tell us a mad but true story

[beerwolf]

that's it really

 

I don't give a fuck what your favourite album is of 2017, who gives a fuck? Not me. Couldn't give a monkeys.

 

Just tell us a mad story. But it has to be real. Artistic licence is allowed...

 

Could be anything, UFO's, ghosts, tripped out and ventured into madness, that time you almost drowned or got eaten by a fucking massive animal beast. Have you witnessed an exorcism? Funniest thing that you ever seen. 

 

I've set this up because obviously I've got a story to tell you, but you go first....

[auxien]

My girlfriend died on the 7th of August, 2012. She was involved in a three car collision driving home from work when someone ran a red light. She passed away within minutes on the scene.

 

We had been dating for five years at that point. She wasn’t big on the idea of marriage (it felt archaic, she said, gave her a weird vibe), but if she had been, I would have married her within three months of our relationship. She was vibrant; the kind of girl that would choose dare every time. She was happiest when camping, but a total technophile too. She always smelled like cinnamon.

 

That being said, she wasn’t perfect. She always said something along the lines of, “If I kark it first, don’t just say good things about me. I’ve never liked that. If you don’t pay me out, you’re doing me a disservice. I’ve got so many flaws, and that’s just part of me.” So, this is for Em: the music she said she liked and the music she actually liked were very different. Her idea of affection was a side-hug. She had really long toes, like a chimpanzee.

 

I know that’s tangential, but I don’t feel right discussing her without you having an idea of what she was like.

 

Onto the meat. Em had been dead for approaching thirteen months when she first messaged me.

 

September 4, 2013. This is when it began. I had left Emily’s Facebook account activated so I could send her the occasional message, post on her wall, go through her albums. It felt too final (and too un-Emily) to memorialise it. I ‘share’ access with her mother (Susan) - meaning, her mother has her login and password and has spent a total of approximately three minutes on the website (or on a computer, total). After a little confusion, I assumed it was her.

 

November 16th, 2013. I had received confirmation from Susan that she hadn’t logged in to Em’s Facebook since the week of her death. Em knew a lot of people, so I instantly assumed this was one of her more tech savvy ‘friends’ fucking with me in the worst possible way.

 

I noticed pretty much immediately that whoever was chatting with me was recycling old messages from Em and my’s shared chat history.

 

The ‘the wheels on the bus' comment was from when we were discussing songs to play on a road trip that never eventuated. ‘hello’ happened a million times.

 

Around February 2014, Emily started tagging herself in my photos. I would get notifications for them, but the tag would generally always be removed by the time I got to it. The first time I actually caught one, it felt like someone had punched me in the gut. ‘She’ would tag herself in spaces where it was plausible for her to be, or where she would usually hang out. I’ve got screenshots of two (from April and June; these are the only ones I’ve caught, so they’re a little out of the timeline I’m trying to write out):

 

http://i.imgur.com/X9G5agJ.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/55FwXKt.png

 

Around this period of time, I stopped being able to sleep. I was too angry to sleep.

 

She would tag herself in random photos every couple of weeks. The friends who noticed and said something thought it was a fucked up bug; I found out recently that there have been friends who have noticed and didn’t say anything. Some of them have removed me from their Facebook friends list.

 

At this point, some of you may be wondering why I didn’t just kill my Facebook profile. I wish I had. I did for a little while. On days when I can’t get out there, though, it’s nice having my friends available to chat. It’s nice visiting Em’s page when the little green circle isn’t next to her name. I was already socially reclusive when Em was alive; her death turned me into something pretty close to a hermit, and Facebook and MMOs were (are) my only real social outlets.

 

On March 15th, I sent what I assumed was Em's hacker a message.

 

On March 25th, I received an ‘answer’.

 

It wasn’t until I was going over these logs a few months later that I noticed she was recycling my own words as well.

 

My response seems kind of lacklustre here. I was intentionally providing him/her with emotional ‘bait’ (‘This is actually devastating’) to keep them interested in their game; I was working off the assumption that the kind of person to do this would be the kind of person that would thrive on the distress of others. I was posting in tech forums, looking for ways to track this person, contacting Facebook. I needed to keep them around so I could gather ‘evidence’.

 

Before anyone asks, yes, I had changed the password and all security info countless times.

 

16th of April. I receive this.

 

This seems like word salad. Like all our conversations so far, it’s recycled from previous messages she’s sent.

 

29th of April.

 

I hadn’t discovered any leads. Facebook had told me the locations her page had been accessed from, but since her death, they’re all places I can account for (my home, my work, her mum’s house, etc). My response here wasn’t bait. ‘yo ask Nathan’ was an in-joke too lame worth explaining, but seeing ‘her’ say it again just absolutely fucking crippled me. My reaction in real life was much less prettier. I’m not expecting my bond back.

 

Her last few messages had started to scare me, but I wouldn’t admit it at this point.

 

8th of May. I don’t really have the words for this.

 

‘FRE EZIN G’ is the first original word she’s (?) made. This has given me nightmares that have only started to kick in recently. I keep dreaming that she’s in an ice cold car, frozen blue and grey, and I’m standing outside in the warmth screaming at her to open the door. She doesn’t even realise I’m there. Sometimes her legs are outside with me.

 

24th of May.

 

I wasn’t actually drunk. She wasn’t an affectionate girl, and it always embarrassed her to exchange ‘I love you’s, cuddle, talk about how much we meant to each other. She was more comfortable with it when I was boozed up. I got fake-drunk a lot.

 

Her reply is what prompted me to finally memorialise her page, thinking it might help curb this behaviour. It might seem innocuous compared to her previous message - it’s pasted from an old conversation where I was trying to convince her to let me drive her home from a friend’s.

 

In the collision, the dashboard had crushed her. She was severed in a diagonal line from her right hip to midway down her left thigh. One of her legs was found tucked under the backseat.

 

Going back in time. 7th of August, 2012.

 

These are logs from the day she died. She was usually home from work by 4.30. This, alongside a couple of voicemail messages, is the last time I talked to her under the assumption that she was alive. You’ll see why I’m showing you these soon.

 

Yesterday. 1st of July, 2014.

 

I memorialised her page a couple of days after I received the message about walking. Until today, she’d been quiet; she wasn’t even tagging herself in my photos.

 

I don’t know what to do anymore. Do I kill her memorial page? What if it is her? I want to puke. I don’t know what’s happening.

 

I just heard a Facebook alert. I'm too afraid to swap windows and check it.

[YangYing]

unban leo immediately and lock him to this thread

[KovalainenFanBoy]

big if true

[Echolalia]

Lost my wallet at Oxford train station. Managed to get to Manchester via Doncaster on the train without a ticket. Kind folks rail staff. Staff at Donny rang Oxford at 10pm and asked if a wallet had been handed in "Yes!" It was mine.

[chronical]

c

[Lada Laika]

My neighbor is one of those annoying wannabe YouTube personalities. Over the years, I’ve seen him cough out cinnamon, lay flat on the hood of his car as it slowly creeps down the driveway, and douse himself in lukewarm water, all the while screaming epic win, epic fail, or, fuck, epic maintenance of the status quo, for all I know. It can get tiring to watch him go about his shenanigans in the pursuit of viral fame. So, when he knocked on my door the other day, told me he was going away for a few weeks, and asked that I get his mail, honestly, it was a relief. I can’t explain the peace of mind I had knowing I didn’t have to brace myself for any of his stupidity for a while. I was always afraid his stunts would wind up bleeding over into my life.

Things were pretty normal for the first couple of days. He received a few bills, a bit of spam, and what I could only assume was a birthday card. Then, one evening, I got home to find a cardboard box waiting on his front porch. In big red letters was written “Return to Sender”.

I’m no small fry, but I admit I had trouble lifting the box on my own. It was really freaking heavy. Lugging it across the road to my house was even harder, and I quickly realized there was no way I was going to drag it up the stairs and through my front door. I decided I’d leave his package in my garage. It wasn’t like I kept my car in there: the garage door was a piece of shit that refused to open without a good thug and a whack. It was less trouble just leaving the car in the driveway than it was to fight with the garage door every morning and night. In hindsight, I should have set the package down while I struggled to open the tricky door, but you know how it is when you’ve got a good grip on something, no point in setting it down if you don’t have to.

It was as I kicked the door for a third time that I lost my grip on the package, and it fell to the ground. I heard a light crack inside.

“Shit,” I cursed.

I hoped I hadn’t broken anything important, but figured I just wouldn’t tell my neighbor about it and let him assume the break happened en-route.

Hands free, I finally managed to get the garage door unstuck, and boy did it screech in protest as it rolled up and over me. I dragged the box the rest of the way, setting it in the corner for whenever my neighbor would come back to claim it. And then, I forgot all about it. Until a few days passed, that is.

I’m not sure exactly how long it took for the smell to waft in from the crack under the garage-to-house door, but it came in in slow progression. It was a sickly sweet odor similar to a skunk, and for the first few days after I smelled it, I genuinely assumed that’s exactly what it was: roadkill that had left its mark on my house. It was only when I realized the scent was growing more intense instead of fading that I went looking for a source. That’s when I opened the garage door, and that’s when the odor knocked me back, holding my nose.

The culprit wasn’t hard to identify. The only change in my garage was the box in the corner. I remember thinking it must have been one of those meat-of-the-month subscription boxes. The meat must have gone rancid from being left out of the fridge for so long. How much meat could have been in there for the box to have been so large and heavy? An entire freaking cow?

I covered my nose as I approached the box, a pair of scissors in my hands. I probably wouldn’t have needed them to open it, as it had become soggy enough at the bottom to poke through with a finger, but I wasn’t about to poke my finger into spoiled meat juices. That soggy bottom was the reason I had to open the box in the first place. If I tried to drag it out whole, everything would spill onto the floor. I was going to have to dump the pieces of meat one garbage bag at a time, and take them down to the dumpster, a process I wasn’t looking forward to.

My scissors tore through the tape along the top of the cardboard box. I thought the smell couldn’t get any worse, but as I flipped the flaps open, I discovered a whole new gamut of stink. It was like opening a burning oven, but instead of a heat wave, I was met with waves of piss, sweat, shit, and putrefaction. It was so bad that I staggered back and had to force down the puke begging to guzzle out of me. I don’t think I could have handled that scent mingling with the horrors coming out of the box. I’m not ashamed to admit I ran out the door for a breath of fresh air, but in the short time I’d spent in the garage, the smell had become so ingrained in the fabric of my clothes that it clung to me like a shadow.

Nothing I tried could keep the smell out of my nostrils. Not air fresheners, not a face mask, not three showers and a change of clothes. Every second that box lay open in my garage was another second the smell was allowed a foothold into my home. I had to bite the bullet.

I returned to the garage, the flaps of the box still open as though inviting me to look. I was prepared, a clothespin pinning my nostrils shut, a garbage bag in one hand, the strongest cleaner I could find in the other, and long rubber gloves to keep my skin from having to touch what was inside. But, as it turns out, I needed none of those things.

I wouldn’t have to touch or clean the contents of that box, I would only have to suffer the nightmares every night. You see, there was meat in that box, but it didn’t come from a cow or a pig. No, it was worse than that. It was my neighbor. Dead. Still in one piece, but dead.

I called the cops, and naturally, they took me in for interrogation. It’s kind of hard not to suspect the man with a corpse in his garage, after all. Thankfully, they soon realized I wasn’t involved. My DNA might have been all over that box, the smell might have left a mark throughout my house, but there was one piece of irrefutable evidence in my neighbor’s own hands that proved my innocence: a vlogging camera.

They showed me the footage only once. I’m not sure if they were allowed to, or if they felt so bad for me they figured it couldn’t hurt. Either way, I saw it.

My neighbor was sitting in the box outside of a shipping facility, laughing as he told the world how he was going to mail himself across state lines. He’d brought pee bottles, food, a pillow, and a few flashlights. His friend – a guy I’d seen at his place several times to help with his stunts –, closed the lid and presumably dropped him off for shipment. Throughout the next couple of hours…or days, I’m honestly not sure, my neighbor recorded a few short clips about his progress. ‘I think I’m in a truck now, I can feel it moving’, ‘Must be in a warehouse. Pretty warm here. Still got plenty of food!’, that kind of stuff. And then, on the last entry, the box toppled over. He broke his neck, and that was it. The camera recorded until either the memory card got too full, or the battery died.

There’s one thing I didn’t tell the police after they showed me the video. One thing I heard in the footage that will haunt me to the day I die. Just after the tumble that broke his neck, I heard the familiar screeching sound of mygarage door.

[Enthusiast]

Then who was facebook?

[OneToThirtySix]

My neighbor [...] door.

 

I'm so pleased I woke up this morning thinking, "I haven't been nauseatedly dizzy for such a long time", and have been relieved of that dry spell.

 

Bless your contribution.

[Salvatorin]

i have a pair of black adidas sambas that i like to wear around. they're comfortable and look alright and are a go-to sneaker for me. i was at a grocery store, wearing my sambas. this guy standing near me in the aisle looks over and goes "you play indoor?". i have no idea what this means. i look at him and go "uhhhh..." and he goes "indoor soccer?". for some reason i immediately say "oh yeah, yep", nodding enthusiastically. i should note that i have never played soccer, much less the indoor variety. he asks how long i've played for. i say "oh, probably nine, ten years...since i was a teenager". he asks if i'm in a league and i start to back off. "nah, mostly we play pick up games. i used to play amateur". i have no clue if these things exist in the indoor soccer world, what they even mean. he smiles and goes "that's cool man, see, i can't find any good arenas to play in around here. where do you play?" i say, "oh, there's a couple up in virginia." i say this like it's obvious, why doesn't he know. he looks perplexed. "huh, where exactly, i haven't been able to find any in northern virginia". i go, "oh, you know, i can't really remember. it's actually been a while. i usually play outdoor." his expression is changing to quizzical. i begin to grab some things from the display in front of me and move to walk away. "so where do you play outdoors?" this is where i totally bail on it. "i actually had to stop playing because i sprained my ankle, but there's a game on sundays in dulles". i wave and walk away. i don't think i even bought anything, i was so perplexed at my actions.

[colunga]

U KNO ITS MAD BUT TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

 

[pcock]

I once randomly bumped into aphex and got hammered with him for about 5 hours.

[auxien]

U KNO ITS MAD BUT TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

 

lolllll

[Braintree]

Back in November, I got the news that my grandfather died. He was one of my favorite relatives so it hit me pretty hard. I went out for a drink and a couple friends came out to keep me company. We started to play some pool and after a couple rounds a guy wanted to play doubles with two of us and his girlfriend. We said sure, but then he immediately changed his mind that he wanted to play just him with the two of us. I put my stick down and let my friend play him 1v1.

 

He was mostly being a rude, obnoxious cunt with little civility. Regrettably, he won the match with my friend, but came over to shake my hand. For a game I did not play. I had no interest in doing so and I said no thanks. Things started to get heated (aside: what a fragile ego), so I tried to level with him and told him my grandfather died that day. I really didn't have the energy to argue, nor did I have any interest in an activity other than slamming as many beers in my face as possible. I was on "Mission Achieve Numbness."

 

Mockingly and angrily, he told me he would cry a tear for him (:::sarcastic tear drop motion over one cheek:::) then started walking away. I told him that was a really shitty thing to do to someone. To spit in my face like that, especially on the day a loved one died.

 

You know, it's kind of funny that when you let someone know that they're being unreasonable, they just double down on it and get more unreasonable. He turned around and lunged at me, tried to punch me in the face, but missed and hit my glasses. His body was off-center and trying to right itself as I drew back my arm.

 

My friend ran me into the pool table before I could clobber that cunt. A struggled ensued, blah blah blah, the rest of the bar got involved and threw him out. Apparently they didn't like him either, and said he was too drunk when he walked in the door.

 

I got free drinks for the rest of the night, but all I wanted was to punch that mother fucker in the throat.

[drome]

^ Drunken bollox. RIP your grandad tho.

[ghOsty]

I once was the passenger in a car accident while tripping on acid my first time, this might get a little long but I promise it's a good story and I remember it rather vividly...

My buddy James and I had been candyflipping during the night and it was now the next morning, James had been borrowing his dad's car and insisted he needed to get it home or his dad would be mad. We felt like we had come down, so after asking him a few questions making sure he felt good enough to drive home (really only a 1/4 mile down the road) so I figured "sure dude whatever, let's go then." We get in the car, and make it down the block from our other friend's house we had been tripping at. We get to the intersection, stop, then begin to turn the corner when this HUGE white Dodge pickup comes roaring around the bend of the cross street from my side and blows through the top sign. I swear time slowed down, and I saw the truck come roaring towards me as I yelled out "FUUUU-..."

Miraculously, James in all his phazed out, just come down from acid glory, still had the reaction time to slam on the brakes just in time. We only made contact with the huge fucking tire of the other truck, it blew out the headlight and scuffed up the bumper of my friend's dad's car. I remember sitting in the car wide eyed and surging with adrenaline as James just repeated "Fuck, fuck ,fuck" over and over again... Then the realization started hitting me, we hadn't completely come down, we were just very between waves and in a moment of clarity, the adrenaline from the crash had me starting to reach another crest of the trip. So we're sitting there trying to figure out what to do as the acid's starting to hit us again, James is starting to freak out and realizes that the other gay may call the police to the accident scene as is standard procedure. And the police station is literally just on the next block over from the street we were on. We're freaking out a little bit because not only are we both tripping, we both have weed on us as well. I tell him he's gotta go talk to the other guy and try to ensure that we're fine and no cops need to be involved... He takes a deep breath and gets out of the car to go talk to the driver of the pickup. I decide to get out of the pickup myself to get some air...

I get out of the car and assess the damage, which is when I discovered that both James' car and the guy's truck were fine, however in my acid logic it occurs to me just how close I came to dying, and I'm definitely tripping again. I'm just standing in the middle of this residential road repeatedly mumbling to myself "I could've died!... I should be dead!" I'm looking all around repeating my mantra to myself when I finally take notice of James talking to the guy who had pulled over up ahead on the road a ways... I see the guy hand James a piece of paper and drive off. Well that assured me that the cops were definitely not coming. How James got through that conversation I have no idea, but he told me the guy kinda admitted it was his fault and gave him his insurance info and didn't want to get the cops involved either. That was fortunate, but James is still freaking out a bit that his dad is going to kill him for damaging the car and the insurance going up for them. Minnesota is unfortunately a "no-fault" state for insurance claims, meaning even though it was the other guy's fault, as far as insurance is involved they're equally at fault unless there was a way to prove otherwise. Fortunately for us there was a guy out mowing his front lawn the whole time. I tell James that if we can gather that guy's info as a witness it will help them when they make the claim. James is a little too rattled and needs to take a moment to calm himself and try to bring himself back down to earth a bit, so I agree to go talk to the guy despite being in the middle of a trip myself, the conversation got a bit interesting...

I walk into this guys lawn and space for a bit admiring his garden and flowers, I snap out of it and remember what I was there for and approach him. I wasn't exactly prepared for this but figured I'd step up and help James out a bit... The man in the yard was a slightly older black gentleman in his late 50s or early 60's, however the way this dude was dressed struck me at first, dude was barefoot and wearing nothing but loose fitting overalls, and a straw hat. I'm giggling in my head because without exaggeration this dude looks straight up like one of those old stereotypical drawings of a like an old plantation field-worker... I ask him if he saw the accident "Sure did, son, you boys alright?" he responds with a deep southern accent and I'm thinking "for fucks sake I'm tripping balls and having a conversation with a fucking walking stereotype." I ask him if he wouldn't mind if I took his info as a witness to the event. "Sure son, not at all... that guy blew right through that stop sign damn near killed ya." During the conversation he then tells me then tells me his name is Jasper Williams, and I'm beginning to wonder just how hard I'm tripping and if I'm mishearing all this? It's a gorgeous summer day out there's birds chirping all around us, I'm standing in Jasper's fucking lawn and garden starting to hit another peak and feeling like I'm in a fucking scene from Song of the South. I start seeing butterflies and shit flying around this dude and I half expected a bird to come land on his shoulder and for him to break out into "Zippity Doo Da" I'm trying to contain my laughter as I take down the rest of his info, half crossing my arms and putting my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. He gives me a questioning look and I break eye contact. "You alright son?" "Yeah just a little rattled I guess" I thanked Jasper for his time and info and made my way back over to James giggling my ass off.

James went back to our friend's house to calm down and decide how he was going to eventually approach his dad about the car. And I decided, since I was still kinda tripping I was gonna catch a bus downtown and get into a few other shenanigans (which is another story I'll save for some other time).

[zkom]

I don't know if this is a mad story but a very unlikely event anyway.

 

When I was but a little boy my father used to play a lot of lottery. He also played a kind of group game with our neighbors, where a group of players buy multiple series of numbers and if they get any winnings they will be divided by all. Anyway, one night when the lottery program was on TV and my dad was checking the numbers, not looking at the TV just listening to the lady reciting them, he hits the jackpot. He goes running around our home and into the upstairs neighbor's home (we lived in an apartment building). Well, the neighbor said they didn't get the jackpot, one number is missing. After some more talk, double, triple, quadruple, etc checks it turns out that the lady reciting the numbers actually made a mistake listing the numbers and they didn't win the jackpot. A long story short, they got some several orders of magnitude smaller amount of money that was split maybe 4-5 ways.

 

But the chances that the announcer misreads the numbers and that you hit the jackpot with those misread numbers is so astronomically low that it still boggles my mind. Also if they had won the jackpot my childhood would have probably been very different from that point on since we were basically a working class family with little money. Oh well.