u/BlinkingInMorseCode

so i’m sitting here pretending to take notes and i had a genuine realisation, i don’t have a single friend who matches my vibe. not one.

like i just want someone to lose their mind over Sleep Token with me. someone who gets it. instead i’m surrounded by people who have never once felt personally attacked by an Architects breakdown or cried to Snuff.
Linkin Park? love them. Three Days Grace? my Roman empire. Sleep Token? i will talk about them for an uncomfortable amount of time if you let me.

and look i’m not asking for much. i just want friends who won’t show up head to toe in Shein and then clock MY all-black outfit like i just crawled out of a coffin. babe. these are just clothes. YOUR fast fashion is literally destroying the planet but sure, i’m the weird one.

is that too much to ask for? apparently yes.
anyway. drop your favourite Sleep Token era and let’s be friends or whatever. i have 2 more hours of this class to get through and i need something to not leave early because im responsible or whatever.

I know how this is going to sound. I’ve deleted this three times already and I never post on Reddit. But I need someone else to know, in case something happens to me, in case he comes back.

My older brother Danny first mentioned the Baking Soda Man the summer he turned nineteen. We were in the kitchen, I was maybe fifteen?And he said it the way you’d mention the weather. “The guy on Crestwood has baking soda again.” I didn’t understand. I said we had baking soda, pointing at the yellow box in the cabinet. Danny looked at me with this flat, tired expression, like I’d said something embarrassing. He left without eating.

Over the next few months I started hearing the name more. Not from Danny, he’d gone quiet the way people go quiet when something important is happening to them. I heard it from his friends, from older kids at the bus stop. Always the same way. Casual. Reverent. Almost nervous. “He’s on Crestwood.” “He’s over by the old Regency lot.” “He’ll be behind the Presbyterian church tonight, after nine.” Nobody ever said what the baking soda was for. I assumed it was slang for something. Drugs, probably. I was fifteen. I filed it away.

The first time I saw him I was sixteen. Danny had stopped coming home for dinner. Mom had started keeping the kitchen light on all night, the way parents do when they’re too scared to say what they’re scared of. I was cutting through the parking lot behind the old Rite Aid when I saw the small crowd, maybe six or seven people, all adults, all with that look. You know the look. That hollow, waiting look.

They were standing in a rough semicircle around a man I’d never seen before. He was ordinary. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Medium height. Maybe forty, maybe sixty, genuinely impossible to say. He wore a gray jacket, the kind with too many pockets. His hair was the color of dirty snow. He had the face of someone who’d been described to you, not someone you’d actually seen. He was holding a box of baking soda. The standard kind. Arm & Hammer. Orange box. One pound. He was handing it out. Not selling. I didn’t see any money change hands. Just giving. One box per person. And every person who took a box held it the way you’d hold a religious thing. A relic. Both hands, close to the chest.

I want to be very clear about the next part because this is the part nobody believes: the baking soda boxes were always new. Sealed. The little freshness tab always intact. Every box. Every person. He seemed to have an unlimited supply, and nobody ever asked where it came from, and he never seemed to run out. I watched from behind a dumpster for maybe ten minutes before he looked directly at me. He didn’t react the way you’d expect, no surprise, no anger. He just looked at me the way you look at someone you’ve been expecting. He reached into his jacket, and I thought he was going to pull out another box. Instead he just adjusted something. Patted his pocket. And went back to the line. I ran home. I didn’t tell anyone.

Danny came home in October. He looked the way people look after something long and consuming. Thinner. Careful about what he touched. He sat at the kitchen table and our mom made him soup and he ate it all and he said “I’m done with that.” Our mom didn’t ask what he meant. I think she knew.

That night I knocked on his door and asked him about the Baking Soda Man. Danny was quiet for a long time. Then he said: “He smells like it, you know. All the time. Even outside. Even in winter. Just that clean, chemical smell.” I asked what the baking soda was for. Danny said: “Nothing. That’s the thing. It’s not for anything. You just…you want it. You need to have it. One box and then you go home and you put it in a drawer or a cabinet or under your bed, and it just sits there, and that night you sleep better than you’ve slept in years, and then after a few days it starts to run out, the feeling, and you need another one.” I asked: run out how? It’s just baking soda. It doesn’t — “I know,” Danny said. “I know it doesn’t.”

He told me the rest in pieces over the following weeks. How the first box had appeared on our porch, three years before, with no note. How he’d thrown it away and found himself digging it out of the trash at 2am without understanding why. How he’d sought the man out after that, first out of curiosity, then out of something else. How everyone in the little communities that formed around the Baking Soda Man were totally normal people. Professionals, parents, kids from the college. Quiet, slightly embarrassed, perfectly functional in every other area of their lives. Just dependent. On a box of baking soda from a man whose name nobody knew.

How nobody ever got sick from it. How it didn’t seem to do anything. How that somehow made it worse. “The boxes are always sealed,” Danny said. “I opened one in front of him once, just to see what he’d do. He didn’t care. He just watched. And it was just baking soda. I tasted it and everything. Normal. Nothing.” He paused. “But I still kept it. I kept all of them. I had seventeen boxes under my bed. Mom found them once and threw them out and I…I didn’t handle it well.” He didn’t elaborate on that. I didn’t push.

Danny moved away two years later. He’s okay now, I think. We don’t talk about it. I’m writing this because last week I came home from work and there was a box of baking soda on my front step. Arm & Hammer. Orange. One pound. Sealed. No note. No footprints on the wet porch. My neighbor’s ring camera shows the porch at 4:14am, and the step is bare. At 4:15am, the box is there. The camera didn’t malfunction. The timestamp is unbroken. Nothing walks up. The box simply appears.

I threw it in the dumpster down the street. I have not slept properly since. Not because I’m scared, exactly. Because I keep thinking about how much better I’d sleep if I hadn’t thrown it away. And I’ve started noticing an orange corner of something in every cabinet I open, every drawer I check, every shelf I pass at the grocery store, and I know it’s nothing, I know it’s just baking soda, it’s everywhere, it’s a normal household product. But I can still smell him. That clean, chemical smell. He’s on Crestwood again.

I know how this is going to sound. I’ve deleted this three times already and I never post on Reddit. But I need someone else to know, in case something happens to me, in case he comes back.

My older brother Danny first mentioned the Baking Soda Man the summer he turned nineteen. We were in the kitchen, I was maybe fifteen?And he said it the way you’d mention the weather. “The guy on Crestwood has baking soda again.” I didn’t understand. I said we had baking soda, pointing at the yellow box in the cabinet. Danny looked at me with this flat, tired expression, like I’d said something embarrassing. He left without eating.

Over the next few months I started hearing the name more. Not from Danny, he’d gone quiet the way people go quiet when something important is happening to them. I heard it from his friends, from older kids at the bus stop. Always the same way. Casual. Reverent. Almost nervous. “He’s on Crestwood.” “He’s over by the old Regency lot.” “He’ll be behind the Presbyterian church tonight, after nine.” Nobody ever said what the baking soda was for. I assumed it was slang for something. Drugs, probably. I was fifteen. I filed it away.

The first time I saw him I was sixteen. Danny had stopped coming home for dinner. Mom had started keeping the kitchen light on all night, the way parents do when they’re too scared to say what they’re scared of. I was cutting through the parking lot behind the old Rite Aid when I saw the small crowd, maybe six or seven people, all adults, all with that look. You know the look. That hollow, waiting look.

They were standing in a rough semicircle around a man I’d never seen before. He was ordinary. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Medium height. Maybe forty, maybe sixty, genuinely impossible to say. He wore a gray jacket, the kind with too many pockets. His hair was the color of dirty snow. He had the face of someone who’d been described to you, not someone you’d actually seen. He was holding a box of baking soda. The standard kind. Arm & Hammer. Orange box. One pound. He was handing it out. Not selling. I didn’t see any money change hands. Just giving. One box per person. And every person who took a box held it the way you’d hold a religious thing. A relic. Both hands, close to the chest.

I want to be very clear about the next part because this is the part nobody believes: the baking soda boxes were always new. Sealed. The little freshness tab always intact. Every box. Every person. He seemed to have an unlimited supply, and nobody ever asked where it came from, and he never seemed to run out. I watched from behind a dumpster for maybe ten minutes before he looked directly at me. He didn’t react the way you’d expect, no surprise, no anger. He just looked at me the way you look at someone you’ve been expecting. He reached into his jacket, and I thought he was going to pull out another box. Instead he just adjusted something. Patted his pocket. And went back to the line. I ran home. I didn’t tell anyone.

Danny came home in October. He looked the way people look after something long and consuming. Thinner. Careful about what he touched. He sat at the kitchen table and our mom made him soup and he ate it all and he said “I’m done with that.” Our mom didn’t ask what he meant. I think she knew.

That night I knocked on his door and asked him about the Baking Soda Man. Danny was quiet for a long time. Then he said: “He smells like it, you know. All the time. Even outside. Even in winter. Just that clean, chemical smell.” I asked what the baking soda was for. Danny said: “Nothing. That’s the thing. It’s not for anything. You just…you want it. You need to have it. One box and then you go home and you put it in a drawer or a cabinet or under your bed, and it just sits there, and that night you sleep better than you’ve slept in years, and then after a few days it starts to run out, the feeling, and you need another one.” I asked: run out how? It’s just baking soda. It doesn’t — “I know,” Danny said. “I know it doesn’t.”

He told me the rest in pieces over the following weeks. How the first box had appeared on our porch, three years before, with no note. How he’d thrown it away and found himself digging it out of the trash at 2am without understanding why. How he’d sought the man out after that, first out of curiosity, then out of something else. How everyone in the little communities that formed around the Baking Soda Man were totally normal people. Professionals, parents, kids from the college. Quiet, slightly embarrassed, perfectly functional in every other area of their lives. Just dependent. On a box of baking soda from a man whose name nobody knew.

How nobody ever got sick from it. How it didn’t seem to do anything. How that somehow made it worse. “The boxes are always sealed,” Danny said. “I opened one in front of him once, just to see what he’d do. He didn’t care. He just watched. And it was just baking soda. I tasted it and everything. Normal. Nothing.” He paused. “But I still kept it. I kept all of them. I had seventeen boxes under my bed. Mom found them once and threw them out and I…I didn’t handle it well.” He didn’t elaborate on that. I didn’t push.

Danny moved away two years later. He’s okay now, I think. We don’t talk about it. I’m writing this because last week I came home from work and there was a box of baking soda on my front step. Arm & Hammer. Orange. One pound. Sealed. No note. No footprints on the wet porch. My neighbor’s ring camera shows the porch at 4:14am, and the step is bare. At 4:15am, the box is there. The camera didn’t malfunction. The timestamp is unbroken. Nothing walks up. The box simply appears.

I threw it in the dumpster down the street. I have not slept properly since. Not because I’m scared, exactly. Because I keep thinking about how much better I’d sleep if I hadn’t thrown it away. And I’ve started noticing an orange corner of something in every cabinet I open, every drawer I check, every shelf I pass at the grocery store, and I know it’s nothing, I know it’s just baking soda, it’s everywhere, it’s a normal household product. But I can still smell him. That clean, chemical smell. He’s on Crestwood again.

so ive been having trouble sleeping lately, not sure why. it’s fine though, i’m used to the quiet by now. mostly.

I don’t really have many friends and thought i’d try this. i’m 22, somewhere in europe,near Germany if you want a hint.

i look how i look. pretty into metal and punk, always open to recommendations. saw Sleep Token live a while back and i genuinely have not recovered. i don’t think i will. there’s something about them that just stays with you, like something got in and never left. if you know you know.

horror is basically my whole personality too, movies, games, all of it. Blair Witch Project is probably my favourite film ever made, keep going back to it. the way it makes you feel like something’s just behind you.
i notice things like that. small sounds, something at the corner of your eye. probably just being tired.

hit me up if you’re also a bit of a night owl or just want someone to talk to. i’m always up.