For a more immersive experience, I recommend you wear headphones for this podcast. [Music] Hey listeners. You know what time it is. It's the alone hours. The middle of nowhere hours. Those hours that that fall between the everything.The time of night when the sky is a little too bright and the Stars seem low enough that you could reach out and grab them, but you don't want to deal with the fallout. Everything has a kind of... unreality about it. A dreamscape feeling. Unrest, unease the UN times. Existence is at a halt... ...Which means my shift has started and I'm at work, and I'm watching it all out of the big glass windows from the lonely little Gasco. The neon purple and pink lights splashing all over everything doesn't really help with the Eerie Vibes. The whole lot looks like an aesthetic tumblr post on a Liminal themed page. There's a slight wind, and the shadows of trees are bending just enough to look unhinged. 'So what are you watching happen, Caro?' Well... sometimes nothing. Often nothing. Usually it's just a regular night and I'm slinging coffee or cans of chips to the few random travelers drawn in by the lights from the Old Highway. Other times, the world bends and that's when the Things happen. Nightmare things. Things that aren't supposed to happen, that CAN'T happen. But they do. Because of me, of this place. The monster under your bed is real and bleeding under the cracks of MY doorway. My name is Caro Greene, and I'm a gas station attendant on an Old Highway in the woods of the Pacific Northwest I work the third shift. Welcome to Mil-Liminal, episode 9: The UnReality. 'So what exactly is unreality Caro, that doesn't even make sense.' Look listener, I don't know what the official definition of anything is. I'm just telling you things through Intuition, or how I see it. A reporter of the news from the other side. The internet says 'the quality of being imaginary, illusionary or unrealistic.' That sounds about right. Ghosts? Most people don't believe in them. Cryptids? Fun idea, but not a real thing according to the experts. You can explain that away, no problem. Except me. I can't explain away the things that keep happening here at the station. I can't explain the Shadows of the deer on the edge of the lot warping and bending into impossible shapes, splintering apart in gruesome ways, too many eyes glowing and leaving light trails in their movements. I can't explain why they don't look right here, when anywhere else they would look completely normal. I can't explain the static figures at the edge of the pumps, flickering in and out, impossible to focus on, or that family that keeps coming here asking for directions to the same place, a slightly more desperate look in their eyes each time I see them. Panic pressing at the edges of their skin, blurring them like watercolor. Sometimes, the things I see even look real and alive and breathing and maybe they are. Because that's another thing about this place! Reality Loops. Refer back to the snowstorm in the last episode, or ask that lone biker with eyes the color of anger and fear who was here before that. I know those are real... or unreal. Whatever. And once again, I'm coming right back around to where I've been the whole time. Why am I like this? Why am I part of this? What trickery of my birth made me part of the unreality around me? Does it amp up around me, or has it always been this way and I can just feel it more than most? I'm broken in so many ways, hollowed out and empty. I wish I could understand. Sam is worried. He's not sure I should be working the night shift. He thinks he's being irresponsible in letting me put myself in danger. And you know, I guess I do agree to some extent, from his point of view. But these things have always happened to me. This isn't some new phenomenon brought on by a Sinister gas station sitting right smack dab on top of the veil, and it's not like I can really talk to him about it, but it's ME! I've always seen and heard and felt, ever since I was little banging on my neighbor's window in the middle of the night so he could save me and scare away the monsters he couldn't even see . It happened to me then, and it would happen to me whether I was here or somewhere else. And maybe it's true that it's worse here, but at least it feels like I matter. Because in between losing the one person who believed me growing up, and finding this place, I'd been alone with it until I came here. I don't know what my co-workers think about me telling spooky stories. I don't even know if they listen to the show or they understand what's happening. And maybe they think I'm crazy, or having episodes or hallucinating. Or maybe they think there's something fundamentally wrong with me. Or maybe they think I'm telling unhinged stories for attention, that I'm a phenomenal liar. I don't know if they listen. I haven't exactly told anybody about this except Sam. So I don't really know what the others think about me, but that's because it doesn't seem to matter to them. Ever since I stumbled into this place, looking like a 12-year-old boy, lost and broken and sad, they listened to me. They clean up my wounds, both physical and mental, rub my back when I'm throwing up because I made myself sick, or forgot to eat, or scared myself to death. And they make sure that I've eaten and they check up on me. No one treats me like I'm a chore when I call them at 2: a.m. to cry, or like I'm broken or a waste because of all these things I can't control. So why would I risk going out into a world where I know from experience most people would ignore me when I cry, or expect things from me I can't give, brush me off when I'm scared and need help, or call me crazy? When you're growing up, sometimes you don't realize how badly you have it until you come out on the other side, and you look back and you see everything you went through. The people at the gas station... they don't look at me with pity, or disgust, or fear, or annoyance. They don't take advantage of me, or abuse me, or withhold love from me when I mess up. And believe me, listener. I'm a mess! I'm 19 years old, and I have no idea how to live, but they look at me like I'm one of theirs.And ghosts or not, I'm not willing to give that up. I'll never give that up. I'm smart enough to know I can't do things alone, and old enough to know to let them walk with me. So no, I don't want to quit. I'll continue to work the night shift, and maybe in the process I can carve out a place for myself, and collect all of these pieces, and try to figure out why I'm like this, and if there's others like me, and what it all means. Besides I've said it a million times, haunted places collect people. And if I could leave here, I already would have. All of this to say that tonight, I am uneasy. I watch the Volvo cruise by. I can feel the slight vibration of its engine carry beneath the asphalt and concrete and up through the soles of my shoes, crawl up the backs of my legs, and settling in the base of my spine like an old gymnastics injury, poking me with a lick of sharpness when I twist in just the right way. I shake it off and watch the fog billowing from beneath the carriage, the wisps disappearing in the splash of neon. Sometimes, if I turn fast enough, I swear I see the shadow of a driver. I wonder who they are and what happened to them. Why they haunt a car, that haunts a gas station, and cruise the Same Old Highway, the same driveway and parking lot even though I know for a fact this isn't a static ghost doomed to walk the same path in death that they walked in life. This isn't some leftover clipping of a movie reel on the floor. The Volvo has a purpose, and I wonder if it's figured out what that purpose is. But that's not really why I'm uneasy tonight. I just haven't been able to relax. Some nights, I can kick back behind the counter with my feet up and not care about a thing in the world. Ghosts or not, who cares. I am Invincible! I read those silly horror comics, and I eat snacks and drink coffee, and I listen to music and dance with the mop, and I think of the good things, and I remember how his hugs felt, and the leather of the battle jacket I sleep next to every night. Going to shows, and drowning in loud music. I remember climbing into bedroom windows or The Treehouse when things were bad, cuz that made them better, and I'm filled with the joy of a new life. Finding the person I wasn't allowed to be, and how proud of me he'd be if he could see how I'm doing now. Tonight is not one of those nights. I'm antsy, pacing around the store. Moving a single chip bag one inch, scrubbing a stain that's been there for the last week under the soda machine. Looking for anything to do that could keep me from looking out the windows or in the CRT cameras. I didn't see anything there, besides the foggy dimmed out lights of the Volvo, but I don't want to see anything out there, and it's making me feel increasingly like there must be something out there. Why is my brain like this? 'It's probably fair for your brain to be scared of big glass plate windows, Caro please, just think of all the horrible things you've already seen out there and lived! Remember the moths?' Yes dear listener, thank you. Hard to forget to be perfectly honest. So anyway... back to me being all uncomfortable like, I've got my back to the door, which yeah another bad idea I suppose, but it's locked as per usual. So naturally I hear a light knock that almost sends me through the ceiling, and I spin on my heel, and... oh. It's just a girl. I blink, giving my head a little shake to get my thoughts straight and push the door open. She smiles at me, a little breathlessly, and almost stumbles through the door like she's forgotten how to walk. And I think maybe she's a little tipsy, so I reach out to steady her elbow, but she straightens up and skips away to the side before I make contact, and laughs out an apology. 'It's a little cold out there,' she says, and wonders aloud if it'll snow later. I give her a blank dead-pan stare, and I say, 'sure hope not.' She smiles at me almost a little too long but I can't read her face, cuz I swear I detect some sadness in there, but what do I know? So I go about my usual routine, 'Can I help you with something? It's not that often someone comes in here at like 2: a.m. without a reason.' She laughs again, and says she's coming home from a concert and just wanted a snack, and maybe an energy drink for the drive back. I shrug, 'we've got plenty of those.' I tell her waving my arms out to indicate the whole store. I wander back to the kiosk and try to act natural, even though I'm still vibrating with unrest for no real reason. I watch her rummage around for a bit, and the silence between us is weird and heavy and stretched out way too far like it's going to snap soon, so I break it. 'Who did you see?' I ask. She looks up at me from a magazine she's flipping through, as though surprised to see someone else in the store 'The concert.' I remind her. She looks like a startled deer for a split second before she hitches the smile back in place and laughs. She sure does laugh a lot. She says she doesn't actually know, she went with some friends who invited her to a show. And I wonder why she's lying to a random gas station attendant she's never going to see again. People are funny that way. You can be anyone you want to be for the 10 minutes you spend in a place like this. Make up your own reality, I guess, like giving the wrong name at a coffee shop. This is me today. I am not Caroline.I am Caro. Something moves in the corner of my eye, and I turn towards the windows and look out into the parking lot. I can't focus on it, but the air is moving in some kind of way, like it's really hot outside and you can see the heat shimmer above the asphalt. Except it ain't hot, and it's too close to the pumps for comfort. Past them slightly but in range I feel Panic Bubble Up in my throat. A gas leak? 'Hey!' I call out to the girl, and she looks up again like she forgot she was there. 'Sorry,' I apologize and tell her I'm going to turn out the outside lights real fast because I'm not sure if something is going on in the parking lot and I need to see better, and the lights make it hard to focus, so don't panic when it goes dark. She nods, brow furrowed a bit, and watches me as I turn the key and click off the neons, the pump lights, and the overhead, plunging the outside into inky black. I walk up to the window and squint. 'Oh!' I jump and spin to face her. I hadn't realized that she had come up behind me. 'It's pretty, she tells me, and points towards the edge of the lot closest to the tree line. It takes me a second but I see it. An oily sheen floating on the surface of the air like water vertical to the starfilled sky. 'Northern Lights?' she asks me, and I shake my head in wonder. 'I don't think so. Aren't we too South for that?' The more I stare, the more space it seems to be taking up. It looks like it disappears into the darkness of the highway and all the way past the back of the building. It does look like the Northern Lights, I suppose, or the pictures I've seen, but on the ground. It reminds me of a floor length curtain blocking an open window and fluttering slightly, or maybe.... ...I stop. Nope Definitely not something I'm supposed to see, or or at least have ever seen. Is that what I'm seeing? (voice goes slightly hysterical) Oh my God maybe I really am hallucinating... but no... weird concert girl is staring at it too, which is concerning cuz either I'm having the world's most random one in a million chance encounter with someone like me, or something else is going on entirely. Maybe it really is the Northern Lights. It's shades of purple, blue, and lilac I feel like I've never seen before, and I can't quite focus on, and I watch it flicker and dance, throwing out sparks of light like a rainbow catcher. Concert girl glances at me for a second and says something I don't quite catch. I guess she sees the missed connection on my face and she points out the window and back at me and says the color light show is the same color as my eyes. I give her the funny little smile I give most people when they comment on my eye color. I stare back out at it and I say, 'what does it look like to you?' and she pauses, staring out the window and says, 'like the fabric I imagine they made Cinderella's dress out of. Or maybe a rain puddle next to an oil spill. (pauses) It looks like the surface of a neon lit pool at night lying sideways across the planet.' She pauses, still staring out at it, watching it dance and warp within itself. 'Have you ever gone swimming at night in the dark, when only the pool lights are on, and everything feels otherworldly and that weird shade of blue green and you sort of feel like you're doing something wrong, even though you're not, and it feels incredible? Weightless, like you're swimming on the surface of the Moon. (pauses) It looks like that.' I stare at her, not expecting that kind of answer and I think I'm a little bit in love. What kind of a girl has thoughts like these? Not the kind I was, that's for sure. 'Do you see people or anything else?' I ask her. She shakes her head, still transfixed on the lights and I frown. She can see it, but she doesn't see the figures moving in and out of it. The ghostly shapes draped in it, their figures blurred, though it's reasonable enough to assume they're human- shaped. I can see them walking, almost dancing throwing out their arms and interacting with each other. There's two of them, I'm almost sure of it. It's hard to focus with the glitching and the moving of both their figures and the movement of the strange light cloaking them. I haven't seen ghosts like this before, that seem to be holding themselves together with the fabric of the universe. Well, actually I have, but it feels stupid to say, these aren't the same as the boo ghosts on Halloween decor at the dollar store, except at the same time they kind of are, but I'm understanding now how somebody seeing them this way would find that terrifying instead of cartoonish. All the hair is standing up on the back of my neck and I'm having trouble remembering where my feet are. They are holding hands, and they are moving towards this store and I'm automatically backing up. I can't breathe. Concert girl looks at me and asks if I'm okay, and I swallow and try to smile, but I know it looks like a grimace. 'Why are you still here,' I wonder. 'It's late, don't you have somewhere to be?' and she smiles and laughs. 'Here,' she says, 'imagine missing this.' And somehow, I'm really really glad I'm not alone in here tonight even if it is a weird concert girl with poetry in her eyes. I'm cold. Goosebumps erupt on my arms and I can see my breath hanging in the air between us. I wince, and I close my eyes and I turn around, because of course they're here, phasing through windows, because of course. Why wouldn't they? Two figures. One is just slightly taller than the other and they are holding hands, swaying slightly, glitching and flickering in and out of focus, and even though I can't see their faces beneath what I can only describe as a fabric sheet even though it isn't really that at all, I know their focus is me. These are not the static ghosts burnt into the film of time repeating action over and over. They know what they are and what they're doing. I have never experience something seeking me out before in a way where I just knew that was what was happening. I can see the darkened spaces where eyes and mouths would be beneath the cloak, eerie spaces devoid of living features, and it chills me, and I back up too fast, trip over my own sneakers, and fall on my butt with a painful thunk. Concert girl looks at me, smile gone. 'It's Caro, right? Are you okay?' she asks, and I know I'm wearing a name tag, of course she must have read it, but it still always catches me off guard when strangers call me by a name I just made up recently. I scramble backward on my butt away from them and at the same time away from her, scooting myself until I hit the counter where I'm kind of stuck, back against the wall. Concert girl is leaning towards me, but I can't hear what she's saying really, cuz I'm too focused on what's going on behind her to notice. The buzzing I often hear during the unreal hours is picking up, but it feels like it's inside my head, like panic and maybe it is. (pause) The ghosts look nervous. it's hard to tell how they look, but somehow their body language conveys it, and they're murmuring whispers to each other I can't quite catch, and holding on to each other like little siblings caught in a haunted house, flickering in and out of reality. And in some kind of way, I think they feel bad for scaring me. Their whispers sound like several AM stations overlapping, that aren't quite tuned in playing in some Far Away room. I don't know why their childlike demeanor comforts me. I start to try to pull myself to my feet losing my balance and tipping sideways, and one of them reaches out like it's going to help pull me up, the outline of a hand beneath liquid cloth made of space and time, and I'm transfixed for a second . It's like my body is on autopilot, acting on impulse to reach out and grab it,. The buzzing noise is deafening in my ears when concert girl moves between us, eyes on fire, and I suddenly realize I have no idea what she looks like at all. Her arms are thrown out and I know she looks wild, like the crooked deer in the woods, too many eyes, too many angles, image cracked and broken and sticking out in odd places. But I can't remember her face, or what she's wearing and I realize I never knew. And she says, 'don't touch them!' and I blink and unfreeze and startle backward, knocking my back against the counter again. She shakes her head, and holds up a finger and I think, 'huh, she sees them after all.' 'Never touch them! The things from the other side.' She says, and I wonder suddenly have I touched her tonight. I remember her moving fluidly away from me. If I'd have touched her, I would have known, I'm sure of it. I don't know what would have happened. I guess I'm glad to not find out. 'I listen to your show. We can grab the signal out of the air. It's like catching butterflies.' She tells me, and smiles again. The ghosts behind her have vanished, and it's only now that I can see her image flickering on the edges peeling away. 'They wanted to meet you too, but they haven't been dead very long, and they forget the rules sometimes.' She sighs and her shoulders drop. I can't say anything, I can't feel my body. She looks outside where the light show is fading, and she smiles. 'I just wanted to meet you.' she says, her voice is like church bells. 'It's the way you talk about us. Your words fill up all the hollow places. We are nothing but Hollow places most of the time, you know. You make me feel like I'm swimming in a pool, in the dark all lit up from below and weightless, smoking cigarettes on the edge of a bridge with the car doors open and playing music way too loud at 2 a.m. after the show. You make me feel alive, but not in a way where I miss being alive, in a nostalgic way. Like staying up all night till you see the sunrise from a gas station parking lot.' She's looking out the window now, back lit in a way where I can't tell if I'm still looking at her. 'Have you ever noticed the most beautiful sunrises you'll ever see are always in random parking lots? You make us feel like that.' I hear her churchbell laugh but she's not there, and I'm not even sure if she ever was. There's a hollow ache in my chest, and I understand it suddenly The Nostalgia for something I've never actually experienced. When Sam shows up in the morning, he finds me in the parking lot. I'm sitting on the hood of the Datson I've parked out front, and I'm drinking a coffee out of a paper cup, and I have a cigarette that I'll never light tucked behind my ear, and I've got my battle jacket draped around my shoulders. I can smell the leather and tobacco, and it's 7 a.m., and blood orange is bursting through the trees and setting the sky on fire. And he asks me if I'm okay, and I smile at him and somewhere in the distance I can hear church bells ringing. 'I just wanted to see the sunrise.' I say. He sits next to me and puts his arm around my shoulders, and I lean into him, and he is all warm and alive just like me, and I think about how right now, all of my hollow places are filled up... ... and this is where I belong. (silence) (Theme begins) Thanks for joining me for this episode of Mil-liminal. Be sure to follow social media, or subscribe for updates. Want to know more now? This podcast is actually based on a web comic, and you can read it right now for free on Tapas and Webtoon. Just search for Mil-liminal, a horror romance about me, Caro, my podcast, and my desperate attempt to win a grouchy barista's heart. Or look for Seemingly Dark, a long running Supernatural comic full of ghosts, mysteries, and of course I'm there too. Follow the creator, Raptorjules on Instagram or Blue Sky or follow seemingly dark or mil-liminal on Tumblr for art and stuff. Logo and music design is by snakepixel on Blue Sky. A special shout out and a thanks to my Patreons and hopefully I'll see you soon! (Music Fades)