Episode 21: Dying up There

Narrator: Welcome to Ghost Wax, a Far and Tall Tales Production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. 

[Intro Music]

Episode 21, Dying Up There

[Recorder clicks on]

*The recording begins and we hear the sound of a car driving slowly to a stop.*

Luca: That's a lot of tarp.

Voncid: Apparently the scene was quite grizzly.

Luca: Do I just drive up?

Voncid: Yes, the police are expecting us.  Detective Margot Angiers is our contact.  She’s one of ours.  Here, go where that officer is waving.

*We hear the car pulling forward*

Luca: So, like, she knows what we do?

Voncid: Intimately.  She’s a new order member.  We try to place as many friendly faces in law enforcement as we can, especially in major cities… there I can see her.

*the car pulls to a stop again and we hear the doors opening*

Detective Margot Angiers: Mr. Voncid.  I hope you don’t take offense at me saying I wish I wasn’t seeing you again so soon.

Voncid: None at all.  “Happy to see you, sad to be here,” practically the unofficial motto of lodge investigators.

Angiers: I’m sure you know we wouldn’t call you unless we had to.

Voncid: I do.

Angiers: By the way, how did you get here so fast?

Voncid: We’ve got a seer who’s been on a bit of a hot streak, Phillipa?  You’ll meet her sooner or later.  We were in the city already.  Knew something was coming, didn’t know what.

Angiers: Well, we’ve got a doozy for you.

Voncid: The body hasn’t been moved?

Angiers: We didn’t touch anything, just put down the sheets and taped it off.  Still processing the scene.  There are shell casings there.

Voncid: I assume the crowd is because of the shots?

Angiers: that’s what they came out for, but they won’t leave because some of them saw the body… the state of it was… well take a look.

*We hear the investigators cross to the middle of the street and after a beat we hear the sheet lift.  Dark magic causes the recording to crackle*

*Nightlings whisper in children’s laughter and chittering giggles.*

Voncid: Ughck… fff… gads…

Luca: Ugh, how did the limbs get like that?

Angiers: I saw a body that looked sort of like this once, but they had fallen in front of a subway train.  This?  No blood? No broken skin?  Just… all broken up.  See the gun?  Shell casings will match.  The victim is also the shooter.  From the ocean of bloody vomit on the sidewalk there we are assuming whatever happened to them, or was happening, it ended there.

Luca: He looks like a bag of broken glass…

Angiers: Yeah, that’s exactly what he looks like.

Voncid:  He reeks of black magic… judging by the progression of the nightlings on the corpse the curse that killed him had been working on him a while before finally…fully  activating.

Luca: Nightlings?

Nash: Nasty little shadows that swarm around sites of deaths by darkness.  You can use them to judge time of death or time of curse onset, like flies with a normal cadaver.

Voncid: Thank you for coming.

Nash: I was in the pine barrens.  Short flight.  I got to use rugen’s helicopter.

Voncid: Lord… he just never gave the thing back huh?

Nash: Who's going to make him?

Voncid: I suppose.

Nash: Do we know who the stiff is yet?

Angiers:  That’s just it, Mr. Faraday, he’s pretty much the opposite of stiff…

Nash: *Taken aback as Angiers lifts the sheet*  Oh… oh fuck… yeah I see.

Voncid: Luca, could you get me the Miridia from the car?

Luca: Oh, sure.  

Angiers:  What's that?

Nash: Sacred water.  We’ll pour it all over the body, will make them safe to move, autopsy, all that.

Angiers: Gentlemen, we’ve got a bit of an audience… it’s not going to look particularly kosher if we are pouring water all over a corpse in the middle of 46th street.

Voncid: Can’t be helped.

Nash:  I’ll be distracting.  

Nash:  Hey, folks, nothing to see here. The guy just had that brittle bone disease. You’ve all seen Unbreakable, right?

Angiers: Fucks sake… 

Voncid: Apologies.

Angiers: I have to keep reminding myself… Silvers aren’t police.

Voncid: No.  They hunt monsters, not men.

*Luca returns with the water*

Luca: Here.

Voncid: Thank you.  Fly away little shadows.

*we hear the sacred water pouring over the body, the chittering and whispering returns but then flutters away*

Voncid: There, let's get this body to Langone.  I’ll conduct the reclaiming there.

*cut and return in a medical center morgue*

Voncid:  We are nearly prepared for the reclaiming after an exhaustive night of reconstructive work.  The body is now a mangled mess of metal wires used to reconnect the shattered bones… we inserted and fused pieces borrowed from a few other cadavers to sort the worst of the shattered sections of the skull.  Soft tissues appear to be basically undamaged, so the victim’s tongue, lungs, esophagus… should be in working order.  In preparation I have destroyed the pain centers of the brain… the testimony should be possible to obtain directly from the reanimated deceased.

Nash Faraday, member of the Blades Silver, is pursuing a more direct approach to the case with detective Angiers.  Apparently several eyewitnesses actually saw the face of the woman who the deceased was shooting at before his untimely demise and we were able to identify the deceased by his ID as Donald Stonelli.  He was found half a block from a comedy club called Yucks that he seems to have worked at regularly under the name Donny Stone.

Luca: When I spoke with the management they offered that he’d been acting strangely since an altercation with an audience member a few weeks ago.  

Voncid:  Perhaps, that’s how this started.

Luca: Must have been a really bad set…

*We hear the lung bellows whirr up and start its steady rhythm.*

Voncid: Wake… wake from beyond the river wide, return with your tale…

Donny Stone: *Long exhale, coughing, like he is recovering from the wind being knocked out of him*  Man oh man, nobody can take a joke anymore.

Voncid: Are you in pain Mr. Stonelli?

Donny: Umm, yeah, I mean no, no I’m ok… but I could really use a drink… my uh… my arms and legs don’t seem to be working.

Voncid: Yes, remain calm please.  Don’t try to move, your injuries are extensive.  You are quite dead in fact.

Donny: I… huh… shit… I feel like I should have some sort of punch line here, something funny to uh… ah man I really am a hack.  Once in a lifetime set up and I can’t find anything to do with it.  Story of my life.

Voncid:  We are actually quite interested in that story, the last few weeks of it especially.  Would you tell us?

Donny:  Yeah, but I usually tell stories better with a cocktail and a smoke.  Do you mind helping me out?  “My injuries were quite extensive.”

Luca: I’ve got some cigarettes…

Voncid: Started again?

Luca: *Defensively* This job is stressful. 

Voncid: Fair enough.

Luca: Also looks like all we’ve got is Methyl alcohol and rubber tubing for a straw.

Donny: I’ll take it.  What’s it going to do kill me?  Ok, ok, I’m warming up.

Voncid: Delightful.

*We hear liquid pouring and then Donny drinking through a tube.*

Donny: Ahhh, that’s good, that is good.

*We hear a lighter and Donny take a drag on a cigarette. The sound of the lung bellows fades here.*

Donny: Ok, let me tell you about how this shit started.  Two weeks ago? Give or take? I work really late nights in a city that doesn’t abide by its bedtime so days tend to blur together.  Between the booze, assorted colored funtime pills and the adrenaline of hitting a small stage in a small room it gets hard to keep track.  Especially when that room is full of angry sensitive babies who want you to make them laugh but never offend them.  It may have all led to pretty serious brain damage on my part.

So I go on at Yucks or Lols or wherever else they’ll put me up.  The city’s been a real fucking wasteland lately, but people are starting to come out again, crazy how fast the masks went away and woah, look, no one’s dying right?  Well… ok, I did, but not from the plague.

Anyway, I was so fucking excited to be able to pick up shows again.  To get in front of people again.  A lot of comedians, I think they’re lying mostly, say shit like “oh I just wanna make people laugh” or  “it’s my calling”.  Bullshit, you want the attention.  The admiration.  A lotta comedians are just hungry, hungry for attention, but they can’t sing, they can’t dance, they’re dogshit face wise, have no discipline and so their bodies are crap, so how else are you going to get the attention?

Stand up comedy. Or starting fires and shit.

*Takes another drag*

Ok whatever, that’s just like my opinion… see!? See how it’s like infected everything?  Worse than COVID.  Way worse.  I used to make a joke, state an opinion and then just leave it.  You know, I said what I said and if you didn’t like it, didn’t laugh, fuck you right?  Or fuck me, whatever that’s the game, but now it’s all “oh jk, don’t tweet me, don’t cancel me. Oh, instagram!”  It’s bullshit.

Luca: *Snorting, incredulous* Is this really what you want to be spending your limited time as an animated corpse talking about?

Donny: Ok ok, sorry princess, I didn’t mean to trigger you, but this is my time right?  

Voncid: We are simply interested in catching your murderer and time may be of the essence, as interesting as your observations on kids these days are.

Donny: Oh not you too, you’re old as shit, you know how full of it this generation is.

Voncid: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, tyrannize their teachers…”

Donny: See, he gets it.

Voncid: I was quoting.  Socrates.  Twenty four hundred some odd years ago.  Thinking this about “kids these days’ is ancient tradition. 

Donny: Ok, ok.

Voncid: *Impatient* Tell us about who cursed you.  What happened?

Donny: *Beat*  I was rusty.  I hadn’t been on stage in a long time… I tried doing shows on Zoom, but that… shit you’ve got no idea what it’s like to have a bad show until you are dying in front of your computer camera…

So when I went back, I was so excited, but it didn’t go so great. Timing was off.  Jokes just didn’t land.  My material was really stale.  Doing lockdown jokes sort of worked, everyone could relate, but mostly it was just an unbroken series of bombs… and when you start to bomb… ok so what’s the one thing audiences like more than anything?  Themselves.

Something live comedy can get you that nothing else can is immediacy.  Actually interacting with a comic.  So, crowd work is the well that never runs dry.  Talk about how that guy's hair looks weird, spend a minute on how that lady who’s leaning super far away from her husband, oh shit they aren’t having sex, talk about how you’d love to get the hot chick in the back pregnant, she’s so hot, you might even pay child support *Laughing*

Luca: Super funny.

Donny: Hey man, it works.  It works like crazy, because people really just like themselves.  Most of the time they don’t wanna really be challenged or hear anything good, they are just looking for some shit to do, a few cheap laughs and an excuse to drink two drinks minimum.

*Sighs*

So I had one bit of crowd work go really sideways.  It happens, but like, this chick wouldn’t let it go.  It was a late show, like 11:30 or something, at Yucks, which is a dump, you’re crammed between a pet psychic and a dim sum place which makes the green room stinks like dog shampoo and chili sauce.

Anyway, room is just chairs, it’s a tiny little stage, don’t stray back too far back, that pipe overhead gets really hot… house wasn’t even full enough to have seating in all three sections, just the first two.  I see a bunch of tourists, few hipsters who think going somewhere vaguely seedy is the height of adventure, like we are basically in Times Square, you know, you’re not living on the fucking fringe, so whatever, but man… I can’t help but see her.  So tall, black hair, this long nose, tall black boots, just really severe… looks like um… shit what's the name of the actress?  Old actress, old actress, she’s the witch in the movie where the chick goes down the road.

Luca: Wizard of Oz.  Margaret Hamilton played the witch.

Donny:  Shit, of course you’d know that *laughs* I mean, I, um, sorry sorry, I have a cousin who… you know, never mind.

So she looks like that.  Witchy-poo.  Kinda hot?  Kinda scary?  I don’t know.

Anyways,  I’m like a minute in when I do joke about how it’s so hard to be clear on consent and should we all have like an electronic signature app for hookups and… I mean they didn’t get it.  I hit the punchline *beat, performance voice* “Sex with consent is the best kind”. The room just went cold, all those eyes just staring at me. 

*Kind of getting ashamed*

So, I pivot to crowd work… “Brr, chilly reception folks, shit, feel that shiver?  Suddenly it’s colder than *beat* her tit in here.”

*Beat*

You know, colder than a witch’s tit?  Colder than ‘her’ tit in here, and I like, point her out.

She’s so witchy looking, it’s, like, people got it right away, I got some laughs, shock laughs, not bad.  She even kinda snickered, you know.

I could feel sweat kinda running down my back, and not because I’m standing too close to the pipe.

Vick is watching and I really wanted him to keep booking me, so I push it.  When you are up there and you are dying? You don’t know what that’s like.  You can’t hear anything but blood rushin’ in your ears…

You know, when I was little and things went sideways on the playground or something and the kids were just turning on me and they just wouldn’t listen… sometimes I’d just shift the focus, you know. I learned to wiggle out from under that spotlight by letting someone else bake in it.

“I mean ladies and gentleman, I know we aren’t supposed to judge people based on their appearance, but she’s married to the devil right?  Right? You wouldn’t let your kids near her or her gingerbread house right?”

Some more laughs.  I watched her face closely and she really hated the devil joke, but her face softened up on the gingerbread one.

“I’m sorry”, I say, “I’m-I’m sorry, what’s your name sweetheart?”  That’s a good trick for if you are laying into someone, ask their name, make it like you two are meeting, becoming friends.

She says some I name, Isis, or Ismee or something.

“Iz-mail?  Like call me Iz-mail?”  I say, “OHHH shit, anyone here who can give Ishmael the moby dick she needs?”

Shock laughs.  And shock laughs are real laughs, no matter what anyone else says, alright.

But more important, I see Vick in the back.  He’s smiling.  Vick the Prick he loves this nasty shit.

Vick’s smiling, but she isn’t anymore.

“Captain Ahab was after the whale.  Ishmael was the narrator.” And then she says, “You should bother someone else.”

Something about the way she said it… it was like a fucking threat, right?  And… man… it had been a long time since I really felt the blood pump, since that adrenaline got really going.

“You’re right, she’s not after a big white whale, not when she’s got her devil husband’s big red whale at home right?  Does it burn when he… and that’s as far as I got… I honestly don’t know how I was going to finish that but it was gonna be gross.

But she cut me off by standing up.  She was sitting in the front row and like I said it was just a little room with chairs in it. She could have reached out and slapped me, I thought she was going to, but instead she grabbed one of my fingers, my pointer finger and just held it super tight.

So… sure I pissed her off, poked fun, but like, it’s just jokes.  Calm the fuck down.

“Hey, if a finger is all you’re after, I’m happy to oblige after my set.  You can wait in the dirty alley next to the dim sum place.”

She ignored me and kinda hissed at me.  She said: “My husband is not the devil.”

Like… this was the weirdest thing to be so pissed about.  I didn’t know what to do so I just asked, “Ok, yeah, so who’s your husband?”

I don’t know, the whole thing was so confusing suddenly… then she just whispers the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard in my life.  “Pathiters made of sticks.”

*Beat*

Yeah… well that was pretty much it.  The security guy up front finally waddled his way to us and asked her to leave.  You can get pissed, but, it’s a show, people are paying, and you definitely can’t lay hands.

I shook it off.  Vick was laughing still.  He sais later that accusing a woman of fucking satan was a very old fashioned bit of crowd work.  But if I’m totally honest, I got really drunk and downed some vicodin later that night, left my ex wife a voice message that was vastly more disgusting than anything I said to the chick and didn’t think about it again for a few days.

Until I woke up one morning and my finger hurt.

I went to grab my phone off the nightstand and when I picked it up… it hurt.  Like I’d sprained it.  

It honestly took me a while to even remember that it was the same finger that bitch had grabbed.

It went away a little during the afternoon, I mean I had gotten UP in the afternoon, but it got better as the day went on, but that night… as I was waiting to go on stage… it broke.

*Snap*

I’m gasping and swearing through gritted teeth trying not to wreck the young guy’s new set, but Vick hears me.

Vick asks “What's up?” and I show him.  It’s purple and fuckin’ sideways.

“The fuck”, he says and I explain I didn’t do anything to it that in fact it had just been hurting all day so I had been babying it and it just broke on its own.

“Isn’t that where that witchy girl grabbed you?” he asked and I’m like “yeah it fucking is.”

He said I’d gotten super herpes and then just asked if I could go on.

I really wanted to say yes, but… but I could kinda feel something… like the achy sensation had moved… the middle of my hand above the broken finger and that wrist was starting to hurt… I got this horrible panicky feeling… 

What if it’s spreading?

So I went to the ER.  In midtown. Took a fucking year.  

They finally took an x-ray and told me that there was nothing wrong with my bones… nothing wrong with my wrist even though I was telling them it hurt like hell now.

“Probably just a stress fracture that finally gave out,” said the twenty year old “doctor” they’d set me up with. Said my wrist was just “referred pain” from the finger.

They splinted me and wrapped me up and sent me home.

That night I had a nightmare that the witch was sitting at the end of my bed, watching me sleep.

“Apologize,” she said.

I had had a lot of fucking vodka that night to numb the pain… so I said “Go fuck yourself to death on a thorny devil dick.”

You gotta understand… people have been telling me what i can and can’t do or say or think my whole life, and this bitch… what did she think was going to happen?  Short skirt, thigh highs, black hair, that face?  All alone at a late show, front row?

She was looking for trouble, right?

*Beat*

My wrist burst *crack* inside my skin when I put weight on it to get out of bed.

I’d never hurt like that in my whole life, I whited out… pissed the bed… *joking* or I'm pretty sure that happened after I passed out, like I said I'd had a LOT of vodka the night before…

When I came to… I was on the ground, I’d fallen out of bed and my shoulder was hurting really bad, almost as bad as my wrist.

Next to me on the floor I could see… There were two marks, like boot prints burned into the wood .  Right where in my dream I’d seen her standing in those stupid fucking Hot Topic boots of hers…

It was Sunday so I staggered into the big Catholic church down my street… I begged the Father for help, but he just kept trying to give me the name of a mental health service or some shit… So I just went past him and put my hand, the cursed hand, into the holy water…

I don’t know what I was thinking would happen.

The water turned black, and hissed and got all foamy.

The priest thought I was pulling some prank, he was looking around for who was filming and yelled at me to get out?

*laughs* I mean…

I dreamed of her every night.

She’d demand I apologize and I’d tell her to die and I’d wake up and break something, or something new would be aching…

I was coming out of a liquor store when some big guy and his old parents, fucking tourists, bump into me.  Just a bump.  

*Snap*

My shoulder… cracked.  He didn’t even stop, he couldn't have imagined he hurt me I guess… he, I was scared of everything… any little thing might break something else…

I was so fucking fragile…

*Beat*

Oh is that supposed to be the fucking lesson?  Was that this stupid bitch trying to teach me a fucking lesson?

I am a grown ass, tax paying, American man.  You don’t get to teach me lessons.  Who the fuck do you think you are?  Teaching me lessons?  Like mommy?  That’s not how the world works… you might hate me, think I’m scum, think I need to wise up and get woke but I’m a fucking person too, alright? What makes you think your opinions are worth so much more than mine?  You think I should apologize, and I think you should get a fucking sense of humor… I was just trying to make people laugh… I mean… *losing the power that his anger was giving him* fuck you… so I hurt your feelings?  You fucking KILLED me… In what stupid world is that fair…

The stress of the pain drove me kinda crazy pretty quickly.  I didn’t even entertain going back to the doctor.  It was some sort of devil shit, I knew that.

I knew how I could end it.  Two ways.

And I wasn’t going to apologize.

Vick called me that night.  Said she was there.  That she was at a show.  That she’d asked if I was performing.

My right hand could hold the gun fine.

I waited for her to come out of the show… by the time she did the gun was really heavy. My elbow was throbbing, I was limping… I was just… broken… inside too…  I didn’t even know what to do.  I didn’t have any… Like what options did I have?  Give in?  Give up?

I don’t know…

I shot her as much as I could before the recoil broke my elbow.

It was so weird.  She looked surprised… like how would you be surprised?  YOU attacked ME.  You started it.

*Beat*

Whatever it was coiled up in me, that was killing me, it just let loose all at once.

She looked almost as surprised as I was when all my bones broke at once.

I spun around all loose and floppy… and if I wasn’t a hack I’d be able to make something funny out of that.

*Beat*

You know, I don’t wanna talk anymore.  Put me back.

Voncid:  I need to call Francis Faraday right away, hand me my phone.

*we hear him hit a few buttons on his phone*

Voncid:  This is Voncid, are you with Isme? *pause* She is indeed a witch.  She’s bound to a very violent othersider… are you in danger? *pause* 

Hold up the phone, I’ll speak it’s true name.  

*commandingly with an echo*

“Pathiters, Made of Sticks.”

*The recorder clicks off*

Narrator: Thank you for listening to Ghost Wax, a production of Far and Tall Tales. Find us at farandtalltales.squarespace.com. Ghost Wax is an independent podcast so if you liked this show, please rate and review, and consider joining us on Patreon at Patreon.com/farandtalltales

Also give a listen to our fantasy role play show Could've Been Heroes for something completely different. 

Ghost Wax is written and directed by Robert Knutson 

Production and editing by Aaron Schoenrock

Our theme song is by Beau Hoover.

This episode features Robert Knutson as Voncid

Aaron Schoenrock as Luca

Tony Patten as Nash

Andy Fischer as Donald Stonelli

Emily Battles as Angiers