On the Other Side of the Building / Coupons

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. There are two stories in this episode, and the first one is called on the Other Side of the Building, and then our feature story coupons. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. One of my co workers had gotten away with another prank and everyone was laughing, but it wasn't anything serious. A toy fake mouse had been left on my desk and no, I don't mean the computer kind, I screamed, just as my manager was coming through the door, and she chuckled with some co workers not knowing whether to laugh or not in front of her. She knew what was going on right away because it hadn't been the first time. It was normal around her off it would make jokes about anything and everything, and part of it came with the job. We wrote for different publications and we used to find ourselves getting distracted often. It wasn't the most exciting job. After work, my manager called me into her office to talk about a project we were working on, when at the end she asked if everything was all right if I considered myself an anxious person. I didn't know how to answer it, obviously, and she had seen me freak out over every prank under the sun. I didn't want to be the one person that she felt she needed to protect or whatever, so I simply told her that I would get startled easily, only because I wasn't expecting stuff like that at the workplace. I didn't mean for it to sound like a complaint, but I guess now I was a complainer. She sighed and agreed with me, and then asked me if there was anything she could do. Eventually, we changed the topic. I went back to talking about the project, and eventually I left her office with lots of stuff to process. I had been afraid of so many things all of my life. When I was younger, i'd avoid going out to the yard to clean after my dog because I was afraid of the tree. It was large and likely dead, and my brother told me that he had seen a witch coming out of it when he got home from school. The habit never left me. I would check the back seat of my car before getting in, and I would dread having to walk along the parking structure on my way back to the car. When I would stay late at work, the elevator would creak and it would always be empty, but the few other cars scattered across the enormous concrete floor. For some reason, I thought it would be worse if another soul would be up there with me, But the habits continued. I thought back on the bathtub woman, the ghost that lived in the bathtub, which was why we were never supposed to keep the shower curtains shut. I know I was to stop mold from growing on it. And even though no one else told me about the bathtub woman, I grew up thinking that she was the reason why Mom was so strict about those curtains. But I was not going to be scared anymore. There was one way I could prove it to myself. My apartment building was on the other side of town, not the best area, but also not the worst. It was a tall building and made of bricks, likely built before my parents were born, and the hallways showed it. There was a section of it where the shoot for the trash was That was at the end of the hall by the fire escape. I used to bring the bag of trash with me all the way down the stairs, though, just to avoid going to that area. It was justified. I had a good reason this time, and I didn't want to go there, but I needed this one for me. I wanted to stop being afraid of everything. The last time I was there, I swear I had seen him. The little boy from the eighth floor, as the maintenance man used to call him, just another prank, I used to tell myself until I saw him. He was coming out from the apartment doors from a unit that has been under maintenance for years before I ever moved in. I didn't talk much to my neighbors, so there would be no way of knowing exactly how long. The place was easy to spot. The doors had been kicked in at one point and had a large gash on the side of the doorknob. The little boy stepped out with even footsteps, not slowing down and not speeding up. I stood at the end of the hallway, a black, dripping trash bag in my hand about to burst. Eye were fixed on this little boy, looking to be about five or six years old, and walking straight toward the door across from the broken one. Despite him looking like a regular kid, there was something dead about him. His arms as he walked across the hallway simply dangled by his sides, and his legs seemed to walk in front of him before he stopped. I stood there, frozen as he smiled at the wall, and from the side I could see his many teeth going almost all the way to his ears. His head began to turn toward me, and I lost it. I dropped the bag and turned the corner and back to my side of the building. I locked the door behind me, my heart beating faster than ever before. I felt sweat dripping to my eyes as I searched my pockets for my phone, but couldn't seem to find it. I didn't know who I was going to call, and yet I felt unsafe without it. I pressed my hand against my chest as I leaned to the door, looking up at the counter of my kitchen. I had never seen that part of my apartment before. That's when I heard my cell phone ring from the hallway. It was right outside. I opened the door, trying to quickly reach my hand through the gap and bring it back inside with me. The door creaked open, and the raintne became louder. It was right there. I must have dropped it when I reached for my keys to get through the door. Reliving those moments made me doubt myself and what I was about to do. But I had this trash bag in my hand, and I was going to make it to the other side of the building this time. The floor creaked below me. As soon as I got past the staircase and into the other side, I saw the fire escape at the end of the hall and the flickering light in the middle. The walls were thick with layers of wallpaper, some with flowers and some with stripes, and every single one of them was faded. It took a step closer to the door on the wall, the shoot where the trash goes, and I nearly changed my mind before I got to the second door. I had never met any neighbors or had ever seen this area occupied. I made a mental note to ask the maintenance man about it next time I saw him. Up Ahead was a door with a gash by the door knob, and I picked up my steps as I passed another door before getting to the slot where you put your trash bags. I opened it, dropped it, and closed it shut. It didn't take long before I heard a whistling hum climbing up the chute. It echoed and vibrated with a haunting, burying itself deeply inside my head. I was shaking now and ran to the end of the hallway. And this had been a mistake. I froze in place when I heard a door open from that side of the building. I couldn't help it and turned around to see a father and his son walk out of the door and toward the little door on the wall where the trash goes. The father opened it and the son dropped a bag of trash on it, and the slot clothed shut. I heard that haunting echo once again. Climbing up the chute, the man looked toward me, he waved and opened his door, smiling. I could see the teeth up to his ears. So that's what the garbage shoots sounded like. Relieved, I turned around again and smiled to myself. I had to stop being afraid of everything. I met the maintenance man by the front door, and I asked him about the hum casually mentioned me that I finally met some neighbors, and that's when I learned that there were no tenants living on that side of the building. Made sense, because there was something dead about them too, coupons. I looked at my phone once again three am. The conversations ran in my head like little hamsters inside of plastic ball in every direction, getting nowhere at all. She told me I was too stubborn, that I would never understand her. That she was glad I was getting what I deserved, But who in the right mind would wish such things to another. She was the one that stopped. She was the one that told me that maybe we should spend some time apart. I thought of the thoughts. At one in the morning, not quite as bad, but also not better. The moon barely visible on the corner of my window now, I thought it was impossible for it to get through those trees. By four in the morning, it was gone, and by five it had been scared away completely, the sky now turning a light shade of purple. Another clear day outside and another dark one inside my apartment. I don't know how many days passed exactly. My friend said that it was a couple of weeks, but I just remember telling myself that it was enough to get fired, and enough to earn a record breaking twelve phone calls missed ones on my phone. I got back to those who mattered via message. Though I'm not a psychopath. The kitchen counter was lined with empty cans. One of my favorite comfort foods that had somehow turned into a sour tasting gravy and a metallic cranberry sauce. No chicken, no turkey, no beef. There was no time to waste lighting up the stove because I still hadn't cleaned out the kitchen sink. It had been a long time since then, and yet I can somehow still remember every single detail of those nights, every single one of those phone calls. Thank you for calling Oiger Foods. May I get your name? They asked me, Sir, this as kind of gravy was sour? I paused awkwardly. The kind man on the other end apologized and asked me for a number on the can. If I couldn't tell the cans apart anymore, how was I supposed to be able to decipher a number written in blue dots? Give me one second, I said. I looked at the phone, twirling its cable through my fingers, and then I pressed a button on the holder. But then the kind man called back. I was looking at the mess I had made last week, thinking of ways to get rid of the dark hair now growing through the tiny doors under the sink. Hello, sir, it looks like we have gotten disconnected. Can you please tell me your address? Why would the warm hand dress? Who was this guy? And why did he want to know where I was? After a long pause, I simply told him that I had to go. Or disappointed whispers in the background, as if they knew something that was impossible. Coupons, I thought to myself, he wanted my address to send me coupons to try some more of their products. Just the thought of the paper with the barcodes that you couldn't even bend before the cashier at the register would tell you that they weren't accepting them because you had cut them right at the black dotted line, or that you couldn't see the expiration date on it, or that it wasn't that specific kind of sauce you were buying. Had enough of those coupons, the same ones that Kathy brought along after every single visit to the grocery store or the mall or the mailbox, the same ones she bothered me about whenever I forgot them. It reminded me of the way she used to ask me to get the carrots that were somehow always wrong, too dead, or too twisted for her taste. Sounded a lot like. The phone rang once again, I would let it go to the answering machine. Now I was tired of holding that phone up to my ear. My arms had been sore from the blunt knife. Have you tried to cut meat with one of those? Have you tilted downwards or cut with the backside of it? It was supposed to work, but I gave up, and in a rage, I simply broke the bones in half. The blood dripped through the base of the doors, beneath the sink, all on the corner, and it dripped for only a little while before it became sticky and easier to handle. I grabbed the open cans and placed them carefully to catch the viscous streams. Nineteen cans and more to go. It was tough to empty them. I couldn't eat the contents fast enough. Before I knew it, the liquid stopped dripping. Hello, sir, I would like to send you some samples and our sincerest apologies. The answering machine played back, stopping right at this part. It would appreciate a call at your earliest convenience. I forgot when nightfall came, but it did, and once again I expected Kathy to come through that door, bogging for something I had forgotten to clean. Sure of what I would tell her, but sure that I would be able to get away with it now, if I could only get some sleep. Eight at night and nothing to do. Once again looked out the window to look for the moon, but it wasn't there. The phone kept ringing, and the answering machine kept beeping, and I thought of disconnecting it too. A wave of emotions ran over me, desperately looking for that moon, the same one that had been a part of that window for enough time to get me fired. But now it was no longer there, and that phone wouldn't stop. The rings came and they left, like the thoughts of Kathy and the way she screamed, the way she told me that I deserved to get sick and that I should have gotten help earlier. And then she had the audacity to tell me to go through the grocery store for her. Oh, I would get those cans she needed for dinner, all right. Then I would put her inside of them. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kobar Rubez. For story ideas or suggestion, send me an email at Hello at scarystorypodcast dot com, or find my contact information over on the website. 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