your house and now the house has returned to the same forest that's seen like with the raccoons and the animals and stuff.

2:30:45Yeah. The window in my mother's room was shattered. Dirty glass glittered on the floor, shining dully like stars on a misty night. There was no furniture. Only a faded spray of graffiti across one wall. Noah's room was empty. It smelled like smoke. I wandered outside as twilight bled over the hills. The miner's lettuce was there. Green and lush as always. The burrow was not, but I didn't expect it to be. I sat down in the place it had been the touch of the cool damp green was so beautifully familiar that i cried even though it was windy and painfully cold i fell asleep to the oceanic rush of the wind through the dying leaves i woke long after nightfall on a cold clear night with blasts of icy wind that shook the trees when i opened my eyes i found myself staring at a deep dark hole wendy's burrow my breath caught and i pulled myself to a sitting position there was no mistaking it rich darkness broken only by the ghostly whiteness of pale roots its entrance half hidden in the miner's lettuce it was smaller than i remembered half my size maybe even less a bat dived low wings brushing my face as it darted past i reeled back heart pounding when i straightened up something blinked to life in the burrow pale yellow lens flares the color of summer moonlight something pale and small drifted out a tiny delicate hand so thin the moonlight poured through it illuminating the fine bones of dried tissue within smaller than wendy's hand had ever been so much smaller i took it though it looked cold and dead it burned as though with fever.

2:32:28Underneath the lens flare eyes, something glimmered dimly, a crescent of small teeth exposed in a smile. The hand let go and withdrew into the burrow. The eyes blinked once, twice, and were gone. Aching deeply, wanting to laugh and scream and burst into tears all at the same time, I'd lay down again and slept. Once upon a time, I was as... Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

2:33:07Okay.

2:33:11Okay. Once upon a time, I was a sad, angry boy who loved fairy tales. Now I am a sad, tired man who can no longer bear to read them, but I remember them. When I touch my face and feel my scarred cheeks, I remember when I wake with the taste of boiled ashes on my tongue. I remember when I think of my mother's cold bird, thin body in my arms. I remember when I see Noah's face in my mind's eye and recall the fear I had for him. Fear so deep and crushing that I pretended it was hate. I remember when I look in the mirror and catch a hint of murky gold in my eyes. I remember when I dream of trees, trees, crows, raccoons, and bats, and a smiling little boy and his yellow-eyed mother on cold, clear nights when bats swoop low and the moon bathes the hills in warm silver.

2:34:04I remember, and I smile. And that is the end. What a great story, man. Bro, when it dropped the once upon a time, dude, just set him up. You got Earl Giddy there, huh? throw up dude dude but it's going in the rafters it's going up it's up there with mother horse eyes it's him whatever else we've thrown up there pin pal stuff dude all right dopamine i also have a deed to a house you can have that one too with the car uh you're gonna my wife's car too she'll be mad but you can take it man bro just just it being what uh okay so i i still i think wendy is i i think it's wendigo imagery what a unique take on the wendigo mythos where it's like it's this entity that is possessed with itself like it's so given to greed and hatred that it becomes its own monster and it's like oh well the enemy's the forest i have to destroy it and i have to fight and fight forever and when i burn it all it'll be okay and it doesn't matter how many people i have to kill to do it and then it our our protagonist who wants to be the hero so bad realizes he has to release wendy but he doesn't realize he has to let go himself too the same golden glimmer that possessed wendy possesses him he still at the end of the story sees the glimmer in his eyes.

2:35:37That same greed that possessed her, the hate is in him. So while he successfully realizes it in her and kills her, he can't let go of it himself. And he tries to give it to his brother and his mother so that he can be with them forever because he can't let go. He had, like I said earlier, what gluttony is there more than immortality? He can't let it go. And because of that, they slipped through his fingers. And now he's just a man who remembers. He can't read fairy tales anymore but he remembers them just like wendy asked him to do it it it passed on he didn't eat the flesh but the spirit of what wendy was now possesses him it just didn't take effect he didn't get what he wanted out of it only the ugly parts right the story uh i definitely feel like i like the story more than the hoarder story feels very concise very like very thorough I do think at the end how gruesomely detailed and how disgusting it is finding the dead mom's body I think that was like visceral and I mean like grotesque almost wonder like there's a couple like a couple thoughts I have is wish there was more interaction between the protagonist and his mom a little bit that was really gut punchy really hard to have that weird back and forth and I feel like which I do think that like the idea is that he says that horrible thing and then he doesn't really, we don't see him interact with his mom until she's dead.

2:37:09So it's kind of like the last thing you kind of say is that horrible thing. I still think it would have been fun to kind of talk with the mom and play with that a bit. But I think like even just that disgusting imagery, we saw a little of that in the hoarder saying with the, the tripophobia kind of vibe and you know, like the fucking like wormy snake in his heel really gross. dopamine has a really great way of like just hitting you across the face with like some very like just i mean like gut turning like i was pretty fucking i mean like my stomach was turning whenever he was talking like sitting next to his mom and like obviously stuff it was it was you know it's brutal i think i would have liked to see more of that too of like just that decay i guess with the mom and feeling more of that but really all in all just such a beautiful beautiful story about dealing with loss dealing with loss sickness and death and stuff and like kind of the idea of things passing you know while we were reading this it made me think about like my grandfather who died back in like uh god seven years ago now uh it's weird because sometimes it's fucked up that like you have these memories of them you know and you're like all these good these good memories but it's weird like it's it's like sometimes i like almost forget what my grandpa's voice sounds like when i like to know that i like have an idea of what it is in my head but i think about that sometimes if like i really miss like when i would call my grandpa just the way that he would say hello on the phone and stuff and it's like just just kind of fucking tears your heart out a bit you know what i mean like it's like just a very very easy thing like it's something that you would be like i'll never forget that because it's so important but it's so easy to let your mind circulate or like just that your mind goes through and that while you're bringing in new memories the other ones get pushed out so i don't know there was that that to me was um probably the most effective part of memories coming back and forth was cool like i'm afraid of being forgotten it's like it's like it's like the spirit of what wendy is is carried on through memory like well if i eat you i'll remember you it's like well when my brothers died i had to eat them or else I'd forget them, you know?

2:39:22And it's also so interesting how like the entire time Wendy was grooming the protagonist to this situation where he would eat his brother, even at the end where it's like, well, your brother eats you. And he's like, that's not fair. I want to be the one that's powerful. She's like, or you could eat him. And it almost works. But then he has that realization that stabs Wendy and she has to be released. But it ultimately does like play out because he feeds her and himself to his brother and mother to make sure they eat something alive so it's like the entire story was her trying to convince him to give it to like misery loves company right she wants to pull him into her hatred so that she's stuck there she's just like him and then ultimately that is what happens to his mother and brother he pushes that hate onto them or that immortality uh but doesn't get himself it's the curse he wanted to have he didn't mean for it to go somewhere else yeah the uh that would have been that would have been fun to in the story i think that was like another thing i was thinking about was that proposition that scared the shit out of me that proposition uh is very interesting i would have loved to see him mull that over i think for a while just like i like have that kind of decision final argument he doesn't that final argument where it's yeah but i think it needs to be something that's like it takes yeah i mean i think it's i think i would have liked more i think of that i could think of like leave, like let you leave with that.

2:40:47And then it's like, kind of like, well, I returned back to my space and now I'm like looking at everything differently. And I'm like looking at my brother in a different light, just that kind of selfish nature to where I think he has to work through it more and earn that kind of like selfless, uh, selfless take, you know, which once again, this is just, you know, food for thought hindsight after reading things or whatever, but that would have been fun. There's, there's just a lot of great things about this. And I think that like, it's always fun to, you know, with these character pieces, this is also two, two great stories with a lot of great characters.

2:41:25Just being able to like, we lived with these characters for so long that you just kind of like, just want more of them. You know, it's like a kind of a similar thing we have in a lot of our episodes. It's like with these good stories is just wanting more from some of the stuff just to kind of exist in the world with those characters for a bit longer. But this was awesome. I mean, this was a great one. And Dopa Bean, I think, really has... I mean, also, too, Dopa Bean writes so much. I don't know if you've noticed that. Yeah, I have an announcement I just discovered about that in a second. But I have one more question about the story before we get to that.

2:41:59What did you think of the feathered man at the end with the eyes, the thousands of eyes?

2:42:07I think it's representative of the forest, what she thinks her father is, like a greater spirit in it. because it's very it's clear to me that a lot of what's happening is in the spiritual realm because sometimes he looks at the skulls and they're just skulls sometimes he looks and they're the grown heads right yeah um so it's like there's it's like almost a limbo between the real world and the the spiritual so i think he's like the essence of the forest the monster she was afraid of but he's not really a monster he's more of a keeper that she has pinned her fear her whores on is there one minute i pictured i pictured it more as her brother i think that in the head what i thought was the thousands of eyes in the forest yeah that tracks with her with her with all his buddies but to me what was interesting is that we only ever get to interact with him in this peaceful way whenever she's not there to where i think even her siblings understand that she is lost a bit like i don't i don't think that they fully at least to me i don't think that they fully buy in to what she's selling or whatever and i think like that's also why they like say run i think that they're a product of her selfishness i think is the big thing yeah that would track i could see that and that's also why at the end whenever they leave or whatever whenever his family leaves i don't know if it's i don't know how good of an ending like i don't know i guess i mean like i don't know how much of a positive ending it is versus like if he would have let them just slip on would they have like because now they exist in there like now wendy is there like revealing herself again she shakes her head and like they go in there and now even when he goes back years later noah is smiling and he like reaches for him before he slips back into the forest like it's a thing where i don't i don't know how i don't know how positive i'm supposed to feel about it i guess i'm curious what people think but it's one of those things where would it have been better just to let them go naturally you know versus this whole this other thing of trying to find a way to save them kind of like a pet cemetery meme or whatever yeah sometimes dead's better that kind of that that is what a lot of it felt like pet cemetery or like uh the reference somebody earlier core line how like the kids go down the well and then the bell the mother like keeps a collection of them and treats everyone like oh you're my favorite you're the first but it's just to add to the collection is very similar to that um man this is so good okay so i while looking it up i should have done this on the previous story my apologies for not doing it now so dopamine's actual name is rc bowman uh and she is a published writer with a ton of stories.

2:44:57So if you go on, we'll leave a link to it in the description. If you go on Amazon, she has a ton of paperbacks you can buy. It seems like there is one that is an entire book about the short story we read about cleaning hoarder houses. It's called Hoarder House, a horror novella. But there's other ones called The Monsters We Forgot, The Monsters We Lo... or what monsters do for love, uh, wondrous blood, pearly gates, the wish doctor, a bunch of stuff. So we'll leave that link in the description. Yeah. RC Bowman, true name for dopamine. Um, I've been blown away, especially by this work, but two incredible works and they write a ton.

2:45:39So you will be seeing more of them in the future and please support them. They certainly deserve it. Yeah. If you, if you've enjoyed this, these past two stories, please support the author and go in on Amazon and pick up some stories to read for yourself. And you know, anything like that, I think always just supports the author in a great way and just shows that our community cares and, you know, that we support these people and the kind of creative work that they're doing. Just want to, as always, give a shout out to the audio listeners over on Spotify and Apple podcasts and anywhere that we're listening to it.

2:46:08Thank you so much for listening to us and giving us a nice review over there. Also to our patrons who support this channel and some of the other ventures that we're doing right now. And as always too, be sure to check Check out the X1 Entertainment link that we have below for the tour for the Halloween charity show. If you want to support that, feel free and have a fun Halloween with us and get to support some charity, some donation stuff. So otherwise than that, guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us. We will see you next week. Bye bye. Yeah, it's just really good. So.

2:46:47Yeah. thank you for watching bye

2:46:55you

2:47:18Thank you.