I Met a Girl Beneath an Underpass. I Never Should Have Taken Her Home
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
If you enjoy a blend of science fiction and horror, be sure to check out my other podcast, The SCP Experience. This podcast takes you on a journey through the SCP Foundation archives where strange anomalies, secret experiments and unsettling mysteries collide. Let's just say it's not for the faint of heart. Be sure to search for The SCP Experience wherever you get your podcasts. There was an overpass between 9th and York that I never walked under if I could avoid it. More than just the darkness, I think it was the smell. There was the usual odor of piss and rotten food that accumulates in such places. But there was something else too, something damp and putrid, like rotting fish guts. The river was half a mile away, but under there, it felt a lot closer.
On the Friday that Joey was released from prison, however, I didn't have much choice. It was the quickest route. I picked Joey up at the bus station earlier that evening and was showing him the way to my apartment, where he'd be staying overnight. He had been incarcerated in the summer, and now it was February. Even with the coat I'd brought him, Joey wasn't dressed for the weather. Taking the long way to avoid the overpass felt cruel, and admitting why felt even worse, especially to a man who'd just done six years in prison for something that started with me. I don't remember much about that night. I'd just turned 21, and Joey and I had both been drinking heavily. The rain had finally stopped. We'd just staggered out of a bar in search of someplace with a better vibe when a pudgy guy with a shaved head had called me a slur.
The kind of slur that sticks in your gut, no matter how buzzed you are. Joey started yelling. The stranger started yelling. And at some point, I threw a punch at him. The stranger, whose name we learned during the trial, was Gavin Derwent, raised his hands and mocked surrender. He was bigger than both of us put together and he knew it. But as he backed away, Joey gave him a parting push and Gavin slipped. I'll never forget the sound that bastard skull made when it cracked against the sidewalk. No one in the bar heard the insult or witnessed the punch I'd thrown.
What eerie setting does the narrator describe beneath the overpass?
All anyone saw was the big guy raising his empty palms and Joey's life-changing shove. Joey's silence was the only reason why I was called as a witness at that terrible trial, rather than as a co-defendant. During one of the rare moments we had alone in his public defender's office, I tried to thank him, but Joey just held up a hand and gave me a sad little smile. There'd be no point, he said, in both of us going to jail. At the time, there was no way we could have known how severely Gavin Derwent's condition would worsen, or how harsh the judge would be with Joey's sentencing. The letters we'd exchanged hadn't prepared me for how much Joey's time behind bars had changed him. His skin had taken on an unhealthy yellow pallor, and even though he was only 27, there were already flecks of gray in his wiry brown hair.
His green eyes still had the same daring sparkle that I remembered, but the joy had gone out. I wondered how I looked to him, with my scuffed-up black boots, thrift store parka, and name tag that read Assistant Manager. I had wanted to be an English professor, but I'd dropped out during the trial. I'd drifted from one job to another until somehow I wound up here, renting a leaky one-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from the bus station. The streetlights came on, jolting me out of my reverie. Joey was still in the depths of some story, but I'd completely lost track of who was supposed to be kicking whose ass in the laundry room, or why. Was this how it was going to be from now on? We'd once been close as brothers, but it suddenly felt like we no longer had anything in common, apart from that one awful night.
A frigid wind dragged snow clouds across the light-polluted sky. Whatever our differences may have been, I walked a little closer to Joey as the overpass drew near. Oblivious to the sudden hush and queasy smell of the place, Joey concluded his story with a wild peal of laughter.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:20
2
What eerie setting does the narrator describe beneath the overpass?
2:20–5:21
3
How does the narrator's past relationship with Joey influence his actions?
5:21–20:22
4
What unexpected encounter occurs when the narrator and Joey meet a girl?
20:22–22:27