I had just gotten back from the doctors, who couldn’t diagnose my condition. All of my vital signs seemed to be mysteriously “shutting off”. Well, I had been to three doctors, actually, and all of them said the same thing: you’re dying, and we just don’t know why. With all of the “creepy stories” floating around the internet, you’d think I’d have known better than to start digging for old VHS tapes in the hopes of finding a gem. A true gem, something that shines unconditionally, like pepperoni on a pizza.
I’d always been a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as a kid, but then I grew up. And it’s weird going back to the past, because things aren’t how you remember them. Your mind reorders them. It arranges them however it wants. It casts bit players as villains and sets up scenery that never existed because the imagination is a “reconstruction”. I worked as a writer for a popular 90’s program, and they wanted me to come up with a flashy new character to fill out the show’s original lineup. I know, not the most glamorous job, but better than being a cleaning person, and much better than the factory I worked at where I made cartoon-style googly eyes, many of which were still around the house. I had made a lot of storyboards, but I needed some inspiration, and being relegated to crutches and a bandanna, decided to watch some other kids shows for “inspiration”. I suddenly felt hungry for pizza.
Well, I had found the dusty VHS in a bin in the garage. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, my favorite. I opened up the sleeve to the VHS to find a picture of a turtle smiling with its mouth open, no teeth but gums visible. Do turtles even have gums? This turtle had gums, I’ll tell you that. And not the kind you chew. Not the kind you chew at all. I could really go for some pizza.
It was hard to watch the VHS because my condition had made me blind in one eye. With my one seeing good eye, I popped the VHS in, expecting a great program. Instead…I got a program that started to scare me and create a creeping feeling of dread that would persist to this day if I was still around.
The intro played as normal, though instead of “Turtles in a half shell, turtle power” I heard the lyrics “Turtles in a clam shell, enjoy your clam chowder.” I was eating a baby marzipan mouse with pearl icing eyes I’d mixed with my brand new Chop Shredder, so I thought nothing of it, though there was clam chowder in the pantry…hmm, maybe this is all irrelevant. Little did I know just how irrelevant it was. I decided to order a pizza.
The turtles were in the sewer and I remembered them all clearly, Leonardo, Donatello, Michaelangelo, Rafael. Maybe you never noticed, but they’re all the same animation with different colored bandanas in MS Paint. And all the anchovies on the pizza are actually easter eggs of the artists’ heads drawn in.
Something was…off. Wait a minute. Their heads were two sizes too large, and one of them had a massive eye. “Shredder’s really done it this time!” Rafael said. “How will we fight crime with our swollen heads!” They yelled. Something was wandering around in the background, it looked like a jackolantern. This seemed like the middle of an episode, not a beginning.
“There’s something totally rad about this pizza!” One of the turtles said. It was covered in pubic hair and lemons. A shot of Mr. Clean was in the background. Then he immediately said “I don’t feel so well, and fell over sick”. There was just a shot of foot soldiers carrying the turtle away with cartoon “X’s” in his eyes. “ You killed him!” They yelled. The camera froze suddenly and there was a highly stylized shot of three turtles standing at a grave. A strange eulogy began. One of the turtles was at the podium, delivering a sermon to a crowd. “He wasn’t human, he was but a turtle, but we saw him as human. He was representative of a person. And though he’s gone, his legacy lives on.” I was really confused, I mean, I thought this was a kids’ tv show. I never saw an episode where one of the teenage mutant turtles died.
My ear fell off. The doctors told me I was going deaf, but they didn’t tell me that I would actually lose the ear itself. The bloody hole was singing with pain, so I taped some gauze to it and continued watching. “We have to stop shredder”. The turtles said. “This time he’s gone too far.” There was a scene showing shredder, the evil samurai, plotting with Hitler to stop the turtles. There was a shot of shredder dressing up Nazis in foot soldier garb and seNDing them to fight the turtles. The next shot showed all of the turtles sitting around, eating pizza and watching TV in the sewers when several foot soldier Nazis came in. One of them shot Leonardo in the head and wrapped a bag over it. They grabbed Michaelangelo while he cried and pulled out a combat knife. The next scene was highly graphic and disturbing. They cut Michaelangelo’s back open by dragging the razor sharp edge around his shell. With a violent peeling back, they ripped off the back of his shell while his organs struggled to maintain composure. He stumbled around the hideout, bleeding before his organs completely fell out and he collapsed on the floor.
Splinter the rat immediately entered. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY TURTLES!” he yelled, and his whiskers furrowed. He ran across the room with tears streaming down his face before he stopped. Shredder had placed a massive sticky trap on the floor of the hideout. The more he struggled, the more he became stuck in the glue trap, violently pinned to it until his muscles gave out and he lay there. Another massive sticky trap came down from the roof, sandwiching him.
I myself suddenly became hungry for a sandwich. I heard a ghostly clattering at the cupboards, but thought nothing of it. As I walked toward the kitchen, my right leg ceased to function and I fell straight down. A two inch nail that had been sticking up from the floorboards became painfully driven into my skull. I thought I smelled something, but then I remembered that my ability to smell had been removed due to my painful condition. I swore I smelled peanut butter. My insides felt like broken glass as I looked down to see that pieces of my stomach were falling out. I pulled the nail out of my skull, bandaged my broken wrist and tried to snap my neck into place as I made a sandwich, then sat back down to watch the program. But first, I called Domino’s and ordered…ordered a pizza.
The fourth and final turtle was shown being burned to death in the hideout as he screamed and melted into googly eyed ice cream. Baxter Stockman had the remains cremated. There was nothing now, no music, no laughter, no return of the turtles. That was it. A shot of the technodrome, the massive spherical building crossing a desolate plain was shown. Inside, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong Il, Mussolini and Shredder all plotted to take over the world. Shredder appeared quite happy. “Now that the turtles are dead, there is NOTHING to stop me from enjoying this delicious pizza”. He ate the pizza hungrily, removing his mask off screen. A huge, bloody eye loomed across the massive landscape, empty, cold, dead.
Splinter was dangling by a chain over a pool of water, still sandwiched in the glue trap while his drunken baby rat head poked out. “Please, Shredder.” The rat said. “I just came to you for a little food, and a corner to rest in.” His baby rat eyes glistened in the dark. “You could’ve been my friend, you could’ve kept me as a pet, but all your hatred and prejudice got in the way.” “RATS CARRY DISEASES!” Shredder yelled, disheveled in a way.
Shredder unflinchingly cleaned the floor. He was dressed as a cleaning lady now, though he still had the samurai mask on. He was trying to clean blood out of tiles as the interior of the technodrome looked like a massive bathroom. “I know you have humanity.” Splinter said, choking. “Please.” He said. “Let me live.” The glue trap fell down instantly as the rat struggled in the trap, attempting to gasp for air. The water bubbled and bubbled as the massive container of water appeared to be a bucket.
It gurgled and then fell still. Foot soldiers pulled the chain up, revealing Splinter frozen, mouth agape, teeth glistening and curly rat tail limp. There was a shot of houses with locked doors, people with their head down, and four coffins being lowered into the ground as the end music of the VHS played. Shredder pulled his trademark mask off, revealing…my face. Or maybe not. It was hard to tell as I was almost completely blind, but it looked like my face. It was 9:30 and if I didn’t have a new character designed by 2 AM tomorrow, I’d surely be fired. And where the fuck was my pizza?!?!
I was having more problems as I had become completely numb from the waist down. My nose fell off like Michael Jackson as I stumbled into the bathroom, vomiting up blood and some of my internal organs. I stumbled into the kitchen, realizing that sandwich I’d eaten earlier had been contaminated. I could’ve called 9-1-1, but instead I stumbled into the kitchen, fumbling through the cupboards and pulling out a can of clam chowder covered in hair. I peeled it open, poured the bowl, hit 69 on the microwave and fell backwards, as my intestines seemed to be bunching up and falling out. I hesitantly pulled them back in and clenched to keep them in place, then I tripped as my eye fell out and was dangling out of its socket. I tried to dice some scallions to put on the chowder but my finger slipped and I chopped off three of the five upper 1/3rd's of my index finger on the right hand. I sneezed, and lacking a nose, my jaw flew off and landed in the sink. My tongue dangled down covered in blood as I tried to put the VHS slipcase back into the player. Something with a massive jaw was crawling toward me, but it was in my blind spot. I heard the wind rustle outside. That better be my fucking pizza.
The blood vessel in my ear had become clotted so my head began to swell with blood and drip out of the bloody nostril holes. I struggled to eat my clam chowder before choking and stumbling into the bathroom. My right kneecap shattered as my broken ankle tripped and smashed into the tile floor. I heard a “pop” and the cap slipped up from my knee into my upper thigh as a hollow disjointed segment lacking cartilage twisted like a chicken bone and I fell into the tub, slamming my head on the side, knocking out my tooth fillings and sending both of my eyeballs flying across the room. I had been holding an Axe deodorant stick the flew off, hitting some Q tips that flew into the air and came down with such propulsive force that they became lodged in and broke my urethra and penis bone.
Oddly enough, I could “see” under the stove. Delicious chewing gum. The doorbell was ringing. My pizza!
With what was left of my hearing, I could hear my phone ringing. I struggled to pick it up, but slipped under water. I could hear something that sounded like a rat falling inside the wall. It sounded like an animal had tripped. I heard a slick noise as there was some really loud movement against sloshing. I could hear what sounded like an animal crying as it struggled “oh no” against the massive wash of water, violently and painfully clinging to something before going limp and dying. There was no sound now, and the water poured into my brain. I, knowing there was a need to survive, an imperative to do so, immediately pulled the brain out of my skull using the top of my head that cracked open like a soft boiled egg. I slapped two googly eyes on it and drew a smile with a sharpie before flinging it across the room. The pizza delivery man broke the door open with a butter knife, jaw agape at the brain laying on the floor.
And that, my friends, is how the TMNT developer’s came up with the character “Krang”.
Credit to original owner here: http://pastebin.com/VnFRHSeQ