Soup Mondays

It was raining the last Christmas we spent with our father. Technically, it was the last one we spent with my mother too. She was the one who knew how to call him. A stubborn man. He was who had only listened to what she said. We all used to say that he was afraid of her. She turned him around. Mother would often say, otherwise he would be out drinking, and if it weren't for her, he would be out in the streets begging for coins to get a beer out of the refrigerated section of the local Utahns and expired food store. Not expired, just not optimal, my father would say. But they loved each other in their own ways. He would bring her the groceries and his paycheck. Every Monday meant every single Monday we would have chicken soup, no matter the weather or the time of the year. No one else liked it as much as my father did. It was how they fell in love, he would say, when he was feeling talkative. It's how we knew that he was a softie behind that tough skin. And they had been traveling between cities that year to be home just in time to spend Christmas with her parents. But they got stuck due to a storm that year and had to stay at one of my father's uncle's homes along the way. They hadn't to frosted the chicken. The gas lines were stuck. My mother had gotten everything together, grabbing some of the frozen vegetables and starting chopping up onions and searching through the spice cabinet something that would work. The water they had was poured into a pot and the wood was fired up outside. It was the best chicken soup I've ever had. He would say. It was a story we had heard many times, but my sisters and I liked the way that he would tell it. There she was my future wife, making it work with what little we had. That's when I knew that I loved her. We would all whisper along with him, and we would all laugh together at how cheesy it sounded, and yet we couldn't wait for the next time he would tell us that same story all over again. My mother loved the way that he waited for Mondays. She loved how he took care of us growing up. She had grown up without a father, and she would let him know too strict she was around the house, but she had a strong, silent love and respect for him. One of my sisters and I talk about their love for each other. We can't quite explain it to other people except with these stories. Sure they had their arguments, but they knew how to fix things. If you can fix your own boat, you can float forever. My father would tell us, usually with a wrench in his hand, when he was fixing something around the house. I think he applied it to our family too. It was especially tough when he passed. We had all moved out of the house by that point, and we would call him about once a week to check up on how he was doing. But one day my mother called to give us the news that he had been hospitalized. It wasn't long after we arrived when we had to see goodbyes. It was like watching a bird try to fly with one wing, circling the same spot in the dried grass until it grew tired, full of hope that it would fly again, that only a few more seeds would give it that final push into the clouds, Like those days when the sun struggled to shine through the orange dust in the sky, full of a different light that wasn't warm anymore, Like a pot of delicious chicken soup waiting in a cold, dark kitchen, no eager spoon waiting just a few steps away. A few years passed, and before we knew it, it was Christmas again, nineteen ninety five, a Monday. Her sisters had brought it the list that had been taped to the old refrigerator. It had where to get the whole chicken from, little notes in case a certain spice had run out. We all knew that chicken soup would be on the menu, even if we did have everything else you would expect at a Christmas table. Children were with us for the first time, asleep by eight, fortunately with the promise of presents in the morning. Together we walked up to the Christmas tree, set a tiny table with the bowl, like we had done for years. We brought out Mom's candles and books, photographs and waited for her to start. I don't know how she got so good at this. I remember the way she would bring over a really old lady to the house every once in a while, Berta was her name. She would come in dressed in white and they would sing, or at least that's what we thought it was, as kids never thought anything weird of it, and my mother started singing. Then soon the words change into something else, sounds like multiple voices in unison. As we all closed her eyes, we got in a circle on our knees and the tiny table by the tree. My mother cried, and she called out my father's name, softly at first, then she started yelling and anger. That's why they say that he was afraid of her. It's out of love, she would say. She was used to mondays waiting for my father, and my father waiting for her. And then the table rattled, The lights on the tree flickered, and a window opened up from behind us. The cold wind rushed in and turned off the candle. As we grew silent, we smiled, we cried, We stayed still until we saw it with our own eyes. The spoon began to move to the opposite side of the bowl, the vapor that came out of the soup remaining perfectly still just above it. Then the light stayed on and still and silent. The wind stopped. We all looked at each other and smiled at my mother. She smiled back. Before spring arrived. That year, Mom passed away, we all gathered to make that bowl of chicken soup. Earlier that morning a Monday, save a little for your father, her last words. The alarm had gone off for the second time that night. The cameras showed no one, not even a hint of movement anywhere in the mall. These places had been empty for some time, especially by that point in January, when everyone had everything they wanted already. Besides, Hooverstone Mall was one of those places, the ones that got stuck in time. The only people who actually enjoyed themselves there were the old people who would buy their shoes and suits for the department stores. Even Bridge Burger had left the food court after decades of being the last remaining attraction. It was hard to think that anyone would want to rob this place at night. It was way easier during the day. Still, when the alarm went off, I was to go to the location and press a security button to mark that I visually inspected it technology right, making it hard to slack off. So with a heavy sigh and a flashlight on my right hand, I started making my way down to the last hallway, the one by the playpen at the end of the mall. My door echoed along those shiny tiles. You could barely see the end of it. And that night, in particular, we had a full moon just above the place. The skylight, now yellow during the day, was bright blue at night. In the silence of the mall, I picked up the radio and pressed the button. Stephen Yo heading over to the last wing. He was supposed to know in order to go to a set of cameras and monitor them. But we knew that in the four or so years we had been working together, it would be pointless. Those screens might as well have been photographs. You could be replaced and no one would notice an alarm go off. I heard back a concerned voice. I almost didn't recognize him. Yeah, I'm going to go turn off the tracker. What he said next is what made me stop completely in the middle of the food court. I'm coming too. He saw some movement around that side of the lot where are you used to take turns being outside and the axis door was by the docks area, near where the alarm had sounded by the food court, which you see, I asked and waited for his answer. A little while later, Mondo I heard it was an echo from the deep side of the deliveries. He was running toward me. I could see a silhouette waving, but he didn't stop running. I was supposed to be going toward him, and not the other way around. It was only when he was closer when I saw that he was telling me to turn back and run. I didn't hesitate and started running, slow enough for him to catch up, and then we picked up. We rushed past the last shop of the food court and toward the seating areas by the gardens, but finally stopped at the bathrooms and back up storage areas. What happened? I yelled, and he shushed me right away. We were both sweating, not used to running around, as you might have guessed. He opened up the storage area and we rushed inside, shutting the door tightly. The closet still had those old tiny chains hanging from the ceiling to turn the lights on, and he got to it first. I could tell from his face that something had scared him. He had been working security ever since he graduated in high school and was used to seeing just about everything. I had never seen himself scared. We were still catching our breaths when I saw him grip the handle to the door and start pulling on it ood he heard. I still can't find the words to describe. I had never heard anything like it, and still to this very day after that it's been about ten years, I still don't know what it was. I want you to imagine a deep wind so sharp that it whistles, and a manic laughter in a whisper. I know it sounds bizarre, but we were both looking at each other with wide eyes, waiting for it to pass. I could tell Stephen's hands was shaking, and knew that he was holding his breath. We were there for about ten minutes. After the sounds faded, blending into the darkness of the place, I cracked the door open and felt the soft breeze of cold air begin to circulate inside the storage closet. Hey man, do you want to go? I waited for his answer. He looked at me and nodded. He didn't want to leave, but the mall was silent again. I stepped out first, afraid of seeing something just around the corners of those dark bathroom hallways. But all I could see was the dim light of the elevator button by the end of the gray and purple light, and one that was coming from the ceiling windows straight toward the shiny floors That was almost by the end of the hallway. When Stephen stepped out and we both walked back to a station by the parking lot in silence. It was like we were processing what had just happened, or if it had ever happened at all. Nobody had access to the inside of them all, not even the delivery people. All dock areas were blocked off from the sales floors. We both knew that, but we also knew that it was the least of our concerns. Who might have been in There was the bigger question, what was it? More? Alarms had been set off when we were in the building. It was normal when we did our walk through that we would set off the motion detectors, but we always set them to silence when we did. Several detectors had gone off near the storage closets, the food court, and all along the wing where we had been. Stephen noticed something else. The motion sensors had also gone off sporadically throughout the mall, with one as far as the east entrance. The timestamps didn't match up to the locations. Nobody could run that fast or be in several locations at one time. Huddling towards the screen, Stephen found the footage to rewatch. He started by watching the outdoor camera. When Stephen leaves a booth from the outside, a large dog like creature seemed to crawl from one of the trees towards the delivery docks. He moved like a stain on the ground and then disappeared. The motion sensor goes off the one I initially responded to, that's when we see Stephen going to the entrance. We replayed the footage. Excited for it now looking at how this thing was going into the mall. You see that? You see that, That's what I was talking about. You were going to go to Stephen paused. He looked back at the screen. Look, look, it's going the other way now. His fingers were smudging the old screen as he traced it, rushing toward the other entrance. Within a few seconds, Stephen was on screen going through the lot and into the building to meet up with me. You have the internal DBR, right, he asked. We couldn't see the inside of the mall from the outside booths. With a silent glance over the outside, we stepped out. Now, I make it seem like we weren't scared, but it must have been the adrenaline that made us look past our shaky voices and sweaty faces. As we made our way back inside, we looked around the area. It was a normal night, cool wind brushing past the dying trees in the parking lot. Everything inside was the same silent. As we were getting to the security office, Stephen stood still. He pointed to over the last wing of the mall. His lips were trembling and his knees were failing him as he started hitting the floor. I looked in the direction he was pointing to, and I saw what I can only describe as a glitch, A patch of darkness, darker than the dark, like a dark puddle, crawl along the depths of that dark structure that vanished near the old shops. At the end, I reached towards Stephen, who was trying to get back up on his own, and we made it to the office. We replayed the footage and watched ourselves rushed over the storage closet. We could only see the camera go dark and then back to normal, as if the night vision had stopped working. For instance, at a time because of certain areas of the screen would stay the same. The light from the ceiling a few tables from the food court in the distance. There it is, Stephen yelled. I looked over the screen and could find absolutely nothing. My face was surging through the monitor ice, twitching from side to side as it looked for the thing. But Steve and kept tapping on my shoulder, yelling near my ear. Look, look, look. He presses back against the wall behind me hard as he kept yelling. I can't find it. I yelled, losing my patience, and just then, out of the corner of my eye, from the window that looked at the interior of the mall, I saw it right outside the office. It was a hooded figure, the thing rising from the floor. I couldn't tell in what direction it was looking, but I stepped back, hearing the motion detectoral arms go off. Inside that office, the live cameras could catch it. They were recording. I was frozen completely as the thing started crawling, no floating toward us along the floor, was only about ten feet away. Steven started whispering what I thought were prayers, but all I could do was stare afraid. That if I blinked, it would end up inside. And next to us, Stephen was on the floor, his hands on the opposite sides of his head, covering his ears. The thing was approaching, and soon it started making the same sound as before, that loud, inexplicable sound that had scared us earlier. It got louder and louder, and then stopped. I watched it crawled or slide or whatever along the floor and disappear into the last wing of them. All the motion detectors all stopped right then. Before we realized it, it was five in the morning and our shift had ended. Light was beginning to filter in through the glass panes, and neither of us made a motion to even begin to look at the footage. Had been a long night already, and we both just wanted to get out of there. Stephen reported it, or at least he said he did, but there were no records of it. When we asked one of our supervisor about it, he told us to stop messing around and that we were going to get them fired. We stuck around for a couple more years until it shut down, and never saw anything similar to it. Since the footage we caught was the same, the night vision option resetting over and over again, and Steven and I talked about it. We would remember other little details of that night, the sounds of the motion detectors and the silence. Steven tried to draw it, but only got sort of close to it. The real fear started when we read about similar incidents not too far from where we were. Two people had been waiting outside a Burger fast food restaurant when they claimed to have seen a creature coming out from the woods across the street. It rushed past them, making a sound that sounded like a howl in a windstorm. Who knows if it was the same thing. To this day, It's a story that Steven and I tell in the new place where we work. He got me another security job through his agency, still at night, but with more guards. Not a single incident since I hope it stays that way. So I was asked about some of the background for some of the stories, so I'm going to add a little bit of information about the stories themselves. So our first story, Soup Mondays, was originally meant to be a story of a family. They have strange habits of invoking or calling spirits around a certain time of the year, something completely normal to them and strange to the rest of the world. But as the story started writing, you know, started moving along. As I was writing it, the cult thoughts of someone missing in the house during the holidays, that's a gob So it changed into a story of longing and love along with supernatural elements of some through through some of the emails that you send that some of my stories seem to do that, you know, the angle that we can spot in some of the stories that I've shared over the years, kind of darkness and tragedy and sadness kind of combined. And I'm not sure what we call that genre, but anyway is what the story ended up being. For the second one that was written in creepy pasta format is about two security guards on a formal, like an informal a normal night who can't understand what's going on. And for this one, imagine the setting right. There's an old, run down mall in the middle of a small town, empty parking lots, with a cracking asphalt and dead trees, and these two security guards are trying to make it work with faulty equipment, old fashioned incident reporting, and their bored out of their minds. That's how this story is set up, and the idea was sent in by who I'm assuming was a young listener who wanted a five Nights at Freddy's story. Now there are no animatronics here. Hey, I'll tell you that I played that game and was only able to beat it after looking up some tips. It's pretty difficult to get the hang of it. Anyway. The whole theme of five Nights at Freddie's fell apart there as well, but we ended up with a strange mystery at work type of story. Anyway. In our community on Spotify and Apple podcast, we've received some comments. This one's from Ruby Hanna, who says, I love this podcast so much. I honestly fall asleep to it. So call me and I wouldn't blame you. It's it's it's there's a lot of people who say that they listened to to fall Asleep surprised you know that you don't have nightmares, but yeah, it's a it's a common thing and I like that actually. Marchea Davis, Kaylee and her boys who will listen and broken heart emojis say that they love the stories as well. So thank you so much for that, ney a Vir and Jillian. Thank you for your comments as well. I got through them. I was. I was going through the comments recently and I found yours, so that means a lot. Thank you. Thank you for commenting on here. As always, you know where to find me in case you want to get in touch thanks to everything or in the description of this episode, and if you have ideas for stories, make sure you send them my way. Scary Story podcast is written by me Edwin Kobarubias and if you're subscribed, I'll be back next week with more stories. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, see us soon.