Data Mutations

It hurts to watch.

Trettin was probably the least liked person in our little town. He was unnerving, withdrawn, and eerie at best, with a distinct lack of emotion or gait. Just the same tone, same face everyday. Hell, Trettin isn't even his first name. Nobody in town knew his full name at all, in all honesty. He just sort of... appeared here one day, y'know? No parents, relatives, or papers with him. Just his lonesome and nothing else. Nobody even knew where he lived, for god's sake. The old folks in the bar usually caused chatter about the kid, calling him a demon or a spirit, and in truth, I probably wouldn't be hard-pressed to believe that.

(static)

He's odd, of course. In the sense of his personality, sure, but also in the sense of his general air. Being around him felt... heavy, like a sack of rocks just suddenly fabricated out of thin air into your stomach, giving you that uncomfortable weight of danger. Everyone was scared of the kid because of that; Mothers told their children to stay away from him, and ultimately, nobody wanted anything to do with the boy. Disheartening, right? At first, I felt bad for him. Probably just a traumatized bloke, ran away from home, socially incompetent, that sort of nonsense. Horrible stuff, I reckon. It wasn't until that "well incident" that I began to get suspicious of the kid, though.

(incomprehensible chattering and static)

Ah. You remember that well incident way-back-when with the drowned kids debacle?

(more static)

Why would I expect anything else? Can't expect a city-boy like you to-

(abrupt silence)

-pparently, the boy was being bullied, heckled by the kids at the ol' schoolhouse. They would usually throw rocks at the poor kid, call him names, and burn his belongings. Trettin didn't do anything to combat it. Just stood there and took it. It was ruthless stuff, y'hear? After a few months, it escalated to an ostensible degree as with most situations like these. The whole lot of them, at one point, took Trettin to the abandoned farmhouse and dropped him into the brick well, down south of the silo as a deadpan prank. Nobody's ever seen the kid for another week and a half, causing a panic in the town for the worst.

The bullies, being just adolescents, fessed-up, probably scared of the repercussions, prompting the police to check the crime scene thoroughly. Weirdly enough, there was no body to scream at when they checked inside; just water and dirt. It was jarring, for a day at least, since climbing out of the well was damn near impossible for a kid Trettin's size. It was only until the day after the situation became peak fucked. Y'know the bullies right? The day after the police checked that well, the next morning, "Poof!" Just gone to the wind. Five of them, to be precise, with no traces of abduction or run-a-ways. At this point, the sirens were on and the in-state police were about to cause hell. After a few hectic town hall meetings and crying mothers, nobody could leave their houses for two days. Can you believe that? They found the kids eight days later in the river-- all of them suffered from some sort of water asphyxiation. All of them, but one. You can probably surmise who it was. Trettin was visibly shaken and roughened up, alright, but that wasn't the most pressing matter at the moment.

(silence and coughing)

Trettin changed, almost like he was new person altogether. He was more talkative, exuberant, but some sort of fucking sociopath. Nobody wanted to stay in the same room as the kid since all he talked about was sweet rot and water. Murky, dark water. At one point, during his stay at the local hospital, all the kid kept mumbling was, "eyes stretching into your stomach," and "a miasma of teeth and cornea." Doctors contributed it to stress. Good lot that did to them. When asked about the five kids and experience missing in limbo or some shit, he would just frown and shake his head. Tough shit, huh?

Turns out, that debacle was just the "Calm Before The Fucking Storm," in all honesty. First it was Barry's two kids on Walker St, then Mary's grandmother, then Sohail, and then before you knew it, people were going missing left and right all around you. It was to the point where a town lockdown was instated for a fucking week! Fucking hell, right? I remember if you were able to look out your window in the middle of the night at the time, you could see a bunch of military personnel and white coats running about silently. Occasionally, if you were lucky enough, you would see the kid in the distance, staring quietly through the fucking breeze. No facial features, no nothing, y'hear? Just black, sunken eye sockets, almost like clay. One of my buddies, I recall, took a look out his window one night and saw the kid staring at him from the sidewalk with empty fucking eyes, waiting. It was almost as if his eyes were just pools of ink going, drip, drip, drip down his cheekbones. Just a river of ink... river of ink...

(heavy breathing and static. 

from this point on, the background of the recording is filled with a static overlay.)

Y'know what was the weirdest thing about this shit? It was hard to look at him.

Every time you would see him outside your window, just looking at you from the sidewalk, your eyes would pulsate and ache. Just ache horribly. I never saw Trettin after the white coats and personnel left. The last place I saw that fucking demon was at the railroad tracks, with a plastered on "smile". It could hardly be called a fucking smile. It was just a few sizes too big, almost as if it were a frown resized and flipped.. Proportions were wrong... proportions were wrong... In the end, it just hurt to watch. It just hurts to watch...

(pause)

You should leave now; it's already closing time... Please, just leave and don't come back here anymore. You got your answ-

(abrupt silence.

heavy breathing and static.)