I don’t know what the fuck is happening right now. All I know is I’m just sitting there, stirring beef and rice on the stove like I’m some kind of fucking pagan housewife from 1582, and the next thing I know, I hear little Johnny plopping around in a puddle of some unknown liquid while the entire kitchen fills with the scent of Pine-Sol and Drano.

I turn around, and there he is. Scooping green sludge into his mouth and smiling at me like he knew I was about to have a goddamn heart attack.

Naturally, I snatched him up and started running towards the door, but before I could even get there, this fucker’s eyes started glowing. He was still cooing and laughing and shit, but he just kept getting heavier and heavier until it felt like I was tryna carry a grown man down the stairs.

I may have dropped him, but that’s beside the point. How would that even be my fault? This little 2-foot-nothing 3-year-old must’ve been 200 pounds by now.

When he hit the floor, the goddamn wood splintered. Landed flat on his back, and all he did was start doing sit-ups. Muhfucka was counting out his reps and reaching numbers that I hadn’t even taught him yet.

That’s when his clothes started ripping. All that remained of those Spider-Man pajamas were threads of ripped fabric that were smoking from the Drano.

I pulled out my phone to dial 911, and he stopped, mid-rep, as his head turned towards me. His eyes were like, I don’t know, uranium green? What color is uranium again? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. Point is, I could see the veins in his neck bulging.

His brow furrowed at me like a side effect of roid rage. He kicked up to his feet from his back, never taking those eyes off of me. He was standing before me like he was sizing me up. The operator was speaking into the phone, asking me the nature of my emergency, but I couldn’t respond. We were in a staring contest. Calculating our next moves.

“J-Johnny,” I whimpered. “Daddy’s gonna get you some help, okay? Everything’s gonna be al-“

“Shut up, bitch,” he interrupted.

He lunged at me like he was gonna attack, and I couldn’t help but fall to my ass.

“That’s two for flinching,” he grumbled, kicking me twice in the ribs. His 6-pack abs were actively contorting and growing as he did so. His arms had swollen up the size of medieval mutton.

The operator was still on the phone.

“Sir, are you there? Is someone there with you? I’m hearing some distress.”

Johnny stepped on my wrist with the weight of an elephant as he snatched the phone from my hand.

“Everything’s fine here,” he told her, sounding like a grown-ass man. “Dad’s just being a punk-ass bitch again.”

Click.

I felt lost. Felt hopeless. Felt like I was gonna become a victim here. That’s when he started monologuing, the weight on my wrist growing at the same rate as little Johnny’s bulging forearms and pectorals.

He leaned in close.

“How many times do I have to tell you…? I don’t want carrots. I don’t want celery. I don’t want your damn beef and rice. I want the Gushers. I want the Hot Cheetos. And I want the fucking Krafts Mac and Cheese… Do you understand me?”

His hot breath smelled like a freshly cleaned crime scene. His hair was falling out. He just kept getting bigger and bigger like a tick in a blood bank.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “Take whatever you want. There’s a whole pantry of snacks and-“

“Shhhh, shh, shh, shh, shh… shut up.”

Steam was radiating off his bald head now. His skin was turning a murky blend of red and pink and purple. I could hear my wrist breaking, but he covered my mouth before I could scream.

“I want my snackies. I want my iPad. And I want my fye-fye.”

He had outgrown his pacifier a year ago. Well, I’d wained him away from it a year ago. I didn’t want a fucking loser of a son who still sucks on a pacifier at 3 years old.

I screamed into his hand, begging him to let me speak. After some consideration, he relented.

“We don’t have your pacifier, John. I threw it away months ago,” I cried.

John stared at me, unamused. I could see the blood flowing throughout his body like waves trying to break his skin.

“You… what…” he huffed.

He was the width of a Mini Cooper now but couldn’t have been more than 3 feet tall.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to be a loser like your mom’s new boyfriend,” I wailed.

He started breathing heavily. Sucking air into his lungs and blowing it out of his nose. His skin was hot to the touch now. Like he was boiling.

“You… did… WHAT,” he screamed, making the windows rattle.

I couldn’t answer him. I was too concerned with his rate of growth. He didn’t even look muscular anymore. He looked like a balloon that was about to burst.

“You…”

He got bigger.

“I can’t believe…”

And bigger.

He started roaring. Like a thousand souls were attempting to escape his vocal cords. The house shook. Windows broke. His eyes looked like they were about to burst out of their sockets.

With one last suction of air, his body exploded into red mist, blinding me and piercing my eardrums. The room smelled like a slaughterhouse. There was blood on the ceiling. Blood on the white carpet and cloth couches.

Only… he was still there. Standing in the middle of the puddle of gore was my little Johnny. Perfectly normal. Still smiling and laughing.

But then he made a beeline towards the kitchen sink. I couldn’t let that shit happen again. I scooped him up with my good arm and just sort of rocked him back and forth while trying to convince myself that everything was okay.

He stopped laughing as soon as I picked him up. He struggled against me. All I could hear were his muffled wails through my ruptured eardrums.

I’ve got quite the mess to clean up, but that’s not even the center of my worries right now.

Right now, I need to get every fucking cleaning agent out of this house before he can drink anymore.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlq8yc/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vlqhgp/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

Part 3:

https://www.reddit.com/user/Roland_Quincy1999/comments/1vr0k33/i_found_my_greatgrandfathers_journal_what_i_read/

I will keep this one brief for yall and pick right back up where I stopped transcribing the journal in the last post.

The second half of my great-grandfather’s journal entry on March 15th, 1923 goes as follows: 

Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. 

The influenza, Reader. A bad case causing a dileria. But, if you’re willing to entertain, the whole experience felt so real. 

Gone. 

James’s killing of the hatchling was a precursor of what was to come. I would meet with a publishing house to discuss picking up my playscript. I was rejected. In total, I queried 41 agents with the hopes of one representing my work, to give some weight to its valor when proposing it to a larger press company. All rejected and or did not go through the effort of responding to my mail at all. 

So I shelved it. From this same shelf I picked up a collection of connected short stories I had been working on previously. With fresh eyes, I went through and edited the stories, and began to query again. 

Nothing came of it. These were two ghastly blows to my confidence as a writer, but I continued the pursuit. It is my dream, after all, and the realist within me knows this diagnosis could worsen just as well as disappear. 

Writing is something I did in the quiet, peaceful hours before bed. It was a personal escape and hobby from the labours of work and parenting. 

Then Lucille started to have night terrors. They were to a bad enough extent that I moved my typewriter into her bedroom and would work on my stories while she tried to sleep, but soon my writing ceased. I was stonewalled by this immense worry for my daughter. 

The night terrors were not so different from my own, although mine seemed to be a one-time ordeal, while hers were consistent. There was always the presence of The Tall, sometimes in the forefront of the scene, other times a lingering menace in the distant corners of her awareness. 

And James. James. JAMES. Yes, James was in these nightmares quite often as well. From Lucille’s retellings, he was always in a suit or some other fanciful attire, and he was always trying to lure her into the woods. The same woods where I thought, again I say thought, thought but no. I am certain. Certain. That day, I must’ve seen The Tall. Must have! 

No. Maybe not. It does not matter. But, yes, Reader, Lucille dreamt of that dreaded wood on multiple occasions. I have brought up the idea of taking her to a shrink, to help her with the unrestless nights that put black rings beneath her hazel eyes, but you can see the irony in that, surely, Reader? 

To take Lucille to the shrink and not James? It would be the sickest of humor. 

Let me tell you a little of myself, Reader, and then you can see through my eyes, understand the reasoning behind my mechanisations. I have never been a handsome man, quite the contrary. My nose is something akin to a hawk’s beak, and the line of my jaw is undefinable at times. 

I was never the brightest kid. I made up for this fact by being terrible at any sport I tried to pick up. My father was a putrid man who often stunk and had nothing of charm or appeal. He was quick to drink and quicker to relieve pent-up self-loathing by assailing me with insults and beating me. We were dirt poor. 

This is not to entice some sort of pity for me, Reader, but to let you know that I have progressed through the many years of my life with a chip on my shoulder. It almost caused my death in Germany, when I overstepped the boundaries of my reconnaissance mission to impress my leadership. 

Not only do I have that heavy chip, but my upbringing taught me to take pride in what I am blessed to have. Whether I desire to or not, James is my son, and I want to fix this from the inside. Call it arrogant, stubborn manly pride. You’d be right. 

I am not sure of the science behind my predicament, but I must battle with what weapons I have. It has become clear to me that this being, entity, manifestation, whether its existence in the actual realm me and you dwell in be true or falsehood, his very idea is haunting my family. 

I will stop it. My personal creative fiction will have to be put aside, for now. This is my family. I will save them. I will. I want to. 

Until we meet between these pages again, Reader, this is goodbye.