I was exploring an abandoned church with two of my school friends. It was just a dinky, local church not too far out of town; not the kind of extravagant building straight out of Castlevania, nor like something that could contain what led to my preternatural demise.
The main church building looked as you could expect, and we did not care for it. However, there was a staircase leading from the lobby, down to the large basement room they used for local events and to keep a small library for the kids. The windows were small and did not let in much light. What we could see, showed us that this place was frozen in time.
Half finished coloring pages were strewn about on the plastic folding tables with the markers completely dried out. The place gave me the creeps. It was like everyone had got up and forgot to come back. A dusty television sat on a rolling cart in the corner. The bookshelves were kept in a back office; half filled with illustrated bible stories, and half filled with wholesome, heavily-screened cartoon VHS tapes. Some of which were clearly home recorded. The selection was so sanitized, they didn't even have Shrek. Sickos. I skipped past a 'Veggie Tales' tape and took note of a worn home recording labeled with sharpie.
'Max & Ruby April 2002'
Max & Ruby didn't air in the states until Autumn of that year. I heard rumors of there being missing and hard-to-find episodes of the show, so I figured that this tape might have something lucrative on it that could make this expedition worthwhile. There's always a collector willing to throw money at anything from their childhood. So I took it. What an awful mistake. The back office was extra creepy for reasons I couldn't even put my finger on. The desk was your standard teacher's desk, the metal kind with the locked side drawer. I tried looting that too, but it was still shut tight after all these years.
My other two friends were busy trying to lift (and smash) the old box TV, when we heard the wind start to pick up outside. It was getting late, and we didn't want to stay here after dark. We split up and went home.
I took the tape upstairs to my room after having dinner with my family. Mom made that fuckass spaghetti with the meatballs that taste like meatloaf again.
A few months ago I found a VCR while I was helping my Dad clean out the attic. Annoyingly, he only let me keep it in exchange for that week's allowance, but I figured it'd be worth it if I use it to pirate shows I'd been watching, since they never make physical releases anymore. Call it an investment if you will. And that video tape I grabbed hours earlier was supposed to make me GTA 6 money.
I pop it into the machine and set it to rewind. As it's speeding past, I get glimpses of strange scenes that don't belong in a preschooler show. Someone grabbing a knife? A brown bunny (either Louise or Valerie) hiding in the bathtub? A lot of what was sped through was dark. Much darker than anything in the show is normally colored, so it was hard it make out specifics. It looked distorted too. What colors were there were spilled out of the glowing outlines. You can't sell this on eBay. Maybe I could discount it heavily, but realistically any buyer would dispute me over PayPal for the shit quality. Then the rewind stopped.
There was silence for a moment as the "coming up next" bumper played. Next was the intro theme. That was 96% normal, except for the part at the end where they both wave from the big window above the title. They weren't smiling. It was such a minor detail, that if I hadn't rewound the tape and already been put off by what it showed, I wouldn't have even noticed. Max and Ruby's faces only showed hollow acceptance. Emptiness.
I would later learn why.
The episode was titled "Ennui". It was raining hard. Max and Ruby were sprawled on the sofa, slouched in abject boredom. This scene holds for what feels like ninety seconds. About a minute and a half of watching the two rabbits sigh, while realistic sounding torrential rain poured outside. Max's stomach rumbled, and Ruby, without being asked, hopped off the couch and walked toward the kitchen. Like always, they are home alone. A note is posted on the refrigerator.
"Working late. There are chicken nuggets and pizza rolls in the freezer. Don't go out or get into trouble. --Love' Mom and Dad".
The note looked old. Ruby opened the freezer and grabbed a nearly empty bag of Chicken Nibblers. She dumped the nuggets onto a microwave safe plate and wrapped them in a paper towel; and then, to my absolute horror, she cooked them in the microwave. I get that they're young, but that is not okay.
After they finished "cooking", Ruby served Max the soggy, rubberized, Chicken Nibblers. He immediately stuffed one into his avaricious mouth and burned himself. The little devil spit out the piece he bit off and threw it, narrowly missing Ruby's head. Ruby just sighed, and dragged her feet to the sofa. Even this early into the episode, I could tell that everything was wrong. They didn't care about each other. Ruby seemed to have given up entirely. Where are their parents at?
Then the doorbell rang. Ruby's face lit up as she raced to answer the door, but it was not their parents. It wasn't even their grandmother. It was Valerie. Ruby's face dropped for a moment but she corrected herself and greeted her friend.
"Valerie! How nice of you to come for a visit!"
When I heard that line, it made the earlier lack of dialog stick out further, and despite her best efforts not to, Ruby still looked disheveled. Her shirt was crumpled. Stray tufts of her fur stuck out at odd angles.
"Ruby, It's been a while sinc--" The audio began to bug out here, so I couldn't hear the rest of Valerie's statement. Her expression looked concerned.
Ruby invited Valerie into the dim, gloomy, house. The two of them went upstairs to Ruby's room and began to play with dolls. The mood has lifted somewhat, but I still feel uneasy.
Max went to the backyard to dig up earthworms from the flowerbed. He's wearing a yellow raincoat, but he digs through the dirt with clawed hands like a real rabbit. You don't usually see this kind of thing in anthropomorphic cartoons. He unearthed a clump of earthworms, grabbed a handful, and stashed them in his coat pocket. Then Max grabbed another handful of worms and ate it. When his teeth tore through, it left smears of red blood around his mouth. Between that and the coveralls, he looked like the rabbit mascot from Silent Hill 3, but not nearly as happy. His eyes still looked bored. I gagged so hard when I saw the worms stretch like bleeding gummy candy that my eyes stung. The sound of flesh being torn apart made the seconds feel like ages.
We then returned to Ruby's room, where Ruby and Valerie were still playing with dolls. They sat with their backs facing the bedroom door, and after a short moment of just watching them play, a pair of rabbit ears peaked out from behind the doorway. Max tiptoed behind the two girls. His face was still smeared in old blood. He kind of looked like the Joker. The tape started getting really grainy at this point, so it appeared that Max was lurching towards them like Plushtrap in Five Nights at Freddy's 4. Once he was directly behind Ruby and Valerie, he reached into his pockets and threw the earthworms onto the tea table. Both of the girls started screaming. And it wasn't normal cartoonish yelps of shock or disgust. The sound effect was clipped from some horror movie.
All the while, Max giggled at his twisted work. When Ruby and Valerie swatted the worms off their table, blood and dirt stained their hands, and streaked across the table top. The screaming felt like it would never stop. Then it did. The horrible scene went black as it cut to commercial.
Right...
I had almost forgotten where I was, or that I originally took the damned tape from that church basement.
When I tuned back in to what the tape showed, I was once again appalled. Even the commercials were completely warped. It was supposed to be a commercial for sunny D, but it wasn't orange juice that the kids were gulping down. They were bottles of blood. Viscous bottles of sticky blood. The red liquid dripped down their faces and soaked into their shirts. However, the voiceover continued as if nothing was wrong. Then the commercial ended as suddenly as it started, and 'Max & Ruby' faded back into view.
Valerie watched in astonishment as Ruby's dirty, shaking, fists curled in quiet rage.
"Ruby... are y-you okay?"
Ruby did not reply.
The camera zoomed in really close to her face. It was way closer, and in more detail than the show had ever bothered to draw Ruby before. Her eyes wobbled as she glared, wide eyed, directly into the camera. No audio came through, the only sound I could hear was the low hum of the VHS player. Her insanity seeped through every pore; The thin strands of fur on her ears stood on end; Slowly, Ruby turned her head to face the still open bedroom door.
Out of nowhere, she broke into a dead sprint. Her footsteps pound down the stairs. She nearly stumbles as she enters the kitchen and begins to rummage in the drawer for a knife. Ruby grabbed an usuba, and gripped the handle tightly. She runs back up the steps, and down the hall towards Max's room. Valerie sees Ruby speed past the open doorway, and barely stifled her scream of quickly dawning terror. Once Ruby reached Max's bedroom, she threw open the door that Max was actually standing behind, sending him tumbling across the room. The soundtrack was wailing. Bellowing.
Max looked back, and to his silent horror, he saw Ruby reeling back the knife. The dim light bounced off of the squared tip. The knife hacked through the air. Max rolled faster than he ever had in his short life. Ruby chopped the carpet. He digs his claws into the carpet and he shoulder checks her; then he books it down the hallway before she has the chance to come after him.
Suddenly, Valerie yanks him into the bathroom. "Hide in the bathtub!" She whispered harshly. Then she locked the bathroom door, and hopped into the empty basin beside Max, snatching the shower curtains shut.
Ruby's footsteps drew near. For a moment there is silence, then there is smashing. Ruby is banging on the bathroom door and chopping at it wildly. Max and Valerie trembled in fear. Over time, the deranged assault slowed, but the door held. The BGM wound down to a sinister tone. Ruby slumped to the floor to catch her breath, and sat with her back to the battered bathroom door. She sat limp like a ragdoll. Her chest heaved with exhaustion. But I noticed something. Even in the dim light, under the shadow that obscured her face, her expression was one of absolute and total ennui. Emptiness.
Why the hell does something like this even exist? Who greenlit this? Why subject who knows how many grunt animators to drawing endless in-betweens for this sickening cartoon? Why the FUCK was this in a church?! These are thoughts that raced through my mind as distorted, illegible, credits rolled by. The tape ejected itself from the VCR once it finished playing, and I was left in darkness.
Now that I'm focused on my surroundings, I finally hear the torrential rain that's been howling outside my window. It genuinely sounds like the rain sound effect from the tape. I also hear another sound... Footsteps? Heavy footsteps approaching my door? I'm thinking I woke up my dad somehow, and then my bedroom door flies open. A huge silhouette steps into the TV glow. It's... Ruby?! She's so tall that her ears graze the top of the doorway, and I still can't see her face. It's scooped out like Squall in the ending of FF8. She's holding the same comically large knife in a clawed hand, but it seems like it was scaled up along with the rest of Ruby, making it look less like a kitchen knife and more like some kind of straight edged saw.
After a split second of looking at each other (can she even see me?) Ruby charged at me. I threw myself to the floor in a bid to dodge her swing, It hurt, and she still grazed my hoodie. I ran out of the room screaming my head off. I ran down the hallway, and clean off the top step. I flew. Then CRACK, I hit the middle step.
Instantly, the edges of my vision started to thin. Everything hurt really bad. The last thing I saw was Ruby running down the stairs, and reeling back the knife. Goodbye, cruel world.
No comments:
Post a Comment