A short horror story from the perspective of my oc Hubert Witlock, written by ES77 (Endersnake77)

CW - Psychological Horror

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Written 08/21/2016 by Admin~IWorkToMuch

People don't usually realize that children aren't born with the knowledge of what is and isn't dangerous. Fear is an involuntary and instinctual reaction, but what triggers it is learned. Whether it be through personal experience, exposure, or even through word of mouth; The things people are afraid of is because they were taught to fear it.

Similarly, No one born in Loneridge is born with the knowledge that they were born in... well, Loneridge. I feel like everyone I've ever talked to has their own traumatic memory of the day they first found out what a "missing poster" really is. No one realizes just how haunting a piece of paper inscribed with the two syllable word of "MISSING" in big red letters truly is. I honestly don't think most people think about it.

In Loneridge, they're everywhere.

You can't walk into the store to get your weekly groceries, or the theater to see a movie, or even down the street without seeing at least one. I can't tell you how many times I'd be on my way to school, only for my heart to skip a beat the moment my eyes dared catch sight of the word "MISSING" on a piece of paper stapled to an old splintered light pole.

But the second I saw it was just for someone's cat? The relief that'd wash over me! Uh-- Not to say it isn't still a bad thing...! But uh-- Well, just let me tell you my own story of the first time I learned about what a Missing Poster entails.

…

I don't remember how old I was, but I do recall being in elementary school still. Young enough that I hadn't met Charlie yet, so odds are he hadn't even moved into town at that point. It was just like any other day pretty much. I had gone to school like every other morning and our teacher took attendance, but of everyone in my class someone was... missing. I didn’t really pay any mind to it at the time, our teacher didn’t either. It's not like it was uncommon for someone to be out of school for the day, with or without a sick note so we all kind of brushed it off.

I went that whole day thinking nothing of it.

The next day, It was pretty much the same thing, more or less. I went to school, expecting the same old morning routine as always. But right before taking attendance, our teacher announced to the class in a chocked up voice “I'm sorry class, but we unfortunately we won’t be seeing Timothy Roderick for a while."

I wasn’t ever close to Tim. He sat on the other side of class from me and was pretty annoying at times. Sort of a class clown from what I remember but, I didn’t know him that well and he didn’t really know me either. That is, unless it was to call me something stupid like “Googly Eyes”. I guess he found it funny that I was the only one in our class with glasses… But I don’t think he meant to be mean about it?

Uh-- Anyway, I must've gone home that night and told my parents about it, because they found out the same night. "Timothy Roderick didn't come to school today." Looking back on it now, I feel so stupid for not fully comprehending the horror of it. Why my parents seemed so shocked and frightened, as if what I'd told them was spoken in the devil’s tongue. I don't have slightest idea to why, but I suppose by some sort of radiant means, I couldn't help but feel the same way.

His name and face was everywhere after that. Milk cartons, posters, advertisements. Out of nowhere, everyone was talking about Timothy Roderick. To a child, it would’ve seemed like he suddenly became famous. But, with how worried everybody was about it, It felt more like he’d done something terrible... or something bad happened to him. I guess I was eventually able to discern it had been the ladder.

I feel like it wasn’t until about a week later that I found what really happened.

To give you some context: My mom liked to leave a radio on in the kitchen while she made dinner. Usually it was always tuned in on the local radio station, because there isn’t much else we have access to in our area; But, sometimes the announcer would chirp in with local news. I think I was doing my homework or something? I don’t know, I just remember being in the dining room at the time when I overheard the name “Timothy Roderick” again on the radio. I don’t remember what was said really, all I know is that for some reason I ended up asking my mom about him.

She told me that he was gone.

Clueless and... a little bit anxious, I asked if was going to come back. She said he wasn’t going to. She said that "Tim had gone missing" that I'd "probably never see him again." "His parents will spend the rest of their lives mourning the loss of their little boy." She chocked on the words she spoke as if they were made of jagged iron. She hugged me. Promised me with stinging tears running down her cheeks that she’d never let anything like that happen to me.

...

I guess everyone in my neighborhood had a similar experience, because that was the norm from than on. Curfew was 8pm sharp for any and all minors. Doors and windows were to be locked shut. Parents had to keep a close eye on their children at all times no matter what. You either knew were your child was or it was something to worry about.

I dunno why, but it stuck with me. Enough that I became obsessed with it.

Apparently, I’d ask about Tim constantly. Always questioning where he went, what happened to him. Charlie even recalls me telling him all about Tim. How he disappeared, what I thought happened to him, and where he went. But I never actually got an answer. It’s weird really-- Despite how obsessed I was, I still don’t know what happened to Timothy Roderick. No one does. It's almost been 10 years and sometimes I think I might be one of the only people who still remembers his name.

I tried looking into it a bit more after all this time--finally do my research on the disappearance, y'know; especially since I was gonna be writing about it. But all I found was this article about it made by the local news station back when it all happened. According to that article, Timothy was last seen in his bedroom the night before he never came to school again... and the next morning he was gone. From what that articles states: "...his room was completely untouched". There wasn't any sign of a struggle or anything like that, even his bed was made. Nothing had changed from the night before... All except for the window. The window that overlooked the dark foreboding woodlands that surround our supposedly haunted town. Apparently, it was mysteriously left ajar, the curtains flowing gently in the morning breeze.

He’d just vanished.

Timothy Roderick was gone.

Logically, he probably ran away from home. Why, I couldn’t tell you. I've met his parents. Even with the loss of their only son, they’re not bad people--At least they don’t seem like it. And Tim wasn’t an obviously troubled kid, either. If he ran away from home, I can’t draw any concrete conclusion as to why. It's not like he would've had anywhere to go either. Loneridge is small enough that everyone pretty much knows each other. Besides, there's no where to go within a 30 mile radius. So if a kid did run away they'd turn up pretty quickly. Really, the only place he could've gone is...

...Yeah.

Needless to say, there’s never been a day since then that I can look at a Missing Poster and not find myself overcome with this haunting sense of dread.

Whether or not I knew one of the people amongst those photos of smiling faces from a moment that has long since vanished, not unlike the face that’d stare back; I think is largely irrelevant to that sensation. It never seems to matter that much if I had ever seen the person who had disappeared walking the streets of my neighborhood or attending the same class as me not even a week before. The emotions of those who knew them and the things that missing person must feel now, If anything at all… It contributed to that feeling sure, but what really scares me is a sinking question.

“What if that were me?”

What if it were my smiling photo, full name, and details scrawled out on a list for public display? Would anyone look for me? Keep an eye out for anyone who even kind of looked like me? …Would they even try to find a body? Or would I just be added to the ever growing tally list of cold cases? Forgotten about amongst a filing cabinet full of old posters? Another unsolved mystery for people to speculate about for years to come but never truly care about the victim.

...When someone goes missing, everyone talks about it and a silent hysteria rings out among us all. We fear for ourselves, our loved ones, our children, our pets...

I live alone. I’ve always kept my bathroom light on at night—habit from childhood, nothing more. But last week, something changed.

I got up at 3:12 AM (I remember because my phone lit up), walked past the bathroom, and saw myself in the mirror... already standing there. I hadn’t even stepped in yet.

She smiled. I didn’t.

I froze. It mimicked every move I made—but a second too slow. Like it was watching and deciding how to be me.

I’ve tried covering the mirror. It doesn’t help. Every night since, I’ve woken up at the same time.

She’s always there. Closer.

Last night, she didn’t copy me. She waved.

Where the Cakes Are Stale, the Candy Might Kill You, and the Smell of Burnt Flesh Just Adds to the Ambience

Ah, the Hive City Bakery and Sweets Market—where sugar, despair, and the faint scent of industrial lubricant mix into an unholy cocktail of culinary horror. If you’ve ever wondered what a post-apocalyptic bake sale looks like, congratulations, you just found it.

What’s on the menu, you ask? Oh, just the most depressing, borderline-toxic confections you’ve ever encountered.

1. “Corpse-Starch Croissants” – You Don’t Want to Know What’s in Them

Ever had a croissant so dry it doubles as sandpaper? Now imagine it was made from the recycled bodies of the unfortunate. Congratulations, you’ve just bitten into the Hive’s signature Corpse-Starch Croissant.

✨ Flaky! (Like the guy who swore he’d pay you back.) ✨ Filling! (In the same way that eating drywall is.) ✨ Sustainably sourced! (From yesterday’s unlucky citizens.)

Eat it. Don’t ask questions. If you’re hungry enough, you won’t care.

2. “Sludge Pies” – Now With 40% Less Industrial Waste!

A “pie” in the loosest sense of the word, Sludge Pies are served warm—mainly because they’re still fermenting in their own filth.

🥧 The Crust? Half-burnt, half-raw, 100% regret. 🥧 The Filling? A mystery slurry that probably started as something edible but has long since become a sentient goo that might fight back. 🥧 The Experience? A 70/30 chance of immediate food poisoning or enlightenment.

Perfect for those with no self-respect or functioning taste buds.

3. “Synth-Sugar Candies” – Sweet, Addictive, and Probably Illegal

Ever wanted to taste cavity-inducing regret with just a hint of chemical burns? Welcome to Synth-Sugar Candies, the Hive’s answer to real sweets—except engineered in some back-alley lab by a guy named Grim Jax.

🍬 Glows in the dark (definitely not natural). 🍬 Might contain traces of actual sugar. Maybe. 🍬 Side effects include dizziness, hallucinations, and brief moments of cosmic awareness.

Kids love them. Authorities hate them. That’s how you know they’re good.

4. “Meat” Puffs – But What Kind of Meat? No One Knows.

Listen, in the Grimdark Hive, you don’t ask what the meat is. If it smells vaguely edible and doesn’t actively try to crawl off your plate, it’s dinner.

🥩 Possibilities include: ✅ Rat? Maybe. ✅ Some dude who owed money to the wrong people? Could be. ✅ Industrial waste reprocessed into something “protein-adjacent”? Most likely.

Either way, slap it in some questionable pastry dough, deep fry it in yesterday’s recycled grease, and BOOM—you got yourself a Meat Puff.

Hope your stomach can handle mystery protein.

5. “Recaf ‘Delights’” – Wake Up and Regret Your Choices

Need caffeine but also mild psychosis? Try a Recaf Delight, a pastry infused with enough synthetic stimulants to make your teeth vibrate out of your skull.

☕ Baked fresh-ish daily. ☕ Tastes like burnt battery acid. ☕ Comes with a free existential crisis.

Pairs well with crippling debt and the weight of existence.

⚠️ WARNING: Consumption may cause:

☠️ Instant regret & irreversible digestive trauma. ☠️ Hallucinations, organ failure, or spontaneous mutation. ☠️ Your food to fight back. ☠️ An unshakable feeling of being cursed.

👀 If your Meat Puff twitches, chew faster.

💀 NO REFUNDS. NO LIABILITY. NO SURVIVORS GUARANTEED.

🔥REBLOG If you want more! 🍳

leon isnt stars so nemesis has no reason to hurt leon

long as he doesnt touch that stars badge of course :}

Buddy Cop Apocalypse (Leon and Nemesis)

🧟‍♂️✨ CRACKFIC SPOTLIGHT ✨🧟‍♂️

LEON & NEMESIS: BUDDY COP APOCALYPSE - A Resident Evil One-Shot

What if Leon S. Kennedy’s first day in Raccoon City meant making friends with the city’s scariest bioweapon? Chaos, comedy, and unexpected bromance await!

Author’s Note:

Big thanks to the anonymous requester for this adorable, chaotic prompt—this one’s for you! Hope you enjoy Leon and Nemesis causing mayhem and redefining the meaning of “first day jitters.” If you have more ideas or want a sequel (Jill cameo, anyone?), drop your suggestions below!

Now and then, I write things that could serve as the start of a story, though I never actually use them. Here, I’m sharing a few that lean toward the darker side. Feel free to use them as prompts, and have fun with them.

The house had been empty for decades, or so they said. But when I stepped inside, the floor creaked underfoot as if it remembered every step ever taken, every secret ever buried.

There was a strange comfort in the darkness, a place where shadows whispered the truths the daylight refused to see.

The wind outside howled, but the sound inside was worse—soft footsteps echoing through the empty halls.

I thought it was just a nightmare, until I woke up with the dirt still under my fingernails.

They said I wouldn’t feel a thing, that I’d be free once it was over. But as the needle slid in, I realized I was still very much alive—and trapped.

(Do you want a part two?)

They spend hours 

Measuring every pore and dimple,

How my jade-green scales crackle and hiss

When they press their fingers in,

Until my voice throbs with pain,

And they laugh, 

Rattling the bars of my cage. 

I am the balm holding this village together—

Pierced with needles and tickled with feathers. 

Some drool at a woman who slithers, 

And shove foul tongues into my slick-fanged mouth. 

I want to slide between those icy bars

And dig my fangs deep into their necks,

But what will they do when they catch me,

The wild, hungry snake-woman?

I can’t hold their coins,

By Tabby Knight (instagram - tabby.knight6)

Artwork by Dy Dawson @xgardensinspace

If you’ve seen all of the Children of the Corn films in the franchise (dear God) I’m both somewhat impressed and also vaguely concerned for your mental wellbeing. I counted a total of 12 entries in the series, including the 2020 reboot and the 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. Not bad, considering Stephen King’s original short story clocks in at approximately 10,000 words, and ends with a degree of finality that doesn’t exactly invite a sequel.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Children of the Corn was originally published in Penthouse Magazine in 1977 and later reprinted in King’s short story anthology, Night Shift (1978) and follows a young married couple who accidentally hit a child with their car while driving through rural Nebraska. Burt and Vicky, who are road tripping to California in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, decide to put the boy (dead) in the back of their car and drive to the nearest town, Gatlin, for help. The shock of hitting the boy has been abated, somewhat, by the fact that he was likely already dead when they went over him — his throat's been slit from ear to ear. They are a little disturbed, however, to find a crucifix made of corn husks in the boy’s suitcase.

They arrive in Gatlin only to find it deserted, and the only building showing any sign of recent activity is the church, which is defaced, trashed, and decorated with corn. Inside, Burt also finds a record of births and deaths, and manages to piece together the town’s dark history: some twelve years ago, all the adults in town were massacred, and the children appear to have created a corn-worshipping cult in their absence. Since then, every registered death in town has occurred on the victim’s nineteenth birthday.

By the story’s conclusion (Spoilers) Vicky’s been mutilated and crucified on a cross of corn, and Burt finds himself trapped in Gatlin’s cornfields, pursued — and ultimately consumed — by a mysterious entity that lives amongst the rows. It ends with the children, who are informed by their nine-year-old cult leader, Isaac, that He Who Walks Behind the Rows is displeased with their inability to dispatch Burt, and has lowered ‘the age of favour’ from nineteen to eighteen as a punishment. As a result, the town’s eighteen-year-old residents march into the corn to sacrifice themselves to their god. One of those dispatched, Malachi, leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, who fantasises about setting fire to the corn in retribution. We end with a line that still sticks with me years after I first read it: “Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly. It was well pleased.”

And there you have it. It’s not King’s best short story by any means, but it’s far from his worst, and it has its own grim, mystical charm that appealed to me as a teenager and still appeals to me now. The cult operating in Gatlin works primarily because of its elusiveness, and its ambiguity. We don’t see the children overthrow the town, we see very little of the entity that lurks in the corn, and there’s no flashy final showdown. There’s a tragedy to the children that fails to translate to the films, a quiet sort of helplessness emphasised by their final march into the cornrows. The conclusion feels inevitable – this is the way things are in Gatlin, and it’s horrendous, but it’s unstoppable. It just is.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the film adaptations manage to capture this same sense of quiet horror, the idea that those who commit such atrocious evil are themselves victim to a larger, far more powerful force that cannot be overthrown or disobeyed.

It’s a shame, then, that the very first film adaptation – a 1984 venture starring Linda Hamilton – dispatches this sense of ambiguity and dread entirely. Instead we are left with a standard, far less eerie narrative structure, in which Burt rescues Vicky, teams up with a couple of the less murderous children, and manages to set fire to the cornrows, ostensibly killing (at least temporarily – 5 sequels and several reboots, remember) He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Instead of the quiet despair of the short story, emphasised by the pregnant Ruth’s secret desire to see the corn burn, we get a final jump scare and a happy ending as Burt, Vicky, and the two kids they appear to have adopted set out for Seattle on foot.

There are merits to the first film, at least. John Franklin makes an iconic and genuinely menacing (if a little campy) villain out of Isaac, who outshines the elusive creature behind the rows as the primary antagonist. Courtney Gains makes for a memorable Malachai - morally grey and surprisingly likeable, far more fleshed out than his literary counterpart. The supporting cast of Gatlin kids are suitably freaky, at least until Sarah and Job are established as good kids, which diminishes the effect somewhat, especially when the short story did so well as to establish the children as equal parts good and bad, victims of a larger system as well as perpetrators of violence.

By creating a binary in which children like Sarah and Job are “all good,” while those such as Isaac and Rachel (the crazed adolescent responsible for that final scare) are “all bad,” we lose that sense of dread. Worse still, we lose the last remaining shred of realism in a film that has Burt pursued through the corn by a tunnelling monster right out of Tremors. As I said, we essentially lose the very point the source material is trying to convey.

That’s not to say it’s a wholly unlikeable film, of course, or that it’s universally hated by horror fans. Lots of people, myself included, look at the film with a great deal of fondness. But that doesn’t change the fact that it falls into that famed category of questionable Stephen King adaptations. It also doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t warrant a sequel, let alone five, and a string of ill-fated reboots with sequels of their own.

Horror movies and sequels go hand in hand, obviously, but unlike the other sequel machines of the 1980’s, the Children of the Corn franchise lacks the same fanatical following. When quizzed on franchises and their sequels, diehard horror fans tend to have very specific preferences. They have a favourite Nightmare on Elm Street, (Mine’s 3) a preferred Jason Vorhees (8-bit video game Jason, though I suspect I’m an outlier) and strong opinions on the superior Child’s Play film (It’s Bride). But with Children of the Corn, that level of diehard devotion appears to be lacking. I’ve met a lot of horror fans, and I’ve never had any of them tell me that Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, for example, is the best of the lot.

I don’t want to generalise, of course, because I’m sure someone out there is getting ready to contact me and tell me of their undying devotion to Urban Harvest. I only mean that as a collective, horror fans are incredibly tolerant of sequels, and often can discuss the merits of part six over part ten. A cursory glance at cinema attendance for the new Halloween and Scream sequels alone indicates a market for the same formula over and over again. I would argue, however, that Children of the Corn doesn’t necessarily fit into that category. With the possible exception of 666, which promises the return of the first film’s Isaac, none of the sequels on Wikipedia’s handy-dandy list either catch my eye or spark my memory, and I can’t be the only one.

The question, then, is why keep churning them out? Let’s not forget that this isn’t just a case of a one-off direct-to-video sequel, or even a trilogy. We’re talking about five direct sequels to the 1984 film, plus three maybe sequels (Revelation, Genesis, and Runaway) and two reboots (2009 and 2020/23).* The obvious answer is of course, money, but you can’t seriously tell me all these direct-to-video sequels are churning out bucketloads of profits. They’re certainly not churning out rave reviews, either from critics or audience members.

My best guess is that, like me, people continue to be drawn to and affected by the original source material, and want to create a film in that same vein. But if that’s the case, why the continual failure to accurately adapt that same source material? Why create a narrative in which He Who Walks Behind the Rows is easily dispatched by outsiders, when the real terror of the story (at least in my opinion) stems from His unrelenting hold over the children, even in the face of their growing resentment?

The 2020 adaptation, much like those that have come before it, has received mostly negative reviews, with an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 22/100 on Metacritic, and a staggering 1.6/5-star rating on Letterboxd. While I haven’t seen it myself (yet – if I do, it’ll bring my total number of CotC films up to…3) what I can glean from Wikipedia, Bloody Disgusting, and Letterboxd is that once again, the film fails to either accurately adapt the source material or, at the very least, capture the same spirit of terror the original story managed to convey.

In a perfect world, such universally abysmal reviews would signal a long-overdue death for the franchise, and I’d like to say I’m optimistic enough to hope for its end. But this is horror we’re talking about, and we appear to be in an age of unrelenting sequels for all genres regardless. And worst of all, there’s a backlog of twelve films whose very existence leave me pessimistic and cynical.

Incidentally, if you’d like to catch a Children of the Corn film that kind of captures the spirit of the original, consider checking out the aforementioned 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. It’s not a perfect adaptation (Burt and Vicky still manage to escape unscathed, god damnit) but it goes a long way towards establishing that eerie sense of mindless violence and inevitability I talked about. It’s campy as hell, of course, terribly acted and not exactly scary, but it is only 18 minutes and free to watch on YouTube, and not too bad for a student film. At the very least, Burt isn’t pursued by a tunnelling monster as he attempts to set fire to a cornfield.