If your child was a monster, if you murdered
your wife, if an intruder tried to kill you, if you suddenly realized the world was full
of bigger monsters than you, what would you do? We’ve got another anthology of shorts to
dissect today. This time, survivability is a matter of resourcefulness. Are you QUICK enough, CLEVER enough, FLEXIBLE
enough to live when faced with circumstances beyond your control? To be honest…most of these people are not. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to break down the mistakes made,
what you should do, and how to beat YOUR OWN CREATIVE SURVIVAL LIMITS in TELL ME A CREEPY
STORY. This one isn’t for anyone who hates the
sound of people Very. Loudly. Chewing. They spike up the sound mixing like they hate
you, hate me, hate themselves, and definitely hate their own creation, JOE, a kid born with
a SEVERE case of polyphagia, or insatiable hunger. His parents LAURA and CRAIG are super excited
for his arrival, but from the moment he’s born, his boundless appetite becomes a menace
to their lives and their sanity. And it only gets worse as he grows up, especially
because while he eats everything in sight, he DOESN’T gain weight. In fact, he’s treated for malnutrition. Doctors dismiss Laura’s fears about his
appetite as ignorance. Social workers accuse her of neglect. Her husband leaves and Laura’s forced to
make daily trips to the food bank to feed Joe. She also starts looking for any opportunity
to euthanize the cancerous growth in her life without having to kill him herself. Although she fantasizes about more proactive
approaches constantly. Ironically, it’s her dutiful parenting that
dooms her from the start. We take care of our kids needs because we’re
legally and emotionally responsible for them, but because Joe physically CAN’T provide
enough for himself until he’s older, he becomes codependent on Laura for survival,
and is never guided toward coping mechanisms or taught even the barest concept of restraint. Which means, he grows up to become the weird
recluse at the end of the road kids taunt with fish on a stick. Eventually, he starts killing neighborhood
pets to slake his hunger. And he sneaks onto farms to eat livestock,
taking buckshot to the leg as he runs away. Laura doesn’t have him treated for it, which
to be honest blood poisoning or sepsis is a far WORSE way to kill someone than just
stabbing them in the heart or walking them to a high balcony and shoving them off. Eventually, Joe’s burden becomes too much
for Laura and she unalives herself in the bathtub, accidentally leaving him a tasty
final meal that inspires a new type of insatiable hunger. Unfortunately for the new neighbors, the infection
from his leg wound is taking its time, and Joe has set his sights on their pint-sized
happy meal as the story ends. Great going, Laura, now you’ve made it everybody
else’s problem. This one’s actually pretty fascinating. It’s definitely heavily inspired by the
real life story of a Frenchman named Tarrare, an underweight man with an oversized mouth
whose appetite made him famous. His family cast him out as a teenager when
they couldn’t provide for him, so he became a side-show act, routinely consuming live
animals whole and offal in the gutters. He eventually was treated in a hospital where
he was caught eating corpses in the morgue and eventually kicked out when he was accused
of consuming a toddler. Laura could have handled a whole lot of the
problems here pretty early on. The accusations of the doctor and social workers
would be easy to prove false. All she’d need to do is put cameras in the
house for a few days, record the sheer volume she feeds him, and her day to day routine
of bathing him, and any accusations would fall away pretty quickly, and she might even
be able to get some sort of government disability subsidy to provide for him. But she has a couple more permanent options
here, although none of them are going to win her a Mother of the Year award. The first is obvious—give him up to a research
hospital. She has neither the financial nor mental abilities
to handle his care and honestly they’d probably find him so fascinating they wouldn’t mind
footing the bill to keep him for the rest of his life. Surrendering a kid you can’t properly care
for is probably the best outcome for everyone. It's very likely Joe has a form of Prader-Willi
syndrome, a genetic condition where a kid’s metabolism spikes, they develop low muscle
tone and insatiable appetite, have trouble eating as babies, and never feel full even
when they’ve gorged themselves. Hospitals already administer human growth
hormone to treat this, so it’s very possible they could find a treatment that would work
for him. The second option, which has only recently
become available, is to find a sleazy doctor willing to prescribe him a hunger suppressant
like these new weight loss injections everyone’s taking. The final option that doesn’t involve flat
out killing him is a little more…creative and might not work, but is worth a shot if
you’re determined to keep him with you. Teach him table manners, get him a therapist
that specializes in polyphagia, and sign him up for every competitive eating competition
you can find. Channel the thing he can’t help down an
avenue with routine, reliable structure, and which takes at least part of the burden off
you. A man and wife are having a silent standoff
at the dinner table. He’s ticked she’s served him a vegetarian
meal when all he can think about is the slab of meat winking at him from the fridge. Eventually, he gets up to throw his food away. She steps up to face him and he shoves her,
half-accidentally-on-purpose on top of the open dishwasher, where she’s impaled on
a knife. No worries, bro. You’ll get plenty of meat in prison…just
probably not the kind you like. Although, to think like a true psychopath,
a good lawyer would be able to make the case that she slipped on a towel and just fell…once
you rinse the blood off, then wash your hands in bleach. Instead, this stupid husband goes with the
“more is more” approach. He starts scheming how to get rid of the body
like he’s going to get points for originality. He talks himself out of all that and goes
with something that is arguably dumber. He buries her in a SUPER shallow grave in
their garden. That’s right. She grew a massive garden for them, which
is why she was feeding him vegetables in the first place. Anyone who grows anything knows if you don’t
keep eating what you grow it’ll eventually bury your house in vegetables. The next morning, he discovers the garden
has started overproducing food. In the night, the back door opens on its own
and he wakes to someone in his house. He arms himself with a candelabra and goes
on the attack, only to discover someone has unloaded all his the garden veggies in his
fridge onto the kitchen floor. He buys a bunch of motion activated cameras
and stations them around the house and in the back yard…and it captures something
as soon as he goes upstairs for the night, but we never see what it is. In the morning, he discovers someone has harvested
MORE vegetables from the garden and put them in the fridge. So, he decides to get ahead of it by harvesting
as much as he can and stacking it all for anyone to take along the road. Once he does, however, he realizes something’s
tainting the food. No, not tainting it. Possessing it for their own nefarious purposes. The husband follows the trail of vegetarian
carnage outside and gets scared back by something in the corn. He retreats to the house, grabs a flamethrower
and calls the police before attempting to engage with whatever scared him. The police pick up just as the motion sensor
cameras go off and he encounters the final boss every vegan has to defeat before they’re
allowed to absorb iron efficiently. In the end, the vegetative monstrosity that
is his former wife carves him up for dinner and plants his head in the garden as a warning
to other ungrateful husbands. So…this one’s obvious, right? If your wife’s on a garden veggie kick,
eat her healthy bullsh*t, then make yourself a porkchop afterward, like a grown man. I’d be p*ssed enough to kill too if I died
because my partner couldn’t make themselves a goddamn hot dog. Surviving the revenge of Veg-zilla, now, is
a matter of distance. Hook up a security camera and go stay somewhere
else for a while until you know what you’re dealing with. Then come back with a Buddhist priest. A teen named JANE is home alone, pining for
an ex JACOB who’s already moved on, when a shadowy figure begins spying on her from
outside. A little while later, she realizes the water’s
out and tries calling her parents for help. They don’t answer, so she calls an all-night
plumber. When he arrives, she tells him there’s no
water coming from any faucet in the house and she suspects it started with her parents’
shower which was struggling the week before. He goes up to check…
…but while he’s gone the ACTUAL plumber LEVI arrives. He dismisses her concerns about the other
guy, saying it’s probably just a mix-up, but offers to check for her anyway. But when they go upstairs, the bathroom is
empty and the water is working again. He reassures her it was probably a wires crossed
situation and leaves…taking a brutal hammer strike to the face right outside. Meanwhile, Jane heads to her kitchen, where
she discovers Jacob standing in her kitchen, not just sopping wet but wet like he’s constantly
under a shower. She’s so distracted she doesn’t hear the
plumber wailing in pain outside as his attacker finishes him off. She also doesn’t notice the killer climbing
up a weird outside set of stairs to her house. Jane wakes from the strange vision to discover
her cell phone is missing and the landline isn’t working. She runs outside to find a man with a knife
waiting for her and retreats back inside where she locks all the doors…before remembering
her parents have a patio off their bedroom and discovers that door is wide open. She hears a ghostly voice call to her and
like an idiot she follows it, finding a ghost version of Jacob standing in the shower right
before a spot of blood appears on her shirt. Suddenly Mr. Knife Guy shuts off the lights. Jane dips into her bedroom and locks the door…before
remembering she shares a jack and jill bathroom with the room next door. She hears the knife scraping against something
and runs for the door just as Mr. Knife Guy slices her arm. She runs to the kitchen and arms herself,
then hides in a corner as he searches for her. As he passes, she hits him in the leg, but
turns to flee instead of plunging the knife in again…and he catches her. Jane reaches for anything, but he overpowers
her, slamming her head back on the floor. He steals her necklace as a souvenir while
she limply reaches for a piece of broken record to use as a weapon. For whatever reason Jacob’s ghost tries
to hold her back, but she ignores him, grabs the shard and plunges it into her attacker’s
neck, popping him like a capri sun. Solid B+ effort considering all the random
bullsh*t thrown in here. Now run to the neighbor’s house. She doesn’t do that. Instead she direct messages 911, unfriends
Jacob and cranks up her record player again. Just to really set that somber tone when the
cops show up. Anyway, couple things here. As a precaution when you’re alone like this
for maintenance services, ask the company for the name of the person they’re sending. We’re all used to being asked our name when
we meet someone, so it’s a safe litmus test for most situations. This would’ve told her within three seconds
of his arrival that he wasn’t who he’s claiming to be while allowing her to fake
being unconcerned before bolting. If you didn’t do that, once the second plumber
shows up, it’s time to call the cops, then call the company. Let them figure out if they sent two people
while you walk to your neighbor’s house and ask to stay with them until the cops arrive. If you make it all the way to the point where
you’re unsure whether someone has left your home or not AND your phones have disappeared
or stopped working, it’s time to head to that neighbor’s house OR arm yourself and
retreat to a room you can secure. And I’m not talking ONE knife from a drawer
full of them. I’m talking multiple, with a minimum of
one hidden so that you can grab it if you’re attacked. If you ARE attacked, don’t give him a papercut. Plunge that blade so deep inside him the coroner
has to use an electric saw to remove it. And if you listened to me and grabbed MULTIPLE
knives, plunge one into the nearest available body part and the other into something more
vital—through his eye, throat, or into his lower back where his kidneys are. This one’s short and sweet. A quote-unquote missionary IVAN wakes up clutching
his tattered bible next to the corpse of his latest victim. He robs her, makes sure she’s decently laid
out on the bed, and leaves in search of his next target. He arrives at the door of MRS. TAGGART, the spunky wife of a meat farmer
who invites him in and has a chat with him. Ivan tells her he’s been everywhere preaching
the good word, then asks her a series of increasingly nosey questions until her husband comes home,
and they toy with him playfully, inviting him to dinner…right before Mrs. Taggart
swings in with a Rapunzel-worthy TKO. Ivan wakes up chained in the nearly pitch
black basement with no means of escape since he can’t see two feet in front of him. That’s probably a good thing, as we pull
out to discover that the Taggarts REALLY love their meat and they really like the cut of
him. Just goes to show that wolves can wear a variety
of sheep’s clothing. Surviving this comes down to doing your due
diligence and picking more compatible targets. There’s a reason the long-running uncaught
killers survive as long as they do. Because they take precautions…at least until
they don’t. Then they’re caught. Or killed. Or fall victim to their own hubris. Ivan here just got a lethal dose of humility
supplied by better monsters than him. If you find yourselves caught and tied up
by your betters, you’re going to be feeling around with your fingers and teeth to see
if anything can be pulled loose or chewed through. Not saying you CAN’T escape this basement. But you’re going to be at it for a while….and
since we never get a good look at how he’s chained, it’s anyone’s guess if the chain
attaches to the wall or rope or concrete, all of which would require different strategies. Yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and call this
one unsurvivable without more information. Most of these creepy stories were solid…but
in the end the only truly inescapable one is the one that doesn’t give us enough to
work with. For those reasons, I think TELL ME A CREEPY
STORY was Beaten. Now, tell me your own creepy story in the
comments.
