Episode 26 - Time Of Death
The central narrative of this episode revolves around the character of Joe Santiago, a criminal whose life takes an unforeseen turn upon receiving an antique clock that eerily predicts violent deaths. As the clock ceaselessly stops at specific times, Joe discovers a disturbing pattern: each cessation of the clock corresponds with tragic events occurring in proximity to his residence. This revelation ignites a profound transformation within him, compelling Joe to abandon his past of crime and embrace a newfound purpose in attempting to avert these impending tragedies. However, as he strives to save lives, he ultimately confronts the grim reality of his own impending demise, culminating in a harrowing climax that underscores the inexorable nature of fate. Through this tale, we explore themes of redemption, the fragility of life, and the intricate web of choices that define our existence.
Takeaways:
- The podcast episode explores the extraordinary, revealing a world that lies beneath the everyday.
- Listeners are invited to embark on a journey where peculiar tales intertwine with the enigmatic.
- The protagonist, Joe Santiago, is a criminal who has never served time in prison despite his illicit activities.
- An antique clock that Joe receives unexpectedly begins to predict violent deaths twelve hours before they occur.
- As Joe attempts to prevent these tragedies, he discovers a disturbing pattern linked to his own life.
- Ultimately, Joe becomes a tragic hero, sacrificing himself to save an FBI agent from certain death.
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Transcript
Imagine a world teetering on the edge of the familiar, a place where the fabric of the everyday begins to unravel, revealing glimpses of the extraordinary lurking beneath.
Speaker A:You're about to embark on a journey into the enigmatic, where the peculiar and the perplexing intertwine, where every tale twists the mind and tugs at the spirit.
Speaker A:It's a descent into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained.
Speaker A:This is when reality frays.
Speaker A:New episodes are published every Monday and Thursday, and when Reality Phrase is available everywhere, fine podcasts are found.
Speaker A:Before we move on, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted when new episodes are released.
Speaker A:Today's episode contains one story entitled Time of Death Joe Santiago was a criminal.
Speaker A:He'd spent his life stealing from hardworking people, running scams on the vulnerable, and even the occasional murder for hire.
Speaker A:He was a bad guy, which he fully acknowledged.
Speaker A:Surprisingly, at 42 years old, he'd never served a single day in prison.
Speaker A:A casual observer would believe he was the luckiest thief to ever live, but the truth was he was meticulous at everything he did, and he didn't make the kind of mistakes that draws the interest of the police.
Speaker A:Joe lived quietly in the suburbs, alongside bankers, lawyers, and legitimate businessmen.
Speaker A:His house was neither the grandest nor the most modest on the block.
Speaker A:His car was American made, which meant it was obscure amongst the Mercedes Range Rovers and other luxury brands that were simply one more badge of status for his neighbors.
Speaker A:On a crisp fall morning, Joe's doorbell rang.
Speaker A:He wasn't expecting company, and his heart rate briefly elevated until he looked out a window and saw a delivery van parked across his driveway.
Speaker A:Still, it didn't hurt to be careful, so he tucked a small pistol into his waistband and hit it with his shirt as he walked to the door.
Speaker A:The delivery man was waiting impatiently with a bulky wooden crate loaded on a hand truck.
Speaker A:Joe bent to check the shipping label.
Speaker A:His name was printed in big block letters, but the shipper information was blank.
Speaker A:What's this?
Speaker A:He asked.
Speaker A:His eyes scanned the street in case he was being set up.
Speaker A:He wasn't worried about cops.
Speaker A:He had a couple of them on his payroll who would have provided an early warning if any investigation targeted him.
Speaker A:His concern was other criminals petty jealousy, which could lead to them trying to take what he had worked for.
Speaker A:The delivery driver shrugged his shoulders in response and held out a tablet for Joe's signature.
Speaker A:Joe checked the neighborhood one more time, signed, then stepped outside and led the way to the garage.
Speaker A:Once the driver was gone, Joe pried the crate open to find an antique mantle clock nestled deep inside shredded packing material.
Speaker A:He plucked out a sheet of paper, surprised to see it had come from a lawyer on the opposite side of the country.
Speaker A:The clock had belonged to an uncle he had never met, only heard of as a child.
Speaker A:That uncle had passed recently, and his attorney had sent it to Joe in accordance with instructions his client had left.
Speaker A:Joe hoisted the clock onto a workbench for a closer look.
Speaker A:Its frame was mahogany, elegantly carved with intricate vines and roses.
Speaker A:The brass hands gleamed faintly beneath a patina of age, and the clock's face, yellowed like old parchment, bore Roman numerals made of what appeared to be emeralds.
Speaker A:Joe had been on his own since his early teens, and the unexpected gift touched a part of him he didn't know still existed.
Speaker A:He was struck by how the desire for the connection of family had been so easily reawakened.
Speaker A:Gently lifting the clock, he carried it into the house and placed it front and center on the mantel in the living room.
Speaker A:He retrieved a rag and gently polished the wood, then set the time and wound the key.
Speaker A:The clock began running, its ticking echoing through the quiet house, as steady as a metronome.
Speaker A:Joe stood watching the second hand move around the dial for nearly a minute, then walked away.
Speaker A:He had a job to do in the city.
Speaker A:It was evening when Joe returned home.
Speaker A:When he entered the house, he immediately noticed the silence.
Speaker A:The clock wasn't ticking.
Speaker A:He hurried to the living room, finding the clock had stopped at 2:31.
Speaker A:He cranked the key.
Speaker A:A partial turn, and the ticking began loud and steady.
Speaker A:Setting the time, he fully wound the clock.
Speaker A:Several hours later, when he went to bed, it was steadily ticking the seconds away.
Speaker A:Joe jolted out of bed a few hours later when a loud chime sounded.
Speaker A:Grabbing a shotgun from between the mattress and box springs, he made a careful sweep of the house, ending in the living room.
Speaker A:The clock sat silent.
Speaker A:The hands stopped on 2:31, precisely 12 hours since it had last stopped.
Speaker A:He reset the time, wound the clock, and returned to bed.
Speaker A:Joe watched the local news as he ate breakfast.
Speaker A:The next morning, he was rinsing dishes when a segment caught his attention.
Speaker A:At 2:30 in the morning, a gas line explosion had killed a family of four in their sleep.
Speaker A:He turned to the TV to watch as the station played a video from a neighbor's surveillance camera.
Speaker A:It caught the moment of the blast, and Joe frowned.
Speaker A:In the top right corner of the video was a timestamp, and it didn't read 2:30.
Speaker A:It showed 231, the same time the clock had stopped twice.
Speaker A:Shaking his head at the impossibility, he shut the TV off, finished cleaning the kitchen and stopped in the living room.
Speaker A:On his way out the door, the clock was stopped again.
Speaker A:6:18.
Speaker A:He stared at it for a few moments, then shook his head, wound the key, set the time and left.
Speaker A:When Joe returned that afternoon, the clock was stopped.
Speaker A:3:31.
Speaker A:He set it to the correct time and wound it.
Speaker A:At 6:18 that evening, the clock stopped.
Speaker A:Joe set and wound it again and waited.
Speaker A:At just before 7pm the social media feed from a local news station posted about a convenience store robbery gone bad.
Speaker A:The clerk and three customers had been shot and killed.
Speaker A:The shooter, a small time crook that had never harmed anyone he had robbed in the past.
Speaker A:The Post listed the time as 6:15.
Speaker A:Joe looked at the clock, a suspicion that felt more like a mental break tickling the back of his mind.
Speaker A:But at 3:31am the clock stopped again.
Speaker A:Another precise 12 hours.
Speaker A:This time, because it was the middle of the night, it took longer for the news to begin circulating at St. Vincent's Hospital.
Speaker A:A patient had stabbed and killed the doctor and nurse that were treating him in the emergency room.
Speaker A:According to the news reports, the man was an upstanding citizen with a good job, a loving family and no history of violence or mental illness.
Speaker A:And the event was reported as happening at 3:30am Joe was stunned.
Speaker A:What he'd experienced was the most unbelievable series of coincidences he could imagine.
Speaker A:But the only thing less likely was them being simple coincidences he could buy a single solitary event where something horrible just happened to occur at the same time a clock had seemingly forecast, but multiple times in close succession.
Speaker A:That wasn't coincidence, that was a pattern.
Speaker A:Obsessed Joe stayed home for the next several days daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
Speaker A:The clock accurately predicted a violent death 12 hours before it would happen.
Speaker A:Joe meticulously tracked each event, but despite his best efforts, couldn't find anything that winked them other than his clock.
Speaker A:As he did this, he was consumed by a compulsion to prevent the tragedies the clock foretold.
Speaker A:He, a man who had spent his life taking, now felt driven to save strangers, a pull as inexplicable as it was undeniable.
Speaker A:The quack's predictions were precise but maddeningly vague.
Speaker A:They gave a time, but no names, no places, no hint of who would suffer or how.
Speaker A:Joe transformed his living room into a war room.
Speaker A:He hung a corkboard on the wall and it was soon covered with articles, maps, and scribbled notes.
Speaker A:He pored over details, his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights.
Speaker A:He was searching for a thread to tie them together.
Speaker A:Days blurred together as he cataloged new events and searched for patterns that had to be there.
Speaker A:The breakthrough came when he plotted the event's coordinates.
Speaker A:Every event had occurred exactly 8.3 miles from his house, forming a perfect circle with his home in the center.
Speaker A:He had stood looking at the map in wonder when he realized the clocks stopped.
Speaker A:Time doubled as a compass.
Speaker A:12 o' clock pointed due north, 3 o' clock due east, 6 o' clock due south, 9 o' clock due west.
Speaker A:A stop at 4:30 met a location east southeast at a distance of 8.3 miles from his home.
Speaker A:Every single event the clock had foretold was on a precise vector and distance from his doorstep.
Speaker A:The clock was also a map, its hands a guide to both when and where death would strike.
Speaker A:Joe acted with the urgency of a man running from his past.
Speaker A:With the clock stopped at 6:17, he used his laptop to pinpoint a location.
Speaker A:He was there the following morning, watching a four way intersection half an hour in advance of the appointed time.
Speaker A:He watched a woman driving to work come to a stop for a red light.
Speaker A:At 6:16, a thug with a hunting knife in his hand emerged from an alley and hurried toward the stopped car.
Speaker A:Joe wept from his car and sprinted toward the intersection.
Speaker A:The thug ripped the woman's unlocked door open and pulled her from the car.
Speaker A:She fought and he was raising the knife to stab her when Joe arrived.
Speaker A:He tackled the thug and they fought.
Speaker A:Joe got the best of him, the knife going deep into the thug's chest.
Speaker A:Joe had leapt to his feet and run, disappearing into the morning rush hour.
Speaker A:He was on a high from saving the woman, and it didn't occur to him that someone had still died at the appointed time and location.
Speaker A:Over the next two weeks, he prevented five murders, a bank robbery, a workplace shooting.
Speaker A:Each act seemed to repair a crack in his soul, filling a void he had never realized was there.
Speaker A:For the first time, Joe had purpose, A reason to exist beyond the next score.
Speaker A:The next morning, Joe received a coded message from the capo of a crime family he'd done jobs for over the years.
Speaker A:He met with a man who asked him to kill an FBI agent who was investigating him and his organization's activities.
Speaker A:This was something Joe would have normally jumped at.
Speaker A:It was high risk, which meant a handsome fee.
Speaker A:But before he could refuse the job, men carrying automatic rifles and wearing body armor emblazoned with FBI stormed the Building.
Speaker A:Joe was swept up with a capo and several of his men, and they were all taken to the local FBI office.
Speaker A:Several hours passed before Joe was moved from a holding cell into an interrogation room, where he was questioned for hours.
Speaker A:With no evidence of any crime, the FBI kicked him free.
Speaker A:Just before midnight.
Speaker A:Exhausted and angry, Joe had taken a cab to retrieve his car, then driven home.
Speaker A:All he wanted was a hot shower and to go to bed.
Speaker A:But when he walked into his house, he found the clock stopped on 3:17.
Speaker A:He glanced at his watch.
Speaker A:He had less than two hours left.
Speaker A:He opened his laptop and pinpointed the location, took a quick shower, and dressed in dark clothes.
Speaker A:With only 45 minutes remaining, he left his house.
Speaker A:He parked two blocks away from the house he had identified and went the rest of the way on foot.
Speaker A:He was on high alert, watching for any movement in the night, but as far as he could tell, he was alone.
Speaker A:He checked his watch.
Speaker A:3:05 12 minutes left.
Speaker A:Slipping over the fence into the backyard, he carefully approached the rear of the home.
Speaker A:No lights were showing, and the house was silent.
Speaker A:He glanced at his watch.
Speaker A:3:11.
Speaker A:He drew his pistol and moved to the patio door, testing it with a gloved hand.
Speaker A:To his surprise, it slid open an inch and he froze, listening.
Speaker A:Joe eased the door far enough open to slip through, silently closing it behind himself.
Speaker A:Ahead was a sliver of light beneath a closed door.
Speaker A:From the far side, heavily muted, came a whimper of pain.
Speaker A:He listened intently for nearly a minute, but the sound didn't repeat.
Speaker A:Joe took a deep breath in preparation, turned the knob, and burst through the door, pistol seeking a target.
Speaker A:In the center of the room, a man was tied to a chair, his face bloody from having been beaten beyond.
Speaker A:A second man whirled in surprise, tearing for a pistol stuffed in his waistband.
Speaker A:Joe fired three fast shots, each of them punching into the man's body, and he crashed to the floor.
Speaker A:Joe hurried toward the man tied to the chair, surprised when he saw the dull gleam of an FBI badge on his belt.
Speaker A:A frown creased Joe's face when he connected some dots in his head.
Speaker A:He checked the restrained man's pockets, finding a set of FBI credentials with a name on them he had heard before.
Speaker A:This was the agent the capo had wanted him to kill.
Speaker A:Movement caught Joe's eye as the man he had shot sat up, pistol raised.
Speaker A:Joe reacted, and both men fired at the same instant, Joe's bullet punching through the man's skull, the man's bullet piercing Joe's chest.
Speaker A:Joe fell to the floor, his watch in clear view 3 13.
Speaker A:Understanding settled over him.
Speaker A:He was the one that would die at 3:17.
Speaker A:Fighting down the pain while struggling to remain conscious, he dragged himself to the FBI agent and freed his hands.
Speaker A:As he spoke in a pain filled, whispery voice, he told him about the clock, the circle, the 8.3 miles, and the lives he'd saved.
Speaker A:It's yours now, Joe said, blood gurgling in his lungs as he died at 3:17am New episodes of When Reality Phrase are uploaded every Monday and Thursday.
Speaker A:If you're enjoying the journey into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained, be sure to press that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted whenever an episode drops.
Speaker A:Until next time, thank you for listening to When Reality Frays.
