Time For Teletubbies: A Lovecraftian Horror

Chapter II

     A cackling. Nasty. Screeching. Like the cries of a wild animal getting stabbed by a thousand knives. And still, simultaneously, it was innocent. Childish. Almost as if the hideousness of the laugh was an intentional move to frighten its listeners. But no. Nonsense. Obvious nonsense. Jacob shook his head in shame for even thinking of such a ridiculous thing.

     The cackling heralded the sudden shining of bright light upon him. He opened his eyes in a wholly foreign land. His bed was gone, and he was dressed in his day clothes, standing in an idyllic field in the middle of nowhere. The grass was glistening. Flowers bloomed everywhere in every color of the rainbow. The trees were sparse, but all were in impeccable health and filled to the brim with pristine greenery. The surrounding hills were wild and rolling with the perfect amount of repetition and variation. Scores of rabbits bounded about, seeming either unaware of or unconcerned with Jacob's presence.

     At first, it was almost unsettling. Everything seemed so perfect. Unbelievably perfect. Unnaturally perfect. Jacob suspected that this was no waking world, though, even if he didn't dare let the thought occupy the forefront of his mind. He had not forgotten the Eldritch horrors of prior nights. Thus, even if it was a little odd, he did not think this change of scenery to be an unwelcome one.

     He turned around to see the sun that had been shining upon his back until then. His jaw went agape as he laid eyes upon the most cosmically confusing sight of all time. A face – a baby's face, no less – adorned the surface of the gargantuan star. It took up not just a small dot of the sky, as usual. Instead, it hugged a huge portion of the horizon. The baby's face gleamed. It was happy, as it seemed, to see him. The feeling wasn't mutual. Jacob knew not what else to do. He set his mind on escape. He readied his soul for a fleeing into a land of unimaginable beings and inescapable danger. But his legs. His own two legs. His necessary and precious legs. They didn't work. They didn't even twitch. He was an unwilling prisoner in his own unbudging body.

     A tall metal speaker rose out of the ground before him. The once-bounding rabbits instantly stood still. Jacob watched without a clue of what was conspiring. It was a paradisal place, of course. The speaker was nothing for him to get his feathers ruffled over. Even the grotesque face of the baby on the sun seemed harmless in the end. And yet, as static drifted out from the rusted and dirty speaker, he could not help but tense up.

     "Time for Teletubbies!" announced the speaker. At first, it seemed about to retreat back into the ground, but instead, it stalled. "You're not alone!" With that, then, the speaker descended beneath the surface.

     Jacob felt his fingers twitching and his feet trying to push him forward. There was no resisting it. Defiance was not an option. Thus, despite the hatred he had for doing so, he gave up all control and succumbed to his own helplessness. He walked along to wherever his unfeeling legs would lead him. As much as was possible, he relaxed, but he did not fool himself into thinking that complete carelessness was going to be an option. He was anxious. He was just lucky to have prevented himself becoming terrified. The hills he crossed were all so monotonous in their pleasantness. The surface-level diversity of the flowers was a sham. Even the rabbits barely seemed real. There was something disturbingly off in this fantastic land.

     His thinking ceased. Suddenly. Gripped with cosmic horror. A gang of beings from some alien realm. Right there. In front of him. Madness must've already completed its takeover of his mind.

     The Teletubbies were like something right of the deepest depths of his innermost nightmares. They were four creatures of the most peculiar build, for they were very alien, and yet, very familiar. Two were vaguely masculine in build and attitude. The other two were vaguely female. All had variously shaped antennae sprouting out of the top of their colorful furred heads. A strange sort of television screen was plastered across their stomachs. Their faces – the only fully furless parts of their monstrous bodies – were dopey and childlike.