Mr. Stiffles
Mr.Stiffles
2022
Tim couldn’t help but stare out the Victorian window peering over his wifes once glorious garden. Samantha was running, laughing uncontrollably. Tim could only wonder what spectacular game she was playing, perhaps one only she could understand. She continued to run out into the field. He smiled, the joy of childhood never lost on him. He had once been that same character of joy, and had once run through the same fields playing and imagining new worlds just like his Sam. His daughter was just like him and he was overjoyed to be lucky enough to have her. As she continued to frolik around the fields and gardens, Tim went back to his writing.
He found himself only staring at the blank page in front of him, the writer’s block formally reintroducing itself to his latest work. His eyes began to wander around the large attic office he had sparsely decorated. The one work of art gifted to him by his wife stood on the east wall but that was it. The large framed canvas showing a lovely city scape, the only thing he ever permitted in his office in terms of color. Besides that all Tim could look at was his large bookcase of both published and unpublished works. The 92 black and white book spines and binders stared at him. His career was growing in media and he was now being pressured into writing more and more. He liked to think of it as them sucking the literacy and ideas out of him. Just like the monsters he often wrote of.
As a child Tim had been more or less normal, growing up in the same attic he now sat in. He would imagine and let the terror of his imagination take hold of him. A form of terror he would then attempt to duplicate, the horror you felt as a child when you heard a thump in the night, the monsters you would be afraid of when you went down to the celler. He would spend hours writing these creatures into words on his 1994 dell. The blinking letters and blue background would take hold of him as he would often scare himself as he wrote long into the night. His mother had once read some of his choppy older works when she returned from one of her year long business trips. She had been horrified by the dark stories and had Mr.Hux smash the computer. The man had obliged and had run it over with his truck as young Tim had sobbed uncontrollably.
And yet the old bitch had only laughed, and when Tim became a quite accomplished author she had only tried to insist she was the token good parent. But kind old Mr.Hux had raised Tim as both of his parents were indisposed all year. He had taken Tim out to radioshack the week after the incident and bought him a small Pentium laptop of which he could continue to write without his mother knowing. The day Mr.Hux had died, Tim fell into a small fit of depression and alcoholism. He was glad for what he had done and thanked him in every book he ever wrote. Tim still missed him.
He sighed, turning off his computer, the chair pushing back as he stood the echo of the hardwood bouncing around the room. He collected his coffee cup and dared take a sip of the chilled liquid. He hated cold coffee and yet every day for ten years he would drink the lukewarm or cold remains. He was not one to waste the precious caffeine or anything at that. He got up to wander the halls looking for inspiration. The hallways held wear from years of running to my hideaway office or his bedroom 16 years ago. The trail of worn wood was still polished and the smell of the hall was of dried roses. His daughter’s room was on his right, the light purple of the walls holding the most color of all the house. She had painted up all four walls as tall as she stood. The bed was messy and her art area was a clutter of her messy drawings, even at ten she had a great deal of talent. The drawings, though bad, had a great deal of potential. Tim and her would draw together every evening after dinner sometimes in silence but most of the time, the large living room was filled with her laughter as they talked of they’re days.
He decided to investigate her art for any that he could hang in the many barron hallways of the large victorian. He began sorting through the lovely colored drawings and the many half done scribbles. All were perfect in his eyes and he couldn’t decide between a drawing of a large battleship and one of the fields she played in. He studied the ship drawing for something, no…… someone in the crows nest looked familiar. It was a small black blob of color and a red baseball hat. Tim couldn’t quite place the familiarity he felt and a surge of anxiety hit him as he attempted to remember.
“Hey dad.”
Tim nearly jumped out of his skin as the sound of Sam sounded from behind him, she started laughing at this.
“Did I scare you old man?” She laughed, tears rolled down her face as she kept laughing.
“No, just took me off guard, who’s this up on the crows nest?” He asked her.
She walked over and tenderly grabbed the drawing, studied it for a moment and her face lit up.
“Just Mr.Stiffles ”
Tim’s blood ran cold and his face went white, that name now he knew where he saw that blob from. He hadn’t heard the name in years and had no idea how she knew it. It was impossible. Mr.Stiffles had been his best imaginary friend and as he started writing when he was young he played the hero of his stories. But as he got older Mr.Stiffles became the very evil he wrote of and the Imaginary friend had become the very thing he feared. Never had he been able to create a very real feeling of his writing since Mr.Stiffles. He had taken an innocent character of youth and twisted him into his stories. Over time the friend he so often talked to did not show up. Tim would catch him in the corner of his eyes or in the mirror while he dressed. His appearance changed to more of a shadow and he haunted young Tim until one day he vanished. Mr.Hux would write it off as youthful fear and would forget about it, and Tim eventually did the same. But now the memories stung him like salt in a wound.
But how had Sam learned of him the young boy had only appeared in stories on his old Pentium which Tim doubted he still owned. Sam’s smile faltered and she looked curiously at her father.
“Do you know him?”
Tim had problems sleeping that night. He had taken his normal sleeping pills and prepared to drift away only to stare at the white painted ceiling of his bedroom. He couldn’t shake the feeling of unease about the mention of his childhood phantom. A steady downpour had started and he angled himself so he could see his daughter through the adjoining rooms. Tim could only hope she was not dreaming of Mr.Stiffles. He thought back to the two’s last meeting, in the summer of 2001.
The night had been similar to the very one of the present day. The house had been dark and just as he did every night he was clinking away on his laptop. He had been writing of a swamp monster or something of the sorts, when he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise up. His heart had started to thunder as he was too afraid to look behind him. His imagination was fast at work he had no reason to be afraid but tonight he couldn’t shake the feeling he would be visited. The visits were far apart and the last story Tim had written Mr.stiffles had killed and his brain had been taken by the darkness. They were just words on a screen, but he was afraid. The kind of fear that one does not just shake. The blind fear that makes changing your shirt feel like a certain admittance of death. And he sat there unmoving for nearly an hour before finding the courage to turn to look at his dimly lit bedroom. And to his surprise nothing stirred, nothing was there. He breathed a sigh of relief and had gone back to typing. The words started to accelerate on to the page for hours like strokes on a canvas. At some point he had fallen asleep.
“BAMMM!!” The sound of something hitting the floor shocked Tim awake. His computer was off and the room was nearly pitch black. He tried to make out what the disturbance was. He stood and made a mad dash for his bed as his heart began to pound and the familiar fear gripped itself upon his stomach. But he never hit his bed, it should have been there but it wasn’t. The safety was gone and Tim hit what felt like a concrete flooring, his legs hit the ground first and Tim heard a large retort of his bone snapping. He screamed out in pain but the fear nearly drowned out the pain as a singular bulb turned on. Illumination flooded and he found himself in a small concrete room, big enough to fit perhaps a small bed. Even if he could stand he probably would have hit his head upon the scratchy ceiling. The smell of urine hit him as he peed himself in fear. Nothing happened and he began to sob screaming for help, and to just wake up.
His Screams were answered as Mr.Hux woke him up, Tim only cried and hugged him, the pain of his leg gone and the dream already leaving him. The next night Tim decided to go sleep in Mr.Hux’s room and had been permitted too. He was gathering his blankets when he got the idea to fire up his computer to make sure the work had been saved on the swamp monster story, four words in the familiar font greeted him.
“See you again Tim.”
The story memories seemed so fake to Tim now that he was older. Surely it was all a fabric of his vast imagination but it stuck with him and he could see it now. He got up and the cold wind that blew through his almost always open window made him shiver. He started down the creaky hallway up the stairs and into his office. The clouds covering the moon allowed very little light so he turned on the flashlight as he crossed the office. The echo’s sounding melodic and freighting even to the almost forty year old. He shivered and moved quickly as the shadows jumped in his vision and he feared for something to jump from them. He hit the switch and the room was yet again broadly illuminated.
He sighed as his heart rate returned to normal, he gently pushed and slid the panel that opened into the long closet. The uniform boxes were the same as a detective would keep to store his old case files. Sprawled along each one of them was the year that they were from and what they contained. He walked to the very end and found it, the box read 2001 this one was bigger due to it being the one containing his old 1998 pentium. He carried it back into the office, sitting by one of the many outlets installed in the office last year. Turning on the device was more of a challenge as it hadn’t seen a day in nearly twenty years. Finally he got it on the illuminating glow reminding him of all the fond stories he had written. He started flipping through his files until he froze. His heart started jumping as he read the title.
April 12 1999, Hello Tim
His shaky hand guided the pointer to the file and he summoned the courage and clicked it. The nearly blank page greeted him, all the way at the bottom of the page read
Hello tim how are you
Tim’s stomach dropped as he read the line. It was him he was real. Mr.Stiffles had returned. He didn’t know what to say, he wanted to think it was a joke, but he knew deep in him it wasn’t.
Tim’s mouth went dry as he shakily typed back
Mr.Stiffles?
You forgot about me Tim
You forgot all about Mr.Stiffles
I’m sorry
NO YOU’RE NOT YOU WROTE ME INTO EXISTENCE AND LEFT ME!!!!
Tim was shaking now he didn’t know what to do he wanted to run he wanted to hide. He wished he could go back. He didn’t run though he sat there shaking and staring at the screen. He waited quite awhile and finally typed
You can’t hurt me
Oh yeah?
“Hello daddy” Tim’s head snapped and he stared at his daughter who stood three feet to his right. She was clad in her care bear nighty and her blond hair was in a muss. She did not smile, she did not say anything else. And as Tim studied her he noticed one crucial thing.
She held a carving knife.
: )
