“JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT MADE ME DO IT” by Jon Allen (Short Horror Story) #WeirdDarkness

Listen to ““JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT MADE ME DO IT” by Jon Allen (Short Horror Story) #WeirdDarkness” on Spreaker.

IN THIS EPISODE: It’s #ThrillerThursday and I’m sharing two stories with you this week. First up, what could possibly be creepy about an old set of eyeglasses? We’ll find out in the story “Ochelari”. Then, a great story from ‘Weirdling Woods’ author Jon Allen entitled, “Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It.”

YOUTUBE TIME STAMPS…
00:00.00.000 = Introduction/Show Open
00:01:43.157 = Ochelari
00:15:17.329 = Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It

SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…
“Ochelari” by Ouroboros: https://www.creepypasta.com/ochelari/
“Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It” by Jon Allen: http://WriterJonAllen.com
Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library.

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(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)
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“I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” — John 12:46
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WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.
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Originally aired: January, 2021

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:

DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.

SHOW OPEN=====

Welcome, Weirdos – I’m Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you’ll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.

Coming up in this episode…

It’s Thriller Thursday! This week I have two stories for you. First up, what could possibly be creepy about an old set of eyeglasses? We’ll find out in the story “Ochelari” – or “The Eyeglasses.”

Then it’s a fictional story written by Jon Allen, and the title alone is clickable, isn’t it? “Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It.”

If you’re new here, welcome to the show! While you’re listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, enter contests, to connect with me on social media, plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you’re struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

Now.. bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness!

STORY: OCHELARI=====

In my room, on my desk, sits a black, plastic casing which holds my glasses.
They have a power of minus 9 and they were very expensive to wear.

When I was younger, my mother used to warn me about sitting too close to the television. She used to tell me that my eyesight would get progressively worse and I’d either end up needing glasses or my eyes would simply be bad enough to make me legally blind.

Being an overly obnoxious nine-year-old, I never listened to her. So whenever my favorite cartoon or TV-show was on I would scurry to the living room and rest my head an inch away from the screen. I figured that the closer I got to the TV, the closer I could get to the show.

Whenever my mother found out about this she would yell at me about how expensive glasses would be and that we couldn’t afford even a single pair. She’d then proceed to slap the back of my head so hard that I would accidentally bite my tongue or unpleasantly acquaint my face with the hard TV screen. It happened every time and I always ignored her.

Until one day she got to say ‘I told you so’ and we were forced to get me a pair of glasses. Because we couldn’t afford to buy new ones, she took me all over the neighborhood to find a used pair that did the job well enough. And so it continued until my eyes settled at a power of minus 9. Finding a used pair of glasses that would suffice was hell.

We eventually spotted a proper pair at an antique store. The store was filled with objects and trinkets that could have come straight out of a horror movie. Most of it, including the elderly woman who was sitting behind the counter, looked fit for use by witches.

The woman was wearing sunglasses that were much too dark for the dusky little store. My mother asked how much they would cost and the woman simply replied ‘very expensive’. She seemed to be blind because she never looked at my mother while they spoke about the price, but she stared intently at me. Even as we left the store I could tell that she was following me with her gaze. It made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

Despite being very ugly, the glasses did the trick. She had to work 7 days a week for months in order to earn back what it had cost, but at least my eyesight didn’t seem to get any worse.

Needless to say that my glasses were a necessity. Without them I was essentially a baby in a suit. I had to look out for every little thing so as not to break or otherwise damage this life-saving piece of technology. Eventually, my girlfriend and I grew tired of having to always watch out for my glasses. And so, after a lot of coercing, she managed to talk me into getting laser eye surgery.

I can’t say that I’ve ever regretted making that choice. It was wonderful seeing things perfectly clear again without wearing my glasses. At first, the discomfort was horrible but eventually it faded and I got my perfect eyesight back. I felt like a new man; reborn with the eyes of a god.

I’m a sentimental idiot and so I never managed to throw my old glasses away. Months and years passed until one day, when we were packing our stuff because we were moving to a new town, I stumbled upon the old, plastic casing of my massively expensive glasses.

Holding them again after such a long time felt strangely nostalgic. They were once incredibly important to me, enabling me to live like a reasonably average human being. I may have actually shed a small tear or two. And in my nostalgia I wanted to wear them again, even if just for a little while.

Looking through glasses if you don’t need them is bad for your eyes, but I figured a quick peek wouldn’t hurt too much.

The moment the pads rested on my nose and the temple tips nestled gently behind my ears, I could feel something wrong. My eyesight wasn’t distorted at all, despite what I’d expected. In fact, when I think back, it might have actually improved marginally.

Naturally, as any sane person would, I was confused and I wanted to take them off to reassure myself that my eyesight was still perfect without them. But they wouldn’t budge.
No matter how hard I pulled, and I pulled REALLY hard, I can assure you, the pads stayed perfectly still on my nose and the entire damn thing wouldn’t move so much as a millimeter.

At this point, I was freaking the hell out. I called out to my girlfriend, who had been in the kitchen, packing our cutlery and plates and such, but she didn’t reply.

At first I figured she must have not heard me, so I launched myself out of the chair I’d been sitting
in, wanting to make my way to the kitchen with all sorts of haste.

Beyond the door, however, was a desolate, empty house where only moments before a vibrant, new home of a loving couple had been. The previously white wallpaper was filled with holes and patches of mold and it slanted away from the wall as if it had grown tired of its own existence.

Behind the wallpaper were cracks in the wall, as if the house had been abandoned for a hundred years. The wooden floor beneath my feet creaked so much I feared it would cave in, and the roof above my head was already partially on the floor.

Through the holes in the roof I could see the sky. Clouds rolled over each other, as if at war with themselves, and in the distance I could see the sun rising, leaving a blood red stain on the deck of clouds as it pierced through them like a knife through soft flesh.

I called her name again, suddenly fearing for her life. My legs were trembling but they obeyed me and moved faster than they had before.

When I finally made it to the kitchen, it was as empty and decayed as the rest of the house had been. The stench of rot and decay penetrated my nose and my gag reflex automatically set in. Panic and fear mixed in my stomach and I ran out of the house into a world that was completely and utterly dead.

There were no people, no animals, no plants. There was no sound other than that made by the wind. I was completely alone in a place that seemed to be rotten and saturated with death.

My fear fueled my adrenaline and with all the strength in my arms I pulled at the glasses, but they still would not move.

I closed my eyes, took several deep breaths and then punched the contraption of plastic and metal and glass that had glued itself to my face and was showing me the end of the world. I punched until I couldn’t feel my face and my knuckles were raw.

Her gasp is what woke me up.

She was standing in the doorway with a horrified look on her face; as if her worst nightmare was coming true. It filled me with worry but the sight of her dampened my fears with love and relief.

I crawled to my feet, wanting to wrap her in my arms and hold her. I wanted to make sure that this was real and that she was safe. But she shied away from me, as if she feared that I would attack her.

Her eyes briefly darted over me before feverishly fixating on my face again. I reached out to her again, hoping that she would understand that I wanted to hold her in my arms, but those very arms were covered all over with a red, sticky wetness. I felt no pain, so that must mean it was someone else’s blood.

Disgust and terror gripped my heart and I frantically ran my eyes over her entire body while she stood frozen in the doorway. The only thought going through my mind was ‘Did I hurt her? Is she alright?’ and I wanted to tell her that I had no memory of whatever had happened and that I would make sure that everything would be okay.

No sound came from my mouth. It was as if there was an emptiness in my throat that swallowed all sound I was trying to produce.

I tried talking again, but all I could hear was a low gurgling coming from the back of my throat followed by the horrific scream that came from the woman I loved. She turned on her heels and bolted away. I started chasing her, ignoring the wet, disgusting feeling on the rest of my body that I’d finally become aware of.

The stickiness didn’t matter. All that mattered to me was to tell her that everything was going to be okay, that I loved her and that we would make it through this if we stuck together.

She reached the front door, pulled it open and ran out before slamming it shut behind her with such a force that it rattled the mirrors in the hallway. I passed them by and glanced, briefly, from the corners of my eyes.

Except there were no eyes.

Two caves of rotting flesh stared back at me, oozing blood that crawled down my face and stained my clothes a dark, filthy red.

My mouth opened in horror but that only made it worse.

In my mouth was an emptiness. My tongue had been cut out and the same disgusting blood was bubbling up and over my shredded lips. I wanted to scream, but I was met with nothing but a gurgle.

I stood still for minutes, staring at the horrific creature in the mirror. Its hollow, bleeding eye sockets stared back at me and in the far reaches of my mind I wondered how that could be. How could I see without eyes?

But then I remembered an old woman who wore sunglasses in a gloomy store, as if she were blind, and my mind made the connection.

Back in my room, on my desk, sits a black, plastic casing which held my old glasses.
They had a power of minus 9 and were very, very expensive to wear.

BREAK==========

When Weird Darkness returns, it’s a story that I personally consider a classic creepypasta – not because it has been around so long, but because it is so well written by one of my favorite authors. “Weirdling Woods” author Jon Allen brings us “Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It” up next!

STORY: JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT MADE ME DO IT=====

Jennifer Love Hewitt made me do it.

That’s a little rhyme I’ve created because these days I can only live in my mind and I’ve run out of ways to nurture my sanity.

It’s true though, silly poem or not.

Jennifer Love Hewitt… made me do it.

But not really. Well…perhaps. Maybe? Maybe not.

I don’t know anymore.

I suppose if I’m honest with myself, that sad replica of a poem is misleading. But maybe she did make me do it? Or maybe I’m a lunatic? No. That’s too far. Lunatic is a poor descriptor. Allow me to note that this isn’t some weird celebrity obsession, like that disturbed guy trying to impress Jodie Foster back in the day by shooting the president. Let’s get that out of the way. I’m way too lazy to stalk or creep on anybody. My bold proclamation is, however, the excuse I’m using as I suffer through my third year of this…thing. I’m not sure how else to label it. How is it only my third year? And only seventeen rotations of the sun left to go.

An explanation seems appropriate before I ramble on, so indulge me and I will enlighten you.

I’m a victim of two things, nostalgia and myself. See, I turned forty-four years old and those twin digits were a double barrel shotgun blast of regret and dread. It seemed impossible and I could not accept it. But if you look at my birth certificate, you’ll see it for the archaic scroll that it is.

1977.

Good God.

In aged ink, from a damned typewriter nonetheless, you’d see my name; Christopher Michael Brooks. Even the frayed, yellowing paper could sell at an antiques shop.

My point is, life is a terminal illness, and at my absolute luckiest, I was halfway finished with the grueling marathon. The demise of my youth bombarded me overnight and I never saw it coming, never realized how much of a lightning flash time actually is.

Well, was.

These days it lingers and drags and festers. But before all of this, it was set on fast forward, this movie called life. One day I was bathing in the fountain of youth and the next…the fountain was drained, the drain itself clogged with hair that once rented from a now vacant lot of real estate I call my scalp.

Why must I lament and bemoan with such fervor? I do so because the good old days were truly that for me, a wonderland of hope, a euphoric dreamscape, a glorious domain I alone reigned over. Giving it words is beyond my capabilities, it’s like trying to describe a color that doesn’t exist. I had it all. I truly did. Then the nasty albatross that is the granular sand inside the hourglass had to destroy everything.

Somewhere along the path with my peers, I veered off the trail like a lost sheep while the rest of the herd stopped at the normal tourist traps; love, marriages, homes, kids, careers…a life. Not me. I remained lost somewhere off that proverbial beaten path, and the sun never set past what I considered my prime, the best days of my life. Then one stupid birthday came and I found myself wrestling with my mortality, and I don’t even know how to apply a head lock.

This is where J Love comes in. It is not presumptuous to call her that, it’s what people of a certain age know her as, and again it’s not really about Jennifer Love Hewitt the person anyway. She is more of a metaphor. Which is unfair to her because she grew as an actor and still is a brand today, so it’s not herfault I chose her as the avatar for an entire era. In fact, the truth of her still being a brand unto herself is what crushed me, because every time I saw her on a tv show or movie in the modern day, I was reminded of my special times. Had she become a faded teen star, I might not have had a trigger for my melancholic nostalgia. In my warped mind, her continued success allowed her to remain in the public eye, which in turn allowed her to become the face of my generation’s peak. She was the queen of the time I hold so dear. She was royalty and we all bowed to her and seeing her in recent years violently jerked my emotions to a lost time.

A refresher for the uninitiated. Often I forget that people exist that aren’t old enough to have seen The Lost Boys in a movie theater, or the explosion of The Challenger on live tv. It befuddles my entire essence that adults exist that are younger than me. Kids I’m fine with, but adults…let’s just move on to J Love.

Her blip on our radar began in ‘94 with that show Party of Five, and between the insane number of magazine covers, the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise and all the other movies during those years, Jennifer Love Hewitt might’ve owned 1997 and 1998 more than any celebrity has ever owned a chunk of time. She was tattooed with that whole “Girl next door if you live next door to the Playboy Mansion” thing, which must have been quite a burden the more I think about it. To be so young and ridden with labels. But truth is, she was the “It Girl”, she was everyone’s crush, and I mean everyone. As I see it, there are three levels of physical attraction a person might possess. There’s of course irresistibly cuddly and adorable, where you almost feel protective. Then there’s the classic beauty that belongs in a painting in some museum. Lastly, there’s the smokeshow; the sultry sex symbol you can’t look away from. Well, to have one of these traits is to win the genetic lottery. J Love? She had all three. And on top of that, she could act, sing, and by all accounts was a sweet and genuine soul. So of course she was my shared crush along with millions of others. There’s a reason she was chosen for the first cover of Teen People Magazine. There’s a reason she was everywhere in the pop culture lexicon and that no one ever, even to this day, has developed J Love fatigue.

I’m saying all of this to say that those years of ‘97 and ‘98 were the “time of my life”, which real J Love fans know is a well placed pun; look under her Wiki television filmography or something, because I already feel like I’m coming off as a lifeless fanboy and I’m not obsessed enough to recite her IMDB page, but I do stand by the cleverness of the pun I just laid down.

As it was, I was twenty, twenty-one years old during the years I mentioned, and I was a bit of a local sensation, a guy with the It Factor much like J Love. I had more friends in real life than the fake ones people today have on social media, which by the way was not a thing yet and allowed us to actually attend life. I had muscles I couldn’t name, I had style, I had the good hair. A different girl every night if I wanted? Without question. A simple jaunt to Fitzwilly’s Pub, my empire at the time, and it just happened without much effort, depending upon whether my girl and I were on a break.

A party on campus at any given time was easier than finding my anthropology class. I could walk into any club in town and cut the line and become the main character within seconds. I even followed my fantasy of becoming a comedian and began attending open mic nights at Go Bananas, as I thought I was pretty funny and charismatic and naturally owed it to the world not to deprive them of my comedic genius. In those days the jokes were mostly about Monica Lewinsky, or this new blue pill for men, or maybe the Titanic movie or whatever else was topical, probably ripped off material I subconsciously stole from Letterman. The routine got laughs though, even if my frat brothers were the ones in the crowd laughing. These were indeed the undisputed, very best days of my life. The future had yet to be written; those dreams of becoming a standup were interspersed with backup glimpses of a career in medicine or law or whatever the hell I wanted. Everything I desired was set on “tomorrow” and everything I yearned for was attainable.

What was to come was always going to be there, and there was no rush because my existence back then was so perfect. Jennifer Love Hewitt, simply because her behemoth of a star began to shine around the same time as my little dwarf star, became a symbol of those days through osmosis, to no fault of her own. I find it ironic that nowadays both of us are inching towards an age where her next sequel could be called I Forget What You Did Last Summer. At least that’s how I position it from my lonely vantage, which is a lopsided affair; I’m just seeking to share my current misery and she has no reason to be besmirched by someone like me slinging silly barbs like that; honestly, look at her now and she gets younger with age. To the point where maybe science should take a look at her because something celestial is happening there. Science might also have a few questions regarding the extreme opposite approach my body took with me.

But yes, back to the glory years, the best days of my life. As I mentioned, what was to come was always going to be there. Until one day…it wasn’t there.

I mentioned I’m three years into this, so I’ll take you back to one night, the last night, just barely beyond three years ago when this began. The wretched birthday had passed. It was a night no different than the others. I was hunched over in the dark at my kitchen table in my squalor of an apartment, the lone trace of illumination buzzing from the television in the adjacent living room. I wasn’t really watching because like any other Wednesday night, my lips had been glued to a bottle of dime store whiskey since my shift at the factory ended. All day long, lugging heavy packages around until my twisted bones ached and screamed for mercy, just to barely pay the rent for all of my labors. My existence was physically and mentally taxing. Therapy would have been a wonderful option for the state my mind had dwindled to, but such luxuries only exist for the wealthy. When you can’t afford insurance you self medicate I suppose, and the whiskey had been curing my ailments for years.

I wasn’t always this way. I clung to hope for a while. I used to still try my hand on open mic nights on Wednesdays like this one, but my references were aging. No one wanted to hear me riff on dial up internet or Y2K. Way back when, during the Good Years as I’ll call them here out, I held the audience in the palm of my hand. In recent times I was met with uncomfortable coughing or a crowd morphed into their cell phones. Comedy, I convinced myself, had died by the year 2000. I knew I was gifted; the people were the problem. Like everything else that had infused me with life during the Good Years, comedy vanished like a specter in the barren shadows. When that dream whimpered into oblivion, that was when I began sitting at my kitchen table and drinking myself through the pain. I replaced my losses with booze, and since I lost so much, you can imagine how much I drank.

This particular Wednesday, the last I would ever have in that form, was a snowy affair, the landscape outside my cracked window a marshmallow dream of white. These were lonely, often angry nights that I placated with escapades of the mind. Escapades that took on predictable forms. Sometimes I would scroll through social media and see the happy faces of long lost friends, with their families and kids and picket fences, and pass judgement.

“The joke’s on you,” I would grunt aloud, trying to convince myself. “You’re stuck behind a 9 to 5 and parent/teacher conferences and a nagging wife. I’m free, man. Free to conquer whatever world I want. No one can tie me down and no one can damn sure stop me.” Of course, that was just jealousy. I was quite adept in crushing the very achievements of those I envied. We all have a talent, I suppose.

For a while I would find myself implanted with random bursts of drive. On the laptop, I would send out a copious amount of resumes that would never be responded to, or I would sign up for dating sights or even live chat with AA sponsors and set plans to heal myself the next day, which never happened. These moments were quite rare, these booster shots of drunken ambition and endorphins. Soon they ceased to exist.

Mostly though, the drink would engorge me in somber yearning and I’d remember the Good Years. To pull an example from the top of my head, I’d watch the 1997 Rose Bowl on the old VHS tape, my anxiety still paramount even though I knew we won that game. Doing so took me back to the Delta Chi frat house, where once upon a time I watched that same football game live in a drunken haze, my fingers covered in Buffalo wing sauce and my voice gone by the second quarter. Trying to remember who the chick was is fruitless, but I’ll never forget her face when I accidentally smeared the sauce on her cream capri pants. The boys laughed as she ran off to the kitchen sink in tears and I played along as if the accident was just another intentional prank by the resident comedian.

That one memory comes to mind but I would go on to relive a thousand of them, all of the time. That was just one story in a never ending book.

It was standard on these nights to sit at the kitchen table and drink in my quiet solitude, as my gadget played exclusive hits from the 90’s. I was an outlier to the present, and I refused to adapt because I didn’t believe in the world as it had become. Fault existed in my bubble but I would never touch it; I was always waiting for someone to claim it, and when no one did, I would assign it to undeserving people or events with ease.

Back to the final Wednesday, though it could have been a Tuesday or a Sunday, the routine remained unblemished no matter the day. It was a typical binge on that frigid wintry overnight, and I could see my breath inside the shoddy insulation that hugged my apartment. Where would I go? Where would my mind travel to this time? My drunken levels had approached takeoff. The nightly time machine roared, the gears of inebriation and memory shifting with reckless abandon. It was an exact science.

Images of Carrie, the girl I still thought was my everything over two decades later, had begun swirling about. This was a favorite amongst my predictable mental excursions. I was slumped in my uncomfortable wicker chair at the kitchen table, besieged with the drink and reliving our time together as if it had been a recent reality. Deep down I knew that my college sweetheart might remember me as a footnote if we accidentally met on the streets, but there I was desperately clinging to something that I forced myself to believe could one day possibly still be, like I’d seen in those rom-coms that poison our minds with unrealistic expectations.

The gadget played “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys in the background, which brought a smile to my face. Visions of Carrie morphed into another memory. Hearing that music reminded me of the countless times I would open the doors to the club and that same song, muffled bass seconds prior, smacked me in the face like a sledgehammer. Next it rotated “Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith, which had been overplayed on the radio so much at the time that even on this final Wednesday, I had to turn the dial. The app randomized from songs that were amazing life bookmarks to songs I had forgotten existed, the volume growing with each sip of muddy brown liquor. All was well and typical for a while on this final Wednesday. Then a boy band from the 90’s went ahead and ruined my life. Again, I’ll explain.

You remember the song. It was catchy as hell.

🎵Wish for you on a falling star…wondering where you are…🎵

In 1999, a boy band named LFO dropped this single, and it was written about…can you guess? Jennifer Love Hewitt. Not only that, she even appeared in the video for the song, because if you’re not old enough to recall, Mtv used to play these things called music videos. Well, during this winter of my discontent, right around the witching hour of three in the morning, my gadget began to hum this ditty. This is what I was talking about. Something would always pop up involving J Love, a tv show, a magazine, an online article. Then I would start reminiscing. It’s like when you see 11:11 on a clock once and suddenly it appears everywhere and becomes all you will ever see. Lately though the sheer volume of these pop ups had begun to freak me out. On my final Wednesday, the trigger came in the form of song. And as each bubblegum lyric of this guilty pleasure brought joy to my ears, I began to fall back into my Jennifer Love Hewitt crush, which allowed my mind to become nestled in that safe space. Then I did what I always did and began to journey even deeper back to those Good Years in a dream state, smiling all the while.

First I found myself in Fitzwilly’s Pub, like one of those ghosts in that Dickens Christmas tale. It had to be 1998, since I was in a bar that carded and had just turned twenty-one. Everything was so vibrant and alive. Conversation drowned out the jukebox that was always stuck on Sublime or Shania Twain, due to the diverse crowds found in a college town. No devices to distract us from living. Pam and Steve were behind the bar, unaged, slinging Jagermeister by the gallon because that was what we all drank then. Steve died a few years back so it was wonderful to see him again, if not eerie. A late summer night, the festive holiday lights still hung ironically from the wall, and I followed the strand of flickering bulbs to the corner table, my table, where I saw my younger self. God I was in such good shape. Carrie was by my side, her left hand in my back jean pocket, while the boys threw electronic darts and made plans for the after party. There was always an after party because we drank until McDonald’s would finally open the breakfast menu. Then we would start our day and redo the entire chaotic scene the next evening, still looking like a million bucks somehow. My eyes fixated on Carrie and I was conscious in my hypnotic state of the smile plastered across my kisser. She was always a raving beauty and I don’t know if I was in love or in lust, but I was definitely in something at the time, and revisiting this scene didn’t merely tug at my heart strings. Rather, it took the ten strongest men alive and collectively they tore away at my innards. This vision remained until it could no longer, and began to fade into another as they always did.

Next I found myself in the Oval, the grassy refuge in the middle of our suburban campus. A brisk fall afternoon, groups formed. The hackey sack crowd, with their clove scented tweed ponchos and white man dreads, did their thing under a sycamore tree, always waving away smoke and keeping an eye out for security. The frisbee gang were well spread out, and as usual I watched the one guy who wasn’t quite skilled like the others throw an errant disc that landed near a group of freshman girls on a blanket, who were chasing attention and some sun rays. Then my youthful doppelgänger appeared again over by Mirror Lake, shirt off of course. I barely recognized myself or that V shaped musculature that ran down my lower abdomen. A typical game of tackle football was afoot, and I ran deep and fast like a beautiful gazelle, catching the ball just barely on my fingertips and cruising past the sidewalk, our makeshift end zone, for the touchdown. Of course I did. This was my life back then, in the Good Years.

The emcee called my name in my next lucid flashback and I watched my younger self hop from a crowded table of drunken friends onto the stage at the open mic at the comedy club. Simply astonishing, the confidence and presence I had back then. Though living in a memory, I laughed at jokes I hadn’t heard since I last told them nearly a quarter of a century ago. I watched myself command the stage with cadence and grace.

“The similarities between former President Nixon and current President Clinton are insane if you think about it,” the Good Years me riffed to the crowd. “Nixon had Watergate, Clinton has…waterbed. Nixon’s greatest fear was the Cold War, Slick Willie? A ‘Cold Sore’. I can go on, folks.
Nixon was worried about carpet bombs…
Clinton? Worried about carpet burns. And let’s discuss that nickname Nixon had…Tricky dick? Does it or does it not apply to both? But seriously everyone, not to get too political, but…”

My words onstage trailed off just as that particular memory did. My pilgrimage had one remaining stop.

In the concluding mental journey that final Wednesday night, my mind took me to the most wonderful place I’d ever laid my head. Walking into my fraternity bedroom in a cloud of whimsical musing was like rushing home from elementary school to the aroma of homemade cookies. It was just so perfect, and right, and from the pages of a fairytale crafted for young men. Everything was as I had left it. The unmade bed with the soft crimson linen sheets my mom bought for me, with that lilac scent I never could replicate. The enormous, bulbous blue iMac computer in the corner that took two strapping lads to carry. Same with the television, with the protruding, heavy base in the rear that caused the set to be two feet off any outlet it was plugged into.

There was a pile of laundry, all Abercrombie & Fitch clothes, that couldn’t be painted on me in my current state. Then there was the endless array of empty liquor bottles, basic college bro decor at the time, filled with fish tank pebbles that radiated a unique spectrum of colors as the black light hit them. The Malibu Rum bottle always looked the coolest for some reason. Maybe it was the way the lighting cast a spotlight on my initiation paddle, another accoutrement of the frat boy starter kit.

The marquee piece of course was emblazoned right above the head of my bed against the wall. Crouched on a crate in classic 90’s jeans and Doc Marten black boots, she wore a rose infused top and an effervescent smile. Such a pure smile, unburdened by the flowing locks of auburn hair that shaped her perfect oval face and amazing chin. Her eyes were magical and mesmerizing and had a way of piercing through the satin photo paper. It was my J Love poster.

And again this is why I see Jennifer Love Hewitt and the Good Years as synonymous.

Remaining stuck in the moment as long as I could, I held a death grip on bliss until it all slowly fluttered back to the present. By the time I was forty-four and drunk at my kitchen table again, slapped awake by reality, the gadget was playing Stone Temple Pilots and my imagination’s nightly sojourn to the Good Years was over.

Sadness enveloped me at warp speed, as if to remind me of my place in the real world. Cruel endings like this always accompanied my fantasy world. They were no different than the hangovers that followed these liquor soaked nights. This time, the abrupt ending really did something to me though. I had these flashbacks as consistently as I breathed, but on this occasion, what would become the final Wednesday night, the brutish snapback to reality was more overwhelming than ever. Actual physical pain numbed my body and the liquor did not exempt me from the emotional turmoil this time. In my throat, a lump caused me to squeeze the top of my nose bridge around the eyes so as not to cry.

This was a new twist indeed. My existence was consumed with dread and regret and I knew that I would not be able to swallow either these feelings or enough whiskey to hide the torment. In a fleeting moment of clarity, I understood that the reason I longed for days past was because I had done nothing since then that was worth remembering. Subconsciously I always understood this, but now I knew the blistering truth; the blame was mine, solely. Not the world or my perception of it. I was the problem. I was the enemy of my own happiness. Now, at forty four years of age, I had not only wasted precious time, I had failed to set myself up for any future experiences either. After an introspective look inside of myself, another cold reality crashed down upon me.

My life was truly squandered. Not because I had cancer or limitations beyond my control, but rather because I had none of those things and still I existed in abject misery and isolation.

All I could do was sit there in that pathetic wicker chair and stew in the harsh storm of honesty that pained me so much. I did exactly that, hugging my liquor bottle like a child holds a stuffed animal, aware of how deep into nothingness I had delved.

The disgust and shame were sobering. People had killed themselves over less, and that was a truth bomb that exploded in my face.

An hour or so later my kitchen table was covered in personal artifacts but much like my bedroom wall in my fraternity house in the Good Years, there could only be one piece that made the room come together, and over two decades later, the poster of Jennifer Love Hewitt had fared better throughout my various moves than the other trinkets.

Why I was compelled to unearth these things from storage was almost supernatural or beyond my control, as if I had been led. Many years had passed since the box had even been opened but on this occasion, I simply couldn’t resist the urge, even though I didn’t know what endgame I was chasing.

Such silliness yet such reverence arose at the same time. The items were varied. Heavily faded concert ticket stubs from a Cranberries show, where I shared a sleeping bag and many kisses with Carrie as that Irish rock band played our song, “Dreams”. A flyer from my first opening act gig at Go Bananas. A Blockbuster Video gift card, unused. Various keepsakes and other postcards from another time were scattered about, but I kept coming back to that poster. Such a surreal and breathtaking beauty she was, in her youthful vigor. But it wasn’t about staring at a pretty movie star. It again all came back to what she represented to me. Had she been a song, Jennifer Love Hewitt would have been the soundtrack to the Good Years. The girl on tv was emblematic of everything I once had and everything I never had. As I stared into her posterized eyes, I could see my past, sure, but I could also see her looking slightly off camera somewhere, somewhere into the future. As iconic as she was becoming at the time that very poster was released, her majestic eyes had the foresight to remain pierced on days yet come.

Another swig of liquor helped none. The sadness became a weighted blanket. I knew it was only a poster from a forgone era. Logically, that was all it was. But like a simple tree might represent where two people shared a first kiss, this item exceeded its initial purpose because it meant something.

Images came in a flurry. I imagined myself jumping into the poster and emerging on the other side, in my beloved time. Another chance, a second shot at this thing. All I wanted was to go back and make my eyes look in the same direction as the beautiful starlet. The direction forward. Towards the future.

Such nonsense, I interrupted myself in an attempt to spare myself from further pointless hope. Life has no eraser. Everything is permanent ink and that’s that.

I looked around at the mess on the kitchen table, which added in making the pathetic four walls even more of a hovel. It felt gross to be in my own skin. My head tilted skyward and my eyes shut with force. The spins came as expected but I knew if I kept myself still, eventually sleep would arrive. A respite from the torture that was consciousness. Consciousness is always the enemy when reality is unending tragedy.

Do I remember saying it or thinking it? Barely. Self loathing and alcohol made noticing anything beyond my self pity impossible. But I in fact did cry in desperation to be returned to the best days of my life. Before I fell asleep, almost as an afterthought, I offered all I had, my soul, to whoever could take me back.

How was I to know that a literary device, a movie trope, could be a real thing?

Crunch.

“Heavy sleeper” barely described me when lost to slumber in my drunken state, so for a noise to rouse me awake was quite the thing. At first I thought I was ejected from a nightmare, but then I heard it again from somewhere outside, that off-putting crunching sound. Once more it came, this time closer.

Crunch.

Closer still.

My apartment window looked out into the woods, and the powdery mounds of snow glistened against the moonlight created a dim glow that almost made me think it was day.

Crunch.

That ominous, dull noise struck my eardrums again, a revolting sound akin to crushing a cockroach underfoot with a nauseating squelch. Being on the back end of my apartment complex, I was somewhat isolated. My elderly downstairs neighbor, the widow Mrs. Loomis, was oblivious to sound, evident by the volume of her television. She would long be asleep at that hour anyway. My silk throated upstairs neighbor, Mr. Marlar, ran some web based company or radio show or something like that and was always at some convention or shindig, this overnight being one, evident by the Amazon packages that had begun to pile up on his doorstep. It was quite obvious, drunken stupor be damned, that I alone was the audience to this theatre of approaching fright.

Crunch.

Maybe I wasn’t completely alone.

This time the crunch intensified, louder and with intent, as if some malevolent being was zeroed in on my meek silhouette in the window pane and making a beeline from far off into the forest directly towards my humble abode. As a fool does, I slid the window open to investigate, undoubtedly emboldened by the remnants of the drink. My liquid high was decapitated from the sobering gush of a seemingly arctic wind.

I squinted, hoping to spot the nuisance. And hoping the nuisance was something on four legs that I might recognize.

It took a few moments, as each stomach churning crunch against the hardened snowy ground grew closer in sound and menace. Then it appeared.

Once I watched a documentary on the Phoenix Lights ufo incident, and the witnesses described the immense size of the ufo above them in the night sky by the absence of stars. That’s what came to mind for this…thing. It’s the only way I know how to relay what it looked like. It was shaped like a very tall man, but was midnight black. So black that black doesn’t describe it properly, yet also simultaneously translucent. It made no sense to my eyes. What I saw, this towering onyx figure that erased everything behind it, did not compute when the ocular mechanisms sent the image to my brain.

Instantly I was frozen, not from the stranglehold of winter outside of my window, but from something I again cannot explain. Some might compare it to sleep paralysis. I was cognizant and aware of my desire to turn away and flee, but my body refused me. Worse yet, the obsidian colored entity was holding me hostage, it seemed. Complete immobility was all I felt.

It would inch forward with that distinctive crunch, only to stop and stare with eyes that did not exist. In a blink, it would advance with dark artistry, only leaving tracks twenty feet apart as if it had levitated. Closer it drew, defying physics all the while. All I could do was gaze with petrified eyes, unable to shield myself from the preternatural shape. It was as if my eyelids had been stapled open like some overused gimmick from a cable tv torture porn trying to pass as a horror movie.

It came within ten feet of my open window and I remained preserved in my catatonic limbo, my lips falling numb from the air. The entity seemed to enjoy lingering so near, as if it could sense my abject fear. Or perhaps it was feeding off it. And a feast I provided it.

In slow motion, I watched the being’s right foot lift gently from the ground, leaving an indentation in the snow below. Then the crunch. Then the blink.

Suddenly it was there, faceless to face with me. That’s all I can remember. I might have passed out or maybe my mind blocked it to save me. But when I came to, I was seated in haste in my ratchety wicker kitchen chair again, the room silent and dark, bottle in hand, 90’s music playing something I was too distraught to recognize. This would be the clearest image I saw of what I now believe was a demon. I still don’t know, honestly.

Relief was short lived though, because now disembodied and living in the shadows, the beast, the entity, began to speak.

The voice came from a single direction yet all directions at once in the pitch black kitchen, a throaty groan that sounded as if someone were trying to speak to me with a mouthful of dirty gravel. Whether an audible, tangible voice or some type of telepathy, I’ll never know.

I swallowed nearly half the remains of my whiskey, seemingly the only movement I was allowed.

“I understand you have called out to me. I’m here, as you requested. As you sit there unable to speak due to your pathetic mortal fear, a weakness your cowering kind always displays upon my appearance, I’ll venture an educated guess as to why I am here. You haven’t done anything with your life, human stain. And you’re left with no other options and I see no wretched messengers of my enemy. I do believe your God would be displeased with such malfeasance, such a wasted life. Is that why you have summoned me instead of wasting your energy on prayer?”

My eyes were no longer pried open by an invisible force and I closed them on instinct like a child hiding from the bogeyman. Pointless and pathetic, but an attempt at comforting myself. The entity picked up on this immediately, though how it saw this in the absence of light was confusing. Flickering lights no longer came from the television. My music gadget had stopped glowing. The room was almost as dark as the entity , though that would have been an impossibility.

“Don’t waste what time you have left, human. You’ve summoned me and now I’m here to barter. Tell me about your greatest desires.”

“What are you,” I managed to spit out, my voice cracking like a child leaning into manhood. “Are you the devil?”

Bellowing laughter erupted from the entity, rustling about somewhere in the shadows.

“Always the same questions. Do you think you’re important enough for that encounter, lost one? This ‘devil’ you speak of, do you think he would bother with such an unlived soul? The devil is not here. What is it you people say…the devil… is in the details. That’s exactly where you’ll find the devil. Now state your business, flesh bag.”

Confusion, terror and aggravation grew into some type of amalgamation of an emotion. Whatever evil thing I had conjured was now throwing a cliche at me? It was admittedly a strange thing to focus on during such a time, but the mind is a mystery.

“What are you then? What do you want from me? I compel you to leave me alone. I compel you in God’s name.”

More laughter from the entity, this time with an even more menacing edge. Then it spoke.

“You watch too many movies. Did my head spin, did I spew green vomit? Such naive swine, you people. And God? Why do you mortals suddenly find God when it’s the last resort? We already covered your God’s lack of presence here. Where is he? Where are his angels? Christopher Brooks, have you darkened the doorway of a church in this decade? There is no God coming for you. You are alone. Now state your proposal, you’ve summoned me and I’m here.”

“I…I take back my summon,” I cried with the little oxygen that remained in my panicked lungs. “I just want you to go. Now. Please.”

Silence. Then, whispering centimeters away into my ear, the entity spoke. “Are you scared? I shouldn’t scare you, your life should scare you.”

I jumped at the eerie closeness of the voice. The shock of it allowed anger to seep through the terror.

“Don’t do that! Where are you? Stop hiding in the shadows and at least show yourself! I have to know where you are. It’s not like I can be any more scared than I already am…” my voice trailed off.

Just then, off in the corner of my peripheral against a wall, two fiendish eyes lit up, malevolent blood red circles that illuminated and dimmed as if watching the lit end of a pair of cigars being smoked in pitch black emptiness.

“Peekaboo. Here I am. Now, enough of this. It’s the same stall tactics for thousands of years with you people. You want something from me. I want something in return. As I said, let’s barter. This game you humans play, it’s so boring. I’m your only opportunity to make what’s left of your life worth anything again. What is it I can offer you, mortal?”

I remained in a state of utter disbelief, my mind an array of chaos and temptation. Could this actually be real? Selling your soul to the dark one? This was fodder for books and television and movies. The Devil And Daniel Webster, that was the big one. The short story and film that followed, that was exactly what faced me in the moment. But it was just a movie. Fiction. Yet here it was. Here I was. I had indeed summoned this beast, this entity. How could it count though? I was drunk and miserable, were there no rules?

Thinking about my life in a vacuum, at least the life I’d lived the past twenty something years, I saw no hope or light. I had long ago lost my smile. Look at how I spent my free time, drinking whiskey and my own tears, staring at posters of movie stars and hoping for a time portal. I was indeed pathetic. Common sense of course, if such a thing could be applied in this situation, told me that nothing this hellspawn offered would be worth my soul. Then again, if my life wasn’t worth a damn to me, why should my soul be any different? It was correct, the entity, in that I had no relationship with God. I only spoke to God when I ran out of people to blame. God wasn’t coming to save me and I didn’t expect a hero’s welcome into his kingdom when this mess of a life on earth ended. Faith was a class I’d failed long ago. God would never allow me to graduate.

Confusion bewildered me. Moments prior I’d been asleep, half hoping to not wake up, and now I was being tempted with matters of salvation and damnation.

“I can still turn my life around,” I defiantly told the entity. “I’m young enough to make a change. I don’t need you. I have time.”

Silence. Maybe three seconds, yet it lasted an eternity. Then it spoke again.

“Time? What good has time been for you? What use is it? You don’t value time, you don’t understand it. What have you ever done with time? Stare at celebrity women who wouldn’t waste the oxygen to step over you as you lie dead in the streets? Shed tears over people who have long forgotten you? You have no time. You have nothing,” the entity sneered with cruelty. “You have nothing and will continue to have nothing. We both know this, Christopher. There’s an out though, having nothing. It means you have nothing to lose. You summoned me. You asked to go back to, quote, ‘the best days of your life’? I can give you that. Or you can spend your last twenty years rotting away in that chair, drinking away the memories you cling to.”

Panic set in. Every word from the entity elicited abject horror, but something in particular it said seized control over my thoughts. Something said that was beyond ominous.

“Twenty years? Why do you say twenty years? What happens in twenty years?” I asked, though deep within I think I knew.

The malevolent red eyes lit up and faded away at almost the same time, telling me it was now on the other side of me in the darkness. I hadn’t heard the beast move. It seemed to flow like water.

“In twenty years, fourteen days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and eleven seconds, you, Christopher Michael Brooks, will expire from the living world. At the age of sixty-four, the very bottle in your hand will take your liver. Forevermore you will cease to exist on this earth. I believe we both know the uncertainty of what lies beyond the mortal world for you. It’s time to hedge your bet. Are you ready to hear my offer now?”

Somewhere in the depths of my stomach was where my heart could be found. Massaging the whiskey bottle with my fingers, I imagined myself growing old, my arthritic bone bag hunched over this very dining room table, dying slowly from liquid poison. My entire body quivered. Twenty years? Twenty years was nothing and it was everything. This entity had played its hand well. To refuse its offer meant knowing, always knowing, that a literal clock would be running a countdown to my personal end of days. I would die lonely and afraid, my body discovered only when the stench became too much for the neighbors. I was kidding myself by thinking I could change my future. Perhaps optimism might endure in this negotiation without a known endgame, but I now knew how it would all conclude. The next twenty years, with each second shaved off in a callous manner, would drive me insane.

And then I began to think of the Good Years. The best days of my life. All of the adoration and companionship from my friends, too many of them to count. The simple excitement of a night out, the tingling sensation of an amorous entanglement in the works…even knowing my family again as people who loved me, not the abandoning hypocrites they would become. To live again where I could turn heads and conquer any room with my boyish charm and unflinching charisma. Most of all, to go back to a time where I was respected. And the jokes! I had a lifetime of jokes since then, amazing material that would be groundbreaking comedy for my beloved era. Grabbing the paunch in the midsection of my torso, I yearned for the days I could feel the ridges between stomach muscles. Rubbing my smooth temples, I could almost feel that thick head of hair that Carrie used to run her fingers through.

Carrie.

She grew from an ex girlfriend into a goddess at that moment.

Suddenly I could see her in all of her sprightly zest, her flaxen hair waving in the wind, those cobalt eyes welcoming me back to where I always belonged, to where I never should have left; with her.

It dawned on me. My love for her was as constant as the North Star. Yes, my mind was under more strain and pressure than it was built for, but I decided right then that she was my everything, and I had succeeded in convincing myself.

All because those were the Good Years. This was my era. I belonged there again. I belonged…home.

As my mind stumbled and struggled towards a conclusion, the entity spoke with perfect timing, as if it could read my thoughts, a near certainty in hindsight.

“Christopher Michael Brooks, I offer you the following. In exchange for the twenty remaining years you have left on the mortal plane, I will grant you those twenty

years to be lived over and over again during the time you requested, the ‘best days of your life’ as you stated. For twenty years, you will remain at that age and timeline, known only to you. During those twenty years, you will feel the time pass and know it has, but nothing will disrupt you and it will always be the era requested. You will remain in the age and era requested, to do as you please, for twenty years. You will enjoy your chosen surroundings and circumstances at a rate twenty times beyond the unknowing mortals around you. You cannot die during those twenty years, you cannot make aware your circumstances to any mortals during those twenty years. At the conclusion of the twenty year arrangement, you will simply perish from existence on this plane. The other humans will never know; life will continue as if only a year has passed, even though you’ve lived twenty times that. In their world, you will continue on as you did in the life you led before and eventually part ways. At the end of our arrangement…you know what we want. This is the best deal possible. So…Christopher Michael Brooks…are these terms agreeable to you?”

Once I thought choosing a frat party theme was an overwhelming decision. This thought occurred at this most inopportune time and I chuckled. Again, mysteries of the brain. I weighed my options. Slowly die for two decades. Or live for two decades during my prime, with no one around me the wiser. Mentally I would perish at sixty-four, but my final days would culminate with endless trysts with a twenty-one year old bombshell and the ability to run a mile without fear of heart failure. I wasn’t there yet but by the time my mental age hit sixty-four, I would be living every dirty old man’s dream. Face it, I bargained with myself, no angels were making any counter offers. It came down to a slow death versus living out the greatest days of my life until the very last second. It didn’t take long to decide. Honestly, what would you pick?

I began to open my mouth but the entity had beaten me again, now making its presence known through the oppressive scarlet eyes that glowed and dimmed in the chair directly in front of me, far too close, a vicious display of intimidation.

The small space on the table in front of me lit up, suddenly clear of the mess I’d made, revealing a scroll inscribed with perfect calligraphy next to a quill pen.

“I take it we’ve come to terms, Mr. Brooks?”

I remember sighing and grabbing the pen with a shaking hand. Then I looked up at the entity, connecting my gaze to where its own gaze now burned fire, and confirmed.

“Twenty years of the best days of my life. No disruptions, no early death. Just twenty years to live as I once did in the greatest days I ever knew, before I hand my soul over to you nasty bastards. That’s the deal, correct?”

Though I could not see it, I just knew the entity was smiling somewhere in the lonely shadows.

“Those are the terms of the deal. All you have to do is sign.”

I thought about my life one last time. I’d be going to hell in any religion, eventually. With that, I took a swig off my last bottle of whiskey, on my final Wednesday, and then I put pen to paper.

So here I am, now in year three of my twenty year contract. The clock hands are moving very slowly. Sometimes I wonder if they move at all. There is nothing to do really. Not much going on, at least nothing I haven’t done for three years straight and will do for seventeen more.

As you can probably gather, this hasn’t worked out as expected. I almost want to use a cliche and say the devil is a liar, but that can be answered with another cliche the entity once said; the devil is in the details.

I wasn’t lied to at all. Not in the slightest. The truth was in front of me but I guess like usual, I just wasn’t really paying attention. The entity was kind enough to show me some things before I landed here, just after I signed that stupid contract.

Did you know that humans tend to glorify the past? We embellish, we memorialize, we write fables. We create things that didn’t quite happen as we choose to remember them. We’re all guilty of it. Except unlike myself, most people wouldn’t wager their soul against it.

It was like watching a documentary of my life, the highlight reel that the entity implanted in my head. And man was it a twist ending, Shyamalan style.

See, I had forgotten all about how Carrie and I cheated on each other all the time. It slipped my mind, being arrested for drunk driving before failing out of college and being shunned by my frat brothers. Those laughs at the open mic? My friends laughed at me and my dream, not my jokes. I don’t even know when I began to falsify my nightlife excursions, because in the montage provided I anchored the back end of many a winding line and saw very few open doors. Those football games? I never scored any touchdowns, that was some other guy. The physique, that was his too. The great eviction episode of 1998 was quite shocking to relive. It barely nudged my parents’ divorce and grandfather’s death for “Scene of the Year”.

Oh, and my thick, lustrous hair? It was just okay.

Why was I shown this? I suppose it was to prove that the devil really was, as the entity had said, in the details, because our contract continued as planned. Down to the details. The days I was enamored with were not the best days of my life, as per our agreement. Always choose words wisely. These were what I call the Good Years, and even though I appear to have overstated that period, it was still a blast, but they weren’t the best days of my life. These were times filled with the same banalities of life in any era; heartbreak, depression, financial woes, anxiety, grief. No amount of romanticizing could deny that.

So here I am, year three into age three.

The best days of my life.

I have no defense. The entity sent me where I asked. No financial worries, no stress about the future, no romantic heart to be broken. I know I’ll be fed and loved and my days will be spent playing and napping. There’s no pressure or demands whatsoever. There’s also not much to do because all I have around me is the technology that 1980 has to offer, and I can’t even utilize it because again, I’m three years old.

Actually my mind is now forty-seven but I’m trapped in a three year old’s existence. When I finally escape this contract, I’ll be a sixty-four year old man in a three year old’s body, and will have been for twenty years. No more drinking, no more women. No more leaving the confines of this house or a car seat. I’ll never see sports on the big screen again, or eat a steak, or hold an intelligent conversation. Per the restraints of my contract, I can’t even pay it forward and somehow tell my parents to buy stock in Apple or something like that.

I’ll be stuck in this hell for seventeen more years, and at that time, the entity will return and take me to another version of eternal damnation. I don’t know how the next hell can be worse than the current. Perhaps they’ll offer WiFi, but the password will be pi. I’ll find out soon enough.

Honestly, I just have to laugh. As a neverwas comedian, it’s my duty. I’ve found myself regressing to an almost nonchalant indifference now, an immature disposition. I wonder if all of this toddler babble around me is the reason I keep joking and making stupid rhymes in my head about such a grave and dire conclusion. Respect is due though. That black mass of evil played me good. If you learn anything from my story, always read contracts with a keen eye, especially when dealing with affairs of the soul.

Do you know what is cosmically funny and tragic at the same time? This whole contract, this whole The Devil And Daniel Webster thing? It occurred to me about a year and a half ago that J Love actually starred in a movie based on that famous tale. Like I said, she always seems to pop up somehow.

Speaking of her, I think I’m like two years older than Jennifer Love Hewitt, so she’s somewhere right now being a one year old, with no idea what power she’ll someday possess. This world is nothing if not unpredictable.

I still have mixed emotions about that beautiful dimpled icon. Had she not been so damned good, she might not have symbolized what I thought was my greatest era. Had I not thought of her, not glorified her, had I not looked at that poster and misread it, had my celebrity crush not inadvertently given me those ridiculous sentimental reimaginings of wondrous days past, maybe I’d at least be drinking my whiskey while awaiting death. But instead I’m drinking milk in a onesie.

I know deep down it’s not her fault. I choose to cling to my delusion though. That’s sort of my thing, as I’ve learned.

Speaking of delusion, I’m riding this comedy dream to the literal most bitter end known to man. I’ve been working on a joke to tell the devil when I arrive but can’t seem to get beyond puns. As I mentioned, I think it’s the child in me. Or is it me in the child? I don’t know anymore. So far, this is what I’ve come up with: “Why do demons and ghouls get along so well? Because ‘demons are a ghoul’s best friend’. “

I hope old Lucifer watches diamond commercials or that one is gonna sink, but hey, what more can he do besides keep me chained in the forever prison of sorrow? That joke only took three years to conjure, which makes me ponder; if that’s as good as it gets for my comedy, it would have been nice if someone had told me back then. Maybe I would have focused on my grades and never have sent myself here. It is inevitable that other prisoners in the eternal hellfire and brimstone of Hades will ask why I signed on the dotted line, and since I’m slap happy with childlike denial, I’ll again answer in rhyme.

Jennifer Love Hewitt made me do it.

SHOW CLOSE=====

Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters, or unsolved mysteries like you do! You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren@weirddarkness.com. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks I’ve narrated, visit the store for Weird Darkness t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, phone cases, and more merchandise, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on the website, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on TELL YOUR STORY. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.

Stories on “Thriller Thursdays” are works of fiction, and you can find links to the stories or the authors in the show notes.

“Ochelari” by Ouroboros for Creepypasta.com

“Jennifer Love Hewitt Made Me Do It” by Jon Allen at WriterJonAllen.com

WeirdDarkness® – is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions.

Now that we’re coming out of the dark, I’ll leave you with a little light… “Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends.” — Proverbs 17:9

And a final thought… “Never limit what you can do or achieve for if you can visualize and dare to imagine with conviction, the sky is the limit on the many possibilities that awaits you.” – Blake Sinclair

I’m Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.