New Fears 2: Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

“GRIDLOST” -- EPISODE 22 MAY 3 2018

Proposed Title: “Leaving the Light Behind”

Intro Script

Good morning, afternoon or evening, everybody, whenever you’re listening. I’m your host Ian Dossimer and welcome to another episode of “GridLost”, the podcast where we interview the new pioneers of the 21st century, people looking for ways to build themselves a space of privacy and safety in an increasingly technology-polluted world. We’ve got something of exceptional interest today, so I hope everybody has time to sit down and listen straight through, because, I can promise you, this story isn’t like anything you’ve heard on “GridLost” before. It isn’t like anything we’ve done on “GridLost” before.

The first and most important thing I have to tell you today is about our guest. Because her name is... not something we know, in fact. That’s right, for the first time in our show’s history we’re conducting an anonymous interview. The only contact information I have for this woman is an Internet forum handle and a phone number that I was assured belongs to a burner phone she plans to discard pretty much the moment she hangs up on us. Some of our more devoted fans may recognize this handle if they frequent the right websites: she goes by the alias “Harmony6893”, and she’s posted on Prepperforums.net and Survivalistboards.com, among others.

If you do recognize that alias, you’ll also probably know why this is something of a coup for us: unlike a lot of our subjects, Harmony6893 hasn’t just disconnected from the central North American power network, she has (so she claims) completely abandoned the use of any kind of electrical technology or telecommunications device. She has no cable, no Wi-Fi, no smartphone, no solar panels, batteries or wind turbines, not even an emergency generator—in fact, she only posts to the Net every two weeks when she visits a not-exactly-nearby town to use their Internet cafe. More controversially, some say dangerously, she’s doing this all completely alone; she has no family or housemates in her property, wherever it is. If there is an ultimate off-the-grid story, this woman is it.

The next thing I have to warn you about is the nature of Harmony6893’s story. As you’ll know from our other episodes, the reasons people choose to unplug are as varied as the people themselves. Some want to recapture a childhood that modern technology is destroying, some are preparing for an EMP attack or any of half a dozen other kinds of disaster, some want to help bring about political decentralization by creating the infrastructure for social decentralization. But in my first phone call, when I asked Harmony6893 to explain the reasons for her self-imposed isolation, she told me that it wasn’t any of that. Rather it was something utterly unique to her, something she was utterly sure nobody else would understand or believe. And after listening to what she has to say… well, I’m not sure she’s wrong. But I do think it’s something that our listeners deserve the chance to make up their own minds about.

Harmony is, in fact, so cautious that during our interview, she was obviously using some sort of commercial sound distorter on her phone to disguise her voice—just to explain why it sounds so odd. Please don’t blame our tech guys! Without further ado, then, let us introduce you… to Harmony6893.

harmony-interview-apr-18.mp3

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Q: I. DOSSIMER, “GRIDLOST”, 2018-04-18

A: “HARMONY6893”

Q: I want to thank you again for being willing to take the time to do this.

A: (PAUSE) “Willing” might be a strong word. “Attack of conscience” is probably more accurate.

Q: Well, that sounds ominous.

A: If you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m hanging up.

Q: No, yes, of course, you’re right, I do apologize. Let’s begin with the standard introduction: So… you’re currently known only as Harmony6893 on a number of Internet forums.

A: You already know that.

Q: And your real name is…?

A: None of your business.

Q: Well, that creates just a bit of a problem for us, especially in terms of, you know, fact-checking whatever it is you’re going to—

A: Mmm-hmh, yeah, I don’t care. If that’s some kind of deal-breaker for you, then I guess we’re…

Q: No, no, it’s okay, it’s all right! How would you prefer we refer to you, then?

A: Um. (PAUSES) Bronwyn, that’s always been a name I liked. Call me that.

Q: All right, Bronwyn. How long have you been off the grid, at this point?

A: Almost a year and four months. Since January of last year.

Q: And you’ve gone completely non-technological? Like, back to the nineteenth century?

A: Hardly. When I need to buy tools and supplies, I buy modern machine-shop versions. I don’t hand-carve my own butter churns. (BEAT) But I do have a butter churn. (CHUCKLES) That’s one of the reasons I started posting to prepper sites in the first place—I had to learn a lot of the old techniques just to stay afloat, and people in the survivalist community put big value on skill-sharing.

Q: And yet you also live completely by yourself as well, we hear. One thing a lot of our other interviewees have said is that total isolation is actually dangerous—not just in case you find yourself hurt and without help, but because humans aren’t really meant to live that way. Community’s a key part of sanity. Why forgo it?

A: (PAUSE) I’d have to call that a matter of conscience as well.

Q: Meaning you don’t want to tell us? It’s all right if you don’t. We always respect the defined spaces of our guests’ privacy.

A: No, I’m going to tell you. It’s just that explaining it is going to take a while. And enough of your listeners are going to think I’m a psycho by the end of this anyway.

Q: You might be surprised. We’re pretty open-minded around here.

A: We’ll see.

(PAUSE)

Q: So we may as well start from the beginning. Had you always been interested in disconnection as a lifestyle, or was it a sudden change?

A: You could call it “sudden”.

(BEAT)

A: The truth is, up until last January, you would probably have pegged me as the last person you’d have imagined doing this. I was a stockbroker—or, as I liked to tell people I thought would think it was charming, I tricked suckers into throwing away their money trying to cheat the system out of more for a living. I was one of those people you see power walking along Bay Street with a Bluetooth in her ear and her nose in her smartphone, checking on Bloomberg and the TSE{The references to “Bay Street” and the “TSE” make it likely that Harmony/Bronwyn is Canadian, specifically from Toronto, Ontario; “TSE” in context almost certainly stands for the Toronto Stock Exchange, and Bay Street runs through the downtown finance core of the city, making it the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street in Manhattan.} for the latest buying and selling movements. That’s how it all started, in fact—I got a promotion and a pay raise that meant I’d finally be able to live downtown on my own salary, so I started looking around for a condo within walking distance of my office. And in December, I thought I’d finally found it.

It wasn’t a new unit, just a one-bedroom plus den job belonging to a guy who flew back and forth every week between Hong Kong and… and where I used to live, so when his job suddenly changed and he didn’t need to be there any more, he was more interested in unloading it fast than in gauging potential buyers. Not a lot of room, but all the space I needed for my office, plus a lot of shelving and a really nice northern view with lots of natural light. And there was this beautiful line of track-lighting in the main room, one of the best I’d ever seen—bright bulbs, understated fixtures, on a dimmer switch. I remember looking up at it while the realtor was nattering on and thinking, “Wow, that’s really nice.”

Q: So what you’re saying is, it was really nice.

A: Yeah, well, I think ultimately, that lighting might’ve been the primary reason I agreed to buy the place. So I go through all the paperwork, wait for buddy to move out and head back to Hong Kong, and I move in three weeks later and… the lighting is gone. He took it with him.

Q: You mean he actually removed the entire fixture? Not just took out the bulbs?

A: Yeah, that’s what I mean. There wasn’t anything left in the ceiling except this S-shaped row of plastic nodules where it must have been attached. I don’t mind telling you I was really pissed off about that, especially when the realtor said she couldn’t do anything—if the guy put it in he had the right to take it out.

Q: Was this some kind of unique hand-made brand or something? I wouldn’t think it’d be that impossible to replace a set of lights.

A: You wouldn’t, right? But no. I mean… getting a new track and bulbs wasn’t the problem—didn’t look exactly like what’d been there before, but at this point, I was willing to settle. The problem was when I got the lighting tech in to hook everything up, and he just couldn’t get it to work.

Q: How do you mean?

A: I mean he couldn’t get a current out of any of the wires running into those sockets. And even weirder? He couldn’t even find the goddam switch that worked that particular fixture. The dimmer and all that shit? Well, my realtor couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be, and neither I nor the lighting guy could find anything like it. Sure, there was a switch inside the door for the hall light, one for the kitchen—guy-o didn’t take that. A switch inside the john, for the vanity lights above the sink. But no switches anywhere else except right next to the en-suite washer-dryer unit built-in, and you know what that turned out to run?

Q: The washer-dryer?

A: Got it in one.

Q: Okay, I admit it, that’s a little weird… You’re sure you saw these lights actually working when you were first looking at the apartment? When the realtor was there?

A: Yes, for fuck’s sake.

Q: Uh, we’d really rather you didn’t—

A: Whatever. (ANOTHER PAUSE) And then I went downstairs, talked to the concierge, wanted to know what the lighting set-up was in all the other apartments with the same layout—they wouldn’t tell me. Cited privacy, can you believe that? So I tell them what’s happened, and how I just want to figure out how to put in lights that’ll turn on so I don’t have to light the whole place with floor lamps, and they’re like: well, we can’t help, can’t even get in touch with the Hong Kong dude because he changed his phone number and it turns out they never even had his email. And my mortgage agreement says I’m the one who’s basically responsible for everything that happens inside my walls, anyhow.

Q: So it was the, um… annoying, frustrating, no doubt expensive unreliability of this system which prompted your eventual… lifestyle change?

A: No. Not that.

(ANOTHER, LONGER PAUSE)

Have you ever thought—I mean, I guess you kind of must have, considering this show you run—but have you ever really thought, like in detail, about just how much we all rely on things these days that almost none of us actually understand?

Q: You mean, technologically? Like—

A: Yeah, that too, of course. But… not just that.

Q: Well, a lot of the people we interview do make a big deal out of how much we take for granted. How our whole society runs on these… tides of energy going back and forth: electricity, cellular signals, microwaves. Invisible presences that we all work with constantly, and only a tiny minority of people actually know how to build, or control, or fix. I remember one bloke talking about how he’d taught himself practical electrician’s skills as part of getting his lodge set up, and he did some handyman work for his friends and neighbours in the meantime; what always amazed him, he said, was how mind-boggled everybody he helped was. “It really was like I was some kind of wizard or magician,” he told me. “Wave my screwdriver, say stuff that made no sense, then everything works again. I mean, it felt good, but it was also kind of unnerving, you know?”

A: Wow, it’s like you do this for a living. Though I guess it’s probably not much of one, right?

Q: Well, we get to do what we enjoy; most of us think that’s worth the trade-off.

A: Yeah. Well, my way of dealing with stuff like that was always to pay other people, like your friend, to do it for me. As it happened, I was dating a guy at the time, who was—lucky for me—both an engineering student and not a dickhead, surprisingly. It was early days, we’d met in a club and liked each other, I brought him home, and he looked around and said, “Why do you have all these floor lamps?” So I told him the story, or a truncated version thereof, and he said, “Oh, I can fix that for you.” I didn’t say, I doubt it, largely because I still wanted to sleep with him, but his pitch was that he’d had a light meter at home, which he’d used before for similar things, so it would be cheap and we could enjoy each other’s company while he did it.

Q: He was well fit I take it?

A: Very. Very… well fit. (PAUSE) So a couple of days later, he comes over to my place and I buzz him in. He’s got his toolbox with him, and a vest on with all these pockets where you can stick things, like he’s dressed to go into battle, and he’s got what look like bandoliers of shotgun shells slung across his chest. They weren’t, obviously; they were batteries and light bulbs, all the different kinds he thought he’d be likely to need. I say, “Great,” show him the empty fixture sockets, the light switch and where everything is, including the fuse box, and he gets to work.

Well, he can’t get anything out of the wires either, any more than the other guy did. I’m standing by this stepladder he also brought holding the light meter up over my head, and he keeps asking me, “Did you see it jump? Is it jumping now?” to which I just kept saying, “Nope.” I honestly thought the meter was broken, and for a minute so did he, until he tested it with one of the floor lamps and proved that it wasn’t. Then he gets into the fuse box, and manages to turn everything else in the apartment on and off at least once, but still can’t find anything that looks like a working light circuit in the ceiling outside the kitchen and the front hallway. And he’s like, “Well, that’s weird.” And it was weird. To be frank, it was kind of starting to freak me out at this point, and I was perfectly willing to tell him to stop. But you know how guys get; he had this look on his face like he was taking it personally. Like “This is pissing me off, and I’m gonna beat it.”

So he took the light meter from me—he was a tall guy—and he stuck it right up near the ceiling, maybe ten centimetres{Four inches.} away, started going back and forth across the ceiling from the fixture, doing this sort of—like he was sweeping a field for mines, you know? Or using a metal detector to look for treasure, and I was like, Oh, this is ridiculous. But eventually, he was almost to the main window, and he was making a sweep to his left, and suddenly… the pointer on the meter twitched. He stops, says: “Look at this!” Further he went towards the corner, meanwhile, the more reaction he got, until finally it was reading as though there was an active socket there.

Q: But there couldn’t have been, was there? Or you’d have seen it.

A: Correct. There wasn’t even a power point. I never even put a floor lamp in that corner.

Q: Why not?

A: Because… I didn’t like that corner. It was always cold there. I mean, it was always going to be a little cold, because it was winter; plus, an additional downside to floor-to-ceiling windows that slide open is that if you want to be able to open them you can’t caulk them up. But this was—colder. Off-puttingly so. So I just avoided putting anything in there, because I didn’t want to be there.

Q: What was it like in summer?

A: I never made it to summer. (PAUSE) So he asks me, “Was there ever a fixture here?” and I tell him I have no idea. And he looked at me and I looked at him, and then he said, “I’m gonna try something.” Gave me the light meter, and took out one of the light bulbs by the—what do you call the metal part on the bottom, the part that screws in?

Q: That’s the cap.

A: Right, yeah. So he held it by the cap, just this standard 100-watt incandescent, and lifted it up closer and closer to the ceiling… and as he got further and further up, the filament began to glow, and then, suddenly, it turned on. Full brightness. It was… it was horrible. Unnatural. I mean, anything unnatural is horrible, right? Like a preaching dog or a singing rose, that kind of shit? Somebody said that.{Arthur Machen, in the prologue to “The White People.” Paraphrased.}

Q: I guess. And, uh, your boyfriend—how did he react?

A: Oh, he was delighted. Very impressed with himself. He started to laugh. He had his arm straight out at shoulder height, and he was moving it all around watching the light brighten and dim, like it was the coolest toy in the world. It must have been really hot, but he didn’t seem to notice; maybe he had calluses on his fingers. And then, basically just by accident, he brushed the wall with the metal base of the bulb—and it stuck there. Like, it actually pulled out of his fingers and stayed behind on the wall, sticking right out like a, I don’t know, like a fucking tumour or something. A fucking glowing tumour.

And he shook his hand, fingers snapping like he’d just figured out how close he’d come to almost burning them, and he goes: “Whoo! That was something!” Me, I just stand there with my mouth open, not knowing what the hell to say. But then he’s peering closer at it, until finally I can’t stand it any more, and I just tell him, “Pull it off. I don’t want it there.” He starts going on about how there must be something magnetized in the wall, and this is a complete cock-up that I could probably sue the building over, and I say, “I don’t care, I want you to get it off my wall, please!” So because he’d have to grab it by the hot part of the bulb this time, he put on a pair of work gloves and took hold of it— very gently—and starts trying to pull it off the wall.

And it won’t come off.

Q: Was he right? Had something been magnetized in the walls?

A: I have no fucking idea, but I really don’t think so. Anyway, he’s like, “I don’t know what to do at this point, I don’t want to break it,” and I’m like, “Break it, man!” So he tries to pull it from the cap this time, hauling on it harder and harder, and then he slips a little and the bulb slides up the wall, and we both suddenly realize he can move it upwards. Towards where the reading is coming from.

Q: The cold spot.

A: Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but—that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

Q: Like in a haunted house?

A: You tell me. (PAUSE) So he keeps pushing it up the wall, closer and closer to the cold spot—the “source”, he’s calling it—and it gets brighter and brighter. And I didn’t really realize this at first, but it was as if, while the bulb was getting brighter, the rest of the apartment seemed to be getting… dimmer. Like it was about to flicker; I’d seen that before, plenty of times. Normal stuff. Even brand new, very expensive condos have power fluctuations.

Q: Well, if the bulb was that bright, it would have made everything else look dim, wouldn’t it?

A: Exactly. Brighter, and brighter, and then—it popped. Not just burnt out, I mean the whole bulb actually exploded, and it was only because my guy already had one hand up shielding his eyes against the light that he didn’t get hurt. And we both jump back, and we’re left with nothing except the cap and a little jagged rim of broken glass around it stuck almost right in the top corner of my ceiling. And we look at each other, and I tell him, “Okay, I think we’re done with this tonight,” and I go to get the broom and dustpan and start sweeping up the broken glass off my lovingly installed hardwood floors.

But, you know, there’s gotta be more to it. So he takes out the highest-wattage bulb he has—spotlight-quality halogen, it looks like—puts on a pair of fricking polarized safety glasses, for fuck’s sake, and says: “Let me just try one more thing.” Well, how was I gonna stop him? He holds up the bulb, pointing it away from me, and the same thing happens as he lifts it closer and closer to the cold spot: Filament starts glowing, ramps up as he lifts, until the cone of light it’s throwing is so bright the colours on that side of the apartment look almost completely washed out. And I turn away, shielding my face, which is the only reason I see it happening.

Q: See… what happening?

A: How every other bulb in the place really is dimming down now, very visibly: kitchen, hallway, bathroom—and before you ask, this isn’t just my vision adjusting to one bright light source, I can see them browning out. And it’s getting colder in the place, too, like the window and front door have both been thrown open and a cross breeze is sucking out all the heat. Except everything’s still closed. And then Joe—my… my friend—I hear him yelp, like the sound you’d make if somebody startled you by slapping your hand. He staggers back from the corner, and he’s just staring at the bulb hovering there, and the look on his face is finally about as freaked out as I’ve been for the last fifteen minutes. So I hurry over to him, asking what’s wrong, and he pulls me almost right against the window so I can see what he’s seeing.

The bulb isn’t stuck to the wall. It’s floating there right in mid-fucking-air. And smoke is curling and hissing off the plaster overhead, except the stain spilling across it isn’t black, it’s… “white” isn’t strong enough. It was like someone photographed a heat-scorch and then flipped it into negative, so black becomes white, except it’s this blinding purplish-UV glow that—I can’t describe it; staring at it hurt, like someone was squeezing my eyeballs, like the world’s worst case of glaucoma, and after a second I had to hunch over with my palms in my eye sockets. But Joe, he’s got his glasses on so I guess it wasn’t hurting him to look at, and he was just staring up at it, his mouth open a little, almost smiling—like he was so amazed, he was happy. Like he was seeing God.

Then, under the sizzling sound of my ceiling cooking, there’s this rippling wave of sharp cracking, banging sounds, and the plaster splits open all around the bulb, shooting out in all directions from the corner—along the ceiling, down the wall, towards the windows. And more glowing shit spills out through all these cracks, except this isn’t light or smoke or fire; it’s more like…

Ever seen one of those phosphorescent jellyfish they have in aquariums? Like the wall at Ripley’s Aquarium, the one they shot part of The Handmaid’s Tale pilot episode in front of? They’re all made of, um, goo, right, even the biggest ones… transparent, like slime, or mucus that isn’t infected. Invisible, really. Until you shine a light behind them.

(PAUSE) I’ll assume you have. Anyway, imagine that, but with the wall’s brightness amped up to eleven, almost as hard to look at as the bulb itself. And I can’t even see the bulb, any more, only the place in the corner where the light is brightest. And this horrid blinding incandescent shit coming in through the cracks, that fizzling, spitting sparkler of a fissure between here and—somewhere else starts… weaving itself out in all directions, dropping these wet viscous tendrils onto the floor, throwing them out at the walls like the support lines on a spider web. Oh God, and just the way it sounded made me want to puke, and the smell was like ozone and rotten seaweed and rancid fat. But even while it’s doing all this—making itself manifest like somebody fucking cutting themselves apart so their entrails fall out, or whatever—it’s still cycling through every colour you can think of, and it’s fucking beautiful, like staring into a ten-foot-tall kaleidoscope.

The bell forms, then filaments, then tentacles. Mucus and spines spread all over Joe, cocooning him—he’s up to his waist in this swamp of oozing, spiny tendrils, and I’m standing in a puddle of oil-slick glowing crap that’s inching its way up my ankles, like I’m sinking into the floor. If I hadn’t already had the broom in my hand I really don’t think I would have gotten out of there, but thank Christ, I did.

I don’t even remember being angry, or frightened, just… wired. Like I was buzzing. Like a signal going through me.

So I stumble forwards with my eyes closed and start flailing with the broom at the corner of the ceiling, the cold spot. And I can feel the sickening, wet way all this slimy guck gives way under it when I’m swinging and jabbing, but then—somehow—there’s this solid crunch, and the light goes out, with this… it isn’t a sound. It’s like a feeling in the air. This silent, agonizing trembling all along my skin, like a thousand dog whistles all screaming at once.

I broke the bulb, and that’s all it took. Right then, anyhow.

So. All the shit that’s wrapping up Joe falls apart with this disgusting squelching noise, and Joe goes over on his side, which is when I grab him up with both hands, trying to haul him to the door—where I thought the door used to be. Because it was dark in there, man, super-dark; dark plus. I’ve never seen dark like that, before or after.

Must’ve looked pretty funny, in retrospect: there I am, dragging—attempting to drag—this huge, cute young dude twice my size, slapping his face and yelling hysterically at him, desperate to get him to wake up. Couldn’t see much, but I remember his arms felt slimy, and patches of his skin almost seemed… soft, like if I squeezed too hard it would just slide right off his arm. Overcooked meat, that was the feel. (SOFTER) God, I wish I hadn’t remembered that.

(PAUSE, THEN NORMAL TONE) Okay, so. I get him past the kitchen counter into the vestibule, still fumbling around, and my hand falls on the door handle, at fucking last. Jesus! It was like a miracle. And I open the main door, so I can finally see again in the light coming in from the hallway—

—which is exactly when the thing in the apartment suddenly bursts into blazing light again, even brighter, but I can still see what it’s doing. It kind of… pulses, first inward and then outward, and opens up like a gigantic umbrella, a vampire fucking squid, with red and purple teeth all ringed round inside and dripping. Tendrils shoot out and they wrap round Joe and haul him back in, so fast and hard I don’t have time to let go. Next thing I know, it snaps shut on us both: all of him, me just to the wrist, the right one. Joe’s just—gone, swallowed. And my hand is stuck inside the peak of the thing, and it’s burning, like I stuck it in a beehive, or a vat full of acid. Like I’d stuck it through a hole, right into somebody else’s stomach.

I must’ve been screaming, but I don’t remember. Just hauling as hard as I could till my hand peeled free and throwing myself back out that door, slamming it shut behind me.

Q: (AFTER A MOMENT) …Joe?

A: (SOFT) No.

I didn’t—I don’t… I don’t feel good about it. But… I didn’t…

Q: You didn’t know him well enough to die for him.

A: Thank you for saying it.

(ANOTHER LONG PAUSE)

By the way, when I say “peeled”, I mean literally. Large patches of skin on my hand just—melted away, exposing layered patches of fat, visible veins and tendons. Nauseating, and painful as shit. I wound up having to have most of the rest of the epidermis debrided so the skin would grow back evenly, and I still don’t have any mobility in my right ring or little fingers.

By the time I got to the nearest ER, I’d been making a fist so long they had to sort of prise, sort of cut it open, because it’d already started healing shut. Human body’s an amazing thing, man. When they got my fingers uncurled, a bunch of stuff fell out: goo, pulp, faintly pinkish. Things that looked like bones, but soft—bendy. Like they’d been digested and shit back out. And something else.

It was a Ryerson University Engineering Department ring.

So yeah, nobody ever found much else of Joe. Just this… layer of sludge all over the apartment, unidentifiable, biological in origin. Just cracks in the ceiling and two broken bulbs lying in the far left corner, right by the window.

Adding insult to injury, the condo corporation tried like hell to blame me for the damage. They only gave up when I got a lawyer smart enough to point out that just publicizing the legal battle would tank sales in the entire building. That’s how I got out of my mortgage with enough money to do whatever I wanted after that.

But by that point I already knew what I had to do.

See, after that day? I couldn’t turn on an electric light anywhere—couldn’t even get near one—without hearing this… buzzing. Incandescent, CFL, LED, doesn’t matter. If I listen hard enough, like really, really hard, I can even hear it coming from computer screens or smartphones. And the buzzing… once you listen long enough, it sounds like—a voice. Whispering. I can’t ever make out what it’s saying, but I know it’s saying something. You know, how you can always tell?

And once it starts sounding like a voice, I know whose voice it is.

Has to be.

So.

(LONG PAUSE)

I quit my job. I bought a farmhouse—all stone and wood, not a bit of metal in it. I took up growing my own vegetables, raising my own chickens—they really are amazingly stupid birds, by the way. I made goddam sure they ripped out every piece of wiring in the building. I cut my own firewood, I buy oil supplies for lanterns and candles. Reading is the only entertainment I have. And when I’m too tired to read, I shut off the lantern and I sit in the dark, and the quiet, until I can fall asleep.

Because the grid is a web, a network of energies. Of ghosts. And things live in it, waiting for food. Hunting. Like spiders.

I mean, maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe that thing was as ass-dumb as a chicken itself. But if it wasn’t… if it remembers there’s stuff here to eat, and at least one meal escaped… it might come looking. And I don’t want anybody else to die like Joe, eaten just because I wasn’t fast enough to get him to safety in time. That’s why I live alone. That’s the “conscience” part.

That’s why I’m telling you this story now. Because if it happened to me, it might happen again. To someone else.

(LONG, LONG PAUSE)

Hey. Did I lose you there, Doss?

Q: No. No, I just… um… I’m not sure what to say to all that. (PAUSE) I mean, I assume this is the reason for the anonymity and the alias. And the burner phone, too.

A: Bingo. (PAUSE) So how crazy do you think I am, now? C’mon. Scale of one to ten.

Q: Bronwyn, we don’t… look, that’s not…

A: Relax. I’ve heard your show before. You did an interview last year with those guys who’re waiting for the shape-shifting space lizards to reveal they control the world, remember?

Q: Well—yeah, but as long as they stuck to talking about building shelters and hunting schedules, they sounded sane. Maybe… maybe you could tell us a little more about your daily routine, the skills you use as part of your off-grid life…

A: Nope. I’ve already been on this phone too long.

Q: Wait, Bronwyn—one last question. If you’re afraid that this—thing, whatever—that it might come after whoever talks about it… should we be careful? What kind of… of risk would we be taking if we release this interview?

A: If you do think I’m crazy, then obviously none. Right?

Q: Bronwyn—

(DIAL TONE)

Lost episode of “GridLost”

submitted 11 hours ago by DossalFinn

74 commentssharesavehidereport

harmony-interview-apr-18.mp3

[-] offbroadwaychaos

anyone got a screenshot of the GridLost home page? i wanna see if this was ever scheduled.

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[-] HyperJoan

I’ve attached a .gif from Wayback but it just says “Special Guest Star coming”. Which could be this Harmony chick, I suppose.

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[-] svalbard43

Don’t get it. Is this supposed to be a late April Fool’s joke or what?

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[-] MichaelTwyla50

No, I listen to GL all the time and this is the guy, this is Doss. + on the May 3rd show the producer did come on and apologize for a shorter-than-usual episode, which would completely make sense if they chickened out of releasing this. + Harmony6893’s a real person, I’ve read some of her posts on prepperforums.net

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[-] ChocoBot14

I’ve posted a transcript of the file here if anyone’s interested, with a few annotations.

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[-] RagingManticore

Okay guys: read transcript and phoned up the Toronto police department. theyve got a missing persons case still on the books from January 2017 for a ryerson engineering student age 22 named joseph macklay, last seen near a condo off adelaide west, fifteen minutes from downtown bay street. local real estate records say theres a corner one bed plus den unit still listed hasnt sold since. sooooo either a *really* well-researched creepypasta or ???????!!!!!?????

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[-] KevlarTuxedo

lol youre a tool—links or its bullshit

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Hello everyone.

I’ve been drafting this post for a couple of weeks now, after my last trip into town, when I realized that my interview with the “GridLost” people had gone viral. Honestly, I never expected them to release it in any form. I just wanted to tell myself I’d told somebody. I still don’t know if I haven’t made a really big mistake. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.

That’s why this is going to be my last post to these forums, or any other. I’m cutting the last cord. I want to thank everyone for everything I’ve learned here, and I hope I’ve given as much as I’ve gained. If I came into this community out of fear, I think I’ve found something like peace, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Some of you are probably going to ask why I’m not trying to make more out of this. I mean, if you believe me, then you accept I saw something that proves everything people think they know about the world is wrong, or at the very least horrifically incomplete—and when there are millions desperate for any reason to believe there’s something out there beyond the 9-to-5, beyond iPhone line-ups and Netflix, why would I not trumpet everywhere I could? Some people would say even a universe full of horrors is better than a universe full of nothing but us.

To that, I say: Wait until you meet one.

If we do live in the bubble I think we do, then the single best thing I can do is not poke more holes in it than I have to. Maybe it’s temporary and futile; maybe the bubble’s going to collapse anyway, one day. Maybe we’ll all become nothing more than parts of the same EM spectrum we’re living off of, energy reduced to its lowest thermodynamic denominator, constantly preyed upon, consumed without ever being destroyed. And in that endlessness will be our end, an ouroboros knot, forever tied and untying—no heaven, no hell. Just the circuit, eternally casting off energy, the sparks that move this awful world.

But not today. Not if I have anything to… *not* say… about it.

This is Harmony6893, signing off.