If your psychotic friend group started
feeding people to a horrible sludge monster for YouTube fame, what would you do?
What started off as a simple History assignment quickly spirals into a never ending quest
for viral content, and the star of it all is a seven-foot-tall, flesh-eating freakazoid by
the name of… Crockamoley? Jesus. Of course, we all know the mob is easily bored, and eventually
the gang is forced to take their channel in a new direction. Nothing like a live feeding video
to crank up the numbers, especially when the main course turns out to be man meat.
I’m going to break down the mistakes made, what you should do, and how to beat crippling
stupidity in WHERE THE SCARY THINGS ARE.
Ayla is a terrible person, and so are all her
friends, especially this little psycho.
Dang, dude.
Yeah, Bran might actually be the worst of them, although between his entrepreneurial exploitation,
Scribble’s black hat hacking for blackmail, and Ayla’s general desire to torment people she
finds annoying, it’s basically neck and neck. The other three are just a bunch of spineless little
toadies that go along with whatever they say, so that pretty much makes them every bit as bad.
This merry band of ne’er-do-wells call themselves the Dokkers, which sounds extremely stupid
until you find out it’s derived from their preferred pastime of digging up dirt on their
classmates and dumping it online for all to see. Now it just sounds like journalism.
At any rate, when they’re not busy ruining people’s lives, Ayla’s A-holes like to hangout
at the local Halloween Park, despite the fact it’s only ever open on, you guessed it,
Halloween. And as you could probably imagine, this has made them real popular with the one
inept guard left in charge of the place.
Well, what do you expect strolling right down the
middle of the road in broad daylight?
Seriously, your hypotrophic henchman already
warned you about the security detail, and yet you still went walking on in like you
own the place. Just look around. The entire area is littered with cover and concealment you
could have used to stay out of sight. Then again, what’s the point when you have current
year’s technology? This isn’t Passchendaele, for Chist’s sake. Instead of sprinting
all the way back to report in, your lookout could have kept an eye on him and
sent you a text once the coast was clear.
Lucky for them, Paul Blart here isn’t exactly
Robocop, although he certainly moves as fast. Now’s the part where you moron’s leave the park
and come back some other time. Like I mentioned in one of my recent Movie Sins videos, once you break
line of sight, it’ll be pretty much impossible for him to catch up as long as you stay quiet and keep
moving, which totally defeats the purpose of a hangout. That said, he clearly can’t keep this up
for very long, hence his resorting to plan B.
Hang on. This goon cranks off a desk pop and
that makes you want to come towards him? For all you know he just dosed one of your friends
in the back of the head out of sheer frustration, and now you’re next. Dumby teenagers.
And does this experience inspire them to change their behavior in any way? No, of course not. In
fact, they literally come right back the very next day. Like, I know the rent-a-cop wasn’t actually
trying to kill them, but given he’s willing to go winging off a criminally irresponsible warning
shot like that, dude could very well wind up smoking one of them by accident.
Nah, what am I saying? Obviously, none of these brainiacs think that far ahead.
Right now, their biggest concern is nailing a homework assignment for their history class:
come up with an urban legend and try to pass it off as legit. Of course, as the saying goes,
truth is often stranger than fiction.
Wow, that was fun.
So, here’s an idea. Let’s get the freak on out of Spooky Town before
swamp thing gets back up and starts biting our heads in half. We have no idea what this
is or if there might be more of them, and this whole wounded puppy routine could very well be
a ruse to make us let our guards down. Not that anyone in their right mind could ever possibly
relax after seeing something like this.
For real, this has got to be the most
blasé reaction to finding a monster I’ve ever seen. Yeah, just load it
up on a tarp and drag it inside. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Of course, if this thing looks as crappy to them as it does to us, there’s a chance they
don’t think it’s a creature at all, just some big, drunk furry who set himself on fire. In that
case, their next move makes a lot more sense.
Yes, because we clearly know the extent of the
unknown abomination’s physical capabilities having only seen it passed out on the ground.
And just wait until you see what he comes up with. Dude friggin ties some ropes around
its waist like… I honestly can’t even think of something to compare this to. Have you never
actually seen someone tied up before, ya know, like in the movies, or cartoons, or whatever?
Okay, obviously, I don’t know its limitations either, but it doesn’t exactly take an Eagle
Scout to realize what an absolute mess this is. First of all, what’s stopping this thing from
turning right around and chewing through its restraints with those massive teeth. Pretty
much any dog on the planet would be out of there in a matter of minutes. And even if it
turns out to be dumb as a post, you’ve left it enough slack that it could probably take a
running start and break free by accident.
We saw this thing walking around on two legs, and
anatomically speaking, it’s fairly similar to a human: hands, feet, arms, legs, everything you’d
expect. How about you start by hogtying the sucker so it can’t tear out your living guts when you
stand insanely close to it? We could even give it the old damsel on the railroad tracks treatment
and wrap it up head to toe. Just about anything’s gotta be better than this crap show.
I mean, what happens when it inevitably escapes and turns your little
sanctuary into graveyard?
You’re right. What a shame it would
be if all those preventable deaths forced you to hangout at the mall.
So, assuming for a moment that we weren’t a bunch of teenaged dirtbags, what would be
the best way to handle this situation for the benefit of all mankind. I think the best answer
would be to deliver its still smoking-corpse to a team of scientists for further examination.
As far as we know, this could be some kind of extraterrestrial life form, meaning it’s of
the utmost importance we learn what makes it tick and then how to make that ticking stop,
preferably from a nice safe distance.
The real question, however, is how we go
about achieving this goal as a random gang of suburb slime. Given we were only armed
with a bat at the time of first contact, the fact it was already injured could have very
well saved our lives, but I still wouldn’t have started swinging away in case it suddenly
got a second wind. Fact is going anywhere near this thing while it could randomly reanimate
is extremely risky, so we should only approach it once we have a surefire plan to keep it down for
good, and I think I might have just the idea.
We can clearly see the creature breathing while
it’s on the ground, meaning it must need air like anything else. Sure, we could try bashing its
teeth out and ramming our arm down its throat like that chick from the horror classic known as
FEAST, but why get your hands dirty when history provides far more expedient means of inducing the
unalive. Just think, what would our forefathers do in this situation?
Ah, the good old days.
The heat alone might be enough to do the
deed, but like any good stake burning, the real killer will be suffocation resulting
from smoke inhalation and the fire consuming all available oxygen. Now all we need is a fuel
source. Of course, doing this clone correct would mean gathering up as much dry wood as
possible and piling it up around the target, and there’s no way I’m spending that much time
with this thing. In that case, we’ll have to syphon gas from any nearby vehicles and napalm
the sucker. Just to be on the safe side.
Either way, it’ll take time for us to round
up the necessary materials, and there’s no telling how long we have before Sleeping Beauty
gets back on its feet and finds another group of high schoolers to play with. Honestly, as
stupid as it was to drag this thing inside, that would definitely make this a lot easier. Once
it was properly restrained, we could just roll in a few burning tires and call it a night.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “But, Nerd, why not just take our recording of the encounter
to the authorities and let them handle it?” Well, as Ayla and company will soon find out,
basically no one on planet earth who actually matters is going to look at that
footage and assume it’s genuine, much less proceed to go trespassing with a bunch of zit
bags in pursuit of a real-life boogeyman.
Just about the only way we could achieve
something like that would be to fake some sort of emergency and lead the cops to it
that way, but that would require us to keep this thing restrained until they get there,
and if we’re gonna go to that much trouble, I think we deserve the satisfaction of sending
it back to heck ourselves. It’s only fair.
Clearly, the super best friends feel the
same way, except it seems they want to have a little fun with it first. After
all, what’s the point of having a pet if you can’t milk it for internet fame, which
is why this is currently happening.
Man, it’s a good thing Ayla snatched that
Beretta from her future stepdad. Otherwise, that could have been dangerous.
So, aside from assessing its vulnerability to firearms, what exactly was the point of this
exercise? You’re just lowering the perceived stakes by making it seem less dangerous. If
anything, you should have pulled this stunt AFTER torturing the crap out of it, and then
aired that footage first to make it look like you weren’t just abusing a burn victim for no
apparent reason. Then again, it probably would have cost us our leading lady once Old Gregg
stuck its thumbs through her eye sockets.
Speaking of which, props to Ayla for having the
nerve to put herself within munching distance, but God dang, what if Scribble couldn’t pull
her away in time? Not to mention the fact she would have been standing in the way of a virtually
untrained shooter if things went sideways. In that case, it probably would have made more sense for
her to have the gun so she could mag dump under its chin at the first sign of trouble.
Oh, well, what’s done is done. Only question now is whether it all pays off.
Hey, you gotta start somewhere.
Of course, like Mr. Lewis, everyone online thinks
it’s all just special effects, which really gets under Ayla’s skin for some reason. Probably should
have thought of that before naming it Crockamoley of all things. How about something slightly
less ridiculous, like Needles or Spine Eater, or ya know, Freak Face. For real, though, who
actually cares if a bunch of randos think it’s all fake. People watch stuff they know isn’t real
all the time. Besides, if it seems too legit, it’ll be harder to monetize. And that’ll be the
least of their worries once the US Department of Fish and Wildlife finds out they’ve been
harboring an unlicensed swamp creature.
The way Ayla sees it, however, this
just means they haven’t gone far enough, and since she can’t exactly get her hands
on those haters in the comments section, they’ll have to go with the next best thing.
Jesus Christ, you can’t just feed it a homeless guy. You have to build up to it first,
ya know tease it a little bit. Maybe start off small with some roadkill or
something and work your way up.
I mean, where exactly can you go from here?
No one’s gonna care to watch this thing wolf down a wood chuck after seeing this, and you’re
bound to run out of drifters eventually.
As for the snackrifice himself, poor guy never
stood a chance. He clearly needed the money, and the possibility of meeting Mr. Beast
was simply too great to pass up. It also didn’t help that he completely failed to
recognize the monster for what it is and even went as far as turning his friggin
back on it. That said, the gang is armed, so one way or another, he probably wasn’t
making it out of there in one piece.
Aside from creating killer content, the sight of
an innocent man being callously served up like a cheeseburger gives Ayla an idea, and just in time
for her Mom’s piece of crap boyfriend to come by. Evidently, Gator needs his gat back, and he’s had
just about enough of all her teenaged shenanigans, like the way she doesn’t respond to
his disgusting physical advances.
Well, let’s see. It took you more than two days to
figure out what happened to your piece, ya know, the one you left dangling from the pocket of
your biker jacket. And instead of confronting her about this back at her house so her mom could at
least serve as a witness, you went, by yourself, to her little hoodlum hideout where any number of
her friends could be waiting to jump you when you least expect it. Oh, yeah, let’s also not forget
that the gun she stole from you, was, in fact, a gun, meaning they could absolutely shoot you if
you give them a reason to, like roughing up their little ringleader, for example.
All that is to say, yes, I think you’re freaking stupid, and that’s
why you’re going to die in here.
Scratch another one for Crockamoley.
Say what you will about his living conditions, he won’t be going hungry.
And here’s hoping he saved room for dessert, because Ayla’s just getting warmed up. Having
realized she can use her personal freakshow to dispose of her enemies, she decides to call
up her arch nemesis of the last ten years to finally bury the hatchet… in the back of
her head. I’m joking of course, they’re just gonna feed poor Jeni to the monster, only
this time they’ll be sure to get it on camera. Can’t let good suffering go to waste, right?
There’s just one problem. They’re all gonna spend the rest of their lives in prison. Seriously, what
kind of moron calls the person they’re going to murder right before they do it? That’s literally
the first thing the cops are going to check once she goes missing, which coincidentally will happen
right around the time your latest feeding video goes up. Hmmm, interesting. I wonder if those two
things are related. Oh, and then there’s the fact they’re doing the deed at a location so strongly
associated with them that even Ayla’s idiot stepdad knew to look there. By now everyone at
school probably knows that’s where these rejects hangout, meaning the investigators will probably
be out there in full force on day one.
All that being said, they were all completely
screwed the second Ayla squeezed trig on the last one. Just like Jeni, the police are going to check
his phone data, which will almost certainly show a ping at the Halloween Park sometime after he was
last seen alive. This means no matter what they do it’s only a matter of time before the cops find
both Crockamoley and a crap ton of DNA evidence, and at that point, neither face blurring
nor Scribble’s heckin awesome hacker skills are going to keep them out of handcuffs.
In the meantime, however, let Jeni’s experience serve as a grizzly reminder
that people never change.
Teaches her for crying in History Class.
Obviously whoever said “never let them take you to a second location” wasn’t envisioning
something like this, but, yeah, NEVER let them take you to another location. Risking a gunshot
is pretty much always going to work out better for you than whatever your attackers have in mind,
especially once you’ve seen all their faces. As a matter of fact, there was even a point while they
were marching her off to the dining room where the triggerman had his pistol pointed straight at the
ground like he forgot which side the bullets came out of. That would have been an ideal time to make
a grab for it, or at very least sock Scribble in the face and run for her life. It’s not like any
of these other dweebs are gonna stop her.
Speaking of which, there appears to be some
dissension in the ranks, as one of the punks, uhhh *checks notes* Snack? What kind of stupid
nickname is that? No wonder he’s PO’ed off. Anyway, what’s-his-name decides he can’t let
his friends go on feeding people to a living gimp suit, so he tells… a teacher. Bro, this
guy’s authority begins and ends at a government building. You need to go to the cops and tell
them you saw someone collecting rain water down at the park. Okay, maybe something a little
crazier than that, just as long as it doesn’t include the words “crocka” and “moley,” or they’ll
try and book you for underaged drinking.
Actually, this would be a great time to employ
my previous strat of faking an emergency and leading the responders out to the creature
cage. I’d probably go with a wild animal attack so they know to be ready for trouble.
Plus, it couldn’t hurt to have a game warden show up with a hunting rifle, just in case the
nine mils fail to leave an impression.
Unfortunately for our heroes, another one of
Ayla’s boy toys overheard their conversation, and now it looks like they’ll be starring
in Crockamoley’s latest muk bang.
I mean, it certainly seems like it.
What exactly was your plan once you guys got here, anyway? You couldn’t exactly move this thing.
All you could really do was show Mr. Lewis to lend yourself some credibility when you actually
reported it, but as we’ve already established, you could have just gone straight to the
cops in the first place. So, basically, you put yet another innocent
man’s life in jeopardy for no good reason. Yeah, great going, Snack.
At this point, I say we just rush Scribble to gain control of the firearm. Dude’s hardly
a sharpshooter, and we could probably wrestle it away from him before he can land something
fatal. Not exactly the best plan in the world, but that’s what we get for putting ourselves
in this position to begin with. Besides, it’s either that or get eaten alive. I don’t
care what they’re pointing at me. No way I’m picking door number two in this scenario.
However, despite his appearance, his actions, his dumby name, and pretty much everything
about him, Snack is smart enough to recognize a third option: release the Kraken and let it
savagely tear everyone to pieces. Wait a second, that’s a terrible idea. How does he know
it won’t do the same thing to him?
Well, about that. Evidently, Snack
and Crockamoley soul bonded one night after he fed it some rotten hamburger.
Sadly, Mr. Lewis can’t say the same.
Oopsie. Yeah, probably should have
warned him to get out of the way.
On the other side of the equation, Scribble
should have put a cap in Snack the second he suggested freeing the beast like that. Simply
put, we already know bullets work on people, but we don’t know if they work on swamp creatures.
Spoiler alert, they do not, or at least not fast enough to stop one from ripping your face off
after getting mag dumped center mass.
As for everyone else, why are you not running
away screaming right now? I know popping off in an enclosed space can be disorienting but that
doesn’t mean your legs stop working. Besides, if Scribble can’t drop it with the pistol,
what exactly are you gonna do?
Ultimately, Ayla’s the only one who tries to
make a run for it and barring some kind of major malfunction on her part, there’s pretty much
zero chance this thing will ever catch up to her. I mean, just think about it. She’s been hanging
out here for years and knows the entire layout like the back of her hand. All she has to do is
find the nearest exit and keep moving until she can flag down a car. Not to mention the fact all
her friends were nice enough to stay back and get mauled to death while she got a head start.
Yeah, just about the only way I could see her getting nailed is if she
corners herself in a small, cramped space somewhere within sniffing
distance of the final showdown, but she’d have to be absolutely braindead
to think of something like that.
Really? You couldn’t have found a hiding
spot that wasn’t clearly visible from the outside? *Sigh. Whatever. It’s not like
she’d have much of a life to live with the cornoplethora of charges headed her way.
And with that, Crockamoley fades back into the darkness from whence it came, although, let’s be
real, with as many people as it’s eaten the last couple days there’s no way we’ve seen the last
of this thing. We can only hope that next time around it’s found by people with access to bigger
guns, or at very least better naming skills.
In the end, the only person who didn’t get
eaten was a guy named Snack. Yeah. However, had we used our thinky parts from the very
beginning and left this freak the heckl alone, literally none of this would have
happened. None of it. For that reason, I think WHERE THE SCARY
THINGS ARE was Beaten.
Moral of the story, friends don’t let
friends feed people to swamp monsters.
