Listen up, you primitive screw heads! Have I got a story for you! It’s not for the faint of heart I assure you.
There once was a man who had this beautiful wife. They've been through so much of each other's lives; they are two of a pair. There were inseparable. Each completing each other. Much like the magician and his elegant beautiful assistant, the jester and his beloved harlequin.
Two halves of one, truly y'see. Without one, the other could not be.
He was everything to her. And she meant the world and more to him. And their only child; BEAUTIFUL. Just like her mother. Had her piercing, tranquil, elegant eyes too.
Now the story seems too perfect right? Life too good, yeah? God don't like that. No, he doesn't. Not one bit.
So unbeknownst to our father beloved, slowly but surely and gradually, the wife loses her complexion over the course of time. She turns frail and pale. Oddly, y’see? Ghostly.
By Fall, it was blatantly obvious by now; she was paler than snow.
Concerned for his fair female, he checks her into the hospital. Time suspended in its cruel habit, the diagnosis reaches his ears: “Terminal”.
Days pass. And so too does the light in his lover’s eyes.
He watched on as he was forever separated. Divided and crushed. No longer whole.
He bid her adieu.
Only his daughter offered him enough of the shattered pieces of himself left on the ground. His only daughter still in her infant stages, seemed to comprehend, although that seemed impossible. He felt the embrace of his wife wash over him, every time her cool piercing eyes looked into him. Penetrating his bleeding heart.
February 19.
Daddy leaves for work. The daughter is under the care of their family baby sitter.
But this wouldn’t be a story worth telling if something's not amiss. Y’see, in his haste, father dearest forgot to lock the door.
Which catches the eye of the inconspicuous.
A demon in the shape of a man sneaks in, with the bloody devil in his very inner core. This guy's as deranged as deranged can get. A madman. His absence of a heart, a satanic worship ground for the demented.
His slits for eyes look around. The baby sitter’s fallen asleep on the couch. The daughter’s in her cot.
His thin lips stretch as he smiles, approaches, coo's and hums…
“If you go down to the woods today, you sure are in for a big surprise, If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise, For every bear that ever there was, will gather there for certain, Because today's the day that teddy bears have their picnic.”
So now, the father, he is on his way home, ya know? From work. All tired. And sweaty. Simply itching for a shower, and then JUST thinking about the free time to wake his daughter from her slumber, just to see her squeal for joy at the sight of him.
On the way, he stops to buy her a teddy bear ‘cause her old one was missing an eye. Sweet, isn’t he? Anything for his sweetheart.
Finally at twilight, to the beautiful dwindling of sunlight, he reaches home.
Blue and red flashes assault the streets.
Sirens.
He is stopped as he approached by the good ol’ boys in blue.
“Sir, this is a crime scene, we cannot allow you to enter.”
“Sir, we need to identify you”.
“Jack, listen, I’m sorry to say but your daughter…”
Silence.
“Weary neighbours concerned over the half unhinged door phoned the cops. They find this demented SOB sitting at the foot of the cot ashen faced. Holding a knife in one hand. The new teddy in the other”.
Our Daddy is now at the interrogation room.
They found no evidence of the killer. No known murderers, or anything of the sort on the watchlist in the nearby radius.
Daddy wasn't talking. Heck, he didn't even seem faced at all. Like he was simply oblivious to being the brunt of a joke.
And boy, lemme tell you, the joke sure was a killing.
Two detectives were illuminated in the overhanging lamp.
One impatient. Rude. Simply detestable scum. And determined to get all the details and call it a night.
The other, though. Silent. Nothing remarkable about him. Except he seemed completely at ease.
The first cop is screaming, slamming his fist on the table, seemed to be on the brink of violence.
"What did your daughter do to deserve her fate, huh? She was just a kid. And the babysitter.. Jesus. What you did! What you did..Listen to me when I speak, LOOK AT ME! I’m going to have you rot in prison so long you won’t remember the light of day! How can a father do that to his own daughter"
Daddy sat still. In his head ran a lullaby, from a time distant.
“If you go down to the woods today, you sure are in for a big surprise, If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise, For every bear that ever there was, will gather there for certain, Because today's the day that teddy bears have their picnic”
The fist cop has screamed himself hoarse. Nothing.
Not even a budge on daddy's seating position.
The brash detective beckons to the other cop, ‘John, lemme go grab a cup of Joe, looks like this 'un's gonna take a while’.
And with that, the exhausted sweaty moron gets up and leaves.
The door shuts behind him, and silence descends.
Then the other cop leans forward.
Daddy finally registers his face. Without a word, the cop gets up, walks around the table and stands right behind poor daddy and unshackles him.
Daddy finally speaks. “The good cop, bad cop routine, huh?”
The reply came, “Not quite”.
Daddy still doesn't move, but shivers.
The other cop bends till he is right at his ear level. And whispers.
“If you go down to the woods today, you sure are in for a big surprise”
Daddy's dumbfounded eyes widen.
Good Ol' Johnny slips out a pouch and throws it down right in front of Daddy and out spilt…!
IT WAS HIM!
Before Daddy could react.
Ol’ Johnny boy books it cackling.
Outside, he can still hear Daddy's frantic banging and muffled screams. It was music to his bloody ears.
He draws from his pocket a pack of Camels. Lights up and he was on Cloud freakin' Nine.
His cheek muscles clenched but the smile doesn't reach his slits for eyes which remain cold. He whimsically hums in the lingering smoke.
“If you go down to the woods today, you sure are in for a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise, For every bear that ever there was, will gather there for certain, Because today's the day that teddy bears have their picnic.”
“Christ!”
“Who? Jesus CHRIST!!? He has no place here"
“Try to remember why you're here”
“Remember? Ohh I wouldn't do that. Remembering's a dangerous thing. I find the past such a worrying anxious place.”
“She’s gone. Just acce-”
“The past tense!! Ha ha! Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in the moment, the very picturesque images of delights, much like the slides off a camera reel that plays before your very eyes blinding you with nostalgia for childhood, the good ol’ days, the diamond days of puberty. All sentimentality. Next, it drags you on the floor wailing, kicking and screaming down roads you don’t want to go. Somewhere dark and cold and filled with damp ambiguous shapes of things you’d hoped were forgotten. Memories can be vile. Memories can be repulsive and depraved. Like murder, I suppose. So why stick with it? WE aren’t contractually obliged to rationality. There ain’t no damn Sanity Clause! So if you find yourself wandering down to where the screams won’t ever stop. Remember, Doc. There’s madness. Madness is the emergency exit”.
Boy, did he sure take that godforsaken exit.
And that, you gathered sons of guns, concludes the story of Jack, and boy, did he deserve all he had coming to him.
The pub is silent for a minute. Then a few hesitant awkward chuckles.
“Look at the mouth on this guy, huh?”
“Uhh, quite a story there, you morbid SOB. But you’ve wasted your time and more importantly ours. No one here gives a shit about any tales. The big game is on in a few, and we just here to get plastered”.
Sure. You just carry on doing that.
Exits.
Takes out a crinkled pack of Camels.
A spark of a flint, reflecting a thin smile in the glass window.
Smoke.
A whimsical hum breaks the silence…A distant one. The music that just won’t stop.
“If you go down to the woods today, you sure are in for a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise, For every bear that ever there was, will gather there for certain, Because today's the day that teddy bears have their picnic.”
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