Back in middle school, me and my boys, Drake and Josh, camped to celebrate the end of a school year. We brought marshmallows and shared stories about people in our school, but after 3 hours we got really bored and talked about local urban legends like Mothman and Bunny Man. These common stories that we've heard dozens of times were made much better with Drake's spastic storytelling about cryptids, he read 5 months ago on Wikipedia, but after Drake finished his rough retelling of Mothman, Josh spoke up and said that he heard about a demon that's in our neighborhood. He talked about this kid named Carter that was killed in this kiddie diddler's basement in Bridgeport. He went on about the signs about his arrival such as a mildew on perfectly dry areas, abnormally humid air, and odor of gangrene that stains the air.
Drake stood up and asked "how do you have such a vivid picture of Carter?"
Josh rebuttaled with " During the lunch where you two had detention for calling the blue haired girl" He puts up his hands for air quotes "an unlocked treasure chest, I had to find new friends, I heard these kids talk about their friend who went missing and their theories on who could have done it. I quickly joined utilizing the inherent charisma, and heard about their crackhead theories"
Drake jeered and said "Oh yeah and did they call you their special guy."
Josh answered with "yeah and they are good listeners too, unlike you"
Drake piped down and went back to his marshmallow.
Josh kept talking about his favorite theory
"So this kid named Carter was taken from his family when he was 9 and we missing until they found his body under the Mr.Choi's house"
"Who's Mr.Choi" I said.
"Ah you might know him as Mr.Levi's" Josh clarified.
"No not his alias i want to know why they look through his basement" I explained
"Oh, well I don't know much about him, but all I heard was that he stood at parks around Clarksburg and took chubby fat kids. He would then put them in his basement and chains them up and starves them to teach them what true hunger feels like feeding them cockroaches and blood. He wanted them to love it, he wanted them to associate the head juices of cockroaches to like candy. He would deprive them of nutrition and make them crave the protein from the cockroach. He would tie up their legs and cut off the blood flow through their thighs. He would then cut them and roast them and eat them, he called it dry age veal. He enjoyed the screams of others he loved when kids tried to bargain with him asking to let him go and enjoyed hearing their cries as their friends and comrades were culled by their captor. They begged to God and wished their lives were easier, they craved freedom, they craves actual food. Neighbors would talk about the odor that came from his house and always talked about how he smelled like a latreen. A heavy odor surrounded the house as the wear and tear shows on the roof and the garden. The roof was full of broken tiles and bird poop, the garden was infested with weeds with grass as tall as a dog. However, after that big storm 4 years ago the dirt that his basement turned in to mud and collapsed the house, Mr. Choi left town after that but the scars of the sins committed in that prison stayed."
Drake barfed up his burnt marshmallow after hearing the cockroaches and blood line, while I was intrigued at house a man broke his whole foundation.
"Anyway after winter, the Homeowner Association made a new house to keep the neighborhood's housing prices up, and they sold that new home to a nuclear family. They it there but they were always complaining they complained about rotting wood in a new house, the miasma of rotten meat that choked the mother and a humid air that put the baby in the hospital, and the oldest kid died in that house. The kid died in his house, this thighs bruised and neck full of hickeys, and his lungs were swollen, but his family adamantly stated that he didn't have that much of a coughing problem. His stomach was full of blood and his heart had sign of palpitations. His toes were swollen and his fingers were black. His kneecaps were broken and there is signs of struggle on his bed. There were scratch marks with varying intensities and his bed frame was broken in half. However without any motive or prime suspect, the cops put the death as suicide."
Drake asked "So where did you get all this info about this family"
Josh responded with "Do you know Maname"
"Oh yeah that homeless kid in our class" I retorted
"Yeah that kid, he was the baby that was taken to the hospital, and he told me what happened to his brothers room. He told me that his mom went insane due to her favorite son dying so she kept his room spotless to keep the memory, but she always knew that there was this one spot that couldn't be cleaned. It was fuzzy, like moss on a rock, it smelled like dried blood and was impossible to clean. His mom cut the carpet she put bleach on and spent a whole day scrubbing it with her hand until the sponge turned into a mess of threads. He even said that his mom almost choked herself by putting ammonia and bleach together to clean that stain. He explained that the stain only got bigger and covered the carpet by the end of 5th grade. His mom got a knife and cut through the carpet, but when she cut the first half of the room, she saw that the moss seeped through the carpet and stained the floor after the carpet got taken out, he said that the floor felt like steeping on seaweed, it was wet and felt like fingers were tickling every pore in his body, he felt violated by a floor's texture. He said his mind was racing and that he belonged here, the moss was inviting, it didn't judge him and he felt comfortable. He wanted to lay down he wanted to feel happy all over his body, and when he was about to sit down, his mom saw him and pulled him out and beat so hard that he could walk straight for a week."
Drake laughed until he coughed "My mans got beat so hard that he became crippled"
Josh had a straight face and waited until Drake stopped laughing to start explaining his theories
"The moss then went through the second floor and after a year of specialists, exterminators, and the government, the moss grew through the whole house and went towards the kids room, Manema said that the moss became so normal that our family saw it as wallpaper and carpet, and when we had no food because our dad went crazy talking about the demon in his house, they just ate the moss, it made you feel nice and was like Soma. He said that although he loved that moss he felt it wasn't right, he knew that the moss killed his brother and that he had to leave, he packed his bags and left out the door and the weirdest part is that his parent never came to look for him, he said that he never saw a missing poster about him ever. He ended the conversation with that he hasn't seen his parents in about a year and hopes the best for them."
Drake laughed at it "Your looking too far into this its a stupid story made for children, its like Slenderman"
I responded "Then why was it so visceral, it felt so real, Mr.Choi left for a reason and a house doesn't collapse for no reason."
Drake came back with "If it was so real why didn't the neighbors call the cops and how does moss feel like fingers, its too convenient to be realistic"
Josh begrudgingly agreed "probably that kid was probably schizophrenic anyway"
I didn't agree with Drake and I called him out
"Ight Drake, if your so sure that this demon doesn't exist then I dare you to go to this house and make sure that one the moss doesn't exist and two the you can lay in the moss with nothing happening."
Drake, a headstrong simpleton, quickly took me up on my offer
He retorted "Bet and if i do this your gonna wear your sisters clothes for a whole day, makeup, dress and, underwear. Also if I do it, I get two photos of you in whatever pose I want."
"Your really weird Drake" I replied
We understood what we planned for tomorrow and what risk I had to take for Drake to shut up. I went back home and went to sleep ready for what in store for tomorrow.