Unwell · Audacious Machine Creative

5.3- Flock

March 29, 2023·25 min·2 clips

Dot questions if she's hallucinating while trapped in a shifting house.

The episode begins with Dot discovering water damage in the attic and downplaying it as a simple open window rather than a roof leak, joking about her memory with Russell Epstein, who is helping with repairs. The two begin a flirtatious conversation that escalates toward a romantic confession from Russell, but a bird repeatedly crashing into the attic window interrupts the moment each time. When Dot steps away to answer a phone call, she realizes she is speaking with two Russells simultaneously — one on hold and one in the attic — and works out that Fenwood House has been impersonating Russell to test whether she knows the real one. She is briefly amused, then annoyed at the house for blocking the moment. Lily calls in during what seems like a routine check-in, but Dot's tone worries her. Dot reveals she has been jumping between rooms unexpectedly when she closes doors — walking into the attic and ending up in the kitchen, then in the basement, then in the dead lodger Rudy's room. She pauses in Rudy's room to grieve him, wondering aloud about Carl Sagan's comment that everything is star stuff, before Lily pulls her back to the task of catching the bird. Dot confesses she cannot tell whether she is experiencing supernatural house behavior or losing her mind to cognitive decline. Lily reassures her and comes to help. The two navigate the house calling Marco Polo to each other through walls, deducing that doors only change their destination if fully closed. They discover a nature documentary about aspens connected to a single root system playing on a TV and use it to triangulate positions. They work together to corner the bird, get it into a box with a towel, and find an exit to the outside, passing through a room occupied by wolves that Lily distracts with a pencil. Once the bird is freed, the house settles, and Dot tells Lily she has decided she will move to assisted living after one more summer rather than continue to live with the daily uncertainty of not knowing what is real.

As heard by us

A haunted-house tangle of family friction, lost time, and dry panic.

This episode gets its charge from a house that will not stay oriented, scrambling rooms and directions until a simple errand feels like a test of whether anyone is thinking clearly.

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Why you'd press play

You want a haunted-house argument that feels weirdly practical.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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