This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Horror_Sh47 on 2023-08-10 13:55:03.

---

For the most part, I had scheduled YouTube time like most good parents do right. Half hour before sleepy time, or when I was all by myself and had to hoover that one time in the month. Occasionally I need to take a big dump. Other times the little git didn’t stop screaming, and Ms Rachel could keep him muted.

Then there were instances when I was just mentally and physically exhausted. I needed to take maybe 5 minutes, sometimes a bit longer if I wanted to play with my joystick. It was during this time when the contagious sound of ‘Hop little bunny hop hop hop’ was starting to grow fainter. I thought hey, maybe he was fiddling with the remote or something. So, I carried on with my business, I was just getting to the best bit.

Suddenly, I could barely hear the song at all, and I nervously continued with the displacement of my cylinder. In the act of the reciprocating motion, I heard a loud scream, it jerked old boy at a 45-degree angle, and I was forced to shoot my shot, like a projectile it went out the window, I hope it got that Angela bitch next door. Anyway, I nearly fell on my head running down the stairs. The little geezer wasn’t there, and the TV was off.

I looked everywhere; I couldn’t find him. I rushed to each corner of the house, he was nowhere to be seen or heard. Illogically, I even checked the shed and got into a little tussle with Angela next door. I asked her nicely, where is he? The bitch erupted like a volcano and asked me if I had been drinking again. I swear I could have strangled her right there. Andy, from the right side of my fence, popped up like Jack in the box. He talked Angela down for the umpteenth time, nice guy, a bit too nice.

I told him what had happened, and we looked in the house together, in vain. At this point the whole neighbourhood was outside my house and the police became aware. They took me to the station and interrogated me, as though I was the lead suspect in the missing case of Madeleine McCann. After they had finished, they said ‘We will do all we can.’ I knew that meant fuck all. It was always budget cuts or something else and never their fault.

If he somehow left the house, we were on a ticking time bomb. The first 72 hours were crucial, I read the first paragraph of an article in the BBC about it. My geezer was so tiny, cut that number in two. Me, Andy and a few others in the neighbourhood, extended our search day and night for two days straight.

‘He’ll show up mate,’ Andy said with ice.

‘Only 18 months, just 18 months young for fucks sake. What’s he gonna do, use google maps to come home?’ I cried.

‘Patience friend, have patience in affliction and let us be faithful in prayer.’

‘Now’s not the time for your Church nonsense. Tell me, what did that decent geezer do wrong? I can’t begin to imagine what he must be going through; on the off chance he’s still breathing!’

‘The lord is with him as he is with you.’ Andy said, as I made the shoulders of his slick white shirt, damp.

Nothing moved me quiet like my geezer Mitch. Am not the emotional sort, but when our eyes met for the very first time, I knew that love meant more than BJ’s from Charlene. He did look like his pretty old man, and that’s not it, it’s the way he called me ‘dah’ and ran into my leg.

I was upset when Charlene left in the summer. I dodged a bullet really. I knew what they all said, the bigger the hoops, the bigger the hoe. I had Mitch and that’s what mattered. Parents naturally hugged their kid to give em comfort, but it’s the other way round. It was only last week we said cheers, I put a few drops of Guinness in his milk, nothing too harmful, just dad and son enjoying a beer, watching our beloved Aston Villa. I can’t begin to quantify how destroyed I was when Mitch went missing.

Our hunt yielded no results and I tried to cry myself to sleep after hours. Andy just about got me eating lunch, and even that bitch Angela came by. The media were hot on me for a couple of days. I couldn’t bare them and didn’t watch any programme either.

One night, I decided to see what the local channels were saying, the telly hadn’t been on since Mitch disappeared.

I pressed the power button.

An oppressive force shook me to the boots, and pulled me in.

I was in complete darkness and had to reset my bearings a bit.

My eyes widened and my jaw relinquished in slow motion.

I saw a silhouette of someone or something carrying a child.

I felt a chill down my spine.

I was taken aback when ‘Hop little bunny hop hop hop’ was abruptly ringing all around me in symphony. When I turned, I saw children staring at me intently from smart TV’s, some were a little older than others, and their complexion was distinct.

Each child had their eyes rolled back; they were in some sort of trance.

I heard an unsettling voice from behind.

‘Hi, friend.’ she said.

The figure was illuminated by flashes of light from the TV’s.

It was Ms Rachel.

She didn’t sound like her usual, annoyingly happy self. Her inflection came from sinister depths.

Her lips were all wet and red. And that smile, oh that horrid smile wouldn’t go away, and reached for the tip of her discoloured eyelids.

She held a child in her scorched arms, the flesh had been stripped away.

I scrutinized a small crimson patch, which stained a white blanket. It wrapped the tiny person.

‘Wow, look! It’s a surprise box. Let’s take out a surprise,’ she said.

I had frozen like a block of ice.

‘What’s in the box? what could it be? do you want to take something out with me?’

The frightening strength of her words cracked me.

My lips fluttered.

‘Take it out, take it out, take it?’ she said.

‘Whaat…uhhh…what do you want, please don’t hurt…’

‘TAKE IT OUT, TAKE IT OUT, TAKE IT?’ she commanded in a beastly proclamation. I couldn’t make out if it was human or animal.

In my fear I replied ‘Out?’ and approached a 50-inch-wide box which separated us.

As I got closer, I saw that it was a young coffin.

I dropped to my knees and started to pray, ‘Please God, don’t let it be what I think it is, I won’t tell Andy to fuck off every Sunday mornings, and I will be nicer to Angela.’

The coffin lid sprang open, and there was my geezer Mitch. Ever so still. Paler than the goth chick from that mediocre kids show. I felt a wave of mixed emotions, which alternated between murder and depression.

My head sank to his small chest.

After an excruciating minute or two, I began to hear a lub-dub sound, it had a weird rhythm.

Fuck me, my geezer was alive!

I calmed myself and stayed there a while longer. I didn’t know where the hell I was, and I didn’t want to imagine what that evil bitch was going to do.

I grabbed Mitch and began to sprint.

I saw that I was heading towards one of the kids out of their mind, stalled, and fell into the screen.

I felt that same powerful force in my bones again, and the next thing I knew, some olive-skinned child was standing over me, crying his head off. I rushed out the house, and eventually, discovered that I was in Marrakech.

Thank God for the British Embassy, it wasn’t long before I was able to get on a flight home, I was lucky to be in a tourist hotspot.

Strangely, Mitch remained fast asleep throughout the whole journey home.

I put him down in the cot next to my bed, as soon as we got back.

The next morning when I awoke, he remained in a deep sleep.

Thankfully, he wasn’t a bad sleeper unless he was going through a growth spurt. He rarely slept that long, I would call it jet lag, but it was only a four-hour flight back to the UK. Do toddlers even get jet lag?

God knows what the poor bastard had been through during the past few days.

When I got out of bed, a migraine was stabbing my left temple.

I was so thirsty.

In the bathroom window,

I saw two equally spaced incisions in my neck.