I was already an adult. My parents died when I was 23 in a car crash. To make things worse, I had no family near me: my closest relatives lived in South Carolina, very far from Alabama. We were the only ones in my family who hardly had contact with anyone else. Since I didn’t work and couldn’t afford to pay my rent, I had to get a job quickly, something that suited me and that I liked. I went block by block, searching every business for a “Help wanted” sign. I wasn’t lucky that day, so I decided to try the day after. I went to bed and set my alarm to 7:00 so I could go and look for a job early in the morning. I was sleeping peacefully until the memories of what happened that terrible day at my friend John’s place came to me. I wasn’t able to sleep the rest of the night, the memories kept coming.
Morning came. I dressed up quickly to go find an employment. I searched my whole neighborhood and didn’t find anything. Once again it wasn’t my day, until I saw a sign on a movies, videogames and series store. It took no time for me to get the job: the owner accepted me without even asking for my CV. I started my job as a salesman. My only task was to attend the clients. The store opened all day and I had the night shift, from 8:00 PM to 12:00 AM. My first day was like being in heaven: I knew that from now on, I would start earning money, I would be able to pay for rent. It wasn’t hard to take my boss’ orders, the store was huge and had a lot of movies and series, mostly children’s cartoons. My second day at work was normal like the previous one, it was a calm and really cold night. I was able to see the thick fog that surrounded the store, and the security guard that protected the main door was sort of uneasy. I could sense a really weird atmosphere, the only two people left in the store went out and it was only us (me and the guard). Since it was 1:24 in the morning, the guard told me it was closing time. I was preparing my stuff to leave, but he told me to stay here because it looked dangerous outside due to the thick fog. While we were watching Spongebob on a small TV, the lights started to flicker. I jumped from the chair; the guard told me to keep calm, since it was normal for this to happen at the store. I asked him if there was some kind of ghost or something paranormal. He laughed and we kept watching the cartoon. The credits showed, we turned the TV off and the guard told me to go to the cellar to look for some of the series that the owner kept in the boxes. I went with him. Since the cellar was apart from the store, we had to go outside through the backstreet, where there was a lot of fog and it was impossible to see. We went into the storage room and we saw several piles of boxes; we were looking for an interesting series or movie. One of the windows burst open and a strong wind came in, making one of the piles fall on top of me. The guard wasn’t able to contain a grim laugh while he was pulling me out of the fallen boxes. I was picking up the video cassettes to put them in their place, until I saw a one of them that freezed my blood for a few moments. It had the title “The Looney Tunes: The Daffy Duck Murderer”.
A vision of what had happened eight years ago popped into my head. The guard asked if everything was fine and I said yes. I read the title again and thought it was a joke to get the attention of the viewer, since Looney Tunes was my favorite childhood cartoon. I asked the guy to come and see this: he saw the title and barely emmited a cold laugh, but for me it wasn’t funny at all. He told me to go back inside and take a look at it. I felt like my subconscious told me to watch the tape, but I didn’t want to. The guard insisted that we watched it. We went back to the store to check the contents of this tape: my hands were shaking and a little wet. I put the video in the player. We sat with a bowl of popcorn to watch the tape and I turned on the TV on Video Mode. The tape started to play immediately: the intro appeared with a screenfade effect; I noticed it wasn’t the same as the other episodes of The Looney Tunes. There was no happy music at all. The title “Looney Tunes presents” was getting close too slowly towards the screen. After 30 seconds the title stops. Weird things kept showing up in the intro: two low-budhget hands drawn with blood came out of the center of the circle. I wasn’t able to recognize the character that owned those hands, but, towards the end, he said: “This is something you’ll never forget fellas, HAHAHAHA!”
Whoever those hands belonged to let out a low and evil laughter. After this, the title “Daffy Duck Murderer” shows up with dark red handwriting; it seemed like the editors didn’t have time to do something better for this episode. The guard felt uncomfortable with what he saw, I was scared and all I wanted to do was leave, but the fog got even thicker as time went by. Suddenly, we heard something in the back; I didn’t have the guts to go check what it was so the guard stood up but he saw nothing. We kept watching the episode: the intro ended, a black hole appeared in the center of the screen and it started to get larger and larger. It started out as a normal episode of The Looney Tunes, but we didn’t know that little by little, this episode would become a nightmare.
Bugs Bunny shows up walking for a while, no more than two minutes and it seemed as if the background were the same and it repeated over and over. After those two minutes, he pulls out a carrot from his pocket and starts eating it brutally… I was able to sense the anger of the rabbit. We were able to see how the scene cut every 15 seconds and it came back to the same: Bugs eating a carrot… this lasted around 35 seconds. A black frame comes into scene for around 15 seconds, it goes away and we see Bugs sitting on the edge of a poorly drawn, leafless tree. As a matter of fact, the whole scene was really poor: there were no clouds or vegetables, the drawing simply was lifeless. Bugs Bunny whispers: “You really want to watch this Doc? Can’t you see my pain?”.
A really cold and creepy phrase for Bugs Bunny. He was eating his carrot with a lot of sadness. Suddenly, the camera does a close-up to the rabbit, he gets sad and starts crying desperately. Blood is running from his nose, he looks with hatred at the camera, and screams “HE HAS HURT ME SO BAD!! DON’T TEASE HIM!! DON’T LOOK FOR HIM!!“. He stands up and throws his half-chewed carrot to the camera, the scene cuts and starts distorting. I paused the VCR and told the guard I couldn’t keep watching that. He was a little scared but kept showing off his “bravery”, he told me to stay and that nothing was wrong. I played the VCR: the scene shows Pepe le Pew and his girlfriend Penelope Pussycat arguing about something. The scene becomes violent, they fight physically with each other in a real way. I was somehow confused since this isn’t normal in a Looney Tunes episode. We saw stains of blood splash into the camera; I wasn’t able to contain my fear.
The camera does a close-up of Penelope: she was really hurt, her face was full of blood due to the hits of Pepe le Pew. She had a broken leg with a really well-drawn bone sticking out of it. The weirdert part is that the bone wasn’t the only thing well-drawn in the scene. Blood kept bursting out of her body; a strange sound comes out of the scene and everything turns even more violent. Daffy Duck shows up and says: “You’re having these dumb fights again idiots? Is this what you want the kids to see? HAHAHA!”. He let out a laughter very similar to the one in the intro. The guard was confused just like me, we couldn’t believe what we were watching. Daffy Duck, smiling evilly says: “LET’S DO SOMETHING FUN WITH THIS TRASH”. The dialogue they used for this episode was unbelievable; double-entendre and rude words. What I saw later made my hair stand on end: Daffy Duck pulls out a knife from his tail and stabs Penelope repeatedly until she dies. The camera focuses on Daffy: he is eyeless, as if they had been erased, and he had a demonic smile that would scare the hell out of anyone.
Smiling, he laughs for 30 seconds with a grim an creepy laughter. After being satisfied with killing her, he starts raping Penelope’s corpse. He says to her dead body: “Does it make you horny to have me inside you bitch?”. Daffy stops and spits blood on her face, while Pepe feels happy and laughing at his girlfriend’s death. I told the guard to pause the fucking tape in that moment, but the remote wouldn’t work and the lights started flickering way too often. The episode kept going: Daffy, laughing, cuts Pepe le Pew’s head off and shows it to the viewer, while he says: “IS THIS THAT YOU WANTED KIDS? DO YOU LIKE BLOOD? SOON, YOUR HEADS WILL ME MINE! HAHAHA”. The scene changes quickly and, with a music similar to the one in Suicide Mouse, Daffy eats the insides of Penelope with his big sharp teeth. His feathers are standing on end. A sound starts playing while he keeps eating, as if someone was chewing something during the scene. Daffy, after finishing, turns around and looks at the camera with a demonic face and bloody teeth… he starts walking slowly towards the screen, as if the viewer was his next victim. The scene immediately cuts. A screenfade shows up with a black background that lasts 30 seconds, while the voice of a screaming girl says “HELP ME!! PLEASE HELP MEEE!! DON’T LET HIM CUT MY HEAD!!”. After that, the usual credits showed up.
The guard was pale, he stood up from the chair, grabbed a bat and smashed the TV and the VCR.
Scared, we tried to run outside the store, but the neither the main nor the back door would open. Desperate, he took his gun and shot himself in the head. He splashed blood all over my face; I was scared and screaming like crazy, I didn’t know what to do.
I broke the window and managed to escape to my house. The next morning I discovered the tragic news: the owner and the guard of the store “Video World” had died that night. I felt like something was wrong: as far as I remember, the owner was at his place, not with us. His wife found him dead on his bed, headless and gutless (I suspect someone took them away). But when she saw a message written with blood on the wall, she fainted. The message: “FROM NOW ON, I’LL BE THE NIGHTMARE OF THE WHOLE TOWN - Daffy Duck”. I didn’t earn any money, so I had to move out. This happened around three months ago. Currently, I live with my best friend Jessica. I still have nightmares with what happened that day at the store.