This is a horror story telling podcast. Our tails are dark and disturbing, intended to shake you up.

Listen at your own risk.

We are all around you. And tonight there will be no sleep.

Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast.

It's the No Sleep Podcast Summer Vacation episode. I'm David Cummings. You know, we're down at the beach this week, but we still have two tails to chill you faster than an unexpected wave splashing your nether regions.

Just a reminder that we'll be back with season 9 episode 16 next week.

Oh, and tickets for our Halloween live in Toronto show are now on sale. Go to livenation.com or ticketmaster.ca and search for No Sleep to get your tickets.

So enjoy the stories and we'll see you back here next week. I'd better go. That boogie board isn't going to surf itself.

In our first tale, we meet a family in turmoil. When a parent has to endure their child suffering, it can shake their character to its core.

As author SH Cooper shares, the effects can sometimes be more than emotional. Sometimes other senses are impacted.

Performing this tale are David Alt, Erica Sanderson and James Cleveland. So when the pain is too much, you just might say you hear the ringing in my ear.

I remember the day I started to lose my hearing. I remember it because two things had happened the day before.

I'd received a particularly painful numbing injection at the dentist's office prior to having some work done. And my daughter was attacked and left for dead in a dumpster just outside her college campus.

We got the call at 4am. Being woken like that by a shrill ringing in the otherwise still and quiet dark is something no one should have to experience.

You know before you pick up that something has happened that something life-changing is about to be dropped in your lap and all you can do is answer.

Mr. Barrister, I'm sorry to call in this hour. It's about your daughter.

I'll never forget those words or the icy way they wrapped around my heart. My daughter, my baby girl. I looked at my wife, she looked back at me and she knew.

If I never again hear the sound she made then I will consider myself blessed. In the flurry of packing and finding a flight to get to Emily and all of the gut wrenching worry, I didn't even notice it at first.

It wasn't until we were in the air and Helena was whispering prayers under her breath beside me that I heard it. A high-pitched keen in my left ear that came in what I can only describe as short beeps.

It reminded me of hearing test times. I stuck my finger in my ear and wiggled it around trying to lessen the sound but it remained steady and irritating and beeping.

It was pushed to the back of my mind the moment we landed however and we raced from the airport to the hospital where Emily was lying unconscious with a row of machines standing vigil at her bedside.

I'd seen them countless times before. I knew what they each did and why they were attached to her but in that moment they were strange mechanical monstrosities that made her look so small and frail.

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