lost episodes

rap rat

Ever heard of "nightmare?" Like a lot of other games in the 90's it came with a vhs which you timed with your play the character in the video will give you instructions on what to do while you played the game in real-time. Being a scaredy cat i refused to play it when my mom brought it for us, my brother was disappointed about not being able to play nightmare but my mom had a solution. She brought out "rap rat", it was a cheap dingy little thing catered to kids my age you went around the board collecting chesse and the first player to reach the end wins. It seemed simple enough and since it reminded us of "mouse trap" there were no objections we popped the movie into the vhs and set the board. The first part of the video was just simple  explanation of the rules as well as instructions on how the game worked. Then rap rat came on the tv he was not.......what any of us had been expecting, my smaller brother who was only three at the time immediately left the room crying. The rat did not even resemble a rat the ears were far too big, it had a mouth lined with two teeth and the inside of the mouth looked almost swollen. The most striking part about the thing though was the eyes. They were large glassy and fish-like, i asked then bothered then begged my mom to turn it off. Rap rat suddenly shouted loudly screaming and wailing saying "WAIT UR TURN!" In a demonic low-pitched voice that was not at all like his normal obnoxious voice.  In the background we could hear the narrator saying "he's rap rat and he's the boss" over and over again in an overly serious tone. The video was.... indescribable, images crossed the screen in quick succession overcut with rap rat's expressionless eyes. The images were some of the things i was afraid of at the time. A person looking over a balcony, a hornet slowly stinging someone's eye, an extreme close-up of a tarantula, a pit full of writhing cobras,
And a bloodied syringe filled with green fluid. We immediately turned the video off and i ran out of the room screaming, slamming my door. It took my mom twenty minutes to convince me that the video was gone, that i would never ever see it again, i had nightmares all week about rap rat. That wasn't the last time i saw rap rat, while my girlfriend and i were preparing to move together i was cleaning out the closet of my room and found rap rat again, with the same board game and vhs inside. It was almost perfectly intact save for a thick layer of cobwebs and dust bunnies on top of it. This was strange..... didn't my mom get rid of it? And what was the game doing in my room? I let out a bit of a gasp when i found it, and my girlfriend came into the room asking what was the matter: breathing harshly i said "rap rat" she laughed a bit if it was a joke. I shook my head explaining that it wasn't, she didn't believe me nobody did and i decided that the only way to prove it to her was to show her the video. I borrowed my neighbor's vhs and played the video for her, however the images have changed i saw a clown its nose bursting and spraying blood into the screen, i saw a women alone in a dark room, i saw a man being forced to pick up white-hot metal and hold it in his outstretched hand, turning his hand into a leathery mess. The scratching i heard as a child continued picking up louder and louder, then rap rat showed up and began twisting and convulsing. His arms thrusting this way and that the costume wasn't a costume anymore the felt was real fur.  Its face wasn't plastic but instead a bristle of thorns with teeth, the eyes turned inwards and suddenly popped out again rap rat's huge fish eyes were inside out staring right at me, watching my every move my every expression it grinned widely and gestured at my girlfriend and with a single, outstretched inhuman hand. I could hear the faintest scratching at my door the tv went black and showed static the scratching got louder, it wasn't scratching anymore but thumping the thumping of tiny feet on wood. My girlfriend embraced me in fear and my senses kicked in, before anything else could happen i stopped the video ejected it and unplugged the vhs the scratching stopped, when i looked out the living room window nothing was there. The police showed up soon after warning us that a neighbor had seen a figure outside of our door and had called in concern. My girlfriend and i simply couldn't explain what had happened, and had to tell the police officer that it was us. I was furious that a children's game was terrifying me i went to pick up the tape but the vhs burned my hand  it felt like i touched a bunsen burner on the highest setting. We had to get the oven mitts from the kitchen in order to take it out, and even then it was scorching hot i brought it outside, tossed it down on the sidewalk and crushed it with my winter boots. My girlfriend and I had nightmares every night we would both wake up in the middle of the night and describe eerily similar images that we saw in our sleep, the scratching would always be there at night, when lights were off and the room was pitch-black now though the scratching would happen everytime i went near the front door and everytime we say rap rat's name. It sounded as if something very small was dragging something across the ground outside of the door.....pacing....waiting. i simply wait with the covers pulled up to my neck until i succumbed to exhaustion. At this point i was determined to sue the company for damages, the first thing i did was call my mother and ask where she got "rap rat" she had no idea. I found a merchant who sold versions of rap rat and asked how i could get in touch with the company he sent me this email. "I don't know about the game but i know it was created by the same people who created nightmare the company is called "a couple of cowboys" i did a bit more research and discovered that the company became defunct in 1994.....only two years after the company created rap rat i discovered why they did soon after. How rap rat came to be: in 1992 the year of the games development a couple of cowboys had commissioned a manufacturing company in Haiti to create the doll portrayed in the game, the company who created the puppet ran a sweatshop where they forced women and children to produce the various components of the puppet, including the felt and plastic of the doll.
One day a young Haitian girl got her arm caught in the industrial sewing machine. The spring loader unable to handle the weight on the machine, came loose and struck the childs neck killing her instantly. A few days after the funeral the mother of the child came to the factory, demanding to see the owner who denied that he had anything to do with it. In a fit of rage the mother said that the "blood from the innocent" would seep into every crevice doll, every component with which it was created and all who touched it would die. She claimed to have summoned a "fear demon" and screamed at the top of her lungs "APARAT WILL CURSE YOU!" The owner simply laughed and told his corporate bosses about aparat they spread the joke person to person, and the game was renamed rap rat a loose anagram of aparat brought with it a greater and greater curse. Only two years after "rap rat" was created the company was shut down and the owners hired by mattel. There were stories of  workers begging for days off skipping work for weeks and weeks, finding the puppet in strange places. Sooner were the stories of suicides grim violent suicides in which the workers would stab their hands and burn themselves to death, writing "I AM FEAR" on the nearest surface in blood. Nobody knows where the rap rat doll went after the original creators dissapeared. Some say that the last things the victims saw before going insane were large sunken fish-like eyes.