Sunday 30 October 2016

Goosebumps Chillogy II: Keep Off the Lawn!

  "You can't stop the monsters," says R.L. Stine.
  "Why not?" I say, anxiously.
  "Because you need the books to do that," says Stine. "You need the Goosebumps books in order to put the Goosebumps monsters back into them."
  "Oh . . . well, I kinda figured that. Why'd you say it so melodramatically?"
  "Cliff-hangers," says Stine. "It's keeps kids excited about the next chapter."
  "Even if they're contrived?" I say. "Look, I don't have time for this, it's insane downstairs. There's a wild Werewolf in my backyard, I just fought a Flying Creep and Slappy the Dummy ate some Monster Blood!"
  "Oh no!" cries out Stine, putting a hand over his mouth.
  "It's okay, I used the Cuckoo Clock of Doom to go back in time and stop him, but it's getting insane down there, the plots are getting more complex and intertwining. I need to stop them now."
  "Okay, I understand. Look, it's actually really simple, once you have their book," he says, he glances around and grins when he sees a book nesting quietly in an elbow joint of two woodbeams. He cooes to the book and plucks it from the ceiling, stroking its spine. "They're scary books, they like ledges, shelves and dark places."
  "Okay, okay. How do I stop the monsters?"
  "I'm getting to that . . . ah, look, this is Why I'm Afraid of Bees, one of my sillier instalments. But, like every other book in the series, it ends the same way. With a twist and a scream," Stine turns around and looks at the plants at the far end of the attic, with bees buzzing around them and pollinating flowers. "You end the monsters the same way. With a twist and scream."
Stine demonstrates by holding the book upside-down and opening the blank pages towards the bees. He lets out a scream and turns the book upright, "Aaah!"
With a fwip! and a puff of smoke, the bees all get sucked swiftly into the book. Stine walks towards me and hands me the book. I flip carefully through the pages, and see that the words are once more printed on the pages.
  "Fantastic," I say. "And this works on every single one?"
  "Of course," says Stine. "They're books for children, you wouldn't want to make them too complicated."
  "Okay. But look, I need to make sure we don't have any more crossovers like Slappy or the Creeps, so I need to keep an eye on them, but you're good with these books, could you get the books while I take care of the monsters?"
  "Absolutely," says Stine.
  "Okay, thanks, let's get to it," I say. I tuck the axe under my arm, adjust the camera more comfortably around my neck and climb back down the ladder. Stine follows me, and I close the attic entrance.
  "What's your name by the way?" says Stine.
  "Oh, I'm Matt," I say.
  "Okay, Matt, listen . . ." says Stine, putting a hand on my shoulder. I turn around to face him. "Be careful, you seem like a smart boy, but some of my books are really . . . silly. Being smart isn't always the best way to approach these books."
  "I understand. Thanks."
Stine nods and walks towards the dining room. I turn to the loungeroom, and see green horrors and orange monsters.
  "Here we go," I say.
As soon as I enter the room, all of the monsters sitting on the couches get to their feet. Two tall monsters with jack-o-lanterns for heads hiss.
  "We were just getting hungry . . ." says one of them.
One of the green goblin-looking men with rams horns gets up and walks towards me. As he gets close, I reach out and pinch him on the arm. With a hiss of air, he collapses to the ground, leaving the rest of the monsters dumbstruck.
  "Listen very carefully. I've read the WHOLE damn series of Goosebumps books. I know all of your strengths, I know all of your weaknesses. I know all your tricks, twists and turns. Do not mess with me, or you will meet your End. Got it?"
  "Y'know, you're a real jackass," says a pretty woman in the corner, with black hair and lipstick, in a long, black dress.
  "Just don't get any ideas," I say.
  "Jackass . . ." she mutters.
I turn to the master bedroom, and head inside. By the window, I see two white dogs, they're snarling and growling at the four purple Creeps, backed into the corner. The Creeps hiss nastily, so I raise the camera and take their picture. They make unusual screams and hisses as they shrink down behind the bed. The camera spits out a photo, so I take it out and shake it. It develops into a picture of four blue-tongue lizards, sitting on the carpet.
  "And that is why you don't mess around with the Say Cheese and Die camera . . ." I say to myself. The dogs turn towards me, and sit there, expectantly. "White dogs? You must be the Barking Ghosts. Thanks for helping me with the Creeps. I'm going to assume that means you're the kids, right?"
The dogs glance at each other and nod.
  "Okay, great. I'll get you guys back as soon as I can, just wait in the loungeroom with the horrors, okay?"
The dogs make their way out of the room, and I turn to face the walk-in wardrobe and en suite beyond. The door is slid shut, so I switch on the light, head inside, and slowly open it up to peer inside. There are blue slug-like  freaks with purple mouths and eye-stalks, covering the tiles, walls, ceiling and bathroom counter. I glance in the shower and see a mermaid under the running water. She looks at me, and places a hand to the glass, with a terrified look on her face. She shakes her head.
I close the door so that the blue monster bloods can't get out.
  "Mermaids?" I murmur to myself. "Come on, Stine, even you know that's not scary . . ."
I turn around, and jump as I come face to face with a green empty-eyed monster.
  "Geez . . ." I say, reaching out to grab the Haunted Mask, hanging on the end of the clothes rack. "You're an ugly thing aren't you?"
I roll the rubbery thing around in my hands, when I notice a lot of hair on my arms. I look at the other hand holding the axe, and see it's just as hairy, it looks like someone's wrapped a piece of brown carpet around my forearms.
  "What the hell?"
I walk out of the en suite and approach the mirror in the corner. It's not just my arm, my face is hairy too. Not just with my beard, but my forehead is growing fur as well, and my fingernails are turning black. And my nose?
I step forward, and seeing a pull-chord, I switch the light on to see myself better. As I pull the chord, my image vanishes.
"What on . . ." I pull the chord again and I reappear. "Oh, for fuck's sake, evil mirror?"
I swing the axe one-handed and smash the mirror to pieces.
  "I have a better idea, let's not get invisible!"
I walk out of the master bedroom, dropping the Haunted Mask on the TV unit. As I do, I look outside and see a woman with long, braided blonde hair wearing a helmet with horns. She's standing next to a blue-furred monster with aa pointed head, long neck and a tail.
  "Oh crap . . ." I say. I walk past a white-haired man sitting at the piano and place my axe beside the sliding door so I can open it and step outside.
  "You must take the survival test" says the woman.
  "But you're it. You must play the game of survival."
  "I am not 'it', I am Ivanna, I will give you the silver chest."
  "Will both of you shut up?! Both of your books suck. Like, all of the suck! Viking-lady, you're a robot or something, nobody wants your Egg of Truth, go sit inside" I say to Ivanna. "And you, Spork."
  "My name is Fleg," says the blue beast.
  "Whatever, look, you can't play your game here. I'm Level Seventeen or something, and it's a rule that you can't play your stupid games here."
  "Levels don't go up to seventeen," says Fleg.
  "Do I look like I give a fuck?" I bray, angrily.
  "I think you're lying," says Fleg. "You're it!"
He reaches forward to tag me, but I grab the camera and hold it up to take his photo. But . . . my fingers won't- I look at my hands. My fingers are gone! My blackened fingernails have taken over, so that I have two hooves on the end of each wrist.
  "No, no! Take the picture!" I say, I try to click, but the camera crushes between my hooves.
  "You're changing?" says Fleg.
  "Holy hell, I'm changing . . ."
  "You didn't say you could change shape. that's a Dandy Donkey, a level two move. I'm not level two . . ."
  "My hands, and my . . ." I touch my face with my new hooves. My mouth is sticking out from my face. I'm growing a snout. "Stine, Help!" I cry out. I head inside, as I do I feel something bundling up under my back. I adjust my jeans and discover I've grown a tail. I look around, panicked, when I see the pretty woman in the black dress, hiding an evil grin.
  "What the hell's so funny?" I say. Then I remember. She called me a jackass . . . twice! I point an accusing hoof. "You! You're the Chicken Chicken Witch!"
I storm over, and swiftly smack her in the forehead with my hoof.
  "Hey! How awful are you? You'd punch a woman?!"
  "You're not a woman! And this isn't a punch, this is a kick, because you TURNED ME INTO A DONKEY! You're an evil witch that tortures children for no reason! This is for that awful, awful book!"
kick!
  "This is for turning me into a donkey!"
kick!
  "And this is for Blogger Beware!"
kick!
The witch collapses heavily onto the floor.
  "Do any more of you want to test me? Huh?! Hee-haw!" I scream at the living room, they stare back in stunned silence, so I stumble away. My feet have reduced down to hooves as well, so I fall over, landing on all fours. Trotting down the hallway, I call for Stine, but my voice is getting higher and more horse (haha, puns). After a minute, I see Stine come around the corner, holding several books under his arm.
  "What's all the fuss abou- . . . oh, I see."
  "I'm turni- hee-haw! a donkey!" I bray.
  "No no, it's alright, I have just the thing . . ." says Stine. He takes a book out of the pile, My Hairiest Adventure, and opens it up. With a puff of smoke, a small syringe pops out of the book. He catches it in the air. "Now, this might sting. I'm not a doctor . . ."
He injects me with the syringe, and after a few seconds, I feel my body start to change. The hair recedes back and my fingers return. I stand up, and look at my hands, all back to normal.
  "Thanks, that was kinda freaky. I told you it was getting out of control. There are heaps and heaps of monsters in the loungeroom, do you have any of the books for Attack of the Jack-O-Lanterns or Legend of the Lost Legend?"
  "No, not yet, why?" he says, walking down the hallway towards the spare room.
  "We need to get them back in their books as soon as possible. It's starting to get dangerous down here."
Stine shakes his head and smiles
  "There is absolutely nothing to worry about. Remember, I wrote these stories to be scary, but harmless. The monsters can't hurt us." he opens the spare room door, and gets hit in the chest with a snowball. "Oh no!"
Stine moves to step back out of the way, but the ice and snow covers his whole body, and he freezes in place just beside the open doorway. I look into the spare room to see two snowmen. One living snowman made of snow, the other ape-like and covered in fur. The snowman with the carrot-nose grabs another snowball and throws it. I dodge it, and it hits the brick behind me, freezing it. I grab the books from Stine's frozen arms when, the Abominable Snowman of Pasadena roars and lunges for me. I try to move out of the way, but I can't move that quickly!
Someone grabs my waist and I'm dragged out of the way as
the Snowman slams into the snowy bricks. I turn around to see who grabbed me.
  "Hannah! Where have you been?"
  "The attic. You left me up there. I heard you yelling, so phased through the ceiling. Come on, let's go."
We head around the living room, as we hear the Pasadena Snowman recover himself.
  "I'm sorry, I didn't forget you. I thought you disappeared because we were referencing how in sequels sometimes, ghostwriters ignore hugely important plot points."
We race around the kitchen, but I stop.
  "Wait, I have an idea to stop the snowman!" I say, opening the pantry. I suddenly jump back and yelp, as I see a large green egg with purple veins sitting on the shelf. "Okay, ignore the egg monster . . . candy, candy candy."
  "You're looking for candy, now?"
  "Yes. Wait, what? No, I'm so stupid! Book, not the movie! Trail mix, I need trail mix . . ."
I grab the tub of trail mix, open it and throw it on the floor. The nuts, dried fruit and other bits of whatever is in trail mix spill all over the floor. There's a thump as the snowman turns the corner, but he doesn't look at either of us, instead, he focusses on the floor. He starts picking at the bits one by one and putting them in his mouth.
  "Okay, come on," I whisper. "You too . . ." I pick up the large egg and we head for the spare room. But, as we pass my bedroom, the door slowly opens. Standing on the carpet is Slappy the Dummy. He brushes some rotten, old bandaged off the sleeve of his miniature suit, and steps out.
  "You . . ." he says. "Did you really think you could get rid of me that easily? Hee hee hee! and I thought I was the one whose head was hollow!"
I place the egg on the table, and quickly scan the titles of the books in my arms. leaf through all of the books in my hands. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb; Deep Trouble II; Attack of the Mutant . . . none of the Living Dummy books.
  "Now, you will do as I say. Or else."
  "Or else what? You'll tell more bad jokes?"
  "Or else I'll destroy your life, make you miserable. You have so many precious things in your life. Your books. Your games. Your home . . . If you don't do everything I say, I will destroy everything you love."
  "Huh . . . y'know, you're creepier than I remember."
  "Creepier? You threw me at a pack of gift-wrapped corpses! I hate you!"
  "Hate me, huh?" I flick through the books in my hands once more and take out a book.
  "What are you doing? Going to read me a book? The Dummies' Guide to Dummies?"
  "Actually, this one's called It Came from Beneath the Sink," I say, and I open the book with the printed pages facing the dummy, and with a pop! a yellow sponge pops out shooting towards his face. Quick as a flash, he snatches the sponge out of the air before it hits his head.
  "What is this stupid thing?" says Slappy "This useless thing could never hurt me."
He looks at the sponge in his wooden hand, and as he does the thing starts pulsing and soaking red like a tiny heart, and looks up at him with two black, little eyes.
As he stands there, his feet suddenly slip and he falls onto his face with a sickening crack.
  "Agh! What's happening?!"
  As he struggles to stand, the wall behind him suddenly cracks, and the shelf of cook books and reference material suddenly dislodges and drops several large books on top of him with a loud smack.
  "What's going on?" says Hannah.
  "That's called a Grool," I say. "It's an evil sponge. As in, it is a sponge that soaks up evil and hatred, and uses it to bring misfortune by giving you unreasonably bad luck."
  "Get this off me!" screams Slappy.
  "As you can see," I say, ignoring him as the pile of books inexplicably catches fire, "for something as evil as Slappy, it doesn't take long to reach its hate saturation point." I pick up the egg once more and, heading past the screaming dummy, we enter the spare room.
I place the pile of books on the ironing board. "Stine was really good, he got more than half of them already."
  "Are we going to get the rest?" asks Hannah.
  "No, we need to revive Stine," I say, picking up the three books that were already sitting on the ironing board. "I only got these three in the time he got over two-dozen. I'd need a twenty-part story to get them all, but this is a trilogy."
  "Well, how do we unfreeze him?"
  "In the books, the abominable snowman is actually really warm and was friends with the main characters and gave them a hug or something. At the moment, he's being a bit of a monster, but we just need something as warm as him to unfreeze Stine."
  "Like what?" says Hannah. "Hair dryer?"
  "No . . ." I say, tucking the egg under my arm to scan the titles of the books, when I get an idea. "oh yeah, egg blanket!" I say, grabbing the egg in both hands and leaving the room.
  "What." says Hannah, following.
  "In Egg Monsters from Mars, the eggs merge together to become a blanket. They're very warm."
We get to the spare room once more, where Stine is frozen in place, his arm miming carrying the books I'd taken. We close the door and use the door knob to crack open the Egg. As the yellow yolk spills out, I lift it up and drop it on Stine's head. It lands with a plop like a yellow, alien cowpat, and Stine's blue skin begins to steam.
As the egg monster slides down his face and body it leaves behind a clear goo like raw egg white, but beneath the goo I see the colour  returns to his face.
  "Yuuuck," says Stine, taking off his glasses to flick off the goo and clean them.
  "Sorry, we had to work with what we had," says Hannah, picking up the egg from the floor.
  "Oh no! Where are the books, they're gone!"
  "Hey, it's cool! I took them, they're in the spare room," I say.
  "Oh, thank god," says Stine. "I nearly have them all. There are some more in the living room and on the shelf which I was about to get."
  "Okay, then can we put them all back in their books."
  "Not quite," says Stine. "There are about three or four I still haven't found: twenty-one, thirty-four and fifty-four."
  "Stine, I don't know the numbers by heart . . ."
  "Oh, right, uh . . . Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, A Shocker on Shock Street & Go Eat Worms."
  "Great, more of the lame ones."
  "Hey!" says Stine.
  "No, sorry, it's a good thing. Means they're easy to deal with. I know how to handle lawn gnomes."
  "Well, they'll be harder to get, they're nowhere to be found inside  the house."
  "Oh, then don't worry," says Hannah. "We got the three books from outside."
  "No, that was 'the Scarecrow Walks' and 'Fever Swamp', these are different books." I explain.
  "But there's no more outside, we've cleared the backyard!"
  "Not the front yard . . ." I say, ominously.
  "Okay, you two kids get the books out the front, and I . . . will wash this gunk off," says Stine, walking towards the bathroom. "Then I'll meet you in the spare room."
Hannah and I head down the hall, past the pumpkin monsters, and unconscious witch in the loungeroom, and open the front door. We immediately see several ugly lawn gnomes staring at us from the driveway and chattering to one another.
  "Yeah, they're outside alright," I say.
  "What are we going to do about them?" asks Hannah. I head for the lightswitch and flick on the two outside lights. The gnomes freeze instantly.
  "Light stops them, it's really easy. Trust me, all of the books in part two have been the lame ones; even the snowmen were easy, there's nothing for us to worry about. You wait here, I'll go get the books quickly."
I open the door, and immediately see three books hanging from the edge of the veranda.
  "See? What did I tell you? This is all of the easy," I say, grabbing the books and talking softly to them "there's a good book, nothing to worry about . . ." I hand them back to Hannah.
  "Wait, this one's different, it's not one of the three Stine was missing," says Hannah, handing one back. The title reads Don't Go to Sleep.
  "Oh, huh," I say, heading down the steps, book in hand. "More books is good, no matter what. Just means there's one still out here. Don't worry about it."
I look around the lawn, and I see something colourful and rectangular resting on the road.
  "There, last one," I say, heading out.
  "Be careful," says Hannah.
  "Of course, there's nothing to worry about," I say, heading down the steps with the book in hand. But, as I leave the light of the house, I remember the title of this part and feel uneasy. "Come on, Matt, nothing to worry about . . ."
I glance over at the Lawn Gnomes. They're as ugly as ever, glaring cruelly. I tuck the book in my hand into the back of my jeans, as I walk across the cool grass in the early evening darkness, and feel the hair on the back of my neck raise from the night air.
No, it's nothing, Matt. Come on . . .
I see the book on the road. Even without seeing the title, I instantly recognize the cover art, Go Eat Worms!. I pick it up, tuck it into the back of my pants with the other book and turn around to head back inside. Then start screaming.
  "AAAAGH!" I cry, as I see the roof. A giant, metal praying mantis, two storeys tall, is waiting on the roof, watching me with black eyes. It shrieked a high pitched whistle, then lunges from the roof. I run as fast as my legs can carry me towards the house, but a long, silver leg pierces the lawn in front of me, making me stop. I turn around, looking the monster in the eye. How can I fight a giant praying mantis?
As it leans in close, spitting out globs of black oily goo from its mouth, it dawns on me . . . A Shocker on Shock Street. That was one of the worst books in the series. How did they defeat the praying mantis robots in those books?
I hop on one foot as I rip the shoe off my left foot, then I throw the shoe at the mantis-bot. The shoe bounces off the metal with a twang! but the robot chitters in panic, tripping over itself as it scampers backwards then runs away.
  "The 'bug' is scared of shoes . . . haha(!) great writing, Stine," I say. "Not like that was a total waste of a cool idea for a monster or anything . . . even the movie did that better."
I walk over to pick up my shoe from the lawn, then I sit on the grass to put it back on. As I untie the laces, I hear something. It's like a cracking, crunching, rumbling sound. I look around, but I hear the sound again, and the ground under me rumbles.
  "What the hell is that?" I say, standing up. I feel the ground shift again, and I nearly lose my balance as the ground bulges beneath me, I see the bulge shift along the grass, when with a great Craaaaaack the ground a few feet away ripped open, and a worm as thick as a tree trunk bursts from the ground.
  "What?! What the fuckity fuck what?! WHAT?!" I scream as the worm curls and coils, then faces its faceless tip at me, the tapered end, probed and stretched towards me. Panicking, I throw my shoe again. It hits near its face, making it recoil, then immediately it dives at me, angrily. I turn and run, as fast as I can, run. But after running a moment ago, I'm tired, I turn to see how close it is, but suddenly get side-swiped by the flailing worm. It knocks me off my feet, with the force of a small, speeding car, and I hit the ground hard.
  "Ugh . . . fffffuck you, worm," I say, winded. I get to my feet, but as I do, the worm moves around me to wrap me up in its coils, like a boa constrictor. I step to move out of the way and whoa! I fall down a hole, I fall through the lawn and out of reality . . .
  . . .
. . . I find myself slowly falling through a white, empty space, when out of the nothingness a wooden cabin fades around me. My feet gently touch the floor, and I discover gravity once more as my weight returns.
  "What the . . . where am I?" I say, looking around.
There's a knock at the door, which I just realize is behind me. I turn around to face it. "Who is it?"
The door opens, and two men in black suits, one tall and one short, enter the room.
  "Good evening," says the short man. "My name is Wayne."
  "And I'm Bruce," says the taller man.
  "We've noticed some disturbing phenomena surrounding you and your house," says Wayne, "It seems as though reality has gone completely out of control."
  "What's why we're here," says Bruce. "We're the Reality Police. You've fallen through a Reality Warp, and we're here to fix it."
  "Reality Police? Oh . . . this is from Don't Go To Sleep."
  "Excuse me?" says Bruce.
  "Look, Bruce, Wayne . . . oh, haha, Bruce Wayne, I get it." I say, smirking. "Sorry, anyway, look, this is all a terrible misunderstanding. I know things all look weird, but this isn't reality."
  "Mr Anderson, I'm sure that this must be confusing," says Wayne.
  "No no no, you've got me wrong. I understand it perfectly. See, this isn't reality, this is fictional. I'm writing a meta-fictional post on my blog. This isn't reality, this kind of thing isn't possible in reality."
  "Fiction?" says Bruce.
  "Yes . . . 'fiction'. And if you guys are the Reality Police, then we're out of your jurisdiction. You don't have any authority in Fiction."
  "Wait . . . are you saying that we're fiction?" says Wayne.
  "Yes. You're fiction. I'm fiction. Well, actually I'm more of an Author Insert Character kind of thing. But either way, doesn't matter. This is fiction, so you don't have any authority here. But even if you did, I am fully within my rights here. I'm an author, I have poetic license, it gives me the authority to adjust this existence as I see fit, within reasonable suspensions of disbelief. So . . ." I blow a raspberry at the two of them.
  "This kid knows his stuff," says Wayne.
  "Indeed," says Bruce. "Look, Mister Anderson, this is a terrible misunderstanding. You're free to go."
  "Thank you," I say, taking the Don't Go To Sleep book out from the back of my pants. I hold it out in front of the guys upside-down and scream, slowly turning the book the right way around. With a swift fwip and popping sounds, the guys get sucked onto the pages, and the world around me warps and bends and sucks in a shifting blur of colours. The room around me starts feeling claustrophobic as it shrinks and shrinks until, POP! The world spits me out and I fall onto my backside on the grass.
  "Good grief," I say, standing up. I dust the back of my pants, when I hear a shuffling, rumbling sound beneath my feet. Once again, the giant worm monster bursts from the ground. It wriggles and shakes to throw the dirt off of its body, then strikes! The worm dives right for me, it's going to crush me right into the ground!!

Friday 28 October 2016

Goosebumps Chillogy I: Night of the Goosebumps

I stare at the television, the credits appearing in a style reminiscent of the Goosebumps cover art. 
"Hannah, and then Invisible Boy? Really? That's your twist?" I say shaking my head. I stand up from the futon, leave the dining room with the television still running, and head into my room. "That's ridiculous. Why did they even call it Goosebumps, when they clearly didn't want to make a Goosebumps movie?" I ask myself.
Dictionary, sitting on my desk, opens a page out of curiosity."
  "Goosebumps?" says dictionary "by /Gūsbumps/, 1. Do you mean the movie starring Jack Black?"
  "No no no, that's not what I mean at all. In fact, that's the point, people now define this movie as 'Goosebumps' but it didn't actually have any Goosebumps in it! I liked the movie, it was fun, it had scary elements that were family friendly. It was funny, it made fun of Steven King! But it wasn't Goosebumps enough."
  "What?" says dictionary. "1. What do you mean by 'wasn't Goosebumps enough?': What do you do to make something 'Goosebumps'."
  "I mean they just . . ." I sigh, and point at my bookshelf. "I have all sixty-two of the original books, Dictionary. I know what Goosebumps is! I wasn't expecting an exact copy, but I remember these books, I remember the characters . . . some of them were stupid, but I was hoping the movie would have fun with that."
I get up on my bed and look at the titles.
  "The Haunted Mask, Monster Blood III, Ghost Camp . . ." I say, reading the titles. "THESE are Goosebumps, not the movie! Hell!"
I put my hands around the series, more than a metre of books stacked side-by-side. "If you want Goosebumps, I'll show you Goosebumps!"
I pull the books out and turn around, throwing them on the floor. But, the books don't touch the floor, Like a flock of birds, or perhaps more aptly 'geese', the books flutter and flap their pages, in a mad mess of manuscripts.
  "Uhh . . . well, that was dumb," I say, looking at the books flying around. "Why did I do that?"
  "Idiot plot," says dictionary. "1. The Main character acts stupid for the sake of setting the story in motion."
  "Well, let's hope this works out . . ."

Almost all of the books fly out of my room, except for three or four that flap around my desk.
  "Okay, come back here," I say. I reach for the books, but all three suddenly snap open with a puff of smoke and a pop spitting out three blobs of green goop, because I can't afford the special effects budget of the movie. There's another puff of smoke, and a I step back as they plop on the floor. There's a puff of smoke behind me, and I turn around to see a regular-looking young kid wearing board shorts and a t-shirt.
  "How did I get here?" he says. "I was at Camp Nightmoon, and now I'm . . . in a house?"
  "Uh, long story. What's your name?"
  "Billy," he says.
  "Ohh . . . no wonder you're so nondescript," I say. "I'm Matt, and since you're a protagonist I think I can trust you, so can you give me a hand? There's Monster Blood on my floor."
  "What's Monster blood?"
  "Well, it's actually a toy that's had a spell put on it, but it's also a science experiment that . . . y'know, if I have to explain the plot of all these books, it's gonna take a while, can you help me get this stuff off the carpet?"
Billy looks around, grabs the wastepaper basket, then hands it to me. I use a stray thong to push each of the blobs into the bin, and sit it upright. I look inside and see the three globs merge and begin to digest the cola can and chip packet inside.
  "That's disgusting," says Billy. "What are you going to do with that stuff?"
  "I dunno, there isn't really an established way to kill monster blood. In one it's magic, in another it's mystical, in a third it's science. For now, let's leave it here and go see what else we can do. Stick with me, Billy, I've read all of the books, I know what to do . . . mostly."
Bin in hand, I head out of my room. The credits are still playing, on the TV, and in front of it are four mummies, each with rotten-looking bandages, groaning. I also see four kids in the kitchen, stirring a bowl of something. The mummies attack the television, ripping it off the wall and throwing it on the floor to stop the noise.
  "Hey, that's expensive!" I yell out, but the mummies turn to me.
  "Peace . . ." groans one of the mummies, "rest in peace . . ." and they begin to walk towards us. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. They advance towards us.
  "Stay back!" calls out Billy, "I'll keep you safe!" and he runs forward.
  "No!" I cry, but as he runs forward, they grab him and pull him within their tight circle, grabbing his arms and throat.
I stand, confused, then see the open laundry door, and slip inside, but before I can close the door, I turn to see a short ventriloquist dummy, standing on his own two feet, with black, slicked-back hair painted on his stern face.
  "I think we need to have a little talk . . . because you will be my slave."
  "Nope," I say stepping forward, and I give him a swift kick, sending him flying back with a clang against the laundry door. "So much nope."
  "How dare you, slave!" cries Slappy, and he runs forward, and slaps my shin with his hand. The hard wood sends pain all up my leg, and I collapse onto my knees. As I fall, I drop the wastepaper basket onto the floor, spilling green goo over the tile.
  "What's this?" says Slappy, bending down in front of me, and scooping up a handful of the blood. "monster blood . . . hee hee hee."
  "What? . . . wait, no!"
Slappy stuffs the handful of goo in his face, and his mouth chatters up and down as he chews and swallows. Then immediately begins to grow. There's a creaking and cracking sound like swaying oak trees as Slappy grows taller than me, then as tall as the room. Then with a crunch, and falling plaster dust, he grows taller than the ceiling And he grows and grows until all I can see are his skinny, but very tall legs.
  "Now this is more like it. Bow down before me!" cries Slappy, his voice booming, and he raises his foot to stamp down. Screaming, I scramble backwards and out of the room, as the foot slams into the tile with a crack!
I get to my feet, the mummies are to my right, so I run left into the spare room and shut the door.
Some of the Goosebumps books are nestling near the window, and some things look out of place. An old-fashioned camera and a strange piece of furniture by the wall, a grandfather clock . . . but we don't own a grandfather clock.
  "Oh my goodness! The cuckoo clock of doom!" I cry. I step over. "Thank you, thank you, thank you . . . okay, it's been about a minute, right?"
I press against the minute hand with my finger and push it anti-clockwise one click. My vision blurs, and there's a sudden rush of vision . . . Slappy, monster blood, laundry, mummies, kitchen, bedroom door . . . then I find myself standing in my bedroom.
  "What are you going to do with that stuff?" says Billy.
  "I'm gonna keep it away from Slappy, that's for sure," I say, holding the bin to my chest. "Look, this is weird, I just travelled back in time. So trust me, when we go out of my room, don't attack the mummies, okay? They want to rest in peace."
  "Mummies? Uh, okay."
  "Look, follow my lead. I have an idea."
I slowly open the door, in time to see the mummies ripping the television off the wall. I look at Billy, hold a finger to my lips, and head into the spare room. I place the bin of monster blood by the cupboard.
  "Okay, wait here . . ." I say. I head out into the dining room and open the laundry door.
  "I think we need to have a little-" I quickly grab the dummy by the shoulders, and throw him at the mummies. There's angry groans and screaming. "How dare you. Hey! Get your hands off m- . . . let go of me! You will all be my slaves! Get off!"
  "Peace . . . let us rest in peace" groans the mummies, and they pull Slappy with them as they head towards the bedroom.
  "I demand you let me go!" screams Slappy.
As they enter the bedroom, I sneak up and close the door behind them.
  "Well, that's that," I say. I head back into the spare room and see Billy waiting there. "See? I told you I knew what I was doing."
  "When did you say that?" asks Billy.
  "When we . . . oh. Never mind. Oh, can you hand me that camera?" I ask, pointing.
  "Sure," says Billy. "Why?"
  "This will come in handy. It's an evil camera."
  "How can a 'camera' be evil?" asks Billy.
  "Look, it didn't make much sense in the book either," I say, hanging it around my neck with the cord "But trust me, it's a powerful weapon. Grab the monster blood and follow me."
I head into the dining room, and see the four kids standing in the kitchen. A tall, blond kid; a short pimply kid with a red face; a girl with long, black hair and another taller boy.
  "Are you guys planning on attacking me?" I asked them, holding up the camera defensively.
  "No," says the short kid.
  "Why would we attack you?" asked the girl.
  "No reason," I say, lowering the camera. "Just checking."
I turn and walk down the hall, where I see a handsome man in a suit and young read-headed boy standing there, with a small, white terrier at their feet.
  "Huh, I don't know you guys . . ." I say.
  "Good afternoon," says the man, stepping forward. "I'm Compton Dawes."
  "Dawes? Wait a minute, are you from Dark Falls?"
  "Yes, I am actually," he says.
  "Oh, okay. Sorry," I say, and I quickly snap their picture. The man and boy scream and their skin begins to melt off, and the dog whines pitifully, as its fur burns.
  "What the hell?!" cries out Billy. "What did you do?"
  "They're zombie-vampirey things . . . the monsters from 'Welcome to Dead House'. They're killed by light," I say. There's a whirring noise as the camera spits out a polaroid. I take it out a and shake it, airing it out, and it reveals a horrific image of the three melting faces. I put the photo in my pocket and step around the charred bodies at our feet to head down the hall, into the bathroom. The door is open, and inside I see several see-through ghosts, all glowing blue and see-through, as well as one solid girl. A young kid with nice hair, three kids about the same age, a strange looking kid with darker hair and a ghost girl with a kind smile. I hold up the camera threateningly.
  "This is a cursed camera . . . if I take your picture with it, you will be destroyed," I say, taking the photo out of my pocket and holding it up. "These are the last people whose photo I took. So don't go trying to . . . possess me, or steal my head, or you're next; don't test me. We're just here to put the monster blood somewhere safe."
  "In here?" says Billy. "What, in the tub?"
  "Yeah, exactly," I say. Billy wanders past and drops the goop in the bath, but the bin had filled in the meantime, making it splatter around the bath, and the bag fell out with it to be eaten by the monster blood as well. "It will keep growing and growing. At least there it won't go spilling out and we can deal with it later."
  "Hey, do you guys know what's going on here?" says the solid girl, stepping forward. She was young, with brown hair in a ponytail, in fact she looked a lot like . . .
  "Hannah?" I say.
  "Yes?" she says.
  "Wow . . . you look a lot like the one in the movie."
  "What movie?"
  "Well, I guess they did get that right," I mutter to myself. "Look, I'm Matt - that's Billy - We're trying to make some sense of this whole mess. You should be pretty useful. Do you want to help?"
  "Sure," says Hannah. "Anything to get out of here. It's creepy hanging around with a bunch of ghosts."
  " . . . yeah, I'll bet." I say, "Come on."
We head out of the bathroom and towards the kitchen, as I do I look at the laundry and stop dead in my tracks. The laundry door is wide open, and I can see a scarecrow shuffling around the lawn.
  "Oh, crap . . . they're outside!" I say, running out the back door.
  "Wait up!" calls Hannah, running after me.
I see several books hanging from the eaves of the house, with their pages curled around like bats wings. I ignore the scarecrow, and step out and reach up for them, but they get scared and fly off.
  "Ugh, damn it!" I say. As I do, I hear something clatter in the garage. " . . . hello?" I say. I walk around the side of the house and see a man by the workbench stuff something in his mouth as he turns around to face me. There's only a flicker of it as he slurps his lips around it, but it looked disturbingly like the furry, grey tip of a possum's tail. He wanders out from behind the bench.
  "I'm so sorry, I didn't hear you coming," says the man in a high-pitched, scratchy whisper. He was short and stumpy with receding hair and black, beady eyes.
  "Nope nope nope nope nope," I say backing off. "So much nope."
  "What is it?" says the man, Mr Mortman. "What on Earth has got you so frightened?"
I hold up the camera and take his picture. He blinks and looks at me, confused.
  "Huh, it didn't do anything . . ." I say, turning back.
  "Not every monster can have its picture taken," says Hannah.
  "Oh, yeah . . ." I say, "in the book, she can't take his photo, even in his monster form."
  "What?" says Mr Mortman, and his innocent smile drops. His eyes boggle out of his skull and he grows long teeth. "Give me that camera, boy . . ."
  "Guys, get back, he's-" I turn, and see that they're both already inside. "No, by all means, run away without me." I say, jogging inside.
I shut the door and lock it as Mr Mortman runs up and bangs his wet hands against the door.
  "Open. This. Door." says the Monster Mortman
  "Let me think . . . No. No. No," I say.
  "If you don't open this door right now, I-" there's a snapping sound that makes him flinch and look to the side of the house. Then he suddenly looks scared and bangs on the door.
  "Please, please, please, you have to let me inside. Please!"
  "Why would I do that?" I ask.
  "Please, don't let it get-" WEREWOLF! There's a snarl and flash of fur as a werewolf suddenly grabs Mr Mortman in its teeth and claws, tackling him away from the door and ripping violently.
  "Thank goodness," says Billy. "I thought that would be a lot worse."
  "It is," I say, looking at the Goosebumps books hanging like bats from the edge of the shed. "The books are still out there. We need to get them. I went out there to get the books, they're still there."
  "What?" says Hannah.
  "You all came out of the books, I need to stop the books from escaping, or you'll never be able to return to your stories," I say, staring at Hannah. "Wait . . . you. If you run around the house, you can make the werewolf follow you, then I'll go out and grab it."
  "What?! Why me?" she says.
  "Yeah, and that's a werewolf," says Billy.
  "Well . . . the movie!" I say. "In the movie, you easily outran the werewolf of Fever Swamp. It's canon. You have nothing to worry about. Just run, I'll grab the books, then come in. You'll be fine."
  "No, that's insane," she says.
  "Trust me," I say, putting my hand on her shoulder. "I've read all the books. I know what I'm doing."
She nods.
  "Okay. If you're sure."
  "What? No!" says Billy, but she opens the door and runs out.
  "Hey! Wolfie!" she calls, and runs around the house. The werewolf looks at her, snarls, and dashes after her.
  "Dude, what the hell?!" says Billy, as I run out for the books. "You're a jerk, she could die!"
  "No, she can't," I say. I quickly jump up and grab two of the books. "She's already dead, she's 'The Ghost Next Door'. The werewolf can't hurt her."
I grab the other book and head inside.
  "What? But, If she's safe, why didn't you tell her?"
  "In the book - and the movie - she learns the truth just before she moves on. I still might need her help. This is only part one of the trilogy, and we've barely seen all of the books."
  "Open the door!" calls Hannah. we step aside and she runs in, closing and locking the screen door behind her, then Billy shuts the wooden door as well.
  "Did you get them?" says Hannah. I hold up three books, The Girl Who Cried Monster, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp & The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.
  "Yeah, that's all of the ones outside, I think," I say, heading for the spare room. I place the books on the ironing board and head out, closing the door behind me. Hannah and Billy are waiting, the television is smashed and there are four kids in the kitchen, they were standing over the bowl as one of them was mixing something.
  "What are you guys doing?" I ask.
  "We're making a special mixture," says the lumpy redheaded kid. "It will help you to fly."
  "Really?" says Billy, heading over. "Is that even possible?"
  "Sure," says the girl with black hair, and she picks up a yellow-paged old book on the bench. "The recipe is here in this book, you just stir in the powder," as she reads the book, I see the cover: Flying Lessons
  "And add the seeds now as well," she says. The blond boys pours blue powder into the bowl out of a black envelope, and added an entire bag of black seeds ; then stirs the yellow mixture with a wooden spoon. The bowl bubbles and turns green, popping madly.
  "And that's it," says the blond kid, lifting up the spoon. It looked like half-melted chocolate-chip mint ice-cream on the end of the spoon. "Who wants to learn how to fly?"
  "Heck yeah!" calls out Billy, grabbing the spoon.
  "Wait, Billy, NO!" I cry out, but he'd already taken a mouthful. With a gulp, he turned to Hannah and me, looking worried but after a few seconds his feet lifted off the floor and his smile returned.
  "Oh, wow! I can fly!" he says. But as he spoke, the other four kids started to shift and transform. Their hair receded, their skin became bumpy and purple, and they became large, purple lizard creatures.
  "Creeps?" I say. "Wait, you guys promised me that you wouldn't attack me!"
  "We won't," says one of the Creeps, I can't tell which they all look alike. "Billy?"
We look up at our friend Billy, and his smile drops once more and he cries out as his body is forced to become purple, bumpy and reptilian.
  "Do as we command. Make them eat the batter as well!"
  "Oh, crap. Run Hannah!" I scream, but she's already ahead of me, running for the laundry. I follow her as Creep-Billy suddenly swoops towards us. I feel Billy's sour breath on the back of my neck, so instinctively yell out and run as fast as I can. I run out onto the grass when I see - WEREWOLF!!
  "Aagh!! No no!" I skid to a stop on the wet grass [which is slicked with the viscera of Mr Mortman, but let't not dwell], and leap run to the right in time to hear the Creep hiss and the Werewolf roar. There's vicious growling and the sound of claws swiping air. I turn around to see the Creep flying high, hissing at the werewolf.
I have to fight, I have to . . . weapon. I need a weapon to fight! I glance around the garage for a weapon: Pushbike, mop, cardboard box, towel, pillow . . .
  "Is that pillow here just for a joke?" I ask.
  "Matt, look out!" cries Hannah from behind the cars. I hear the snarl behind me from the werewolf, so when I lay my eyes on the shed, I run at it, throwing my body weight at the door, and quickly reach behind the stack of power tools and grab the handle of what I'm looking for.
I turn around, Axe in hand, and stare down the approaching werewolf.
  "AAAARGH!" I yell, holding it high. The werewolf gets a worried look in its eyes, barks and starts to back away. "Get away, or I'll cut you into pieces, dog-boy!"
The werewolf, intimidated, scampers off towards the wheelie bins in the far corner of the yard.
I look up at the Creep, flying in the sky, he's swooping and flying around in loops. I don't know if it's a remnant of Billy enjoying the night air, or a contrived way for the author to buy time for exposition, but either way I look over to Hannah hiding by cars and workbench.
  "Hannah, come here!" I call. "I need your help."
  "Huh . . . how?" says Hannah, walking over.
  "Hannah, I need you to go up there and grab the Creep, so he doesn't fly away or try to attack us."
  "What?" she says. "I'm not eating that flying goop."
  "No, you don't have to. You're a ghost, Hannah. you can fly and walk through walls and all kinds of things."
  "No way, are you crazy? I'm not a ghost."
  "Yes, you are . . ." I say, and I swing the axe at her head. It phases right through her making her form glow blue, and hits a support beam with a thunk!
Hannah stares daggers at me.
  "It's doing things like that which make ghosts want to haunt people, y'know . . ." she says.
  "Sorry . . . but we're low on time. Please, just grab Billy the Creep and drag him down here."
Hannah looks up at Billy, then her body glows blue and she lifts off the ground, and swiftly flies up to meet him.
  "Hello, Billy," she says, and she grabs him by the arm. Then she stops glowing, and as her weight returns the two of them are dragged back down the Earth. As they land on the grass, I call over to the werewolf.
  "Hey! Come and get it! Free food!" I call out. The werewolf sees Hannah and Billy, and since neither of them have an axe, he happily lunges at the two of them. Hannah's body phases once more as he dives through them, and she watches sadly as the werewolf tears into our mutated friend.
  "Okay, let's . . ." I hear a rustling sound from behind the shed, take two steps towards the scarecrow and swing my axe through it. It's defeated in a burst of straw, so I turn around and move on with the story. "Okay . . . let's go show those Creeps what's what."
Leading the way inside, I hold the axe in front of me, angrily. Behind me, Hannah glows blue and follows, floating half a foot off the ground.
  "Calling all Creeps!" I say, heading towards the kitchen. "I'm only going to say this once. Give me all your identity seeds . . . Now!"
Two of the creeps drop two plastic baggies of black seeds on the ground and then they stumble over one another to run away. One of them tries to grab the green batter, but I step forward and swing the axe. It hits the goop with a Splink! as it resounds off the bench tile, and the Creep falls over itself to follow its friends racing out of the kitchen.
Not skipping a beat, I grab the bowl and tip it down the sink, then rinse my axe under the tap. Hannah grabs the bags of seeds and tips them down the sink as well.
  "Is this really their scary plan? Making people eat seeds?"
  "Hey, it's not the worst Goosebumps book . . . it's actually the first one I ever read," I say. "There was one with these kids that turned into dogs; and another where dogs turned into kids. And don't get me started on the 'Choose the Scare' books, those were-" Whack!
I book suddenly smacks me in the face, making me jump.
  "Ow! . . . That hurt!" I say, looking around at a green and purple book flapping around the kitchen.
"Wow, you're bleeding," says Hannah "Is that one hardcover?"
  "What? No, none of these books are hardcover," I say, but I press a hand to my lip, and look at it. Blood. My lip was bleeding where my skin hit my teeth. "You little shit!" the writer yelled, and bloodied hands, to the book he held; as he shook his fist and ran, compelled, to grab that Goosebumps by the cover . . . sorry, wrong blog post; prose not poetry.
The book flies down the hallway, so I grab the axe from beside the sink and head after it, calling for Hannah to follow. We turn the corner in time to see it fly up the staircase leading to the attic, passign another book that was hanging like a bat from the edge of the ceiling manhole.
  "Is that it?" asks Hannah, looking at the book hanging from the ceiling.
  "No, that's 'Stay Out of the Basement'." I say.
  "What's it doing here?" she asks.
  "Well, we don't have a basement. Maybe it's resting here, where its plot has a higher chance of making sense?"
  "Maybe," she says. "But . . . this was closed when we came here before, who opened it?"
  ". . . let's find out," I say. I tuck the axe under my armpit, and climb up the ladder to the ceiling.
This is a roof cavity my father actually made, he installed this very ladder, so when I climb up I see roofbeams and rows of shelves made from old wood, between the angled beams and wooden pannels as a makeshift floor. But at the far end, there was a strange man with a black suit, with his back facing to me; he's looking at a pile of green plants that have grown in the far corner, with bees flying around them. I climb up and hold the axe ready in two hands.
  "Hey! What the hell are you doing up here, man?" I say. the man turns around, and smiles timidly. He had a slight hunch to his neck, receding hair on his head, round glasses, and was wearing entirely black trousers and a long-sleeved, black button up shirt. "No way . . ."
  "Hi, I'm R.L. Stine," he says. "I write the Goosebumps books."
  "Yes, you do . . ." I say. "What are you doing here? I thought only monsters from the books were . . . wait, hardcover . . ."
Stine smirks and nods as my mouth drops.
  "It Came from Ohio! I must have dropped your biography as well, that's the only hardcover on that shelf!" Yes, I'm such a dork I even own the Stine biography. Don't look at me like that . . .
  "Well, this is perfect! You wrote the books, you can help!"
  "I'd love to . . . but first, we need to be very careful up here," says Stine. "I saw a book flying around here, I think there's a monster in . . ."
He goes quiet as I hear rapid footsteps clumping around on the wooden floorboards behind me. Another man with a black jacket and jeans steps out of the darkness. He has a round face, a full head of hair, large glasses and a stern look on his face.
  "What are you doing up here?" he says, in a comically exciteable voice.
  "Oh, no . . ." I say, and I sigh as I put my face in my hands.
  "Stay away from him!" says Jack Black. "I'm R.L. stine, not him. He's not the real author. He's not even human! He's a plant!"
  "You're the plant!" says R.L. Stine.
  "Really?" I say. turning to Stine. "Are we really doing this? I mean, that's clearly Jack Black, from the movie."
  "He's dangerous!" says Jack Black. "How could you have let him out of the book!"
Caught in the middle, I stare from the real Stine to the fake, plant, movie Stine. Who was the real Stine? . . . well, I mean, I think it's obvious, but this is a Stay Out of the Basement parody, so . . .
  "That's not the author!" cried out Jack Black. "He's a copy. A plant copy. One of the stories I wrote that went wrong."
  "You're the copy!" cries out R.L. Stine. "He has to be destroyed!"
  "Dude, seriously, this even a Spot the Difference challenge. You don't need to convince me that 'Jack Black' isn't R.L. Stine, I can kinda tell."
  "Put down the axe," says Jack Black.
  "Ugh . . . I'm sick of this." I say. I swing the axe at the Jack Black character, and it cut easily through his body, slicing him in two. A thick green liquid oozed from the cut as he fell, a look of disbelief and horror on his face.
  "Oh, no, who would have guessed(!)" I say sarcastically, "It turns out that Jack Black wasn't the real Stine after all, I never would have blaaah blah blah."
I turn back to Stine.
  "Okay, I know that in real life, you had a butt-load of ghostwriters. But, in the biography, you say that you wrote them all. So, I'm assuming that's canon for your character, right?"
  "Yes, I wrote every single Goosebumps book," says Stine.
  "Okay, cool. That means you know everything about them, right? Like, how I can stop them? Maybe even how I can get them all back into their books?"
  "Oh yes, I know everything about them," says Stine, turning away to pick up his biography, sitting on the shelf. "Every monster, every twist, every single chapter cliff-hanger."
  "So, can you help me?"
  "No, I'm afraid not," says Stine. "I'd love to help you. I love fans of my books, I really do. But you see, you can't stop these monsters. You can't stop them at all . . ."

Thursday 27 October 2016

Drop Dead

It was one hour after sunset, late afternoon, but out in the bush it looked as dark as midnight. Peter Brown was sitting in the back of his pickup, with a grim look on his face as the cop car pulled off the road. He looked up from under the brim of his akubra, and saw the silent police car approach with its flashing lights.
Instinctively his dog, a blue heeler dog jumped off the back of the truck to see the visitors.
  "Oi! Marky!" barked the farmer, whistling sharply. "Get back here, ya mongrel . . ." the dog ran back onto the truck as told, and Peter walked over to the cops in their dark, blue uniforms.
  "G'day, Pete," said Officer Franklin, a tall, thin man with a thick, salt-and-pepper moustache and wrinkles that made him look fifteen years older than his middle-age. He shook Farmer Brown's hand as he glanced at the trees. "The techies are on their way."
  "So, what’ve we got?" said Officer Henries, a burly young Kiwi with a close-shaved head, bright eyes and a heavy New Zealand accent. “We got a call in for a dead body, is that right?”
  "Yeah . . . it's bloody dreadful," said Peter, turning towards the trees “I’ve never seen anythin’ like it in my life.”
The two officers followed him as he wandered deeper into the trees. Henries whipped out a flashlight to light the way.
  “Is it all the way out here?” said Franklin.
  “Yeah, just a bit down in from the road,” said Peter.
  “So how’d you find ‘em so far out here? Pretty bloody dark.”
  "I got a call from Sandy, said she was driving home from the shops, and saw some trespassers on my property.”
  “This is part of your property?” said Franklin.
  “Yeah, just a foot from the road down.”
  “No fence?”
  “Nah, too fucken expensive,” said Peter, “and the trees keep out most sticky-beaks.”
  “Well, it’s not really tresspassin’ if yer ain’t got a fence, bruv,” says Henries.
  “Nah,” Peter says, waving a hand dismissively. “I don’t give a shit, they can come as they please; the paddock’s fenced, they ain’t gonna steal a cow.”
  “So, why’d you come out here if you don’t care?” asked Franklin.
  “I just worried that some backpacker’d gotten lost. Some of them try to shortcut through to get back to town, but they get turned around in these trees. It looks straight and narrow, but under the canopy it gets craggy . . . here we go.”
Peter stopped by a shallow ditch a good 50 metres from the road. Henries shone his light onto the spot. A young blonde, probably European, was on her back, her pale, dead eyes looking up at the sky, but a nasty, purple bruise covered the right side of her forehead, and scratches down her face that had crusted up with dried blood. Her hands and feet were draped across her, limply.
Peter Brown took his hat off and held it over his chest as he looked down at the sorry sight.
  “It ain’t right . . . pretty young thing.”
  “Is that her bag?” said Franklin, pointing a few metres away to a nearby tree, a huge hiking backpack was resting by it.
  “Yeah . . . I found her facedown,” said Peter. “I thought she’d just tripped, I tried to help her up, but she was limp as a sack o’ potatoes. I took the bag off, so I could try to resuscitate or somethin’, but when I touched her cheek she was stone cold . . .”
The farmer sniffed and exhaled a heavy, wet breath.
  “Goddamned disgrace,” he said, he put his hat on and started walking back towards his truck.
  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” said Franklin, kneeling down beside the body, turning on his own flashlight.
  “Yeah, cuz,” said Henries, sounding unsettled. “Just some bloody boyfriend or somethin’, crack her round the head with a bat, I say.”
  “Hmph . . .” grunted Franklin, stroking his moustache. “It wasn’t a baseball bat. It’s scratched up her face.”
  “She coulda cut her face on a branch or somethin’,” suggested Henries.
  “Do you see any low hangin’ branches?” said Franklin. “No twigs on the ground . . .”
  “Maybe the attacker scratched her,” said Henries.
  “Not unless he had two thumbs,” said Franklin, looking at the shape of the scratch.
  “Well, I dunno, cuz . . . we’ll leave that to the lab boys, eh?”
  “Right . . .” said Franklin standing up again with a grunt.
There was a rattling sound from the trees above that made Henries jump.
  “What’s that?!” he said, shining his torch up. “Is that a snake?!”
  “It’s a possum, ya goose,” said Franklin, patting the man on the back as he walked past. “Come on, we better cordon this place off. You take Pete up to the road and question him properly, get his statement, and I’ll . . .” Franklin looks back with a sigh. “I’ll wrap this up.”

The crime scene techs showed up soon enough. Officer Franklin stood by the blue and white tape and lifted it to let them through, one by one, taking note of the time. Not long after, the detective showed up, wearing a simple business suit and tie. The first thing he did was walk up to Franklin and Henries, introduce himself as Detective Samson and ask what they’d documented so far. Then he headed into the scene. Franklin stood outside, calmly, waiting for the detective to secure the scene, when he heard an angry shout, then some people started screaming.
  “Wait here!” Franklin told Henries, and he ducked under the tape. He ran full-tilt towards the crowd of techies, but their lights were darting around, frantic, and people were stammering, panicked.
  “Is it gone?”
  “Oh my god, are you bleeding?”
  “Get her away from the scene.”
  “Is everyone alright?” called Franklin, shining a torch around. Two of the techs had taken a third aside, a girl who was bleeding from the forehead.
  “Call a goddamned ambulance!” barked the detective.
Officer Franklins grabbed his radio and called it in before going to attend to the crying technician.
  “What the hell happened?” he said.
  “Something dropped out of the tree,” said the detective. “I thought you secured the scene?”
  “I did . . . there was nothing here but possums.”
  “That wasn’t a possum, it was a . . . spotted quokka or somethin’,” said Detective Samson.
  “It bit me!” said the crime scene technician, in an American accent. “Just above my eye.”
In the trees above, they heard some snuffling and rattling.
  “Clear the scene!” said the officer. “Out, out, come on!”
There was a loud screech from above, and Officer Franklin drew his weapon. The explosion of sound echoed across the paddock as he fired twice. There was a cracking of branches then a loud thump as something fell out of the trees.
The other technicians gasped and jumped as it hit the ground.
  “What is that, a koala bear?” said the detective.
  “Koalas aren’t bears, they’re marsupials,” said the policeman, he stepped towards the lump of grey fur, its back mottled with black spots. “And these trees sure as hell aren’t Eucalyptus.”
He gave the thing a nudge with his boot, and felt thick bone under its rump, but it didn’t move otherwise. He rolled it over onto its back to see its face, a grey little snout with a wide forehead, like a wombat, but sharp teeth.
  “Well, bugger . . . they got the drop on another tourist . . .”
  “What?” said the detective, approaching the creature, shaking his head. “No way, you’ve gotta be kidding, it’s a myth. They’re not real are they?”
  “Oh, they’re real, I’ve just never seen one so close to town, before,” said Officer Franklin. “We’d better call in animal control . . .”
Franklin walked out of the crime scene, Henries standing anxiously by the chequered tape.
  “What is it, cuz.”
  “D.B., Henries. Call in animal control,” said Franklin, then he turned to Farmer Brown. “Look, mate, it’s a right tragedy and you’re not at fault. But if you’re not going to fence off this area, I recommend that you put up a sign warning tourists about the drop bears.”
  “What, really? This close to town?”
  “Hey, they’re as scared of us as we are of them,” he said, glancing into the crime scene. “So, if people don’t start taking them seriously, we’re gonna have a real problem on our hands . . .”

Wednesday 26 October 2016

The Hunter's Guide to Monsters - Chapter Nine

It is said that there are some things worse than death . . . tonight, we meet one of them. Feel pain, panic and pity for the tortured soul we call 'CHUPACABRAS':
Chupacabras /chū'pəkahbrə/ n. 1. A legendary creature in the folklore of parts of the Americas, supposed to attack and drink the blood of livestock, especially goats.
9. Chupacabras
  by Hunter Jeremiah

A rare and unusual monster, the chupacabras is a disturbing freak of nature with a dreadful history. For ages and ages, it was believed that the chupacabras was a result of satanists or Native American lingerlings or even misremembered nightmares from R-rated sci-fi horror movies. But the truth is more unusual than that. Also known as a ghoul, grunch, hodag, jersey devil, wechuge or wendigo
The chupacabras is in fact a mutation of the werewolf, caused by vampire venom. The unusual, metamorphic bone structure of a werewolf causes the teratogenic properties of the venom of grow sharp spines from the backbone, hair loss, muscular deterioration, ichthyosis, ocular dilation & hyperphagia.
So, the chupacabras has skinny arms and legs and often gaunt facial features. They will have patchy hair, and scaly often discoloured skin. Their hindlegs are often weakened, forcing them to run on all fours or hop like a kangaroo, and their heads will often have sunken eyes and retracted lips, exposing gums and jagged teeth, and they usually have long claws on their thin fingers and toes.
They also occasionally, but not always, have a tail.
The chupacabras is, in fact, sick; and a form sickness. If you are in any way bitten or scratched by the spines of these creatures, or even if you accidentally touch, consume or inhale any of the creature's bodily fluids, you too will be infected with this horrific and painful mutation. Whilst I pity the poor creatures that suffer from this disturbing sickness, they are incredibly dangerous and must be put out of their misery.
If the wretched hands of twisted pain, can scratch your flesh or mark your veins, as the sickness torments once again - you'll be screaming for a Hunter to put you down.

It is actually incredibly rare for a bitten werewolf to become a chupacabras. It requires a weakened and vulnerable werewolf to be bitten, and injected with a large amount of venom whilst the werewolf is in their animal form for them to succumb to the venom. But, since vampires tend not to bite werewolves and werewolves are naturally strong enough to overcome the bite in most cases, it is theorized by monster scholars that the chupacabras is in fact, a war orphan.
They believe that this mutation is the result of the centuries-old war between vampires and werewolves, since for a very, very long time, werewolves and vampires have been bitter enemies; and especially during the dark ages, it became a very bloody and vicious war. It is believed that, in an attempt to turn the tide, vampires attempted to infect the wolven victims of these wars, which resulted in the chupacabras being born. At the time, they were called "lamia", but unfortunately, this threat was not contained as the chupacabras is a virulent pest. It has been entirely destroyed within the British Isles and Oceania remains quarantined to these beasts; however, it is still a threat in the Americas, and has even been sighted in parts of Europe.
I find the history fascinating, but I tell you about their past for two important reasons. Firstly, these are not natural-born creatures, they don't act natural. They don't just eat for food, they don't nest or sleep and they don't attack if they feel threatened. These creatures are voracious and eat even even when their stomachs distend; they never sleep, only ever collapse or revert back to human form and they attack for almost no reason, often because they are in pain and lash out in anger and agony.
The second thing is, they are a mutated child of werewolf and vampire. They are not the beloved children of this pairing, but an unwanted freak. While they have aspects of both, they also have aspects of neither; as I just mentioned, they can revert to human form much like the werewolf, and they prey on the living much like the vampire. But, unlike the vampire, they hunger for more than just blood, often consuming blood and organs as well; and in some cases, even try to consume mud, rotten plants, glass, garbage, torn clothing, old newspaper . . . pretty much anything they can cram down their throat, their hunger is not restricted to food, they eat out of desperation. They kill out of anger, not food, they just eat the remains from starvation.
Also, unlike the werewolf, they cannot control this transformation at all, as it is triggered by hunger for flesh, and only once they have overeaten and are exhausted do they fall unconscious and return to their previous form; but, because human beings are not designed to digest large amounts of raw blood, flesh and bone (or the other non-digestible things that chupacabras feast on) a chupacabras in human form will often suffer from stomach pains, sickness, neurological issues and delirium following a transformation.
They change back into their chupacabras form when they are hungry, and when the sun is down; they do not return to human form during the day, only when hungry, but they cannot become chupacabras in the daylight.

These are wild and unusual monsters; however, just as a virus has common symptoms, and a rabid dog has common behaviours, although they act unnaturally, they can be predictable. These are some of the basic foundations of Chupacabras Psychology, which determine how a chupacabras acts:
- If it's Food, Eat it. Chupacabras are always hungry, and this is their drive. Find it, eat it. Nowhere in there does it say "cook it", they don't care, they just want to eat everything. And to them, pretty much everything is food.
- If it's Moving, Kill it. Chupacabras are always in pain due to their form, this makes them incredibly agitated and angry, and if something is near they kill it, out of anger and fear. But this applies to trees, grass and water, if it moves they attack.
- If it's Still, Grab it. Chupacabras are actually naturally curious, they have a human brain and claws which they use to investigate anything they come across, so they try to pick it up. Some consider this one of their few human characteristics.
- If You Grab it, it's Food. Unfortunately, their curiosity always comes second to their appetite, and if it's in their hand, it will probably fit in their mouth, so they will try to eat it.
These are, however, three corollary notions that drive their actions:
+ Cold is Scary. They never "seek out" heat, but they avoid cold, especially cold water.
+ Everything is New. They can only remember something if they are looking at it.
+ It Hurts. They are in pain, this leads to erratic shrieking, flinching and mood swings.
If you know how chupacabras think, then you're one step closer to knowing how to handle one safely.

Protection
If you find yourself at risk due to the chupacabras threat, here are some important notes to remember which can keep you from being eaten alive:
  • Home Sweet Home − Chupacabras don't understand doors. If you are hiding inside your home, they won't know where you are and will look for food elsewhere.
  • Barricade Your Door − Chupacabras are very strong, but not unstoppable. Whilst they can break through some doors, bars or something heavy can keep them out.
  • Play the Waiting Game − Never face a chupacabras at night. They have superior night vision, but daylight blinds them. Wait out the night if you want to stay safe.
  • Peace is Quiet − Chupacabras are not quiet, sneaky creatures, they are loud, cranky, sloppy predators, so if you cannot hear them, you are safer than if you can.
  • Don't Feed the Animals − Everything is food, nothing satiates them, and if you put food out near you, you just bring the chupacabras to you. Don't bait them.
  • Let there be Light − Light blinds the sensitive eyes of a chupacabra, and it can scare them. But this is a very risky move, as they may try to kill it.
  • Sink or Swim − If you know how to swim, getting into cold water can save your life. Because they fear the cold, they won't follow. Just beware of hypothermia.
  • Younger, More Hunger − Their transformation is controlled by unnatural appetite, so the more recently they have changed the more dangerous they will be.
  • Don't Touch − Don't kick or punch, don't grab, don't even get near. Even if you can survive, their spines can easily infect you with their corrupt venom. Beware.
Hunting
Whilst, technically, it can be referred to as venom, the Hunting community tends to refer to the poison of the chupacabras as "chupacabras toxin". Mostly, this is to differentiate between vampire venom and chupacabras venom, but also to remind that the mutated venom of the chupacabras is more dangerous, painful and toxic. There have been cases of chupacabras toxin infecting people through their unbroken skin, it is a vile and painful infectant.
When hunting chupacabras, your main goal is to avoid being infected. Because chupacabras are already in severe pain, whilst some ethicists may disagree, Hunters have deemed it pragmatic that inhumane methods of hunting are fair game for the chupacabras. They are, after all, a human suffering from a toxic mutation. Your goal is to end their existence to cease their suffering and prevent the suffering of others.
Never capture a chupacabras, only kill. To capture a chupacabras, prevent it from eating, and keep it alive is nothing short of torture. Even in human form, they are sick, infectious and dangerous. Kill on sight.

Find
The only upside of the chupacabras, is that they are loud, messy and conspicuous. Whilst I often equate the work of hunting a monster as that of a detective, in thsi case you're not a detective, you're a firefighter.
Find the source, put it out.
So, your location, is your first victim. Be it human, pet or especially goat (they aren't called "goat suckers" for nothing), the chupacabras will seek out and attack, then eat their victim. Chupacabras have an unusual habit of leaving behind skin, I believe this is a remnant of their vampiric nature that they prefer their food wet to dry, but no matter the reason, chupacabras have a habit of killing, then biting into the stomach and tearing out what they can grab and eating it. This is much akin to the way a werewolf may devour human victims, but there are some differences. A telltale sign is the "chupacabras bite". A common misunderstanding is that chupacabras drink blood identical to a vampire, but with a third "tooth" unlike the vampire bite. This is not true, chupacabras tear out organs and rip with their teeth, but they tend to grab their food and pierce with their claws in a way that pierces the skin with three fingers, which leaves behind a mark like the finger-holes on a bowling ball, two close together and one further down creating a long triangle. Also, werewolves are heavy and large, and tend to lunge on top of prey, chupacabras are messier, there are often signs of a long and painful struggle, wounds will often not look like torn scratches as much as piercing and gouging, and there will often be missing fingers, nose or genitals, and in the case of animals, they often eat the ears and tail, or even legs if they are small enough, anything it can fit in its mouth.
Don't mess around, don't interrogate, don't collect evidence. Remember, firefighter, there is a blazing monster on the loose. If you find a chupacabras bite, or believe the body has been chewed on and brutalized, extremities are missing, go on the hunt. Especially if it is night time.
They're not hiding, don't play cat and mouse, get in a vehicle if you have one and drive. If you don't have a vehicle, draw your weapon of choice and run. The Hunt is on, and the longer it takes you to catch this monster, the more death they will cause.
Your suspects will either be the conspicuous rabid, monsters with sharp teeth, spines and shrieking in pain as described above. Or, in the instance that your chupacabras is in human form, they will be unhealthy, delirious, their skin often a sickly yellow colour, covered in stretch marks or cuts, their teeth dirty and bloodied and it is very common for them to vomit blood or suffer extreme mood swings. They are dying, it's not the kind of thing you can hide very well; the only reason they survive each time is because the same thing killing them also gives them vampiric endurance and werewolven fortitude, but that just prolongs their suffering. Follow the trail of blood, teeth marks, victims, sightings and vomit, you will find your monster soon.

Kill
Do not ever capture a chupacabras, I cannot say this enough. I've seen Hunters try, often using methods similar to capturing a werewolf or zombie, but it is a daft and dangerous action. Put Them Down. They have suffered enough. Let them die.
Your best method is a Decapitate. My tried and true method for taking down a chupacabras is to get in my truck, run them over and stop so that they're trapped underneath, then stab them in the head with my Weapon of Choice if they're still moving. I know it seems cruel but it's necessary, you can never touch them as there's a high risk of being intoxicated, and it puts you at the least risk. It also avoids unnecessary mess. Some Hunters prefer to get a gun, and shoot them in the head. It keeps them far away from you, lowering your risk of intoxication, and it is a swift kill. Unfortunately, this method can spread their brain matter out, which makes clean-up more difficult and if you only have a shotgun (as most Hunters do, for the sake of packing specialized shells), then it's an even higher risk of getting their toxin on you, and it also puts citizens at risk of getting shot if your chupacabras is in the middle of a populated area, which is very likely, but it does often work.
It's difficult, because they aren't bothered by pain, so fire is much too dangerous; traps often just aggravate them and they've been known to chew through their own feet to escape a trap; and because they have toxic blood, if you try to cut them or bleed them out or fail at many of the other various methods, you will leave a huge mess in their wake that can infect more unfortunate victims. The stupidest attempt I have ever seen was a man who fed a grenade to a chupacabras. Three more people became infected as a result, and the man died in the attempt. It was a waste of human life which I hope to never see again.
The only other method of killing that I endorse is Suffocate. Not just by drowning, although that can work, but if you have more experience with traps, one method is to entrap them (preferably a cage, not a snare, as they will try to tear themselves free), then surround the trap with something mostly airtight and fill it with a non-oxygenated gas you can acquire. I highly recommend carbon monoxide, as it's easy to attach a hose to your exhaust, and I find that it is the quietest method, if not the quickest.

Quarantine
It doesn't end there. The job's not done. When Hunting a chupacabras, you're in Attack Mode, you hunt, you kill, you do it quick. But after the job is done, you have to enter Defense Mode, you have to prevent the infection from spreading. As I said, the chupacabras is a pest, so you need to contain the threat before moving on, You Will Need:
"Suit" - You can't protect people from being sick if you are sick, yourself. You can purchase hazard suits online so long as they're airtight with splash protection (level B in the U.S., Type 2 in Europe), or if you have electrical tape, a raincoat, wet weather pants, rubber gloves and boots, you can wear that and seal up anywhere that isn't watertight with tape; but, you need to cover your face as your eyes and nose are very susceptible to infection, so no matter what I always use a raincoat with a hood, and wear a gasmask that covers my eyes. If you don't have a gas mask, at the very least, I recommend you wear protective glasses and a "particulate respirator" mask, even a disposable one, you can get them from most hardware stores. This isn't just for the chupacabras toxin; the cleaning solution required to clean it up is very volatile as well, don't cut corners.
"Slop" - You will need a caustic solution to dissolve and destroy your chupacabras and any bodily fluids or dead victims they leave behind. Chupacabras toxin is a biological toxin, which means it can be destroyed with a caustic solution. I prefer lye and water, since you'll need a lot and this is one of the cheaper and safer options; I use a 5:2 water-lye solution. This is your "weapon" now.
I mix the solution in a plastic wheelie bin which I purchased, as it is made from polyethylene, which is safe with the caustic soda I use. Now, this solution is incredibly dangerous, if you get any of it on your skin, you need to flush the area with water, try to water down the alkaline and if possible scrub it off. And if you mix caustic soda with water, the chemical reaction produces a lot of heat, and I find that it can melt the plastic of the bin I mix it in, so you'll need to add the soda slowly or use a metal container. Look up some basic chemistry, caustic soda can dissolve glass, the vapours are dangerous and the solution will cause permanent blindness if it gets in your eyes, be careful. Also, don't fill the container; there's a reason I chose a bin with wheels, you will need to move it around, and if it's overfilled, it will spill. It's a pointless waste, and creates a serious risk.
"Spade" - It's a bad idea to throw this stuff around with your hands. Not only is that risky if you've made your own Suit, but it's difficult to spread it effectively. I use a shovel, with a metal handle (wood breaks down in caustic soda). You will need a spade for a few reasons. If you are putting large pieces of chupacabras, especially severed chupacabras limbs or the head into your Slop, it's a safe way to scoop them up whilst keeping well clear of their spines and claws. Also, if there is blood on walls or the road, use your Spade to scoop out some Slop and spread it out on the affected area.
Remember, your job is to disinfect, not make it look pretty. It will probably leave a stain; that's not your concern.

Other equipment you might need includes caution tape and/or traffic cones. This is actually something you can purchase in hardware stores, and with this and some rods you can stand on the ground or sticky tape or a stapler, it can save a lot of effort trying to keep people away whilst you are cleaning, or marking off areas far away, if you have a big cleanup job ahead. Often the smell is enough to keep people away, but it does make some all the more curious. I find that Slop is the most effective, but if you find that too difficult in some circumstances, you could attempt to do the same thing with fire and accelerant.. I find that too dangerous, especially for stains inside of homes. You may also need some handcuffs, or just a strong few zip-ties is much cheaper and easier. Always bind their hands behind them or to something solid (I often zip-tie them to the tow-ball of my truck).
It is rare, thankfully, that victims of chupacabras get scratched and live to talk about it. However, in the instance that they do you have to quarantine them as well. You should also have fresh water with you, for safety, to dilute any accidental spills of your caustic solution.

So, set to your task. Once you have your Suit, Slop and Spade, if you have used any weapons or tools against the chupacabras which may need to be detoxified, it's a good idea to dunk them in the Slop and stir them around. If there is just blood, it doesn't take long for the Slop to get to work.
Next, collect your chupacabras corpse. I recommend that you break up your chupacabras corpse with your spade, to increase the surface area so it breaks up faster. Whilst Slop works faster and cleaner than some other methods, it can take around three hours to dissolve an entire chupacabras. Some hunters mix things up by burning the body beforehand, it does make it safer but I find that wasteful and dangerous. Also, any dead victims need to go in the slop as well. Don't rush, don't stuff them in, plan ahead. If there's too many for your Slop, either cremate the remains of the victims, or make more Slop.
Also, the reason I call it "slop" despite the fact that lye and water is clear when mixed is because as the body dissolves it becomes soapy, brown and gelatinous, which colours the water. If the Slop becomes too dark, dispose of it and make more.
Finally, pour some slop onto areas where blood, viscera, organs or body parts have stained the area. If you can pick it up, put it in the Slop; this includes grass, you can't leave these bloodstains on grass. Whilst the toxin will eventually break down, just to be safe you should dig out any grass or dirt with chupacabras blood on it and put it in your Slop.

Lastly . . . victims. If there are any living victims of the chupacabras with bites or scratches or blood on their skin, cuff them as soon as possible or separate them from anyone else in a locked room or enclosed space. Now is the difficult part.
You have two options:

- Kill them.
They are infected, they have a high chance of becoming a chupacabras. Especially if they have been penetrated with a spine, claw or tooth; or they've gotten blood in their mouth, eye or any wounds, it's inevitable. Kill them, and treat them as another chupacabras to clean up after.
- Torture them. As I've said, it is very rare, but there can be survivors of chupacabras attacks. If their intoxication looks minimal, or you're not sure how bad it is, you need to get some slop and apply it to the affected area. If that's too difficult, you could apply some accelerant and set it alight. Don't lie to them, it is going to hurt. A lot. Especially if it's close to their face. It's also a very stupid thing to do, but this is their only option and if I had to choose between second or third degree chemical burns and being chupacabras, it's no choice at all. After their skin blisters and burns away, get some water and flush the area until the soda is dilute (or the fire goes out), then, get the person first aid, with disinfectant and bandages. Then, wait until nightfall and test them. Soak a small towel in warm salty water and place it in their mouth. If they spit it out, they are well. If they try to eat it, or do anything other than spit it out or suck the water, it's time to put them down. If you're not sure, wait another night, feed them no meat and try again.

Final Notes
I hate the chupacabras. I've lost so many innocents due to careless mistakes with weapon choice; misidentifying warning signs; poor quarantine practices and hasty decisions. I also have friends horrifically scarred due to a small scratch they needed to disinfect, and irremovable stains on the back of my truck, to remind me of the time when I mistook an infected chupacabras with a detoxified survivor.
Stupid, small, simple mistakes are your greatest enemy in regards to the chupacabras.
I can guarantee you that the number of times that a Hunter has hesitated before destroying a chupacabras is equal to the number of Hunters that have died hunting these creatures down. Don't let yourself become one of them.

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Don't Watch Me I'm Awesome

I want to know, what do you think about children's programming? Don't answer immediately, because by 'children' I don't just mean all young people, or "young adults". There are some amazing kid's shows, like Gravity Falls, Dragons: Riders of Berk, Looney Tunes, Avatar: The Last Airbender . . . the list goes on. But what about shows for preschool children? Especially educational kid's shows.
Shows designed to entertain as well as educate our youngest. What do you think about them?
Most people seem to think they are a good idea. You can make shows for kids so that they can watch television and have fun like their parents, but because they have educationally hungry young minds, it's good to put learning in there as well, right? Well, I'd like to talk about kid's shows today. Because I think, if you're not careful, children's programming might just be "programming" our children. The Word of the Day is: 'EDUTAINMENT'

Edutainment /edjū'taynmənt/ n. 1. Television programs, movies, books, etc., that are both educational and entertaining, especially those intended primarily for children in the elementary grades.

What on Earth do ‘kids shows’ have to do with Halloween? Well, to begin with, if you ask me the idea of us using television to program our children and “educate” them is a horrifying concept. But the second reason is that this post is inspired by and in response to another horrorshow; if you have the time, I highly recommend you watch Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. Whether you’ve seen the show or not, it’s important to this post, but here’s what you need to know. Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is made to very much look like a children’s television show, it’s colourful, it uses puppetry and soft-foam/rounded props, light and cheery-sounding songs and often features fantastical things that come to talk about a particular topic, in the guise of education. It looks a lot like a kid’s show . . . but it isn’t. Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is a horrorshow, and although the first minute or two of the show might look like something friendly to show your kids, the show quickly devolves into unusual or misleading lessons, disturbing concepts, creepy characters, mean or eccentric behaviours and eventually culminating in a fast-paced crescendo of gore, blood, pain, suffering and/or insanity.
To reinforce just how deceptive those colourful sets and characters can be, each episode often ends with a character, prop or set with something you often wouldn’t see on a kid’s show, as the credits roll, like a set leaking with black paint, a character escaping or a prop being burnt with gasoline.

So, why on Earth would someone make this? Firstly, because it is a parody and in many ways a critique of children’s shows. Secondly, because it is edutainment; but not for kids, for adults. I like to think of it as a “kid’s show for adults”, because this is trying to teach something to adults about kid's shows. What is it trying to teach? Well, if you dig below the surface, there are some deeper meanings that can be garnered from the themes and imagery explored, If you have already seen it (or don’t mind spoilers), you might instead enjoy watching Game Theory’s “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared” Theory, Part One & Part Two; or Nightmind’s “DHMIS: Explained” video, both explore the deeper meanings. But an educational show is pointless if you need to analyze it just to understand it. And whilst as a form of entertainment you can look for something more (and I really enjoy those analysis videos), the surface is all we need for today. Just as, by looking at Sesame Street, you can quickly tell that it’s teaching about letters and numbers; just by looking at Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, you can tell that it’s a show that “looks” like it’s for kids, but is definitely not suitable for children.

If you ask me, that’s the lesson here. That a show may “look” like it’s child-friendly, but not be.

I want you to think about that for a moment. Because, that’s the horror that I want to talk about today. Sure, whilst most kids shows don’t suddenly become a crazy bloodied and visceral horrorshow half-way through, I would submit that there do exist children’s shows out there that are just as unsuitable for children (if not worse), but on the surface look like they’re good for kids.
There are six Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared episodes , each covering a different topic of education, but every single one of these topics are themes covered in actual kids shows, and despite wanting to make kids smarter, these shows can teach children in a bad or dangerous way . . . and even make them dumber.

After high school one day, I saw a show come on television which I found very confusing, called Boohbah. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this show, but it is about five fat, coloured furry creatures with baby-like faces. They jibber and make raspberry noises when they jump, and when they bounce off one another they make farting and squeaking noises as they dance.
They dance around to accordion and glockenspiel music on a white background and at the end they fly, hum in unison and sleep in spoon-like sleeping pods. It also occasionally shows sketches of mute actors interacting with random props. Why does this show exist? Whilst some people have said the show is good to watch while high on hallucinogens, and I personally find it hilarious to think of a person scripting each episode (the BLUE BOOHBAH jumps, and makes a FART NOISE, the ORANGE BOOHBAH then jumps with it).
But think for a moment about what this does for children. I’ve heard that shows like this, for instance Teletubbies, are designed to “unlock different parts of a child’s mind”, and this show advertises itself as "encouraging children to move" but I can’t buy that. Because the brain isn’t something you unlock, it’s a pattern-seeking engine, and because these baby-monsters are so fat, mostly they just spin around; you can't watch dancing on a screen while you're spinning around. The show’s creators admit “we use colours and sounds to appeal to the short attention span of children one to four years old".
Sure, I get it, perhaps it just exists to occupy their mind, and maybe you want your baby to watch this and be entertained so you don’t have to jangle your keys for a while, I understand that. I also believe that not every show on television (not even every kid’s show) must have dedicated educational content . . . but this is educational content. I know for a fact that every show teaches something. Not things like trigonometry or chemistry, and not even something they were “trying” to teach, but simple things like “paper sounds like this” and “you can wiggle your toes”. I distinctly remember, as a child, that I first learnt about tap-dancing through Play School. They weren’t trying to teach me, it was just a brief segment showing a choreographed routine, but I found it interesting, and remembered it as a result. I learnt about sheep, backpacks, stars, tractors, colour mixing, robots, sarcasm, sharing and thousands more little things which you and I take for granted, because of television. We learn from the experience of what we see, even on television.
Whilst television doesn’t offer interactivity, it can offer lessons about real things, tangentially, and there are several minor things we learn about in the world through television, especially as young children because we are still seeking out patterns of how things work. But Boohbah, and shows like it, are entirely manufactured, nothing in the show is like it is in the real world. So, it actually hinders kids from learning about real things. But more importantly, it teaches them “this is interesting”. They learn to enjoy watching things that do not teach them, things that require no input, interactivity or learning. If children think it’s fun to pay attention to farting, squeaking, colourful, fat, furry baby-monsters, then how will they be able to pay attention to the human teacher wearing a brown jacket, in front of a blackboard every Monday to Friday? Even if they are exciteable and wearing rainbow colours, a teacher can’t make fart-noises when they fall over, fly when they sing or dance just to keep you interested.
Not only do they not teach your children new things, they teach your children to not learn new things, because “real things are boring, compared to TV”.

But that’s just shows that don’t even attempt education. What about ones that do? Things like, for instance, Horrible Histories. I am not referring to the current version of this show, with live action and sketch comedy, but rather the version I saw as a kid. It was a cartoon about two friends that were sent back in time by an all-powerful narrator to see history face to face and learn about it.
I remember this show as a kid, but rewatched it so that I could write about it. Of course, this tries to teach about a period of history in a fun way, but for Horrible Histories, the “fun way” consists of exploring the gross, creepy, deadly or dangerous elements of the past. The problem with this is that history is more multi-faceted than the gross parts, and worse, the way that the show presents these gross facts focuses more on the “horrible” than the “history”, often sidestepping accuracy for the sake of a poop joke, or exaggerating the disgusting or funny facts disproportionately. The show presents outdated information as fact, like Romans using vomitoriums to puke up food; cavemen cooking with fire and wearing loincloths; the Great Wall of China being visible from space & Vikings having horns on their helmets. It also presents things like lawlessness, lack of hygiene, rudeness and ignorance as common practice, even though these are just simplistic ideas about how people actually lived.
In the current version, with live-action and sketch comedy, they have added little foot-note factoids that pop up when something said has been verified historically, so people don’t confuse jokes for facts, but it still keeps the exaggerated scatological aspect.
Also, in order to make the history more “fun and child-friendly”, this show as well as many others of its sort that teach about the past, often reduces the significance of details regarding sex, murder, politics, religion and education, unless they can make a joke about it. Rather than teach history as it is, it just cherry-picks the parts that the creators of the show think kids will find interesting, but in the process often mislead children into having an inaccurate and unrepresentative idea of the past.
That’s the biggest flaw regarding edutainment, that most kid’s shows think that education is boring, so the two come into conflict. Whilst I do think the modern show is better than the one I saw as a child, it still often fails to encourage children to learn for themselves and rather than telling them that they can learn more beyond the show, and although it does try to make history fun, it still prefers to have them watch the show to learn and leave the history books at the library.

I think that tends to be a running theme with educational kids shows, “good intentions”. They try to teach, but in so doing, might teach kids the wrong way. I almost feel bad, but to me that brings to mind Bibleman. I don’t care about your religious beliefs, because even if you are Christian and want to teach your children about your beliefs with a show like Bibleman or even Kids Praise! with Psalty the Singing Psalm Book, you are doing the wrong thing. Not just because of the religious indoctrination, although that could be a whole issue unto itself, but just as bad are the ways that the show creates and solves problems.
Because of the conservative views of the show, they don’t like addressing direct problems or dealing with real world issues without a magical additive. So, even if they want to talk about something serious like depression, lying or anger issues, it never actually says that some people get angry, it shows that the problem is caused by some devilish villain with an “anger gun”, “lying gas” or a “sadness juice” or some other such stupid prop. Then, in order to defeat it, Bibleman pulls out a clearly copyright infringing yellow lightsaber and fights the villain to destroy their evil device, then reads bible verses at them and children.
Or in shows like Psalty, the solution to their problems is almost always prayer. Again, I don’t care if you’re Christian but it’s been conclusively proven that prayer doesn’t work, and can even make things worse.
Even if you don’t expect your kids to pray, these shows do and teach children either that all of their problems happen for a good reason, or that they can’t solve these problems themselves, so must appeal to something greater to step in and help. Problems don’t come from stupid props or strange men in makeup, and problems aren’t solved by fighting them with swords, prayer or song and dance routines. By implying that they do, this show teaches children that they are not capable of helping themselves, that they are inferior and must do as authority tells them and most upsettingly that their worth is only made valid by someone else’s judgement.
As they say, the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions.

One show that I find very troubling is Dora the Explorer. This show also has good “intent”, it is actually trying to teach Spanish as well as some basics about not stealing and riddle-solving. For the most part, it does it well, however, the show has a disturbing habit of constantly turning to the viewer and asking questions.
Now, asking questions to your audience isn’t bad, I did that at the very start of this post after all. But what I didn’t do was expect you to answer. It was a rhetorical question. Because I know that you can’t actually answer me, unless you choose to scroll down to the comments section.
However, Dora the Explorer doesn’t teach that to children, and neither does its spinoff Go Diego Go!, for some reason, both of these shows constantly have the cartoon characters look at the screen and ask the viewer to respond, and actually expect an answer.
I watched the first episode of Dora the Explorer for the sake of this blog post. After the title sequence, the very first thing that happens is Dora looks at the camera and says. “Hi, I’m Dora, what’s your name?” and stares blankly at the viewer, waiting for an answer. Then she asks “How old are you?” and again, stares blankly, before saying “Wow, that’s big!” She then asks the viewer to help point at her big red storybook, to help her find it.
This was even more disturbing, because I am an adult and I decided to not answer Dora, so she stared at me in dead-eyed, cold silence for two seconds, so Dora doesn’t care what I am going to say, knowing my response is not relevant to her method of conversation.
The conceit of the show is that it is a lot like a computer game, often having a cursor on the screen and the opening title sequence showing us enter a computer, but this is not a computer game, it’s a scripted, animated show. It would be fantastic as a computer game and interacting with children, but as it is this show and its spin-off are both teaching children to talk to their televisions,
Why are we teaching children something that is wrong, i.e. that televisions can interact with us? This show disturbs me greatly. Do they believe that Dora can hear them? Do they know it’s fake?
This has the potential of hindering the way they learn about conversation. If children are watching this show and talking to themselves, this could teach them that interactivity is unimportant to conversation. I don’t know what’s worse, children talking to their televisions, or the idea that some of the fanbase of Dora the Explorer are watching the TV in silence, as Dora keeps talking to them, and blankly staring, expecting an answer.
Or perhaps this could even teach children that their television, a box in the corner plugged into the wall which cannot respond to them, is their "friend", since it talks to them and smiles. I don't know about you, but that disturbs me.

There aren’t very many children’s programs on television that just deal with healthy eating. Sure, some may occasionally have an episode or two where they say “cookies are a sometimes food” and “fruit and vegetables are good for you”, but very few actually talk about food in every episode.
I do know of one that I saw several years ago, but I can’t remember that much about it. It’s called Planet Cook. Apparently it’s still popular in the UK, but this show takes place on “Planet Cook Island” (I don’t know why it’s called planet when it's just set on an island, but whatever). It stars a celebrity chef who calls himself Captain Cook who lives on this island with a magical yeti, called Bouma, and is tasked by a computer called Roxy to create a delicious dish out of the day’s chosen theme and ingredients before the Info-Bites in the hourglass run out. So they zap three randomly chosen kids to the island via a special slide and help to cook the dish, and speed up the cooking and other time-consuming processes by having the “magic yeti” power the machines through various means, and then by putting the finished meal in the telepad, sent the Taste Transmission around the world and save it from . . . something? I am under the impression that if they didn’t send the dish in time something dreadful would happen, but I can’t remember what or why. Is this the planet’s only source of nutrition? Also, apparently the Roxy computer would teach kids other fun facts about where ingredients come from and the natural world.
I am quite a fan of cooking, and this was an interesting show which I watched a few times. Do you know what I learned from this show? Fuck all.
Magic yetis? Rock AI? Info-bites? I don’t even know why they were cooking, let alone what they were cooking. I saw a promotional ad online that insists the show promotes healthy cooking and I've read online that nutritionists approved all of the recipes, but I honestly don’t remember the meals being healthy at all. But the part I can never understand is that this show was made in the hopes of getting kids interested in cooking; yet, they forgot to make the cooking interesting. They throw time limits and audience participation and magic yetis and computer animation in there to try to make the show interesting, but just make a confusing mess. But one thing I do know is that at the end of the show, they don’t eat the food!
They stick it in a machine and spread the “taste transmission” around the world, but they themselves never eat it.
So, this show is a lie. It’s entirely a lie. It pretends to teach healthy eating and cooking skills. But even though I watched this at a kid, what I remember most was the yeti, because why the fuck was there a magical yeti on a cooking show?
It’s just another example of a show that looks like it’s good for kids, but at the end of the day it was just another set of flashing lights on the idiot box, that kids could zone out in front of at the end of the day. But in regards to cooking, this show (and several other formats of kid’s cooking show) takes the format of a competition. These kids are racing against the clock, and Captain Cook needs their help. It just makes cooking seem difficult. In my experience, cooking is very easy, and the more skills you develop, the easier it becomes to do more interesting meals. But this show presents cooking as a race against the clock, a challenge to be overcome . . . it’s no wonder I found it easier to just sit back and watch rather than try to learn the recipes. I could never cook the recipes they have on the show. After all, I don’t have an artificially intelligent rock computer, or a magic yeti, so why bother?

There aren’t many shows about literally dreaming either, since anything that can happen in a dream can also happen in a television show so that's kind of redundant. But, there is one show which, to me, is not only entirely about dreams, but also should not be shown to children.
That would be Harold and the Purple Crayon. Each show takes place at night, after a long day, and by using his special crayon, Harold creates entire worlds all with the power of his imagination, and in quite a few it ends with Harold waking up in bed. Whether it is literally a dream or we’re meant to imagine a magical crayon, each episode is quite surreal. In the first one, which is most directly based off of the book that inspired the series, he goes for a walk, then draws a river, then jumps over the river, then after a trippy song sequence draws a glass of milk and blows bubbles until the path ahead is filled with bubbles. Then he draws a porcupine to help pop the bubbles, and to thank it for its help, draws a picnic full of pies. But there’s too much pie, so Harold draws a hungry moose to help, but because he draws the poor thing as emaciated, it gets so hungry that it eats the whole drawing . . .
There is a reason most shows don’t deal with dreams. This whole world runs on dream logic, and nothing is beyond Harold, his imagination is limitless, so there’s nothing he can’t do. At least, that’s what this show would have you believe . . . but it’s not true. Harold always imagines animals and recognizable things, and it’s always drawn in a playful, friendly style. Also, everything he draws is instantly recognizable, because it’s designed to have children understand it. So, it’s not boundless, it doesn’t help foster creativity, So what is the point of this show? The problem with this show is that it doesn’t understand the book.
The book of this show is a bedtime story. It’s meant to be something you read as children are going to sleep, so they can see how imagination is amazing, and you shouldn’t be worried about going to bed. But the show isn’t made to be simple and imaginative. As I said, Harold draws entire worlds and characters to populate them. So, as it is, this show is basically about a kid with godlike powers and how he uses his godlike powers to make problems and then solve them. And, in one of the episodes called “I Remember Goldie” after his goldfish dies, Harold goes on an adventure to find his goldfish. Harold doesn’t understand what “dying” means, so tries to entice her back with toys and food, until a mermaid tells him that dying means “Goldie’s body had stopped living and breathing and moving”, and that death is natural like “being born, growing old or learning how to dance” . . . this is a surreal show about dreaming, but slips an “everything dies” message in there. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach kids about death, we definitely should, but who expects something like this, which had other episodes about birthdays and rain, to suddenly drop that in your lap?
The premise of this episode is to help kids understand mortality, but not only does it have a lot of “floating off into the sky” imagery (which bothers me), but it also assumes that kids will understand, and also won’t make the connection of “wait, I’m part of everything. I’m gonna die”, which in my experience is something that can be very scary for a little kid to come to terms with. This wasn’t even something that the original books covered, as I understand it.
This is something which, were my child to learn it, I would want to be there and help answer their questions. If this were read as a book, there would be a parent there reading the story to their child, and after the end, kissing them goodnight and tucking them in. If they had any questions or worries, they would be there for them. That’s the main problem with this.

In fact, that’s the main problem with all of these shows. There are much better shows on television for kids: Curious George, Sesame Street, What’s the Big Idea? & My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are some shows that I think you should definitely consider for your young kids. But I am not saying “don’t ever ever let your kid watch any of these shows”, and I’m not even saying “only let your kids watch these other good shows that I like”.
The point is, there are many parents that just sit kids in front of the TV, and leave them there to watch whatever kid's show is on at the time. I’ve gone into friend’s homes, and seen parents cooking in the kitchen whilst their kids are sitting in the lounge watching Peppa Pig. I didn’t cover it in this, because it’s not “horrifying”, but Peppa Pig is the worst kid’s show on television. None of the episodes have a point, and it just seems to have an agenda of basically teaching children “snort and giggle, it’s funny” and “learn to enjoy being middle class” (I might cover that in a later blog post, but that’s not a joke. In one episode, they taught how much “fun” it is to ride the bus); it is an utter waste of time. Or, even worse, YouTube kid shows: They are basically just nursery rhymes or bouncing characters for hours at a time. I’ve seen these shows, I can’t stand them.
You shouldn’t just put on a kid’s show and wish for the best. You should be able to watch shows with your kids. If you think “Oh, but that’s boring, I don’t want to watch that” - why are you letting your kids watch it? Children aren’t stupid. They don’t “know” things yet, but they’re not another species, they have the same brain. The only reason they find colourful shows interesting, and you don’t, is because they haven’t experienced as many things as you. If you think something is stupid or boring, why would you put your kid in front of it to learn? Or, if you don’t let them watch television to learn, then put on a show you enjoy. They’ll learn just as much if not more from “Grand Designs”, “The Walking Dead” or “Big Bang Theory” as they will from The Wiggles.
I’m not telling you to always watch television with your kids, I know that you may be busy, but kid’s shows are very short and you can read synopses online pretty quick; I'm saying, watch at least one episode, and read up on the series before your kid sees it. The reason Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is titled the way it is is because it is referencing absentee parents, if you put a kid in front of that show, they would be scared, but they couldn’t get emotional support such as a hug.

I honestly think that a kid could learn more by watching Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared than any of these other shows. I don’t suggest you do that, but at least fear teaches you something. I’d rather have my kid be scared, than stupid. Because, to me, that’s much more horrifying than rolling a raw heart in glitter, or your skin melting off . . . it's having a child with wasted potential. I’m the Absurd Word Nerd and please don’t hug me, I'm scared.