In the land of the free, there are actually a lot of strange laws that don’t make sense. Of course, some of these laws are outdated and not exactly still reinforced, but some of them, sadly, are still the ways of the land—and impacting your love life.
One recent case brought up a weird law made news headlines back in May when a 44-year-old Georgia resident named Melissa Davenport filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s law prohibiting the sale of sex toys. Currently, the only way a person in Georgia can purchase a sex toy is if it was used medically or scientifically, educationally, legislatively or for a law enforcement purpose. This situation is very important to Davenport because she has multiple sclerosis so she and her husband use sex toys to keep their intimacy going. Davenport’s lawyer claims that this law violates the 14th Amendment, which says a state cannot deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property.
This is not the only law that can have effect on your love life. There are plenty of crazy laws in many other states that would probably penalize a lot of citizens if they were all taken as seriously as Georgia’s sex toy ban.
Check out below to see what you may be guilty of!
Getting married on a dare is grounds for an annulment in DE. We can only imagine what that couple was like to set a precedent for this law…
It’s illegal to allow premarital sex in one’s home in Colorado. Colorado residents need to lay down some ground rules for those guests that don’t have a ring on their finger!
You can’t teach others what polygamy is in Mississippi. Does this law mean Mississippi doesn’t show “My Five Wives”?
Flirtation and “lascivious banter” is punishable in Arkansas. This law is most likely an old one and overlooked, but the law states that one can go to jail for 30 days just for flirting in this state.
You can’t “settle lover quarrels” using magic in New Orleans. OK so it’s not magic exactly, but the law lists fortune telling, astrology or palmistry being prohibited. So put away the fortune cards and talk it out people!
A man can’t seduce and corrupt a single lady in Michigan. But how would anyone fall in love? We kid! A weird law in Michigan states that a man can get five years for doing this.
Homosexuality can’t be included in sex ed in Louisiana. Sadly there are many laws in the US that shows prejudice against the LGBT community, but one that is definitely ridiculous is this one in Louisiana. Sex education is already terrible in this country, why make it even worse by creating laws that censor important parts of the subject?
Married couples can’t engage in “lewdness behavior” in Florida. Oh Florida, you should perhaps look past what married couples are doing and focus more on some of those crazy citizens that continue to make national headlines.
You can’t kiss a sleeping woman in Logan County, Colorado. This law actually makes sense in a way because you can’t give consent while you’re asleep, but it’s weird that this doesn’t extend to men as well.
It’s illegal to sell sex toys in many areas. Believe it or not to this day, some states are trying to keep citizens from getting their freak on with sex toys. Alabama has a law that prohibits selling products that are “primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs” in order to protect public morality. The entire state of Alabama and Georgia along with parts of Texas, Maine, New Mexico and more prohibit selling these devices because they are categorized as “obscene.”
It’s illegal to have sex in a car without curtains in NM. If there is a new trend for teens in Carlsbad, New Mexico to have curtains in their car, we now know the reason why…
It’s illegal for men to be aroused in public in Indiana. Sorry Indiana guys, but you need to keep your arousal in check when you’re outdoors thanks to this law.
I am currently in Dale, Alabama. My father was transferred here not too long ago from Lawton, Oklahoma. I won’t get into too much specifics, but know that my father is an engineer.
Yesterday, during dinnertime, I noticed my father wasn’t eating too much on his plate. I asked him if he was feeling alright, because he’s a big man, you know. He looked at me and my mother, who already seemed to know what’s up. His face darkened and told me something is going to happen this Friday. I looked at my mother. She kept her head down and looked at her hands. I asked him what weird thing, and all he could say was, “Something bad, son. Something real bad.” Then he added, “Make sure to say goodbye to your friends on Thursday night.” And that was it. I tried to ask him more questions, but he told me everyone will know come Friday evening.
After dinner, he had us pack some bags and told us to get ready to leave in a couple of days. I can’t help but think that it’s some stupid game he’s playing with my mother to get me ready to leave the state again. We just moved here. I don’t know what he’s up to, or what he has planned for my family, and I have this weird feeling that something really bad is going to happen.
It’s not like my father to fail to report his location for almost 24 hours. For as long as I’ve known, he and my mother would always be in communication, whether by phone or messaging. My mother would always know where he is.
As of now, he hasn’t done either of those. My mother is frantic — she is legitimately worried that something has happened to him. I keep imagining the worst.
Yesterday, he had told us, at the dinner table, something bad was going to happen Friday. I fear, whatever this “bad thing” is, has just started.
My mother is calling my name right now, she says someone called about father. She says he is currently in a facility that has no reception, so he hasn’t been able to contact us. The relief in my mother’s voice is obvious, but for some reason, I don’t think my father is alive anymore.
Below, some of the dumbest and grossest things that men have said to me during sex. And how I wish I would have responded. In reality I usually just make an awkward joke or get really wide-eyed and nod uncomfortably. There’s always next time, I say to myself. (And then, “Oh god, please don’t let there be a next time…”)
1. “I’ll be…like so fast. You won’t even notice I came.”
Valid point considering I never noticed the entire time I was sleeping with you; you’re absolutely right(!!!) I probably won’t (and ultimately never did) notice. But the fact that you would even let those words slip right out of your mouth just shows how you have both:
No idea or concern about figuring out how the female body works, and
No hope of ever getting a woman off.
I’m not sorry for you at all after hearing about that time a girl bit your penis mid blow job. You deserved it. Hell, you EARNED it.
2. “The cramps can’t be that bad. And don’t worry, I’ll only be a little weirded out if you bleed.”
All right baby boy. Remember when you got hit in the “family jewels” at full force in elementary school gym class because you were playing dodgeball? Imagine that happening every few minutes all. day. long. As someone who is lucky enough to have the same sensations as contractions when cramping, I would just like to yell: YES THEY ARE THAT BAD. (Please clap in between each word for emphasis.)
And you’ll only be a little weirded out? Well guess what sugar!? I won’t be weirded out or even be the tiniest bit upset when you GTFO. Don’t let the door hit you in the testicles on the way out. And if it does — don’t worry! It won’t hurt that bad.
3. “But I won’t drop you!”
Famous last words. You are far more focused on the sensations happening around your boys to even give me and my personal safety a second thought.
I am supremely happy I didn’t break anything. You should lift more before making such bold statements.
4. “Om nom nom nom.”
Nope nope nope nope NOPE.
Okay. I shouldn’t have actually said anything back. I should have just fled the scene.
Imagine your favorite running away gif (mine is the lizard running on water but I digress) because that is exactly what should happen if a man ever makes a noise like that. That should have been my reaction when this came at me. I should have told him to leave and never come back, Gollum style.
5. “Oh my god, look! No hands!”
Oh honey…. You could have made this funny, less awkward, or even charming had you been a good lay. But your self confidence was next to nothing and I really got the vibe that you wanted to cry and quote Nicolas Sparks movies after we were done. You always seemed like you were trying to prove something and could never exactly pinpoint what you were aiming for. Godspeed my friend; I just wasn’t the girl/vagina for you.
6. “Could you maybe…I dunno…call an Uber or something?”
Yeah bro, already on it but don’t hurry to even pull the condom off first. And just so we’re clear, anyone who gives a hickey after the age of 19 needs to self evaluate anyway. Plus: you are almost 30 and sleep on a mattress on a floor…wasn’t planning on spending the night with you in any way shape or form. Thanks for the beer and humiliation though!
7. “You aren’t going to tell them it was me, right?”
You tried to:
Punch me mid-fuck.
Asked me to stick a finger up your ass.
Said you loved me/came in my hair.
Wanted me to pretend to be an alien
(And yes all of the above happened.)
I won’t name names on the Internet or to strangers because I’m classy to a certain extent. But yeah, my friends all know what you did, said and asked for. Hey, you were willing to get naked; you should have known that it was a possibility. And please, like you haven’t exposed parts of me to your friends over whiskey. Please.
Baseball nicknames in the 1800s were like moustaches at a craft beer festival – everybody had one and they were freaking amazing. It was a time when grown men went by names like Scrappy, Ham, and Jocko. When Native American players went by Chief, deaf players went by Dummy, and no one thought twice about having a guy on their team named Alamazoo. When managers said things like, “We need a big bat in this spot. Tell Doggie Miller to get ready to pinch hit.”
Even the regular names were pretty fantastic back in the day. Every team had at least a few names that sounded as if they were hastily conjured up by a horrible novelist mere seconds before the game began – monikers like Fred Gunkel, Julius Willigrod, and Dorsey Riddlemoser.
You can have your trendy, modern baby boy names, your Liams and Aidens and Carters. But I’ll take a guy named Klondike Douglass every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
30. Con Daily
Sounds like: A Jay-Z song
29. Carlton Molesworth
This is just the worst name I’ve ever heard. This dude definitely died a virgin.
If you thought I wasn’t going to include names that make me giggle like a 10-year-old boy, you thought wrong.
25. Trick McSorley
Trick got thrown off his team for “crooked play,” making him the first in a long line of tricky McSorleys.
24. Bill Goodenough
Little is known about Goodenough, who only had 31 career ABs, all occurring in 1893. But his full name was William B. Goodenough, which sounds like a Chuck Berry song, and his face was comprised of only 9 pixels.
23. Hi Ladd
Sounds like: A friendly fella. Not to be confused with Welcome Gaston.
22. Shadow Pyle
Sounds like: A minor character from a Thomas Pynchon novel
21. Dude Esterbrook
Wikipedia: “Esterbrook died at the age of 43 when he leaped from a train, in Middletown, New York, that was transporting him to a mental hospital.” DUDE.
20. Candy Cummings
Sounds like: An especially depraved female porn star. Regardless, he was a fantastic pitcher and many credit him with inventing the curveball.
19. Boileryard Clarke
Apparently Boileryard earned his nickname due to his voice. What that means is anyone’s guess, but I’m assuming he wasn’t exactly the heir apparent to Whitney Houston. He looked like the kind of guy you see right before you die.
18. Brickyard Kennedy
Sounds like: The Kennedy brother that could really, really drink
17. Cozy Dolan
Sounds like: A black market Snuggie
16. Bumpus Jones
Bumpus pitched a no-hitter in his first major league appearance and then did nothing else of note. He died doing what he loved, having the nickname Bumpus.
15. Buttercup Dickerson
Sounds like: A candy bar or a doo-wop singer
14. Foghorn Bradley
Foghorn, who only played one season, spent most of his time as an umpire. He also had a hair part that looked like it was divided by Moses himself.
13. Noodles Hahn
Wikipedia: “Hahn acquired his nickname as a child, but said that he did not know how he had gotten it. Hahn’s biography from the Society for American Baseball Research suggests four possible origins for the nickname, all involving the fact that Hahn had frequently carried, sold or enjoyed noodle soup.” Well, alright then.
12. Egyptian Healy
Cuz he was from Cairo, Illinois.
11. Lady Baldwin
Sounds like: An antiquated feminine hygiene product
According to Wikipedia, “Baldwin was given the nickname ‘Lady’ because of his ‘quiet ways’ and his refusal to swear or to come into contact with either tobacco or liquor.” The 1880s – a time synonymous with inclusion and sensitivity.
10. Live Oak Taylor
I can’t even begin to imagine the origins of this nickname, but I can tell you that this dude probably did well with the 19th century lady folk because he looked like a long-lost 98 Degrees member.
9. Peek-A-Boo Veach
Sounds like: A pedophile
8. Old Hoss Radbourn
Old Hoss is probably the best known guy on this list. He was a 300-game winner and holds the all-time record for single season wins, with 59. He pitched 678 innings that year, which is more baseball than I’ve watched in the past five years combined. Below, a long Wikipedia excerpt that ranks among the most incredible I’ve ever stumbled across:
“Jealousy and hatred between Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney, the other ace pitcher on the team, broke out into violence in the clubhouse; Radbourn was faulted as the initiator of the fight, and was suspended without pay after a poor outing on July 16, having been accused of deliberately losing the game by lobbing soft pitches over the plate. But on July 22, Sweeney had been drinking before the start of the game and continued drinking in the dugout between innings. Despite being obviously intoxicated, Sweeney managed to make it to the seventh inning with a 6–2 lead, but when Bancroft attempted to relieve him with the change pitcher, Sweeney stormed out of the park in a rage, leaving the Providence side with only eight players. With only two men to cover the outfield they lost the game.
This left the team in a state of disarray with the consensus view that the team should be disbanded. At that point, Radbourn offered to start every game for the rest of the season (having pitched in 76 of 98 games the season before) in exchange for a small raise and exemption from the reserve clause for the next season. From that point, July 23 to September 24 when the pennant was clinched, Providence played 43 games and Radbourn started 40 of them and won 36. Soon, pitching every other day as he was, his arm became so sore he couldn’t raise it to comb his hair.”
7. Phenomenal Smith
I think Phenomenal may have been the only one who called himself that. Wikipedia says, “In his first and only game for Brooklyn, on June 17, 1885, Smith’s teammates were reported to have intentionally committed 14 errors to punish Smith for his perceived brash and cocky demeanor.”
6. Jiggs Parrott
I like the 1800s because they thought they had to give a guy with the last name Parrott a nickname.
Apparently, one season Jiggs was so hated by hometown Chicago crowds that manager Cap Anson elected only to play him in away games. My Little League manager tried the same trick.
5. Oyster Burns
Sounds like: A rare and horrible medical disorder that occurs on the inner thigh
According to Wikipedia, “Burns, nicknamed ‘Oyster’ because he sold shellfish in the off-season, was described as a ‘loudmouth’ and having ‘an irritating voice and personality’.”
In 19th century baseball, you got a cool nickname for smelling like fish and disturbing people. I do it in 2014 and I’m legally required to go door-to-door introducing myself every time I move. Well, I guess I’m just an old soul.
Some other Wikipedia gems on Oyster:
“While he was playing for the Bridegrooms, the New York Clipper described Burns as ‘the noisiest man that ever played on the Brooklyn team. His voice reminds one of a buzz-saw.’”
“In 1893, between games of a doubleheader, a teammate of Burns, Tom Daly, was sleeping in center field when Burns stabbed Daly with a penknife. Daly awoke and turned on the knife, leading to a severed tendon which kept Daly out for two weeks.”
4. Cannonball Titcomb
Pretty amazing, but he’d be number #1 if his name had been Cannoncomb Titball.
3. Pretzels Getzien
I sincerely wish this man had lived 100 years later so that Sportscenter anchors could’ve shouted “This Pretzels is making me thirsty!” during every one of his highlights. Wait, no I don’t.
2. Ice Box Chamberlain
“Ice Box!” We don’t even use those anymore! That’d be like if there was a dude in the 70s named 8-Track Wilson, or a guy in 1997 named GeoCities Jones.
1. The Only Nolan
Take that Nolan Ryan! I love the idea of someone claiming ownership over such a pedestrian name. The Only Nolan is certainly the only Nolan that matters to me, and apparently he was a total badass. Some facts from his Wikipedia page:
“He was expelled by the team on August 14 when he told the team he was going to a funeral, but instead went drinking.”
“At a National League meeting…the league adopted a blacklist of players who were barred from playing for or against any NL teams until they were removed by unanimous vote of the league clubs. Nolan was one of the ten blacklisted for ‘confirmed dissipation and general insubordination’.”
Confirmed dissipation! Nowadays we’re lucky to have rumored rakishness. The 1800s, those were the days…
Bonus: The 10 Greatest 19th Century Team Names
Even the teams of the 1800s had incredible nicknames. Besides hailing from metropolitan hotspots like Worcester and Troy, team names of the time were frequently as awesome as they were off-the-wall and quirky.
Philadelphia Quakers
New York Mutuals
Worchester Ruby Legs
Brooklyn Superbas
Brooklyn Bridegrooms (an 1888 name change from the Brooklyn Grays due to several players on the roster getting married)
High noon, and there he was, just like Whistlin’ Pete told me he’d be. At least, I thought it was Whistlin’ Pete. With the sun directly overhead, I could just barely make out the silhouette of a man in a cowboy hat sitting on top of his horse. The distance between us was nothin’ but rock and sand, the horizon looked like it was made of wavy lines comin’ up from the ground.
I was hoping that nobody’d show up, that the whole, “Meet me out in the desert, high noon,” was more of an intimidation tactic than anything else. But here he was, here we both were. A couple of lizards ran out from behind a rock to his right. Their sandy color made the little animals blend in almost perfectly with the ground. In fact, if it weren’t for their shadows, I wouldn’ta been able to make them out, scuttlin’ across the imaginary line that connected me with Whistlin’ Pete, kickin’ up tiny little lines of dust as their tails dragged along the ground.
The silhouette started moving, the horse’s hooves up and down, comin’ in a little closer. Was there enough time to run? Maybe. But that wouldn’ta settled anything. Whistlin’ Pete’d find me right back at the town, maybe he’d even beat me back to the inn where I was stayin’. And what would I do if I got back first, keep runnin’? The only train out of town left hours ago, and my horse wouldn’ta made it too far, not in this heat.
Another three or four lizards ran across, these ones just slightly bigger than the first two. Whistlin’ Pete sure was taking his time making his way over. Was this part of the process? Just stretchin’ out the suspense, makin’ me sweat it out? I thought to myself, well, if it’s all an elaborate scare tactic, maybe Whistlin’ Pete’ll let me go. Otherwise, what would be the point of putting me through all of this anticipation? Yeah, maybe he’d give me a good old fashioned desert spook, and then he’d send me off, runnin’ away, free to spread the story across the territories. Maybe that’s what Whistlin’ Pete really wanted, a reputation, a name that’d strike fear anywhere.
Now Pete was getting close enough that I probably could have called out something that he’d hear, but what could I say? How did this all get started anyway? Does Whistlin’ Pete really take seats that seriously? “Hey pardner,” I could still hear Pete’s voice in my head, tapping me on the shoulder at the saloon, “That’s my seat.”
And why did I have to be so confrontational? My memory from yesterday was interrupted at the sight of eight or ten more lizards running right in front of him the same right to left direction as the others, the same color. But these guys were noticeably bigger, maybe the size of squirrels, or small cats. Was I standin’ on their habitat? Were they tryin’a run away? For the first time all day, my aversion to all of these reptiles made me think about something other than Whistlin’ Pete.
When I looked up, Pete was waving, and it didn’t look like he was tryin’a say hello. “… iza … ey! … own! …” but I was too far away to hear clearly, and Whistlin’ Pete wasn’t exactly known for his enunciation anyway. Even if he had a full set of teeth, even if he didn’t make that whistlin’ sound every time he tried to talk, I couldn’t imagine his words being too much clearer.
But there was something else, though. I couldn’t make out individual words, but I could definitely hear somethin’, a sense of … was it panic? That didn’t really mesh with the hardened image I had in my mind of the showdown-challengin’ outlaw. But yeah, Whistlin’ Pete had both of his arms in the air now, so no gun probably, and there was definitely some flailin’ around going on.
That was maybe five minutes ago. We’ve been at a standoff ever since. I’m just noticing now those same lines of shadows and dust gettin’ kicked up in front of Whistlin’ Pete. Only, from this distance, those lizards must’a been a lot bigger. Now I’m really startin’a get a little freaked out.
Pete’s horse just did one of those moves where it stood up on his hind legs and kicked the front ones in the air. I can make out Pete strugglin’ to hold on, but two or three bucks and he’s on the ground. Now there are more lizards runnin’ right in front of the both of them, dozens, or hundreds even, several lines runnin’ between us and, when I look behind, there are even more.
And gettin’ bigger, the size of dogs now. The little ones earlier weren’t payin’ any attention, but now some of the bigger ones are stoppin’ for a couple’a seconds, just to kind of eye me down, pay me just a half a minute of consideration. In the distance, Pete looks like he’s strugglin’ with somethin’.
And the bigger they get, the more and more time these lizards stop to look, to make eye contact even. Now I’m gettin’ the sense that somethin’ progressive is happenin’ here, somethin’ primal, not natural, a whole line of little lizards runnin’ away from bigger lizards, and they’re only gettin’ bigger. I swear, that one right there had to be the size of a Shetland pony, and when it stops to look, it doesn’t start runnin’ again, it just stays here and stares.
In the distance, Pete’s gone. It’s just those shimmering wavy heat lines at the horizon, which is gettin’ increasingly difficult to see anyway, on account of all of the lizards. To my right I’m startin’a hear something like a stampede, and I get the sense that my horse is gettin’ spooked. I don’t want to see how big the biggest of these things gets, and I don’t want to get bucked off like Whistlin’ Pete did.
And so I let out a big, “Ya!” and steer myself in the only direction I can. Not in front, not behind, because there are lizards as far back in the other direction, but just left, just runnin’ right alongside all of the other lizards. I look back and the big ones that had stopped at me before are right on my tail. And behind them, there isn’t even a horizon anymore, it’s just shimmering, squirming, dust-brown scales, all of them. And all I can do is hope that my horse can outrun these things, that maybe I’ll find a way out before we get to the canyon’s edge, as long as the big ones didn’t catch up, and as long as I can hold on when the horse eventually decides to throw me off. Although I have that feeling, like he’s right about to buck. Any second now and I’ll be on the ground, if he can’t hold on, that is. “Ya!” he keep screamin’, hopin’a maintain some control, kickin’ the horse in the side, “Ya! Ya!”
1. I was in my room when I heard someone moaning. I thought someone was having sex in the room next to me and I quickly rubbed one out while listening to it. It wasn’t a couple having sex. It was a squeaky ceiling fan.
- Brett, 24
2. There was this girl that went to my college — she had this really red hair, and this one time, she wore this bright blue dress. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
- Ian, 29
3. Lola, from Space Jam.
- Dylan, 22
4. My dog licking my hand.
- Josh, 20
5. There was a news anchor on channel 11 and my god, for some reason, her voice just got me going.
- Sean, 23
6. Crying girls…
- Travis, 26
7. I was in line to get coffee and a really tired-looking woman came in sweatpants. I had to hide my boner with my coat.
- Hank, 28
8. Ears. Who’d have thought.
- Ethan, 26
9. A girl I was sleeping with randomly choked me. I had the most intense orgasm after.
- Rob, 21
10. I get a solid boner listening to Blonde Redhead. I don’t know why.
- James, 27
11. Bus rides. The vibrations fucking get me.
- Dean, 28
12. My girlfriend chewed me out when I broke something of hers. I got turned on like crazy for some reason. It was humiliating.
- Walter, 28
13. When girls miss a button on their shirt.
- Pete, 20
14. The way my professor used to chew on her pencils. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
- Xavier, 25
15. I saw a video where this woman is doused in milk. It was disgusting, but so…hot.
I think it’s rare to meet a woman who identifies as heterosexual (or pan, bi, anyone who can enjoy a fella) who doesn’t have some weird affection for this part of a man. It’s actually kind of a creepy and vampiric attraction to have when you think about it, but GOD DAYUM! THAT VEINNNNN. It’s probably a sign of low body fat percentage or something more superficial than any of us want to readily admit, but yum. Can you lift up that bag of groceries one more time for me? Slow motion for me, move in slow motion for mehhh.
2. If they say hi to a dog passing by
Any attention or affection to an animal probably triggers some biological “HAVE MY BABIES” response in our bodies. But seriously, the more you pet that dog, the more someone might want you to pet the kitty. Just keep that in mind.
3. Shoulder blades
Almost every time I feel gooey and sentimental and decide to write a love poem about my latest Romeo, I pen some #basic metaphors and lines about how it feels to trace his shoulder blades. I’m not about to be named a Nobel Prize Laureate anytime soon (duh), but there’s a reason I’m so fixated on remembering how it feels to touch those little boney babes. They give me the tingles.
4. When they tease you about something you said a while ago
It means he was legitimately listening and stored the information away. Even if he’s playfully giving you shit about something, this is a pretty good indicator that he cares about what you say and makes an effort to remember. But if he can dish it out, he better be prepared for your rebuttal.
5. Being kind of awkward
This might be a personal preference because I’m not exactly the smoothest baby bottom in the bassinet. If a guy is Mr. Lothario, all slick and almost disgustingly charming all the time, it’s not very attractive. It’s concerning, and probably all an act established eons ago when someone stabbed his fragile ego. A man who is endearingly awkward is so much more real. Real is sexy, point blank.
6. That audible gulp/swallow sound they make before things get HAWT
In the best relationships, bringing pleasure to your partner only intensifies your own pleasure. You know that moment when you reach for his belt and your dude has that, “Oh, fuck yeah” look and swallows loudly enough that you can actually hear it? It’s like an auditory lube, readying you for action.
7. When they say your name
This seems obvious, but it’s just nice to hear. Sure, there’s a place for the babe and sweetheart moments of the world, but calling me the name my parents agreed upon decades ago will always be a favorite. Whether it’s gently before we go to sleep or in the midst of a tickle match gone awry, hearing a guy say your actual name is so reassuring and sexy. Even hotter if you generally go by a nickname (*ahem Ari) and he pulls out the full name (Arielle…). Not like, hinting to my future lover(s?) or anything…
8. When they are comfortable being silly
Picture this: It’s Sunday morning. You are in the shower and you can faintly hear Swift’s 1989 blasting in the other room. You come out to see him full on pelvic thrusting and Ashlee Simpson lip syncing into your hair brush. And he’s not embarrassed by being caught in the act, he just extends his hand to you to join him. Instant lady boner.
9. When they suck at something
Perfection is such a buzz kill. Seeing him try something he’s clearly not going to make a professional career out of reminds you he’s a mere mortal, just like you. Plus, nobody wants to be with that one freak of nature who is good at everything.
10. PENISSSSSS (size irrelevant)
No offense men, but penises are kind of fucking weird. If you really study one up close, which I’d advise against, it is pretty bizarre we want these little (or big, medium, smedium, whatevs) mysteries all up in our own business. I remember being kind of terrified to see one for the first time, but when my then boyfriend unzipped and pulled out his Johnson, I thought, yep. I like that.
11. When they disagree with you
If he’s just doing this to be a tool or you have fundamentally different views, probably not going to be too hot. But a guy who sticks to his guns on what he believes, even if you don’t always agree, is very attractive.
12. Voices that sometimes crack
As long as you aren’t actually 12, guys who occasionally still have breaks in their voices are adorable, and somehow sexy at the same time. It’s this sudden cute moment of innocence, and guys usually get all red-faced and make a joke about going through puberty again. Am I alone in liking this? Omg, please tell me I’m not alone in this.
13. Having some scruff
I can dig the clean, baby-faced look or full on hipster/lumberjack beard, but nothing beats a little scruff. It’s strange that this is a look we often find attractive, because really it just means he was too lazy to shave, and/or has trouble fully committing to serious facial hair. What does this say? I have no clue, but that 5’oclock shadow has me feeling all kinds of feelings.
Read this: This Is How We Date Now
Read this: 30 Men On The Moment They Realized They Were In Love
Read this: When You Look At Someone And Realize You’re Going To Fall In Love
1. This White Plains, NY mom was accused of slowly killing her son with salt and tracking the decline of his health on social media for all to see. “She did it for the likes and favs” is not yet a solid defense for taking your kid’s life.
3. No one was safe from the Queens father/husband/son-in-law who shot up everyone in his home to end a five-hour manhunt with the NYPD. You can also add him to the shockingly high percentage of athletes who turn dangerous—before all of this happened, he was an “international basketball player,” which is what I’m pretty sure what the black guy on New Girl who’s not a Wayans supposedly did before moving into the apartment with Jess and the guys.
4. Last year a Phoenix man took his son’s life by chopping into him with an ax. According to the reports, the man claimed that his son had been possessed by the devil and needed to be removed from the planet.
8. Innocent of the final deed or not, party girl mom Casey Anthony didn’t look for or report the fact that her daughter Caylee was missing for almost a month. It took Casey’s parents finally noticing that the little girl was M.I.A. for Casey to fess up to the fact that she’d kinda sorta lost her daughter to a fictional nanny, “Xani.” Even if you’re one of those people who (wrongly) thinks that Casey didn’t kill her sweet baby, you can’t deny that her actions leading up to the little girl’s search certainly lead to unfortunate end of this story.
11. This Christmas, a man in Ebonyi returned from a holiday trip to Lagos, fought with the mother of his son and then murdered the boy for revenge. Happy fucking holidays!
In 1992 or -3, I had an aging Datsun (not Nissan) 200SX whose ignition system was notoriously dodgy. I was in the habit of carrying both a rubber mallet and an extra long Craftsman flathead screwdriver to persuade my starter to in fact start my car.
My then-boyfriend and I had gone for a date up on Grizzly Peak Road in Tilden Regional Park, hanging out in the dark looking out over the city lights out to the bridges and playing music on the car stereo…and running down the battery. Ooops. Someone tried to jump my battery for me, but as I’d expected from prior experience, I needed someone with more oomph under the hood than the dinky lil’ import that was offering aid.
Late as it was, we were wondering whether we’d be able to get any help. Remember, these are the days before mobile phones. Along came a vintage Karmann Ghia convertible, mostly faded, with the lights flickering weakly, and a young slim, long-haired and barefoot hippie chick to match. Again, this is 1993 and hip-hugger bellbottoms were not much in vogue, especially not among the Berkeley hippie set who at the time were all in baggy t-shirts and broomstick skirts.
She offered one or both of us a ride down to the bottom of the hill, back to civilization. We thought about sitting in the dark, and opted for the unsafe but momentary option of my riding down on his lap.
Now, the road down to Claremont is hilly and winding, and not very well lit. Ms. Blonde Barefoot and Bell-bottomed took the curves with great aplomb and not inconsiderable speed, and then blithely mentioned after a bit that she had no brakes on this car, because she’d bought it for $50 from a friend. But no worries, she assured us. Clutch would suffice!
So. No seatbelt, open top, barely any headlights, and no brakes. Hooboy.
And then, grinding noises and muttered cursing. No more clutch.
There is a traffic light at the bottom of that road, and it crosses a far busier one. I have no idea what we would have done if the light had been against us. Played Frogger while leaning on the horn, maybe.
The light was with us.
We cruised in on inertia into the parking spot that was miraculously open in a straight shot from the gas station driveway. Ms. Hippie Chick wandered off while my boyfriend and I were figuring out what to do next. She’d told us she was abandoning the car, as it wasn’t worth fixing. We were going to see if she needed a ride anywhere, but … she was nowhere to be found.
We asked each other whether either of us had actually touched her. Neither of us thought to check the temperature of the engine before it had been long enough for it to cool off, but the suddenness of her disappearance and her anachronistic appearance had us wondering for years whether we’d been part of a “Disappearing Hitchhiker” ghost story with a twist.
Get exclusively creepy TC stories by liking Creepy Catalog.
1. A large catfish in the only bathtub of my Vietnamese friend’s house. He told me they fatten them and purify them for a few days before eating it by feeding it a special diet. Oh, and they showered with it.
6. A large Folger’s coffee can that the father pissed in, in the middle of the night.
Apparently, he doesn’t like getting out of bed to relieve himself. So he just flops his thing out from under the covers, pisses in the coffee can and goes back to sleep.
7. I was playing nintendo 64 at a friends place when I was 13, I farted and he got scared and kept a look out for his parents who were upstairs. After that, he said that I had to fart in the bathroom from now on. Never went back.
8. My wife and I were sitting down for dinner at my grandma’s house. We were all having spaghetti, g-ma’s favorite. I get a text and look down at my phone, it’s from my wife… Who is sitting across from me, and is bright red. The text reads, “turn around, there’s something in the hutch. It can’t be what I think it is.” I turn my head around, confused. And amidst all the knickknacks, statuettes, and trinkets in the hutch of her china cabinet… Is a huge…glass…dildo. I immediately turn around. Look at my wife with wide eyes, nodding. It is definitely what she thinks it is. It’s unmistakably a glass dildo. On a stand. A glass dildo, next to china plates. A glass dildo.
That’s when my grandma bursts out laughing. “Most people don’t notice it. Your wife’s got a good eye!”
10. I had a friend from a hippie family growing up. In their bathroom was a paper grocery bag next to the toilet and a note above it said “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down; toilet paper in the bag for compost, please”.
They were a clean family but the bathroom always smelled like old pee.
11. I saw my friend’s brother giving his mom a massage in the master bedroom. On the bed. Neither had their top on. The door was open a crack and I saw as I was walking to my friend’s room.This is how the conversation went later.
“Um, dude, I saw your topless brother massaging your topless mother in her bed.”
When I got home Wednesday night, I was exhausted from a long day of work at the accounting firm. The end of the fiscal year meant our workload was about to triple, so I’d been working extra hours to tie up loose ends before the influx of income tax reports. I’d lazily bought lasagna at a bistro on the way home to avoid the hassle of cooking for myself. After enjoying my meal in front of the TV, I decided to change into something more comfortable, and headed towards my bedroom. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the sliding glass patio door in my dining room. I didn’t have a patio.
I stood motionless in front of the fog-coated door while my brain tried to process what I was seeing. I wondered if I’d somehow absent-mindedly wandered into the wrong apartment complex. That theory was debunked quickly, when I confirmed that my family photos were still hanging right where they belonged. I approached the door cautiously, feeling an odd sensation as I got closer. It was as though the door was both present and absent at the same time, like when you watch a 3D movie and try to grab one of the objects popping out at you. My eyes acknowledged the doorway’s existence, but there was a sort of disconnect with my other senses, as though they were going numb. I placed my hand on the glass: it was wet and cold to the touch, like a mirror after a steamy shower. In a circular motion, I wiped away part of the fog that was obscuring my view of what was beyond the pane, leaning close to get a good look.
The other side was bizarrely ordinary. It was my home, but in reverse, as though I was looking through a mirror. I squinted, pressing my nose against the glass to try and make out the details. I could see the tall grandfather clock in the corner, the stacks of papers on my dining room table, and even the side of the flatscreen TV in my living room. What I did not see was my own reflection looking back at me. It was a small detail, but it bothered me tremendously. If this was a reflection of my home, then were was I? My attention turned to the handle. If I opened the door, would I find the painted concrete wall that should have been there? I had to know, so I tugged on the handle.
A small gush of air came in from the other side of the glass door as it slid to the right, revealing a mirrored version of my home. I had to touch it to make sure, so I slowly reached a hand towards the image of my apartment, still expecting my hand to brush against something solid. My fingertips passed right through, as though the wall had never existed. Still unsure of what to make of it, I stepped over the threshold and into the mirage. The moment I reached the other side, the world became completely silent. I could hear my accelerating heartbeat echoing in my head, but nothing else: not even the dull hum of electronics. With a deep, stressed inhalation, I realized that the room had no scent. The atmosphere was strange, too. It was as though I was walking through water, and it seemed like everything was in subtle but constant motion. I could see the walls and objects jittering just outside my vision, but they seemed stable whenever I turned to face them. I reached for the table, but my hand phased right through the object, as though I were nothing but a ghost.
As I made my way through the apartment, I noticed one blaring difference between it and my own: the blood. There was blood everywhere. An ever-growing feeling of dread stirred up inside of me as I made my way towards the source. I turned the corner and followed a trail of stains leading to my bedroom, where I saw something that nearly made me lose my supper. I had found the “other” me, and he was dead. He was sitting under my bedroom window, mangled and torn open from the abdomen. Claw marks could be found all over and around him, as though a wild animal had attacked him. I screamed, feeling blood drain from my face and extremities. I had to get out of there. I ran down the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the sliding door as quickly as my feet could take me. By the time I caught my breath and turned around, the sliding door was gone. I brought a hand to my mouth, gasping in shock. My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor. I spent the rest of the night going over it in my head. What did it mean? Was I just daydreaming? Had the lasagna given me food poisoning?
Having to go to work the next day was hell. I was sore and stressed out, barely accomplishing half of my daily tasks. I wasn’t in the mood to do much when I got home, so I bought a loaf of bread and started heating a can of tomato soup on the stove. I’m not sure why, but I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety pressing down on me. I felt as though I was on the verge of a panic attack. Then, for a moment, some kind of silhouette appeared in the corner of my eyes. I screamed and jerked violently, accidentally spilling soup all over my suit. Grunting in frustration, I stomped towards my closet for a change of clothes.
When I returned to the kitchen, the sliding glass door stood on the wall across my dining room table, mocking me. I tried to ignore it, focussing on my meal, but I could still sense its presence, and felt as though it was calling to me. Reluctantly, I opened the door and stepped through it. Just like the night before, the other side was quiet as the grave, scentless, and seemed barely within my range of perception. This time; however, I did not see blood. It was actually quite a relief, and I felt myself calming down a bit and foolishly believing it was safe.
Within a few minutes, I saw my other self down the hall. He looked perfectly healthy, albeit a little frazzled. He stood in front of the walk-in closet, body language betraying his terror. I walked in front of him, waving my arms to get his attention, but he looked right through me. Suddenly, a brisk movement caught my attention. The closet doors swung open, revealing a pair of glowing orbs locked on my other self. He screamed soundlessly, bolting towards our bedroom. A large mass leapt out from the darkness and ran after him. I wanted to look away, but I watched as a shadow-like wolf covered in spikes tore through him like a rag doll. Black saliva oozed from its razor maw as it attacked. It shredded my alternate self until he was left lifeless on the ground, just like I had found him the night before. The monstrous form then turned towards me, and for a moment, I feared that he could see me. Thankfully, he walked right by me and returned to the closet. I did the only sensible thing a man could do in this kind of situation: I fled through the glass door, into my home, and drank until I was numb from the inside out.
Today, I drowned myself in my work to keep those horrific images out of my mind. I did everything I could to stay busy and keep myself from having a nervous breakdown at the office. By the time I got home, I’d convinced myself that the magical sliding door and the horrors beyond it were merely stress-induced nightmares. I was going to take the night off and relax a bit. I figured I’d feel nice and refreshed in the morning. Unfortunately, when I got home, my plan hit one big roadblock: the sliding door was back.
I can’t tell you why I decided to go through this time. Maybe I hoped I’d see something better. Maybe I’m too curious for my own good. Either way, after gawking at the impossible door for ten minutes, I went through. The other me was cooking something on the stove. I approached cautiously, and saw him stirring a pot of tomato soup. My stomach dropped, and I finally understood what was going on. My past self started looking nervous. His head twitched ever so lightly in my direction. I knew he’d seen a glimpse of me. He screamed, jerked, and knocked soup over his suit. I was seeing what had happened yesterday.
Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could still save myself. I ran back to my real apartment, frantically making my way towards my bedroom where I’d left my car keys. Then I heard it. A scratching noise coming from the walk-in closet. I stood frozen in front of it. I know what’s going to happen now. I was given a chance to save myself, and I didn’t take it. Now, it’s too late.
From spontaneous human combustion to the Egyptian Pyramids, crop circles to the Bermuda Triangle, we live in a world full of unexplainable things. Here are 10 things that have since captured our imagination.
1. When I was working the drive thru at Popeyes, we would always tend to get this one couple who would come by. Sure, we had plenty of regulars, but every employee knew of the Human Tables. There was always the four of them, the dad, mom, sister, and brother, and they always rolled up to the window with AT LEAST 3 big bags of food from other fast food places. Not bags of trash, but bags of uneaten food. We would call them the Human Tables because they all had their seats all the way back and would use their stomachs as tables. The smell was pretty horrid as well. I mean, imagine a family that eats 4 big ass bags of fast food from multiple fast food joints for every meal. Pure terror I tell you.
Or there was this one time when an 80-year-old woman was hopped up on meth or something and decided that you should be naked for a “better Popeyes experience.” So many wrinkles. So many.
2. Working at McDonalds at 3am on a Sunday morning, I handed out food to a very nice gentleman. He must have been very nice because the guy in the passenger seat was giving him head, and he (the passenger) looked up and smiled at me as I handed them the drinks, which meant I got to see the driver in all his glory. He had no pants on at all from what I could see, so this seemed premeditated, which was the worst part of the experience. Ah, that was a wonderful place to work.
- Anonymous
3. At McDonald’s, a car full of naked people drove up and ordered food, with paper bags on their heads. I believe one of them referred to another as ‘Mom’.
- Anonymous
4. It’s not really too disgusting but I felt it should be shared. I was working the window at Tim hortons and one man ordered six small ice capps. When he came to the window I saw he had several children with him, all of different races. Then he leaned in to me and said, “Yep! I’ve got one of every kind! Black, Asian, Mexican, and way in the back there, I’ve even got a Jew!”
- Anonymous
5. I work in a tire installation shop. I’ve been there for 7 months and I already have everyone beat. 4 used tampons tied together, hanging from the woman’s rear view mirror. What made it really unsettling was that the woman was fucking gorgeous.
6. Working the McDonalds drive through at 11 am on a Sunday morning. A lady orders a Mcflurry (half M&M, half Oreo). Comes up to the first window where I am. Says hello and gives me her card to swipe. Completely ignores the fact that there is a crying teenage girl curled up in the fetal position in the passengers seat wearing nothing but a bra and panties.
Also there was this lady that had so much stuff in her old box style minivan passenger seat that it was almost formed to the shape that half of her body took when she sat in the car.
- Anonymous
7. I worked at Sonic as a carhop in high school. I don’t know if there’s Sonic up north, I’m from South Oklahoma, but it’s basically a drive in, you press a button, order, and your food is brought out to you.
Well, as employees, when we were bored, we would sometimes tune into the different boxes and just listen, usually get the radio, or conversations, nothing really interesting, usually. Well this night, we saw a car in the back of the lot who hadn’t ordered yet. So, naturally, we tuned in. It was quiet at first, then we heard a few grunting noises and realized “They’re having sex in our parking lot!” So we drew straws and decided I was the one who would bring the “Happy tray” out (basically a tray with condiments on it that you go car to car with).
It’s pitch black out, our lot isn’t very well lit, I get out there, peer in the shaking car and very innocently say “Would y’all like a mint?” (all the while I know my coworkers are listening in)
The car stops shaking, I see a shadow of a face look at me and say, “Back in my day, if a car was rockin, we stayed the fuck away.” I heard several giggles from the back as he flipped on an interior light. There were three women in the back pushing 80, no joke, and this stallion of a man was at least 90-years-old. I can never unsee that.
tl;dr: At sonic witnessed a 4 way with 3 80-year-old women.
8. While working at Arby’s this car FILLED with trash came up to the window….when he handed me the money I got a whiff of a putrid odor coming from the car, the guy was obviously homeless and lived in the car. As he pulled away I saw 3-4 six gallon buckets filled with urine and feces swishing around in the back seat.
- Anonymous
9. A pregnant girl was tweezing out hair from her belly. I was definitely not expecting to see that.
10. My worst story wasn’t something I saw but what I heard. I was taking orders at the drive through one evening. A man is doing the ordering and I can hear his wife in the background giving directions on what she wants, nothing unusual. Out of no where he screams, “How many fucking times do I have to tell you, I don’t give a fuck what you want!” Then their is a couple loud slaps and complete silence on both ends. They pull around and she has her head down, not sure if she was crying or unconscious. My manager had a headset on and came back a few minutes later and asked me if its what he thought it was and it was.
11. I watched the gradual decline of a customer’s car through drive thru other a couple of months. To start with he had trouble rolling down the windows of the rust bucket. That’s not too bad… Little while later, the window is completely fucked. It’s duct taped shut and he has to open the car door to hand over the money. Eventually he was standing on his seat and leaning out of the sunroof to get his food. I was surprised that piece of shit could even start – it was completely held together with brown paper and duct tape.
He was always well dressed and that though, seemed like he had money. It was just the car.
12. I worked at Taco Bell once upon a time. It was about mid-afternoon, and it was hot as hell outside.
One of our registers was down, so I was taking the payment and giving the food out at the same window. A lady pulls up to my window and I tell her the total. I don’t remember exactly how much it was, but it was probably around seven or eight dollars and some change.
She was very large and sweating heavily, she looked dirty, but luckily I couldn’t smell her. First she pulls a couple bills out of her bra and hands them to me, they were moist but it wasn’t something I had never had happen. She then reaches deep down under her boob and literally pulls out a hand full of change. FULL! I looked at her, I looked at her boob change and I said, “It’s okay, you’re close enough without the change.” I handed her the food and she went on her way, but man there was no way I was touching that!
All I could see in my mind was that episode of Spongebob where Bubbles Bass hides the pickles from his Krabby Patty under his tongue, except it was coins on the underside of a sweaty fat lady’s boob. Ew.
13. Not a drive-thru, but similar. I worked as a cart clerk at a grocery store in a rural town and saw some disgusting stuff.
There was this massive guy who probably weighed 300+ pounds who was sitting at the end of the checkout lanes and shit himself. Some of it fell out of his pant leg onto the ground and sat there for 20 minutes until the janitor showed up. No idea where the guy disappeared to, but it wasn’t to the washroom.
There was also a regular who was probably 400+ pounds and was so heavy that he had to lean backwards and do a fast walk to keep his momentum up in order to stay standing until he got to the electric carts. He would drive around and leave stink trails all across the store.
- Anonymous
14. While working at my first job, McDonald’s: greasy, unshaven man who was missing teeth pulls up in your stereotypical sketchy white van. Hanging from his rearview mirror are 3 or 4 pairs of little girls’ underwear.
15. Disgustingly fat black woman in a very short dress wearing no underwear being fingered by old black dude. She is on her back and her disgusting cooch is visible being fingered as you look out the drive window. Nearly puked.
- Anonymous
16. While working as a minimum wage slave at McDonalds. I was the drive through window guy just passing out the food. Well, one night this couple pulled in and was waiting on their fries. We had to make a new batch so I told him he could wait for a while because it was unusually slow that night. During this time the guy proceeds to whip out his dick and get a blow job all the while his other half pleasured herself while they waited and this continued as I handed them their fries.
- Anonymous
17. I was going on 47 hours plus without sleep (don’t ask, it was a bet), it was just before closing, and I was working back cash.
This couple pulls up and places their order, I think it was a Big Mac combo and something else. I only remember the Big Mac because it comes into play later. I take the order, given them their total and ask them to pull up to the window.
Here they come, in a truck I swear was more rust than metal. The guy, who’s driving, rolls down his window as he’s fumbling around with his wallet, counting out the money. It seemed like it took at least five minutes for him to count out five one dollar bills. Did I mention they looked like the most hillbilly, redneck people on the face of the planet?
Okay, so he hands me five one dollar bills. I repeat the total to him, which is a few dollars more than what he handed me.
“Ahh shit, lemme look around and see if I can find some more money,” he says. Proceeds to dig in the seat, ask his female companion, shit you not, look in the bed of the truck, but alas, he can’t come up with the money. All this time, I’m waiting, trying to figure out if this is a dream, or a hallucination.
“Ah man, I don’t have no more money. Maybe we could come up with a trade,” he says. I tell him nope, it has to be cash.
“Yer sure it has to be cash?” I repeat that yes, it has to be cash.
“Well, my lady friend here gives the best blowjobs in the world, and I’m sure she would oblige and give you the best hummer in the world, if you would just let us have the Big Mac,” he says. At this point, the lady smiles at me from the truck, and I shit you not, there was only three teeth in her head.
I mentally shudder, and repeat that I need the cash, or we can’t give them the food, all the while trying to avoid looking at either of them, for fear I might puke spontaneously.
“Yer sure about the blowjob son,” he says. I tell him I’m fine without it. He shrugs, looks at his lady friend and says, “Guess we won’t be eatin’ McDonald’s tonite hon.” Puts the truck in gear and drives off, leaving me to wonder again if this was a fucked up dream, or reality.
19. This isn’t fast food establishment, but a drive thru at a local convience store. I saw a man with one of those blue drinking fountain jugs HALF filled with snuff spit. I inquired about it and he told me he attempted to ‘recycle’ on the days he couldn’t buy a whole can.
20. Working night shift in a McDonalds equivalent, 2am ish, there’s a huge line to the drive through. Up comes a car with a middle aged gentleman and an older woman. Nothing special here, should be an easy customer… or so I thought. Upon a closer look the old lady is tripping balls with some kind of greenish goo oozing out of her mouth. The man himself has a contact lense with a star printed on it. Kind of strange but hey, it’s late saturday, right?
Well this is where it gets interesting. Instead of your standard late night order this guy goes ahead and orders twenty nine (29) hamburgers, no fries, no drinks. Now this is somewhat unordinary but nothing we can’t handle. Such order takes a while to do and this guy starts talking (the older lady, who turned out to be his mother, still on another astral plane) about how he’s a psychic and can tell the future. He goes on a rant how everythings going to shit and we’re all gonna die and other standard crazy person talk. At one point he asks my co-worker if she’s thought about name yet. We think nothing of this and once his order is finished he leaves without a fuss.
An hour goes by and the same car comes around. Maybe he’s still hungry after those 29 burgers? Well, he drives to the window and flips his shit. Starts shouting that he didn’t order all these hamburgers but he wanted a big mac (still not a mcdonalds). Guy literally goes ballistic and starts throwing the hamburgers at us. After a long 5 minutes we get him to calm down, but not before threatening to call the cops.
The crazy thing about all this? My co-worker was few weeks pregnant at the time. No-one knew.
21. Working at McDonald’s one fateful night shift this very drunk man makes an order for 2 Big Macs, I hear two other voices and assume its just his friends. After they order, I open the window for them to pull up. Four minutes pass they still haven’t pulled up. I’m confused at this point, so I look out the window to see a couple fucking in the front seat of a taxi…with the cab driver sitting next to them.
WRITER JOEL: I was thinking I would do that story about the phone-sex operator next.
EDITOR JOEL: Are you sure that’s a good idea?
WJ: Yeah, why not?
EJ: Well, considering how smutty your last piece was, I’d say you’re already running the risk of being labeled the E.L. James of horror.
WJ: Who the fuck is E.L. James?
EJ: Author of the 50 Shades of Grey series.
WJ: Those books did make a fuck-ton of money. Pun intended.
EJ: But is that what you really want?
WJ: A fuck-ton of money? Yes.
EJ: It’s up to you but keep in mind that going down this road is setting a dangerous precedent.
TROLL JOEL: Plus, it’s not like anyone’s ever used sex as an analog for horror before. By the way, Clive Barker called and asked if you would mind NOT sweating every inch of his nuts…
WJ: Nobody was talking to you!
RATIONAL JOEL: Technically, that’s not true seeing as he IS you.
HORNY JOEL: Boobies.
EJ: See?!
HORNY JOEL: Where?!
WJ: Ugh! Okay then tell me, smart guy, what story SHOULD I write?
EJ: That one about your dog is kind of cool.
WJ: Yeah? It’s also kind of deep-end, off-your-meds crazy pants.
TJ: Have you read literally ANYTHING you’ve written? “Grounded in reality” is an exit you missed a ways back, buddy.
WJ: Alright, fine! You want me to tell the fucking dog story? I’ll tell the fucking dog story!
TJ: Actually, that was Editor Joel’s idea. I’m sure this one will suck just as hard. It simply won’t contain as many erect penises.
HJ: Oh, and like a hot girl’s ass for some reason!
ACT 1: Pre-Agro
I am a big fan of dogs (cats are cool too but if I HAD to pick a winner, it would be an easy decision). I had always wanted a Border Collie but despised the idea of paying for a specific breed of canine when there were already countless perfectly good shelter dogs out there who needed a home. At the time in which this story takes place (2007). I was already caring for one adopted dog — a beautiful Australian Shepherd by the name of Indy.
One night, I was driving home with my then-girlfriend, Trish, when we spotted what looked to be the distinctive black-and-white coat of a Border Collie as he started across the intersection just before our apartment complex. It was late, but the intersection was well-lit and I was able to slow down in time to avoid hitting him.
The dog looked young, maybe a year old; he was still in that awkward phase between puppy and adulthood where his paws and head were slightly too big for his body. He didn’t have a collar and his fur was matted with filth. As we got closer, I saw that the poor guy had a large open wound on his back.
Thankfully, it was late enough that we were the only car on the road and I was able to stop right there in the middle of the intersection. I popped open the driver’s side door and called out to him in my gentlest voice, “Hey, buddy… Are you okay?”
The dog had made it across to the median by this point and he glanced back at me with utter panic in his eyes before sprinting off into the night. After that, we spent an hour or so driving around looking for him, but to no avail.
The next morning, Trish contacted a local rescue shelter where she had volunteered the summer before and a week later they called to tell us they had found a year-old male Border Collie down the block from our apartment complex, sleeping in a dilapidated gas station that had been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina.
The shelter was ready for us to come and get him a few days later and the first thing the lady who ran the place said to us was, “There’s a one-to-ten scale for how potentially aggressive a mistreated dog can be and it’s important you know that this guy is a hard nine.”
Trish smiled and shrugged as she said, “Well, at least he’s not a ten.”
“Ten means a dog will physically lash out if they feel threatened and therefore wouldn’t be eligible for adoption.”
The lady took Trish’s expression as a cue to elaborate. “The only reason he’s not a ten is because, though he’ll growl to high hell when he’s cornered, he’s never once tried to bite me or any of my staff. It’s actually a bit bizarre. I’ve seen a lot of mistreated rescues who weren’t biters, but will still occasionally snap their jaws at you to pantomime biting as a threat… But he doesn’t even do that. This dog has been so deprived of exposure to other canines that he might not even know it’s an option.”
“That sounds like a positive thing to me,” I said and the lady gave me a look that made me immediately regret it.
“From the extent of his wounds, it’s safe to assume that this dog has seen a tremendous amount of abuse. Someone has been using him as an ashtray. I’ve counted over two dozen individual cigarette burns on his back alone. When we found him, he was malnourished almost to the point of starvation…”
Trish began to cry silently and I was tearing up myself by this point, but it was totally because of my allergies. Even if it wasn’t, you’re pretty much a monster if you didn’t feel like crying after reading that last part, so suck it.
“The point is…it’s very rare that I come across a nine who I feel completely comfortable about adopting out. You’re both young, though. You don’t have kids and you already have one dog, which will help. He hates people, but seems to adore other animals. Still, I feel I need to stress to you that he…”
“Agro,” I said, almost without even thinking about it. “We’re naming him Agro.”
The lady suddenly laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of humor in her voice as she repeated it. “You’re naming THIS dog Agro… Why?”
Trish and I exchanged a quick glance before I replied, “It’s the name of the hero’s horse in a I like.”
It was actually from my all-time favorite video game, Shadow of the Colossus, but Trish had stressed to me the importance of not giving this lady any reason to judge us. I’m of the opinion that video games are just as important of an artistic medium as literature or film, but I’m also painfully aware of the social stigma that comes along with a grown man playing them.
The lady slowly shook her head as she finally responded, “That’s what the aggression scale for animals is called.”
“The scale is called Agro?”
“The Agro scale, yes. It’s short for aggression.”
Being a huge video game nerd, I was already familiar with the term “agro” in this context and so it shouldn’t have been such a shock. Nevertheless, I was suddenly overcome by an ominous sense of foreboding. Trish though, being the eternal optimist that she was, simply smiled and said, “It’s like it was meant to be.”
The lady was still staring at me as she let out a dry scoff. “If you say so…”
ACT 2: Grace Period
We dealt with a lot of the typical new-dog problems at first, like trying to get Agro to eat out of his bowl and not pee inside the house. But by far, the worst part was trying to take him out for a walk. To say that Agro was easily startled would be an insult to the term “understatement.” Anytime he heard so much as a car-door shutting, BOOM, just like that Agro would go from zero to scared shitless.
I started out using the traditional leash-and-collar set-up and whenever Agro went into one of his flip-outs, he would immediately start yanking at the leash and trying to pull free of his collar. All I could do was try my best to keep Agro from choking himself unconscious while also maintaining a tone that was soothing enough to talk him down. Needless to say, this process quickly became exhausting.
Trish suggested we try using a harness to walk him and after a bit of shopping around, I eventually found one which was secure enough that Agro couldn’t pull out of it… or so I thought. The harness seemed to work perfectly for about a week or so. Then, one evening a car alarm started to go off while I was walking Agro and in one violent jerk, he suddenly yanked free of his harness and darted off down the street.
This was the big fear; that he would get loose while one of us was alone and walking the dogs at night. Trish was at work at the time or else I would’ve called her to hop in the car and come help me track him down. With that option off the table, Indy and I were left with no other choice but to chase after Agro on foot.
Border Collies are by no means slow dogs and I only managed to keep up with him long enough to see Agro hook a left at the next corner. I reached the end of the block just in time to spot the white tip of Agro’s tail as it disappeared inside the derelict gas station where the rescue shelter had first found him.
I began to approach the station’s open doorway when Indy, who was one of the sweetest dogs I have ever known, suddenly let out a growl so guttural that it actually startled me. Her eyes fixed on the doorway as she spotted something inside the building, something there in the darkness that I couldn’t see, and refused to take another step closer.
From inside the station, Agro began to bark. By this point Indy was yanking on her own leash, trying to lead me back towards the complex, and for a moment I had no idea what to do. Agro’s barking was getting louder and he sounded terrified, but I couldn’t let go of Indy and risk losing both dogs in one night.
I was just beginning to turn and run Indy inside when Agro’s barking finally stopped. I paused to look back and watched Agro saunter out of the gas-station with the biggest, goofiest grin on his face. He started towards me and, not wanting to scare him off by trying to reattach his harness, I simply turned and continued towards the entrance to the complex. Agro followed me and Indy back inside without any further hesitation.
After that, I decided to try taking Agro out without a leash on and even though it had been my idea, I was still more than a little surprised when it actually worked. Agro stayed at my side the entire time, the two of us walking almost in unison as we made our way down to the empty lot where the dogs liked to do their business. As we neared the lot, I nodded toward it and said, “Go on.”
With that simple instruction, Agro wandered over to a small patch of trees that bordered the rear end of the field and crouched down. Once he was finished, he promptly returned to me and we headed home. On our way back from this initial test run, a girl on a bike suddenly rounded the corner and started toward us.
I immediately tensed up, sure that Agro was going to try and book it, but all he did was positioned himself between me and the girl as she whizzed past us and that was it. There was no panicked shivering. He didn’t let out a single whimper and when we started on our way again, Agro’s tail was wagging.
ACT 3: A Few Months Later…
It was about 3:00AM when Agro nudged me awake. We were in the dead of winter by this point and it was almost unbearably cold out that night (at least by the standards of someone who was raised in a tropical climate like New Orleans). I let out a reflexive groan as I saw the earnest look on Agro’s face. “Seriously, dude? It can’t wait until morning?”
He replied with a short whimper, followed by a deep sigh. By now, we had bonded to the point where I could read Agro’s idiosyncrasies like a book and this was a definite no. I slowly sat up as Agro jumped down off of the bed and started toward the door with his tail wagging.
Indy was still curled up at the foot of our bed and I placed a hand on her back as I said, “Indy, you wanna go outside?”
Australian Shepherds are notoriously high-energy dogs and under normal circumstances, this would’ve had her darting for the front door before I was even done asking the question, but that night Indy’s only response was to slowly open one eye and give me a look that said, “Are you kidding me? It’s fucking FREEZING outside!”
Agro let out another urgent whimper as I tossed the covers off of me and climbed out of bed. “Chill, pimpin’. I’m going as fast as I can.”
I pulled on several layers of clothing and then led Agro outside, hoping all he had to do was take a quick piss in the garden (which meant that I could stay just inside the building’s front entrance and out of the frigid night air) but as soon as I pushed open the door, he began to sprint across the street. “Shit! ‘Gro, WAIT!”
This was the first time Agro had taken off on me since I started walking him without a leash and my half-conscious stupor immediately dissolved, giving way to blind panic. I hurried after him, bracing against the freezing wind that seemed be blowing from every direction. Agro glanced back at me as I called out his name again, but he refused to slow his pace and I lost sight of him when he started down a nearby side street.
I was digging out my cell to call Trish and praying that her phone wasn’t on vibrate when headlights began to approach me from behind. I moved to the sidewalk as I glanced back to see a girl in a red hatchback coming my way. We locked eyes as the girl drove passed and the hatchback then slowed to a stop in front of a house halfway down the block.
The girl exited her car and turned to gesture at the leash dangling from my hand (I still brought one with me whenever I took Agro out, just in case.) “Lost your dog?”
I absently scanned the road beyond her as I pointed a thumb back over my shoulder and rambled off a flustered reply, “Yeah. I live in the apartments on the other side of Robert E. Lee and my dumb ass didn’t have him on his leash because it’s so cold and I thought he just had to pee, but then he took off this way.”
She gave me a nervous smile and pointed back towards the corner. “Thought so. I saw him when I was coming down the street. That’s why I…”
The girl was suddenly yanked down onto her back and then dragged beneath the car, her face smacking against the driver’s side door with a loud THUNK as she disappeared into the darkness beneath her little red hatchback.
I froze, standing there in the middle of the street with my mouth hanging open. It all happened so fast that it took me a beat to process what I had just seen. There was movement beneath the car and a moment later the girl slinked out into view. She slowly stood and started to shuffle toward me.
My brain was screaming to turn and run but my body refused to cooperate and so I just stood there like an idiot as the girl grew closer. When she passed beneath the street light positioned between us, I finally caught a glimpse of her face.
The girl’s crumpled nose was leaking blood from both nostrils and her left eye was bulging so far out of its socket that I expected it to pop loose at any moment. This sight was enough to get my legs working again and I turned to start running, but it was already too late. The girl began to moan as she pounced onto my back and drove me to the ground.
My head smacked against the pavement hard enough to blur my vision and a shiver of pain tore through my body as the girl’s nails pierced my thick jacket and dug into the flesh beneath, pinning me against the road with what felt like inhuman strength. Her moan became a wet gagging sound.
I craned my neck to look back and watched in horror as she opened her mouth wide enough to dislocate her jaw. That’s when I heard the familiar pitch of Agro’s growl and the girl’s body went stiff as she looked up to see my dog diving towards her.
The girl’s nails tore a set of twin gashes down my back as Agro knocked her off of me and I was rocked by another torrent of pain. I rolled onto my side just in time to see Agro clamp his mouth around the girl’s shoulder. She let out a blood-chilling scream as he bit her and a bright light began to emanate from her open mouth.
The light enveloped the girl and her flesh started to bubble. Agro removed his mouth from her shoulder and the girl’s body quickly dissolved as the light faded, leaving behind a steaming person-shaped stain in the pavement. The world around me began to spin as the shock of what I had just witnessed overtook me and I promptly passed out.
In my dream, Agro and I were hiking across a vast sunlit field bordered by a thick patch of woods to our left. The forest was so densely packed that the sunlight could barely penetrate it. A black shape was moving just inside the darkened tree-line, following alongside us as we made our way across the field.
I threw a worried glance down at Agro, who was positioned between me and the woods, and I was overcome by an immense feeling of comfort as his eyes locked with mine. A disembodied voice began to speak to me then. The voice sounded completely alien and yet somehow strangely familiar and I realized that it was Agro talking to me telepathically.
“Between this reality and the next, there are doorways that cannot be closed. When the world was new, these doorways were necessary but they have since become a refuge of darkness. A bridge from which unspeakable things occasionally emerge… My purpose is to prevent this. Do you understand?”
I glanced at the dark shape that was still stalking us from the other side of the tree-line and then nodded at Agro. “I think so.”
“Your mortal mind is unequipped to perceive me in my true form, which is why you see me as the creature you call Agro. The darkness can take many forms, so forgive me if I ever seem uncomfortable around strangers. And know that when I run away, it is not because I do not love you.”
“I know,” I said as Agro stopped and I crouched down beside him.
“I only wish to keep you safe.” Agro started licking my cheek and in that moment, I was suddenly able to see everything through his eyes:
The night I first spotted him crossing the street, he had been on the trail of something truly horrible and when we stopped in the middle of the intersection, it started to draw this thing toward us. When Agro had darted off, it was because he was chasing it away…
I awoke to find myself lying in my bed with Agro perched beside me and licking my face. At first, I assumed that the entire night had been one long weird-ass dream. Then I sat up and immediately winced. My back was on fire. I hurried over to the mirror above my dresser and lifted my shirt to reveal a set of twin scratch marks running down the length of my back.
A lot has changed since that night more than seven years ago and yet Agro doesn’t look much older than when I first brought him home. He still hides under my bed whenever I have company over and to this day, most of my friends have only glimpsed him once or twice. I suppose that eventually people might start asking questions, but I’ll worry about crossing that bridge when I come to it.
Currently, he’s pretty much the most awesome dog ever. He never gets sick and I don’t need a leash to walk him. The one big difference these days is that, on the rare occasion when Agro wakes me in the middle of the night and then takes off as soon as I let him out, I know better than to chase after him.
Before I tell you my story, I have to tell you that I haven’t worked at Disney for almost six months. I got the gig through their college program. Getting paid to work at the happiest place on earth? Great, right? NOPE! I could write endless stories just about my day-to-day work there, but I guess it wasn’t all bad. The novelty of working there surprisingly never wore off. In mid-August I was starting to legitimately enjoy it; that is, until I got the complaint.
“What is up with the additions? It scared the shit out of my kids.”
I sort of looked at this woman with a “What the hell are you talking about?” face.
“We haven’t done any additions to the Pirates Of The Caribbean in a while. When was the last time you came here?”
“We were just here in December. I’m just saying that the fish robot got way too close to the boat.”
Holy shit, for anybody who has been to Disney world should know that there aren’t ANY fish animatronics on the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride. I cashed the woman out (I was working at the shop outside the ride), called my supervisor over the walkie-talkie, and told her what she told me.
“Wait what? Fuck, I’ll be right over. Go to the nearest break room.”
I did just that. I sat in the room for a few minutes until my manager finally came in. She actually locked the door (which is actually against the rules) to make sure we were the only two in there.
“So she said that there was something in the water?”
I told her yes.
“Did she say anything about hair?”
I sat there really confused. I said shook my head no and asked what she meant.
“Well I got approached by a few guys in their early 20s, and they told me they saw what looked like a mermaid near Barbosa’s boat. I just assumed they were high and forgot, but if someone else saw it, we need to tell the ride runners.”
My manager and I headed towards the inner tunnels that led to the mechanical room for the ride when a woman sprinted out of the exit sobbing her eyes out. We quickly brought her to the break room and asked her what was wrong.
Through her sons she tried to explain that while she was on the ride, near the “plundering” scene, she saw something pass the boat. Now, the water in the ride is not very deep, so what she described next sounded absurd.
“It looked like a mix between a fish and a person. Its arms were only a few inches long and I saw the fucking gills. It had huge eyes, no nose, and a gaping mouth.”
We calmly asked her what color the scales were.
“No, no. It didn’t had scales. It was flesh.”
The ride was shut down within five minutes. I didn’t have high enough clearance to know what they were doing to find the thing in the ride, but my manager was cool enough to tell me what they found. Near the “jail scene,” a disgusting mound of flesh was left on top of the dog, but nothing else was seen.
Now like I said before, I was just a normal worker, so I don’t know about any investigations they did about the Pirate’s incident, but I do know when the next fucked up thing happened.
A few days later, I was working in Hollywood Studios doing janitorial work when I heard a family talking as they left the Great Movie Ride.
“Did you hear Kevin scream at the Alien scene?”
A tween boy pushed the girl, who I assumed was his sister.
“Shut up! The robot came so close to us! Did you see its eyes?”
Red flag. I assumed they were talking about the Xenomorph scene and what they were saying didn’t add up. So yet again, I called up my supervisor. My supervisor there was a pretty young guy, I’d say about 25, so he thought I was fucking with him when I told him. But he had heard what happened at the Pirate’s ride so he quickly took me seriously.
“What did it look like?”
Fuck! I had to practically chase this family down to stop them. They acted like I was accusing them of doing something wrong when I asked them what happened.
“We didn’t touch any of the props, sir.” The father said.
“No, I don’t think you did, I just really would like to know what was wrong with the animatronic.” I was trying to pretend that what they saw belonged.
“Well first, the slobber was a gross touch, it got on my nice sunglasses! A warning would have been nice!”
“I’m very sorry, could you describe the prop so we could take a look at it?”
“You don’t even know your own ride? The ostrich human thingy.”
I was so confused so I asked her to explain more. She reluctantly went on.
“The thing covered in flesh, the bent legs, the arms in the shape of wings, and the really long neck. That one.”
“Oh…uhh…yes… I’m very sorry, we’ll take a look at it immediately.”
I felt very uneasy, so I got away from them as quickly as I could to tell my supervisor what they said. He told me that he would handle it and to get back to work.
I stalled a bit doing my work so I could stay pretty close to the ride. It was shut down within minutes and the plain-clothed Disney workers went inside the ride. Five carts drove up to the ride. Eight men holding medical masks and black briefcases ran inside. This was one thing that I hadn’t EVER seen before. These Disney workers were breaking the magic, so it had to be serious.
Luckily, this supervisor was pretty cool too and explained what they found in there. Little pieces of flesh were scattered around the Wizard of Oz scene. But something else was left there. A sticky note attached to the witche’s broom. Two words were written on it.
“WE’RE HERE.”
The next week felt really weird among the cast members. A lot of them explained they felt like they were always being observed, and not in the normal, “Hey look it’s Beauty!” way. I could notice that the secret security had been beefed up in every park. I even got to talking with one that was down in the tunnels under The Magic Kingdom.
“I don’t know much. They just told me if I see something suspicious, call the suits,” he said.
People that have worked at Disney know what the suits are. They are pretty much Disney’s CIA. Not in some freaky conspiracy kind of way, but whenever there is a serious threat to patron’s safety in the parks, the suits are there to respond. They don’t actually wear suits, we just call them that because of the CIA parallel. They are usually behind the scenes, ready to go at any given moment. They do all wear black polos, though. So if you’re at Disney and you see an unusually high amount of black polos in one area, you are probably in danger and you don’t even know it.
But back to the story, the last time I was involved in one of these incidents was two days before I quit. I was on the nightly clean-up shift. When all the patrons left the park, I was out there cleaning their stuff up. This particular night, I was working alone in the line for Splash Mountain. The engineers had just passed me, so I assumed they were done with their nightly inspections, but in passing, they told me that a garbage bag had been ripped open and I had a lot of work to do.
Yup, right near the sign that says, “Last Chance To Exit”, a fully filled garbage bag had been ripped open and garbage was EVERYWHERE. After 10 minutes, I was nearly done cleaning it up, when I heard a quiet voice.
“Hop, hop, hop.”
I looked up and saw at the entrance of the ride, a log was in the water, and someone was in the front seat. The lights were all off and I had left my flashlight on the ground, so I could barely see the person besides the outline of their body.
“Hop, hop, hop,” the voice said again.
“Hey! The ride is closed, I’m going to have to ask you to leave please,” I yelled.
I could see the figure shift, whoever it was was getting out of the log, so I picked up my flashlight and shined it on them. To this day, I wish I hadn’t. On the platform was this monstrosity…on all fours, in a crab walking formation, with its head was straight up. Jesus Christ, its head… It had the eyes of a human, but the nose of a rabbit, and I shit you not, these tall fucking ears. And it wasn’t covered in fur. It was in bare flesh, even the ears.
The creature started advancing towards me in awkward, jerking motions. It was moving pretty slow, so I sprinted back towards the exit. As I was racing towards the exit, I pulled out my walkie-talkie and screamed into it that I needed a suit right away. I stood outside the entrance for about a minute, making sure that the thing wasn’t behind me anymore, before a suit finally came. This time, it was something I had never seen before, he had a pistol with him.
The suit checked all over the ride and found a few things. There were little piles of flesh and another sticky note taped to one of the vultures before the big drop.
“We won’t leave.”
For the next day, Disney let me stay in a nice room in one of the pop hotels. People came to the room a few times asking what I had seen, but when I started to ask them questions, they all seemed to clam up. This pissed me off to no end, so I decided to quit.
I’m sorry to finish this rather anti-climatically, but since I quit, the company has cut literally all ties with me. Back around December, for some reason I really wanted to go back there, they said yes, but only if they could do a “screening.” They gave no context for that so I declined. I don’t know what happened with those weird occurrences, the cast members that I still talk to have said no weird shit has gone on since that night.
I have my theories on what those things were. But here is all I can say: Disney is a much more powerful corporation than many people think. I personally believe that those things were a product of someone that Disney had pissed off, or something that they had created themselves.
All I know is what I saw last summer will never leave my mind.
