CHAPTER 8: BEWARE THE FREAK

PRESENT DAY

In the city of Hillwood, the rising sun beat down its warm light in the cold hours of the early Sunday morning. Many get up and start their routines for work, stores open for business, people commute to their jobs, and the day begins for many.

There are two, however, that take a long-needed rest before they begin the day.

In a small bed in the highest room of the Sunset Arms Boarding Home on Vine Street, Arnold and Helga laid together in the spoon position, resting after a night of rough sex.

Arnold, having arrived home just a day ago, wasted no time to repair the damage done to his family and his significant other. He has returned from his long 5 years in Hillwood, both fulfilled from his training as a Spirit Master, one of the most powerful beings on Earth; and fulfilled from his rekindled love shared with Helga.

Helga, having lived a life of suffering and misery for 5 years, suffered no more with Arnold's return. Having her betrothed in her arms again has done more for her soul than any force on this Earth could do for her. She was healed at the spirit and the heart, and her love for Arnold healed with her.

With both of them fulfilled emotionally, spiritually, and sexually, there was nothing that could separate the two now. They are now truly soulmates.

As the two laid into a heavy sleep, their peaceful sleep came to an end with a familiar sound waking the two from their slumber. The sound was from Arnold's old alarm clock, his handmade clock still functional after all these years. Made possible, no doubt, by Helga's obsession with his room in the past.

"Hey Arnold! Hey Arnold! Hey Arnold!" The clock said.

Groggily raising his hand, Arnold unplugged the clock from its potato battery, shutting it off and bringing a relaxing silence to the room.

With the clock's loud alarm bringing its waking noise to the room, Helga began to awake as well, giving a slight moan from stretching her arms.

Arnold began to get out of his bed, but Helga gripped him and pulled him back into the bed, not wanting to get out of bed herself just yet.

"That was the best night of my entire life. I'm so glad you gave it to me." Helga said.

"I'm glad that I could heal you after all this time. I'm never leaving Hillwood again. Not without you." Arnold replied.

The two shared a deep, passionate kiss, preparing themselves for a second round of what happened between the two last night. Little did they know, however, the two had company in the room with them.

A sharp 'Ahem' echoed through the room, bringing the attention of the two to the door. Miles and Stella stood at the door, watching the two, trying their very best to hold back their smirks.

"We thought you two might be hungry, there's breakfast downstairs." Miles said.

"Great, I haven't had any real food since..." Arnold began to say.

As Arnold tried to get out of the bed, he tripped himself along the bedsheets, accidentally knocking the covers off of both him and Helga, leaving them both fully exposed in front of the two adults. Arnold and Helga's faces turned bright red with their modesty in full display. Miles and Stella simply turned their heads, withholding themselves from laughing hysterically.

Arnold needed to cover himself with only his hands, where Helga had to cover herself with both her arms.

"Uhh... ...whoops." Arnold said.

Miles and Stella had even more difficulty not laughing, now beginning to snicker at the two.

"Well, we'll be downstairs with the food if you two'd like to get dressed." Stella said.

Miles and Stella exited the room, with their laughs beginning to be heard from downstairs by the two.

Arnold was slightly relieved that the embarrassing moment was over, trying to laugh off the situation himself. Helga, not quite as forgiving, slapped Arnold's buttocks with a pillow, eliciting a slight squeal from him.

"Nice going, football head!" Helga said.

Helga tried to act angry towards Arnold, but she still couldn't help but smile at the hilariously awkward situation Arnold put them in.

"If I had a penny for everytime you called me that, I'd be richer than Rhonda." Arnold replied.

"Good thing money isn't something I care about. Food, on the other hand..." Helga said.

Helga got out of bed and began rummaging through a dresser, selecting her clothing choices for the day. As she got herself dressed, Arnold began to search for clothes for himself, only to find that none of his old clothing fit him anymore.

"Crap." Arnold said.

"What?" Helga asked.

"None of my old clothes fit anymore. What am I gonna wear?"

"...Nothing?"

Helga gave a smug smile, getting a laugh from Arnold.

"You want me to eat breakfast with my parents totally naked?" Arnold asked.

"I won't complain. Besides, we're out of milk for cereal and having you pantless would solve that problem." Helga joked.

"...What does that have to do with- Oh my god!"

Upon realizing what Helga meant, Arnold started laughing hysterically at her perverted joke. Helga couldn't help but join in the laughter herself.

"But, seriously, do you think you could get some clothes from my dad? I think I might be able to fit his." Arnold asked.

"Sure, I'll be right back." Helga said.

After a short walk downstairs and a quick search through Miles' dresser, Helga returned upstairs with a button-up plaid shirt, a fresh pair of underwear, and a pair of blue jeans.

"Thanks." Arnold said.

After a few minutes of changing, Arnold got himself decently dressed. Before heading downstairs for breakfast, Arnold took a look around his room, observing more of Helga's redecorations.

Even though he knew just how much Helga loved him, he was still surprised as to how much work Helga had put into all the decorations she added. Helga took note of Arnold's reactions, contemplating on what he might have been thinking.

"You're right, I really should get rid of this stuff." Helga said.

"But, I thought all this was important to you?" Arnold asked.

"I kept it all because it reminded me of you."

Helga put her hand on Arnold's chest, holding him tight.

"I don't need it now." Helga said.

Arnold gave a smile at Helga's gestures of love.

"I'd still like to read your poetry sometime. I remember everyone made fun of that poem book I found in the fourth grade, and you managed to cover up that it was yours." Arnold said.

"Did you laugh too? Is that why you want to read more?" Helga asked.

"No, I loved it. It made me feel special, even though I never knew it was you until now."

Helga felt elated at his words and jumped onto him, kissing him aggressively, hoping to move the conversation to something more... physical. Arnold grew hungry, for breakfast, that is; so he tried to put Helga's focus back on breakfast as well.

"Okay, Helga, calm down, let's just get breakfast." Arnold said.

"Then carry me to the round table, my sweet King Arthur." Helga flirted.

Arnold carried Helga in his arms like a newlywed bride to the kitchen. As he walked down the halls, Arnold took notice of the emptiness that haunted the halls. Where before he knew these halls to be loud and alive with their tenants living in the home, they now felt cold and hollow.

Wow, it sure feels empty in here. Arnold thought.

After a short walk down the stairs, the two arrived in the kitchen, where Miles and Stella awaited them. While Arnold and Helga were sleeping, the two made a large helping of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hash browns to give a proper welcome home to Arnold.

"Hey Arnold, welcome home!" Miles and Stella said.

Arnold gave an appreciative smile at the banquet prepared, eager to chow down into it. After gently setting Helga on the ground, the four all sat down at the dining table together, all of them enjoying the large breakfast. All the food looked delicious, and it tasted even better than it looked. At least, so Arnold thought, as he had forgotten how good American food was, as he was eating his breakfast ravenously.

Even though his welcoming back home was as warm as it could get, Arnold felt like much was missing, as if his home was still incomplete. While he had managed to overcome the pain of losing his grandparents, the people who raised him since he was young, he still felt not at home with them gone. To him, the house was like a mausoleum.

Not wanting to bring his depressing feelings to what was meant to be a warm family breakfast, Arnold tried to put his mind to other things, questioning what happened in his absence.

"Hey, Mom, Dad, what happened to all the boarders?" He asked.

After a glace between his parents, as if asking each other who should answer, Miles decided to answer.

"Well, after Phil and Gertie died, everyone just went their separate ways. Ernie left to find work in another city, Mr. Hyunh decided to further pursue his hobby as a country singer and opened his own restaurant chain with his daughter using his touring money, and, believe it or not, Oskar and Suzie got back together." He said.

"They did?! What did she ever see in him?" Arnold asked.

"Actually, after everyone else left the boarding house, Oskar decided to turn himself around and pull himself up by his bootstraps. He went back to school, got his G.E.D., and he's putting himself through college. After he ran into Suzie again, the two just seemed to hit it off again and now, they're planning to remarry, so I heard."

"Good for them, I guess. Still, it feels empty around here. No one else came to rent rooms?"

"A lot's changed since you left, Arnold. Hillwood isn't at all the same city anymore. Crime rates have skyrocketed, businesses are leaving, and kids are getting into more and more dangerous activities. Two days ago, I heard some kid dumped hot fry oil on another kid just because he was picking on him. This was at P.S. 1018, where most of your friends go now." Stella said.

"Did they say what the kids' names were?"

"The one who was attacked was a football quarterback and known school bully named Alan Miller, the attacker was a kid named Thaddeus Gammelthorpe, who kids called 'Curly'."

"Curly? He did this?"

"You know him, Arnold?" Miles asked.

"He was this kid with a lot of problems back in the fourth grade. He had some unexplained obsession with Rhonda. One time, he held himself up in the principal's office and made demands that he was supposed to be ball monitor after dodgeball. I tried to help him as best as I could, but... Damn, I should've been there. I could've helped him. Maybe that other kid would've been alright."

Stella, trying to take the attention away from the tragic event and putting the conversation to more constructive areas, changed the subject.

"Well, speaking of schools, Arnold, you'll need to start getting back to school to make up for all the years you've been gone." She said.

"You're right, mom, I'll get started tomorrow. I think I'll take the equivalency tests like Grandpa took to graduate sixth grade." Arnold replied.

"Equivalency tests? That'll take you weeks of studying."

"I can do it. Let's just say it's a Green-Eye trick."

"That reminds us, you still haven't told us about what the Green-Eyed People taught you. What could've kept you there for so long?" Miles asked.

"A lot of that is secretive, Dad, they don't want me just spreading their secrets like that. Surely you and Mom of all people understand that." Arnold replied.

"We do, sweetie, but we've been studying them for years, and we've been itching to know-" Stella tried to say.

"Hey! He's only been back a day! Can't you let him get settled in a bit?" Helga interrupted.

Arnold's parents, realizing their mistakes, backed off from the subject.

"You're right. We're sorry, Arnold. If they want some things kept secret, they can be kept secret. You can tell us what's not secret later." Stella said.

"It's okay." Arnold said.

Despite the conversation leading away from the events at P.S. 1018, Arnold couldn't stop thinking about Curly going crazier than ever. Without him in Hillwood to keep people like him in check and there to give a helping hand, what else could have happened?

Curly dumped fry oil on someone? What else could someone like him be capable of? Arnold thought.


In the broken home of the Gammelthorpe 'family', the abused and neglected child named Thaddeus Gammelthorpe, better known as Curly, laid unconcious and nearly dead on the floor, not moving for an entire day after heavy abuse from his father.

His parents paid no mind, as the two despised him and viewed him as the greatest embarrassment in their lives. While abusing him was as routine in their home as eating and sleeping, the two never stooped so low as to kill him. Even though they wanted to, they were smart enough to know that an abused child is easier to hide from the authorities than a dead child. But, if he dies, he dies.

Curly, however, shared no such sentiments.

Having finally regained his consciousness, Curly arose from the floor, awakening from his beating. The blood that poured out of his nose finally clotted, but the lost blood was left dried and crusty on his face, giving him a vampiric appearance.

Finally up off the floor, Curly stood firmly on the ground, breathing hard to catch up to recover enough oxygen to mend his potentially damaged brain. After a pained snort, Curly took a nearby bedsheet laying on the couch and blew his nose on it, not caring what his parents would say or do when they saw what happened. It wouldn't matter in a few moments, anyway.

After blowing his nose on the white bedsheet, his nose stinging with sharp pain as he did so, dried blood and scabs mixed with mucus flew from his nose, allowing him to breathe out through it again. The bedsheet left a red stain so dark against its bright white fabric that it turned nearly black with the new bloodstain.

As Curly observed his surroundings, he noticed that his house was empty, meaning his parents were gone. He figured that they were most likely out for fun times at a fancy restaurant, needlessly spending money meant to feed and clothe him on 50 dollar steaks and 12 dollar cheesecakes. He hopes that they enjoy their meal, knowing that he will make it their last.

Walking up the stairs with his bruised legs stinging from every movement, Curly went up to his room, preparing for his change in wardrobe. Before he began to change, he passed by his mirror, taking a look at himself.

He didn't like what he saw.

Angered at the weak, pathetic being that was himself, Curly punched his reflection, fracturing the mirror, and cutting his hand. As he looked in the mirror again, the reflection showed a shattered reflection of himself. He thought it was an improvement, giving a sickened smile.

Still, this wasn't enough of an improvement.

Sickened by all the walls surrounding him, Curly took his glasses off. As his eyesight began to blur and distort, his paradigm of the world around him began to do the same. There was nothing important in this world to him. There was only matter occupying space. There was no meaning, no purpose, no life; all just worthless shapes and wasted space.

Hating the surroundings in his eyes, Curly crushed his glasses in his hand, ignoring the sharp pain of the glass cutting into his hand, and threw the frame against the wall, breaking them in half, just as his soul was.

Tired of the clothes that hid his scars, he threw them off, leaving his malformed body uncovered. His entire body was completely covered in scars and dead skin tissue, each mark showing years of abuse and torture that he endured from his psychopathic parents.

Even though he hated his parents more than anything in his heart, he loved each and every scar, each one reminding him of how much he hated his disgusting parents. Still, there was one more mark that he needed to make.

Taking a knife from underneath his pillow, one that he used to abuse himself just for fun, Curly began to carve a mantra into his chest as a permanent reminder to who he was now. This new mantra was 'NO TEARS', reflecting his promise to himself. The cut ran deep and the pain was agonizing, but he loved every second of it.

Stepping into the shower, Curly turned the water on full heat, searing the open wounds on his chest, sterilizing them. Where any normal human being would be crying in agony, Curly groaned in pleasure and began laughing, the pain no match for the absolute Hell he endured for most of his life.

Washing the blood from his face, he began to feel as if the very skin from his body was being washed away as well, as if he were a snake shedding its skin to show its true self.

Upon stepping out of the shower, Curly didn't bother grooming his hair. Instead, he ran his hands through it, making it messy and unkempt. Taking several clothes from his parents' room, he selected for himself a dark pair of jeans and a trench coat, wearing it unopened over his shirtless body, his mantra on full display.

As beautiful as he felt in his new look, he felt that there was still something missing. Upon wondering what it may have been, he scanned the room to see what else he may have needed.

Finally, he found his inspiration.

He looked at the Alice Cooper poster hanging over his bed. His parents put there when he was a baby, knowing it gave him nightmares. In his early youth, after listening to his music, Curly became a big fan of him, lying about disliking it to keep the poster, leaving the only positive influence on his life.

Taking the one positive influence he ever had into a negative one, he decided to become his childhood nightmare.

After messily rummaging through his mother's medicine cabinet, he found her makeup and began painting black eyes and a smile on himself, just like the Alice Cooper poster that terrified him for years.

He had become his true self now. Curly was long dead and gone.

Now, he is The Freak.

Upon leaving the room, The Freak took notice of a picture of Curly, his older self, standing with his parents, all smiling together in the picture. As happy as they all looked together, looks can be deceiving.

The Freak remembered exactly when this photograph was taken. It was taken on his 13th birthday. In an uncharacteristic move, his parents had bought him a puppy, the first and only gift that he had ever received from his parents. When that happened, he thought for the first time in his life that he was actually loved by his parents.

Two weeks later, they gave him a crowbar and forced him to beat it to death, or else they would beat him to death with the same crowbar. Being scared, he complied, tears falling from his eyes and breaking down emotionally after doing so. His parents couldn't stop laughing, taking a picture to savor his misery for their entertainment. After that, they beat him with the crowbar anyway.

As The Freak stared in anger at the photograph, the images of his parents began to distort and shift. Where the two resembled human beings in the picture, at least on the outside, the two had shifted into demons, just as the bully in the high school cafeteria did.

"Your pain is our pleasure, Thaddeus." The demon mother said.

"We revel in your punishment." The demon father said.

"Why me? What did I ever do to you?!" The Freak shouted.

"You exist. That alone is a crime. A crime punishable for all eternity." The demon father said.

"You are a blight upon this Earth and I am disgusted that you came from my body. We hate you, Thaddeus. We hate you very much." The demon mother said.

"SHUT UP!" The Freak shouted.

Throwing the frame with all his might, the picture frame broke against the wall, the picture falling to the floor. He knew what he had to do next.

After carefully taking a hidden box from the attic, The Freak gathered the last tool he needed to complete his transformation of soul. In this box was his father's old handgun. Gripping the .45 Caliber pistol in his hands, The Freak was going to do something that he wanted to for years.

He was going to kill his parents.

"If I am a blight, demons, then you are a blight, and I shall cleanse the Earth of you once and for all." The Freak said to himself.


Within a few minutes of waiting, Curly's parents arrived at the door, laughing happily. The two had arrived back from having selfish fun gambling at casinos and eating expensive dinners, using money meant for their son.

After the two enjoyed their hedonistic activities and planned to go to the bedroom for more, continuing to neglect their son, something unexpected happened. What happened next neither of them would have ever expected to happen in their lives.

A gunshot was heard, and, before anyone could find out where the source came from, Curly's mother fell to the floor, dead. A bullet hole gaped in her forehead, bleeding heavily, with a larger exit wound in the back of her head, her brains leaking on the floor.

Curly's father, shocked over the loss of his wife, gripping her tight and devastated from her death. His moment of grieving was paused with a sinister voice from the back of the room.

"For years I wondered if you ever loved anything. I suppose that in your last moments we both finally know the answer." The voice said.

Curly's father looked to the source of the voice only to find his son walking from the corner with a smoking gun. But this was no longer his son, it was the body of his son taken over by the new, vengeful, insane persona of The Freak.

"You little bastard, how dare you? HOW DARE YOU?!" Curly's father yelled.

"'How dare I'? A better question is, 'why haven't I sooner'? I feel so much more relieved now that she's finally dead. And when I pull this trigger again, ending your miserable life as well, I'll feel even better." The Freak replied.

"You killed my wife, you little shit! We should've bashed your head harder as a baby! Not just enough to make you stop crying like back then, enough to make your damn ears pour out blood!"

"Maybe you should've. Perhaps then you'd be alive now."

"You son of a bitch! You are filth! I HAVE NO DAMN SON!"

"You never did."

The Freak pulled the trigger, sending a bullet through the skull of his abusive father, ending the lives of both his parents and beginning his new life.

Taking the bedsheets from his parents' beds upstairs, he laid them atop of their dead bodies, following it with urinating atop their corpses as a final insult to their graves.

After continuous dumping of whiskey, vodka, rubbing alcohol, and mouthwash all over the house, The Freak took a match, lit it, and dropped it on the ground, beginning to burn the house down.

Now, with the people he most hated dead and the place he hated most destroyed, there was only one more thing on his mind. Something far more primal and animalistic.

"Rhonda, my girl, you had your time with the little boy Curly, now meet the new and improved me." The Freak said to himself.

As he walked away from the burning house, he began skipping down the street, singing "My Girl" by The Temptations aloud, making up his own lyrics.

"Well, I guess you'll say,

Who am I gonna kill today?

Rhonda...

Gonna kill you, Rhonda!" The Freak sang.

Inside Curly's old room, the picture of Curly and his parents smiling together still remained. The flames brewing through the house slowly crept up to it, beginning to blacken and char the paper and destroying it.

Just before the picture was destroyed forever, the outline of Curly remained for a split-second, still showing the one moment in his life he felt truly happy.

With another rise of the flames, that moment is gone forever, just as Curly is now.