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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2026-05-23 02:56:09+00:00.

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Back when I was a teenager, my family was going through some sudden changes. My dad never really told me about the details, but I could figure some things out from context. I have two younger brothers; one six years younger, and one eight years younger. All of a sudden, our family is splitting up. My brothers are moving in with my mom, and I’m staying with my dad. It’s a lot of moving boxes, hurtful words, and late nights with difficult talks. The family tree was a bit more complicated.

That kind of situation is difficult enough as-is; especially for a teenager. You kind of have your own problems at that age, and making sense of the world gets a whole lot harder when your entire life is pulled up by the roots. Dad and I had to move into a smaller place, and I had to get used to a new level of quiet. I still talked to mom and my brothers almost every day, but it was clear things would never be quite the same.

After about a month, my mom was already seeing someone. It didn’t seem like a new thing. My dad was in a bad space, but I think just having me around helped a lot. Still, I had my own life to live, and I couldn’t be with him all the time. That gave him a lot of space for things he couldn’t do before, like fishing, or playing pool with his work friends.

I guess that’s where it started. That’s where Mister Yates came into the picture.

I remember that one Saturday, years ago. I got up at around 11am, made myself a cup of noodles for lunch, and noticed my dad wasn’t up yet. He’s an “up at 6am” kinda guy, so I didn’t know what to make of it. The door to his bedroom was open, so I peeked in.

He was face-first into a pillow, snoring like a boar. He still got his shoes on. I figured he’d had a couple too many to drink, which was unusual. I’d never seen him like that before. It was a moment where I figured maybe he’d taken this whole thing a little harder than expected. I saved him the last glass of orange juice and left him alone, writing a note on the counter that I was going to see a friend of mine.

When I came back for dinner, he was up. I got the impression that he’d only just got up. His hair was a mess, and he was wearing the same clothes. He had some ravioli cooking on the stove and yawned at me when I stepped through the door. He clearly hadn’t showered.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Think I’m coming down with something,” he muttered. “Went to fish down the river, and it’s like… I don’t know. Caught something. No fish though.”

“You got the flu?”

He shook his head, stirring the ravioli.

“Not a flu. Not a virus. Definitely not an infection. Maybe allergies?”

He shook his head, yawning again.

Then he did this… I don’t know how to describe it. We have this barbeque lighter in a jar on the countertop. He plucked it, grabbed a wooden spoon, and stepped away from the stove. The ravioli was boiling over. He took the spoon and lit the tip on fire. Meanwhile, I’m rushing over to save dinner, asking him what the hell he’s doing. He just looks at me like I’m crazy.

“What?” he asks, holding the spoon like a torch. “What is it?”

“Put that out!”

“Just a minute.”

“A minute for what?”

As I pulled the ravioli away, he put the fire out. And, while holding the burned spoon like a knife, he carved a charcoal ‘X’ on the back of our front door. Before I could even ask, he headed for the bedroom.

“I’m not awake yet,” he said. “It’s all Mister Yates. All of it.”

There was a half-burned wooden spoon on the floor, overcooked ravioli, and dad was passed out in the bedroom again. The only thing that seemed deliberate was the ‘X’ on the door.

I called my mom about it. She asked if I wanted her to pick me up, but I said no. I figured he just needed time. Mom seemed genuinely worried. Neither of us had seen this side of him before. I ended up cleaning the kitchen a bit, watching a movie, and slouching to bed just past midnight. Dad was still a no-show. I tried cleaning the ‘X’ up, but he’d scuffed the paint.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think I heard him walking around sometime in the middle of the night. He wasn’t sneaky about it or anything, he was walking back and forth between the bedroom and the bathroom. At one point I’m certain I heard him kick the trash around. There was also a bit of singing, I think. Strange thing to notice at 2:30am.

Thankfully, it all seemed okay the next day. He was up early, making breakfast. Woke me up at 9am, got the kitchen smelling like pancakes and bacon. He was using the wooden spoon but looking at it like he didn’t understand the burns.

“You feeling better?” I asked, toothbrush in hand. “You were pretty out of it yesterday.”

“No idea what that was,” he said. “All better now. I’m getting two pieces, how many you want?”

He pointed to the bacon in the pan. He knew I wanted two.

“Who’s Mister Yates?” I asked.

He turned to look at me, almost forgetting to flip the bacon. He raised an eyebrow.

“Mister Yates?”

“Yeah, you said something about Mister Yates.”

“There’s no Mister Yates.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

He turned his attention back to the pan, shaking his head. He murmured something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out what he said.

Things were largely back to normal. He would go about his business as usual, and I got buried in assignments. Last year of high school can be relentless, and I couldn’t make time for him, even if I wanted to. Even if I cut out my time with the guys, and my desperate pursuit of a certain girl I liked, there was just too much going on in my life to step back and look at my dad. But even so, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of things that were out of place.

Sometimes the charcoal ‘X’ on the back of the front door had been filled in again. There’d be black stains on dad’s covers, and he’d wash them every other day. He also started getting this really red right eye, like he had an infection. He got a cream for it, but it didn’t seem to help. And every now and then, I could hear him walking around at night.

And sometimes, he’d walk straight out the door and be gone for hours.

One night I decided to confront him. It was just past 2am, and I could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. I got up, walked out of the bedroom, rounded the corner, and froze.

I could see him in the light of the fridge. From the silhouette, he didn’t look like my dad at all. He was pulling things out and piling them up on the counter. Cereal, orange juice, salami, and this fancy sliced cheese we got at the deli. I flipped the light switch, and he snapped to attention like a cockroach caught in a spotlight.

I could immediately tell something was off. Not only the posture, but the way he’d combed his hair. He usually kept it back, but this was parted down the middle. He wasn’t his usual relaxed self. He looked like he was about to burst into a sprint, like I caught him doing something illegal.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just stood there, looking at me.

“Hello?” I tried again. “What are you doing?”

Still, no answer. He just looked at me like I was accusing him of something horrendous. I took a step closer, and he dropped everything flat on the floor, pulling out a knife.

It was so far from anything I expected him to do that the image has sort of burned into my mind. He had this wild expression on his face, like an animal. But looking a little closer, there was more to it. There were these marks on his face, like pox scars. And his eyes; there was something weird about them. Not just the expression. It took me a while to notice, but it was the redness. He had an infection in his left eye.

The wrong eye.

I stopped talking. He wasn’t saying anything either. We just stood there, staring at one another. I didn’t even notice my hands were up, like I was trying to talk him down from a ledge. My heart was racing.

“I’m Yates,” he said. “Mister Yates.”

His voice was low and hoarse with a slightly southern tinge.

“I dun’ know you’re here,” he continued.

“I live here. We live here, dad” I corrected.

“I dun’ know you,” he said, circling the kitchen island, keeping the blade pointed my direction. “I dun’ know what you want.”

“Dad? What are you doing?”

“Huh?”

He blinked a couple of times and scratched his eye. He looked down, as if inspecting his hands. He yawned, dropped the knife, and walked straight back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. I knocked a couple of times, but there was no response. I could hear him snoring.

In the morning, I sat him down to talk. I laid it all out in the open. The ‘X’ on the door. The late-night escapades. The hair, the eye, the fridge raid – all of it. And when it was all out there, dad couldn’t pretend anymore. He threw his hands up.

“I didn’t know he was gonna do that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do what? Pull a knife on me?”

“That’s obviously out of line. Way out of line. He shouldn’t even-“

He paused and took a deep breath.

“Look,” he said, slowing down. “It’s not something I talk about. I don’t like to talk about it. But I think it’s reached a point where we have to talk about it.”

“I agree.”

“So,” he said, adjusting his seat. “Mister Yates. Let’s talk about that.”

“You said there is no Mister Yates.”

“And technically, that’s true.”

He looked down, tapping the kitchen counter a little. Finally, he looked up, scratching his right eye a little.

“And in another way, it’s not entirely true.”

My dad grew up in a strict household. I never knew my grandparents, but ...

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