* * *
👦Bishop: I need to get this off my chest.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Fair enough. I'm listening.
👦Bishop: Hello, my name is Bishop.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hello there, Bishop. Just call me Ocean. So, what's up?
👦Bishop: I live in rural Kentucky with my parents, uncle and 3 cousins. Or, what's left of them anyway.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Frown* Who did what to them?
👦Bishop: Before we get to that, however, I need to tell you what I can remember from my childhood. It was Easter morning, the rain's dew over the meadow and fog over the woods. It was a fairly nice day, until we heard the scream.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Oh dear.
👦Bishop: It came from the woods, just beyond the shed on our property. We were eating breakfast, just going about our business when my uncle, Jim, crashed into the kitchen with a shotgun in his hand.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: This isn't looking good.
👦Bishop: He looked like he just saw a ghost. "Terrance! You gotta look at this!" He was puffy. Of course, being a seven year old boy, I decided to go along as well. First my mother pleaded, but my dad insisted it would be fine.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, your uncle is scared out of his wits, so that he has armed himself. And your dad thinks it's cool to bring you along? With all due respect, he's a bonehead, and your mom is right to want you staying out of it.
👦Bishop: I wish I just stayed in the damn house.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So many people, so many regrets.
👦Bishop: As we neared the source of the scream, all we heard was chewing.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Grimace* Something/somebody is chewing while screaming, and chewing so loud you can hear it along with the screams?
👦Bishop: The cracking of bones and the tearing of flesh.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Ugh! So the screamer is eating something it has killed, apparently. Or has found dead.
👦Bishop: If you could hear it, it was hell.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Without the screams, and all depending on what kind of carcass it is, it might be tolerable.
👦Bishop: Just to put it in perspective, if you were to put a living mouse-no, rat- into a meat grinder, it would make a noise not even close to what we heard.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Shudder cringe* Eww! The mental image... So why is the thing trying to eat when it's screaming like that? Normally when something is in that much agony, they don't eat.
👦Bishop: We saw a trail of blood, coming from a cornfield, go into the woods.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Which suggests a struggle beforehand. And the screamer still screams and eats.
👦Bishop: My uncle Jim readied his shotgun. My dad pulled out a knife and gave it to me, grabbing a sledgehammer from a box near the woods. But the sledge already had blood on it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I still don't know what in hex your dad was thinking. Bringing you along on some apparently bloody wreck that scared your uncle, and now he hands you a knife? There's something not quite right here.
👦Bishop: This made all of us flow with adrenaline. It was kill or be killed.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Got it.
👦Bishop: As we walked into the woods, we saw the damn thing eating into a little girl's face.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Horrified glower* The screamer took, killed, and is eating a little girl? NOT COOL! AT ALL! It's in as much trouble as that weird vampire elf for doing the same thing...! *Fuming*
👦Bishop: But it wasn't any little girl. It was my cousin. This infuriated my Uncle, who was always nice and chill about 100% of the time. He was screaming words and curses I dare not say. 🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I would too if I was him...!
👦Bishop: To this day, I still don't know what some of them mean. I don't even want to know. After what happened to my Uncle.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: It's not important. What matters is what this monster actually is. I need to know what I'm supposed to be hunting.
👦Bishop: Anyways, this... thing was eating my cousin's face.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: You already established that...
👦Bishop: My Uncle shot a round at it, but it bounced away on its legs.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Unfortunately in this case, sometimes wildlife is faster than us slow humans.
👦Bishop: My cousin had a egg basket ready. It was spilled over and in the eggs... My Gosh in the eggs were tiny little dead chicks.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Scowls* Why didn't the monster eat those instead? I don't expect you to answer that, it's a question directed at *it*.
👦Bishop: Bits of red and yellow were everywhere. This drove my Uncle mad. He threw himself into a train yesterday.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: *Shudder* Ugh! Sorry, Bishop, but this monster will pay.
👦Bishop: Not even enough to bury.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: The monster will pay.
👦Bishop: I'm 26 now and it's my daughter's first Easter. Well, one she can celebrate. She was born with a birth defect that was also found in my DNA, but enough of that. She is a 4 year old little girl and her mother decided on throwing an Easter party. I agreed as long as they are careful around Elexa. I... I saw the damn bunny. This time I got a good look at it.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: So, the incident you described would've happened back in 1998. There just seems to be something about the late 1990s, doesn't there?
So... It's a bunny, is it? A blood-thirsty bunny. Time for some rabbit hunting...
👦Bishop: I was 7 feet tall.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: I think you meant to say "It" there. So, this mutant is a 7-foot tall bunny, eh? That's a lot of rabbit meat.
👦Bishop: It was pink and red and purple, like it was a feral animal.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Feral means merely gone wild, it has nothing to do with being strange colours. But thanks for the description. I'm on it. Soon to be all over it.
👦Bishop: I guess it was. But what scared me is it wasn't a bunny. It was a person. Only the person was dead.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Hmm. So, a vampire or zombie, dressed up in a bunny costume. Will have to get the big guns out for this one.
👦Bishop: It's face, sewn into the suit.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: A full body costume. Will have to cut it open to get at whoever's inside it. The costume itself isn't alive, no kidding, but whoever's wearing it, would be.
👦Bishop: It was the suit. I wondered why my Uncle wasn't going to have a funeral. Now I know.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: But I sure don't. What's one got to do with the other? He was run over by a train. that doesn't mean he can't have a funeral, just not an open casket.
👦Bishop: The bits and pieces, the suit, the train. It all makes sense. My Uncle is the bunny. He's out to kill my daughter. The suit... I wonder how long it will be until I get sewn into one too.
🧝♀️Ocean Elf: Huh? Now that really doesn't make sense.
Let's see if I can kind of get this straight.
We have a dealive screamer who Frankensteins itself by eating people and making witnesses go mad, and he's your cousin, now your uncle too?
No. Your uncle was scared, then understandably provoked when this monster killed his daughter. He didn't become part of that monster. He died of grief, and guilt at not being able to save her.
Here's what it must be. He's a predatory elf who thinks he can avoid capture, by teleporting and disguising himself.
He will not escape me.
-- Update: The evil elf has paid the price.
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