Unknown Sound Recording

(Written by Matt Dillon)

Alice held her breath, offered a silent prayer, and began carefully brushing away at the dirt. Keeping her hand steady, she slowly, oh-so painfully slowly, began to trace the contours of the artifact buried in the dirt, unable or unwilling to keep the grin off her face. It had taken her fifteen years to find this place. Fifteen years of her life, her youth, frittered away on this pursuit, this self-imposed mission, this holy crusade. She’d read everything she could find on the InterColony Network, spoken to anyone she could find who remembered the old legends. She’d even found some recordings, buried deep in the hard drives of shady collectors. They’d charged her a small fortune just to listen, let alone to take a copy. One guy even offered to let her have the whole collection in exchange for… well, the sort of thing fat sweaty obsessives who live in their parents’ basement don’t usually experience. Alice had declined, and paid cash instead. She had a feeling he’d spend it in the red light district on Satellite Five. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that his audio files had provided the final piece of the puzzle, the final clue to finding these ruins. And here was Alice, scrabbling in the dirt, burning with hope that the clump of earth in front of her held the prize she desired.
This place had been a home once. A house, like the one Alice’s great great great grandmother had grown up in, before the apocalypse. It had taken humanity four hundred years to rebuild, to recover from the ragnarok which had come so suddenly, so effectively, and turned Earth’s children against her, but no-one had rebuilt this place. No-one came here any more. No-one remembered why, but Alice knew. This place was sacred, in a way. This was where it had all began. When she’d firt ducky under the crumbling doorway, she’d even fancied she could see the impression of two sets of buttocks still perfectly preserved in the petrified sofa by the far wall, but she knew that it was nonsense. Besides, it wasn’t the sofa that had brought her; it was the precious treasure that now rested beneath her questing fingers.
Alice gasped. She’d brushed away enough debris to see clearly what she was digging out. It was only a corner, the smallest patch of surface, but it was enough. She had been right! They’d called her insane to believe it, but she knew it was all true, and here was proof! The joy of swift vindication bubbled through her, making her cackle with laughter. Grinning like a loon, she threw the brush aside and began digging with her fingers, all care forgotten in her fervour. And then, at last, it was hers, shining in the darkness like a forgotten jewel. Her holy grail, her Shroud of Turin. As her hand closed around it, sending a supernatural bolt of energy through her skin, she dared whisper its name, the first human being to say it aloud in four centuries.

Falcor.

Now the power belonged to Alice. This time, she’d see to it that the world ended properly.

(Written by Nathan Head)

In an underground government storage facility beneath Summit Lake. Officer McTuttle walks down long corridor, aided by two armed guards. He reaches the end and the guards stand back, banging on the door he pauses a minute and shouts “We’re coming in, stand away from the door”.
Nodding to one of the guards to open the latch and aim his rifle towards the cell. The dimly lit room is dank and depressing with little or no furnishings, a small chair in the centre and a sheet on the floor (presumably for sleeping under). The soundtrack to The Evil Dead musical can be heard from within. “Turn that fucking shit off” alerts McTuttle as both of the guards fire at the MP3 player, blowing it to pieces, “It’s shit like that that started this whole mess in the first place”.
The three of them pan the room and their eyes stop at the two haggard figures lurking in the darkness. “We’re ready for you guys” instructs McTuttle. One of the guards turns the cell light on as we see Mike and Ike slowly stand, shading their eyes from the harsh lighting. Officer McTuttle holds up a USB storage drive and says “you boys have got some explainin’ ta do”.
Mike and Ike are taken to an interrogation room, on the table in front of them are many miscellaneous items; a photograph of Jenny, a Blueray of ‘Serbian Film’, a plastic bag labelled ‘Remains of crushed cat’ and finally a lubed up carrot.
Officer McTuttle, having spent the past few days trying to get a single word out of the pair, screams out “For too long the world has been suffering because of some fucking podcast you two put on the internet, did you not realise who could hear it? My goddam mother heard that fucking song, What the F…” the Officer and guards are taken aback as Mike and Ike leap up and interrupt McTuttle by finishing off the song “..Uck was that? I got some Shelly on my shoe. What darkness lurks beyond this wooden sanctum?” The pair are quickly tasered back into their seats by the guards.
“You are a sick coupl’a bastards” Grits McTuttle as Mike soils himself from the electric shock “I aught’a deport your tuna-melt eating ass back to Bucking-ham or Liver-pool or wherever it is you slithered over from.”
He nods up towards a mirror on the wall and winks at it, almost immediately the lights dim and a screen is lowered down behind him. A video is played showing panic in the streets, various scenes of rioting from across the world are intercut with news reports detailing the history of the Mike and Ike podcast and their parody songs. The image freezes on a frame and McTuttle shouts “Zoom in and show ‘em what we found”.
Mike and Ike look at either other confused, Ike has an itch and can’t reach it “Can you please loosen the straps on this straight jacket? I gotta scratch my balls”.
McTuttle slams his fist down on the table and then grabs Ike’s head firmly in both hands, squeezing his cheeks into a pout. “Just look at the fuckin’ screen!” he yells.
The image on the screen has been magnified to show someone crawling out of a garbage can.
Mike’s jaw drops as he says “Jennifer’s alive?”

(Written by Colleen McEuen)

James and Eddie first heard Mike and Ike’s Serbian Film song at work. It was a slow night. There were neither medical emergencies nor fires that needed put out. By two a.m. the fireman knew they should have been asleep. Instead, they grew anxious. The song was all that mattered. The deviant splendor enlightened them. They soon came to realize their duty to the citizen’s of Washington D.C was not to help with fires, but to spread the Word.
James maneuvered the fire engine to the center of town. They drove through the silent suburbs, bars closing for the night, the senators, the hookers, and up to the brightly lit White House.
Once parked Eddie connected his ipod to the vehicle’s loudspeaker system. “You ready for this?”
“No.” James said, “But we must do it.”
“Think we’ll lose out jobs?”
“Does it matter?”
Eddie laughed and pressed play, “Nah.”
James slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The engine roared to life. He flipped a switch and red strobe lights danced over the city. The lyrical stylings infected the subconscious of every man, woman, and child.
By the time the two fireman ended their shift the sun breached the horizon. Their superiors had no clue about their prank. It wasn’t until James and Eddie went to IHOP did the fruits of their labor bloom into fruition.
A waitress hummed the Sound of Music tune as she went from table to table. After she took an order to the cook a loud bang echoed into the restaurant. Blood seeped under the door. The waitress stumbled out. The cook’s head swung in her hand.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” An old man crossed his chest and fell back against the front door.
“Hey,” A young woman shouted at him. “I don’t need you to force your religion on me.” She threw a fork at him. The dull steel embedded in his eye.
The riot began. James and Eddie sat back, finished their pancakes and watched the show.
It moved out to the street where it converged with another chaotic horde. Flames burst out storefront windows. Cars crashed into one another, into people, and buildings. Wives chased after their cheating Senator husbands. A gang of children pummeled a stripper to death.
After breakfast the two firemen walked out to the parking lot, dodging silverware and a Molotov cocktail.
“What do we do now?” Eddie asked.
James surveyed the chaos. He saw the White House in all its glory. The military surrounded the perimeter. Instead of protecting the President they stormed the castle.
“As the Unofficial Official Spokesmen for Mike and Ike we continue doing what we did last night. It’s time to spread the word. And take out as many people as we can in the process.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah,” James slipped on his sunglasses. “Back to the station then.”
They stole the fire engine with Eddie’s ipod still inside. Their manager ran out to stop them, but James ran him over without hesitating. Eddie turned back on the song. As James steered the blood-coated fire engine out of the city limits the two men sang along with the sadistic tune.

(Written by Ryan Smith/ThatGuy/Marlo)

This was the fifth time he’d had the dream, but he would never know this. Upon awakening, as always, he would find himself screaming in bed, covered in sweat and piss. The dream started with darkness, and the sound of applause. Abruptly, an image appeared in his mind of a television screen, with the familiar sight of Jay Leno rubbing his hands together, grinning and looking pleased with himself for another lame joke. “So….what else, oh! Today, congress debated whether or not they should take another look at Obama’s health plan….” Here, Leno always raised his eyebrows. “There just wasn’t enough room for PROSTITUTES under the original bill, it would seem!” Here, he faked straightening his tie, as he had all four other times. The applause in the crowd was uproarious, and joined with the sound of hooting and strangely animal-sounding laughter. The sound of the crowd abruptly changed to the sound of animals, howling, barking, caning, keening,…it was the sound of monkeys. Monkeys jibbering and howling excitedly, as they now flew into view out of the audience onto the screen, Jay pointing and laughing smugly, until they became a swarm of bees, a cloud, and then one flew right at the camera and OUT of the screen right at him-

After cleaning himself off and changing his bedding for the 5th time in as many nights, he really wondered if he needed to see a doctor. What was going on? His diet hadn’t changed. He hadn’t done anything different. His job still sucked. He still drank himself to sleep at least one night a week. He smoked and tried to think of something to occupy his mind until sleep might re-embrace him. That Mike and Ike podcast, now that was hilarious. What was it that had cracked him up so hard? That voice. That voice they did on one of their fake commercials, the one about the anti-christ, the one he could do, too…he had discovered the trick of partially closing off the back of his throat as a child in order to fake an opera voice so that he could imitate Michigan J. Frog. He could do an alright Chubby Checker and Louis Armstrong with it, too…but by speaking in a slight falsetto through it, it took on the sound of what he liked to call “Panky The Elf”. “Hel-lo…” he said to himself in the voice, and smiled. He already felt better. He lay down and slept.

The next day, he awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. He answered it in the voice. While the voice spoke through him, it also spoke to him. He left the house naked, carrying only a kitchen knife. “Hel-lo, my name is Panky the El-l-lf. Tee-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE” he tittered. He heard the tinny “Turkey-In-The-Straw” of an ice cream truck in the distance, and followed, carving a lazy, bleeding S into his thigh as he walked.

(Written by Joe Fischer)

He was drifting in and out while sitting at his computer. He smirked a bit as the Serbian Film song rattled around in his head. Mike and Ike could always make him smile. Arthur rolled his head back as he stretched in his chair, where had the time gone? It was getting late and, the sun had long since set. A sudden urge griped him that now was a good time for a walk. More over, he felt compelled to go outside. Arthur wasn’t the outdoorsy type so, this was a new feeling for him. Yawning as he moved, Arthur slowly dragged himself out of his office and through his house, leaning on walls as he went. Sleepily, he walked into his garage and stared at his work bench.

“Here,” he thought.”Here is a collection of things that I have rarely, if ever use.” he found himself running his fingers along the blade of a machete, a house warming gift from a friend. He stared almost dreamily at the collection of screwdrivers. Slowly, he reached out and touched them. Arthur smiled as he turned on his heels and pressed the button to open the door of his garage. While the door slowly rose he started whistling a song to himself, rather absentmindedly. He was watching the door opener and not the growing space at the bottom.

Arthur didn’t even notice the little girl from down the street standing there until the door had reached its apex. The sudden realization that he was being watched made him instantly stop whistling and turn red in the face. He was now searching his mind for the little girl’s name. He recognized her of course, he knew she lived just up the road. Her name totally escaped him. “What was to be expected of him,” he thought. “Its not like the neighbors got together with any kind of regularity.” That’s when he realized the two were just staring at each other, neither moving or speaking.

“Tabitha,” the girl finally said. “The name you’ve been searching for,” she paused, “my name.” Arthur began to feel very sheepish. “I heard you whistling,” she told him. “Are you a Mike and Ike fan too?” a smile returned to Arthur’s face as a sense of calm washed over him.

“Why yes… yes I am,” he said. “Have you heard their newest episode?” Tabitha stared at Arthur almost as if she was looking through him and yet, some how, it was calming for Arthur.

“That’s a silly question,” stated Tabitha, “I recognized the song you were whistling.” Arthur’s smile grew, it now stretched from ear to ear.

“Would you care to join me on my walk?” Arthur offered as he extended his hand. Tabitha, who until this point hadn’t moved, now crossed the garage to stand right in front of Arthur. She began to smile a very innocent, sweet smile.

“I would love to,” she said. Tabitha took the screwdriver from Arthur’s out stretched hand and placed it, with a pat, in her pocket. As the two began walking down the street into the absence of street lights a tiny, beautiful voice drifted from the darkness “do… you see… a baby raped…”

(Written by Dave McGuigan)

It was a normal, sunny day at the theme park, filled with families and laughing children enjoying the opportunity to meet their costumed idols and gaze in wonderment at the sights around them. Chris was just one of many, a normal young man passing the day at the park. Slightly high, but no more than usual for a Sunday.

Chris didn’t normally take his Ipod to the park, but today it had seemed to almost suggest itself to him as he was leaving the house. He scrolled to the podcasts menu, selected one that would suit his mood (and his slightly altered mental state), and headed towards the teacup ride.

As he walked, he began to chuckle to himself at the podcast. Considering where he was, it started fairly aptly with some (admittedly slightly twisted) Disney talk, and he’d seen some of the films the hosts were now reviewing so felt involved. Chris decided that this was going to be a good day.

Suddenly, he froze on the spot, as if an unseen force had pinned him to the ground. At first no-one around him thought twice, believing him to simply be transfixed by a buxom young lady nearby in a particularly enchanting Sleeping Beauty costume. It was only when he started snarling that it was clear something was amiss…

People began to back away, as he started chanting what sounded to those within earshot to be something like “mechanic”, over and over again, getting louder and louder until it was less of a word and more of a guttural scream. After a minute or so he went silent, as two burly security guards approached to try to calm the situation. The first one spoke to him, calmly but with authority so as not to further disturb the growing pack of onlookers, but received no response. It was as if Chris was not even aware of their presence, instead taking on a thousand yard stare.

As one guard reached out to take Chris’s arm, he snapped back into life and reached for his earphones, removing them and throwing the MP3 player to the ground. As it shattered into pieces, the sounds from within could suddenly be heard by all, as if they had been freed. Or escaped. No-one quite knew what to make of what they were hearing, some bastardisation of a musical piece that seemed to tell of unspeakable horrors, but for a moment it seemed to calm Chris down. There was a noticeable change in his posture and the tension seemed to lift as he let out an audible sigh and reached calmly into his jacket pocket.

Within seconds, both guards lay dead at his feet. And then the screaming started…

(Written by Danny Davies)

I’d switched off both my deaf aids before I stepped on to the station platform. Always do before the commute. It muffles the grunts and farts of the other passengers, the whine of the powerlines. Turns the volume down on the Kings Cross Express.

I remember the guy that started it all. He’d sat next to me on the bench, flitting between songs on his iPhone, until he settled on one. Didn’t see the full title, but I know that two blokes named Mike and Ike were responsible. Something about a tambourine? Submarine?

Mostly, he seemed amused. Then came… I don’t know what. He laughed, but his eyes filled with tears. Plainly, what was making him laugh shouldn’t be. With passing seconds, fear turned to shame, arousal, joy, disgust. The laughter continued, contorting his face in waves of panic, remorse, anger, and occasionally retching amidst the sobs and guffaws.

Then something seemed to snap inside him. Calmly, he removed his headphones and made his way along the platform to the little telephone receiver the guards use to make announcements.

I read his lips as he bellowed to the other commuters. Policemen. Old couples. Two priests. A primary school teacher and her class. Office workers.

‘Everybody!’ he cried ‘I think you need to hear this!’

He held his iPhone up to the mouthpiece. I could make out it was music. Just.

Everyone froze and listened. That same tsunami of emotions played across all their faces. Hands were wrung. Some vomited. Others wept.

The first stood and looked on. He’d moved further along this path, and knew what must be done. He punched at a nearby window pane, twice, and pulled from the frame a carving knife sized shard of glass. He brought it up to his jaw line, dragging that chunk of glass around his face, then tucked his fingers under the skin. When he’d grip enough on his loosening face, he began to tug, hard. With further effort his face came free, revealing twitching, bleeding face-meat, and a pair of horrified, unclosing eyes. Then, he disrobed, and began on the rest of his body.

The others stopped. That, they realised, was the only way to escape what they’d heard – to get out of their own skins. They began worrying at each other like dogs, tearing at each other’s skin, which came away in bloody fistfuls. I saw their heads thrown back in maniacal laughter, bitter tears stinging their skinless, lidless eyes. The children were most vicious, some of them gouging out their friends eyes, stepping on them and grinding them into the platform.

It was when I tried to run for cover that they noticed me, and the skin still clinging to me. I dashed off the platform, onto the track, and they chased. Once off the track I started running backwards, facing the skinned horde inching towards me. I didn’t see what I’d backed into, but it struck my head hard, knocking me out.

I came round covered in blood. Caked in my hair, pooled in my ears, soaking through my jeans and dripping on to my legs, cooling in the breeze across the far trackside. I looked over to the platform, wondering how I was still there, intact. Smeared along the length, and underneath, a crashed train, were the other commuters.

(Written by WhoisJonathon8)

Not a long time ahead, in a neighborhood not so very far away, a certain high school vampire is, no doubt, out for blood. Even monsters get the fucking munchies, you know. He probably draws up his hoodie and sidles into a likely suburban garden.

Hello, window – and hello, three dudes huddled around a computer. They’ll do. Young, reasonably healthy-looking, and… listening to something online?

Could it be – oh fuck.

It is.

Not a-fucking-gain.

That’s the Mike & Ike podcast, and that means…

The sudden, sloppy, triple thwack of skull fragments and brain matter traveling violently in all directions within the confines of a small room is unique onomatopoeia. Our hero looks sadly at the drippy, moist mess sliding gently down the inside of the window, knowing that behind all that slimy sludge on the glass, liters and liters of lovely fresh red stuff are not only spilling uselessly out of three necks that have just failed in their primary function, but are getting all gross upon mixing with the dust and carpet hairs on the floor.

Dinner plans thwarted again, and it’s happening more and more often these days… The immortal hoodlum throws back the hood of his hoodie, bares his teeth with due melodrama, and shakes his disappointingly unbloodied fist at the cold and disinterested stars.

“Damn you, Mike & Ike – damn you and your killer podcasts to fucking hell…”

(Written by Matt Dillon)

I always knew I’d kill Pooh Bear first. He always rubbed me up the wrong way, singing his stupid fucking songs and smiling at the children with that benevolent glassy stare. He was always so fucking cheerful. Well, I knew what that cheer hid: a closet case with halitosis and a wee bit of a drinky problem. Cunt even hid his bourbon in the fucking hunny pot. What a joke. What a goddamned, hypocritical fucking joke. Well, Pooh wasn’t singing any more. He wasn’t doing much of anything any more. Not since I plugged him through the skull with my 12-gauge, blood and fluff all over the grass. Wasn’t even real fucking grass, it was that scratchy astroturf shit. I fucking hate this place; so fake, so much bullshit. I’m gonna make the 100 Acre motherfucking Wood burn.
Kanga’s looking at me now. Looking at me real funny. Like she understands. She’s nodding: it had to be done. She’s not scared of me. She gets me. She knows what Mike & Ike are all about. What they needed us to do. No… what humanity needed us to do. This is how it had to go down: me, Kanga, my shotgun and a whole lotta cleansing. Cleansing that helps to wash the pain away. Mike & Ike knew all about this.
Then I see it: Piglet’s making a break for it. I knew he would. He’s a fucking coward, has been since the day I met him. He gets both barrels in the back as he runs away. I turn just in time to see Roo. Little man’s all growed up, swinging for me with a fire axe. Where’s he even get that anyway? It doesn’t matter, he’s not quick enough: I smash him in the face with the butt of my rifle and step on his chest, smiling at him as I slowly reload and point the muzzle at his face. He’s terrified now, realizing how futile his bravery was. On any other day I might have given him props for trying. Doesn’t soothe my itchy trigger-finger though. It twitches, and he’s gone.
As I watch his face explode into a million fragments, I get a rush. A rush of what, I don’t know, but suddenly my heart’s pumping, my mouth’s laughing and my cock’s harder than it’s ever been before. I need to fuck something, I need to fuck something now, and Kanga’s only too willing to offer her mouth. She wraps her silky tongue around my burning shaft as I reload again, cackling like a fucking maniac. Only I’m not a maniac. I’m righteous. Mike & Ike told me so. That’s right bitch, suck it down. Let’s make our own little donkey show right here.
The gun’s reloaded, and the path is clear. I’m gonna let Kanga finish up, then I’m going to find Rabbit, Owl and that cunt Tigger, and I’m going to introduce them to my boomstick. And when the 100 Acre Wood drenched in blood, I’m going to kill every last fucker in the Magic Kingdom. Oh, they laughed at me, they clapped and they cheered, but nobody’s gonna laugh at ol’ Eeyore ever again, thanks to Mike & Ike.
I never did like working at Disneyland. The stupid fucking costumes make my balls itch.

(Written by Matthew Dray)

This is Karen. She’s 23, works as an assistant librarian and she is working on the screenplay for a horror film, ‘The Insane Dead’, which is due to be filmed in three months time with a group of her friends. At least, that’s who she was before she went bat shit insane and gutted her boyfriend.
It began earlier in the evening. Steven had come home from work in a foul mood, bearing a bottle of navy rum and a pizza, and declared that all plans were off. He needed cheering up and he needed it now, and the only thing that would soothe his mood at that moment was the new episode of Mike & Ike’s All-Star Summer Jamboree.
The booze was poured into generously sized glasses, the pizza box placed upon the bed of their bed-sit, the PC was fired up and the podcast stream started.
Nothing seemed different at first. They just sat and listened to the boys vent and praise and crack wise about everything from Evil Dead: The Musical to Disney, Lloyd Kaufman to The Psycho Legacy, but it was the song that caused their evening to take a turn down a dark, dark alleyway.
Later on, in her more lucid and quiet moments between bouts of homicidal laughter, Karen wouldn’t be able to say exactly how it started. One minute they were laughing at the sick song the boys had written about ‘A Serbian Film’, the next she had found her fist and forearm buried inside Steven’s arsehole while she bit a chunk out of his buttock as he beat himself off. Even when she realized what was happening, she didn’t want to stop and she kept on pummeling his colon for all she was worth as he screamed and rubbed himself raw.
Steven came violently and she pulled her arm from him as his ruined sphincter tried to contract and release around it. Blood and shit and sweetcorn followed her limb and slopped onto the bed and dripped from her arm and something inside her snapped.
“You filthy, filthy cunt. Look what you’ve done!”
The endorphin rush had yet to wear off and Steve just laughed, all the while fingering the ripped gash in his buttock, picking at a flap of flesh her teeth left behind, and before he had a chance to react, Karen had grabbed the straight razor from the bedside table and with a swoop of her arm, sliced a great gash into his abdomen.
The look on his face was priceless, part confusion, part pain and part delight and he tried to sit up to have a look. His movement caused his wound to open further, pushing his already damaged intestines through the rip and out onto his body. He began laughing and crying all at once as Karen moved up his body and put the razor against his throat. She smirked at him as tears poured down her face and she kissed him tenderly and slashed with all her might. She slowly pulled back and watched as the life fled from his fragile, ruined form and one word slipped unbidden from her lips, barely audible.
“Namaste.”

(Written by Scott Clevenger)

“The medium is the message.” He began repeating the sentence midway through Mike and Ike’s podcast, his voice distant and dreamy at first, but quickly becoming thin and strained, until his face was pale and pebbled with perspiration, and he passed each word like a kidney stone.
“Shut up, Antoine! Shut up!”
“The medium,” he groaned, “is the message,” and she somehow knew in her gut, in the bottom of her soul, that he would never again have a moment’s peace; so she clubbed him like a baby harp seal, although her bludgeon of choice was a frozen veal-hip from Whole Foods. $14.98 a pound, which painfully stretched her budget for the challenge, but the theme this week was “Meals on Veals,” and she was certain none of the other contestants would dare use a cheaper cut, like shin or ankle.
Vanessa quickly, professionally butchered his remains in the bathtub – there was certainly no shortage of boning knives and cleavers in this house! Top Chef: Cleveland was perhaps the stupidest idea in reality TV history, but at least the stench of dead fish and chemicals wafting in off the Cuyahoga River would mask the aroma of fear and blood seeping from under the bathroom door.
She buried Antoine’s neatly disassembled parts in the basement, but she couldn’t dispose of the dented and gory veal-hip; she’d need that for tonight’s challenge.
And all day, his last rasping words chased each other around her brain: “The medium is the message.”
Well, now that she thought of it, yeah. Of course it is. After all, what’s the message of a snuff movie? Death. And then they had to go and sing about it. Had to turn it into a goddamn earworm…
She couldn’t get it out of her head while she cooked, but in a way the demented ditty was a welcome thing. It crowded out all the usual distractions, the other contestants hustling around the kitchen, the hot, overly bright lights, the cameras peering at her like a bunch of masturbating, cycloptic voyeurs.
She was flushed with pride and confidence as she plated, but the judges were strangely, almost inhumanly harsh in their criticism. Padma said it was “like a war atrocity in my mouth.” Tom Colicchio announced that after tasting her food, “my tongue wants to quit and go into business as an anus.”
Gail Simmons of Food & Wine magazine had kind words for Vanessa’s pomegranate demi-glace, but Anthony Bourdain seemed like he wanted to climb across the table and punch her until she hemorrhaged.
“That veal tasted like you pole-axed a hobo with it!” he screamed. “It’s like you wiped your ass with an uncured skunk pelt, then swabbed out the drain of an abattoir and wrung the residue into my mouth! I’m going home right now and slowly, individually cauterizing each taste bud with my kid’s wood-burning kit!”
He took a short, sharp, gasping breath, his face red and his eyes bulging as though he were being strangled by his own rage. “However,” he added, “I did enjoy your English-style pea purée.”
She squinted at him, trying hard to focus, but still she nearly missed the grudging words of praise. The song inside her skull just seemed to get louder…

(Written by Walter Cunningham)

I was just sitting at the counter, minding my own business. Normally the coffee at these truck stops isn’t very satisfying but there was something different about it, could’ve been the best cup I ever had.
Then the bell over the door gave a jingle. A group of college kids came walking through and took up a booth in the corner. I didn’t focus too much on them; I was just sipping my drink. About five minutes after they sat down, they started talking real loud. Now in a little place like this, anything above a whisper is going to get heard by someone, and these kids were just going on and on about a Mike & Ike thing.
At that time, I had never heard of Mike & Ike, I never got to a computer that often and nobody told me about them. It sounded interesting, so I walked over to their table and ask them to show me what they were talking about. One of the kids had a phone that used internet and started showing me the “Totally” videos. It was unlike everything I’d ever seen before, it made me laugh, made me think, I was hooked. They showed me every video they posted and started playing their podcast.
During the second podcast, one of the kids made a comment about the slipping accents and how it helped them to appeal to an audience of struggling actors. This kid just didn’t get it. He could never appreciate the true genius at work here, for Christ sake, he was wearing a Napoleon Dynamite T-shirt! This would not do.
I grabbed a fork that was near my hand and I jammed it into his throat. He looked so surprised, and so did everyone else. They didn’t get it either. I broke a glass and used the sharp edges for a throat cutter on the douche with a beanie hat. I drowned the hippie in his bowl of soup, and I took his weed to pay tribute to the best group of critics that ever have or will walk the Earth.
The ignorant were dead, no one left to misunderstand or misrepresent Mike & Ike. The silence was deafening. I paid for my coffee and began to leave but just as I hit the door, my waitress whispered to me, “Sir?” I knew right away what I forgot. I returned to the counter and gave her a $2 tip and told her, “Thank you. Best coffee I ever had.”

(Written by Mike & Ike)

It was the Serbian Film song that finally did it.
Jennifer didn’t get all of Mike & Ike’s jokes, but she laughed a lot and they were just fun to listen to. She hadn’t watched Surprise. She hated zombies.
The second episode of the infected podcast was really funny, even for them. She loved the Disney rant and the two word movie reviews, but the song.
It just wasn’t right. She knew enough about Serbian Film to know she didn’t want to see it, and they did say they were giving spoilers. And it was a parody of a Sound of Music song!
This just shouldn’t have happened. It’s full of horrible things and the song is so bouncy and happy and it was funny and she was disgusted and it just wasn’t right.
She started by killing the cat. Dropped a TV on it. It was strangely fulfilling, but it didn’t take away the pain in her head.
Then she killed the kid. Dropped the other TV on it. Also fulfilling, but no medicine. Even the tuna melt didn’t help.
There had to be a way to make it stop.
The couple in the next apartment started arguing again, something about her missing Gossip Girl DVD’s. Their door was open.
And for one brief beautiful second everything made sense again.
But then the song came back, and with it the pain.
She finally stopped stabbing and thought for a moment. Two helped a little. There was a family of four two floors down watching Full House together at that very moment.

Jennifer smiled. She was going to need another knife.

FROM: TREVOR BARCLAY
TO: MARCUS RAINS
RE: PODCAST

Doctor,

Per your request, attached are the first round of logs I’ve collected on the infected podcast. A lot of people want to tell the stories, so I’ve set up an email address (itsMikeandIke@yahoo.com) for people to write to. I expect to have more logs soon.

I should warn you, some of these are a bit graphic, but I guess some of them need to be.

I wish I had better news for you.

Love,

T