Dumb

Narrations Here
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“Inspector, he had this journal in his backpack. It’s got his name on it, so I assume it’s all his writings. There’s several pages torn out though, none have been found so far.” said the constable as he put the small journal on the inspector’s desk. The radio on his desk created a quiet, muffled ambience of classic rock amid the usual toned out ruckus going on outside of his office.
“Has anyone else read it so far?” the inspector asked, as he feigned nonchalance.
“No sir, you said you wanted to be the first, right?”
“Right you are constable. Nothing fishy, I just want to know what’s been going on in my nephew’s head since his disappearance.”
The constable nodded and took leave of the office. Inspector Smith sat down and firmly thumbed the spine of the thin book as he held it on his lap.
“Ty, what have you gotten yourself into…” he muttered as he shut the radio off, and opened the journal.
----
June 20th, 2016-
I haven’t done journaling since I was a kid, but I feel like I need to make note of this. It was weird as hell.
It was 11:30 in the morning when it first happened, as far as I know. I was just hanging out in my basement, playing on my Xbox 360 and listening to music. I was a huge Nirvana fan, so I was listening to my mom’s greatest hits CD. My dad was in the other room, finishing up some laundry when something struck me as strange.
As I was muttering along with the lyrics to the song ‘Dumb’ I had some kind of trick of the brain. The line “I think I’m dumb, maybe just happy…” played, but what I heard was, “I think I’m dumb, guess I’ll dress snappy..”.
Now obviously that was a really strange alteration of the lyrics to hear, and is definitely not how the song (or any parody of it I know) goes. I didn’t think much of it, as I did tend to have a pretty overactive imagination. I brushed it off, until later that day.
My parents were going out for some kind of dinner, I think they were meeting some friends at a bar or something. My mom was in the entrance hallway of the house, waiting for my dad, which in itself was peculiar because the situation was always the other way around. After yelling up to him to ‘hurry up’ and asking ‘what’s taking so long’, he finally came downstairs, in a tux.
“What the hell are you wearing a tux for?” my mom asked, obviously confused. It wasn’t any fancy dinner they were going out for.
“I don’t know.. I just felt like I had to dress nice…” he trailed off.
“Well you’ll need to change, you look snappy, but that’s a bit too much.”
That’s when I remembered the strange lyrical change in the song earlier that day. Did my dad hear it? He was just in the other room, he very well could have, and why the hell would that have made him overdress anyways?
Unfortunately, it ended up spiraling into a bit of a fight between them, in which my dad refused to take off the tux, and they didn’t end up going. My dad sat in the living room, on his computer, tux still on the rest of the night.
----
June 21st, 2016-
I thought about that song all night. I decided to listen to the song again. Nothing strange, no changed lyrics, no hidden obscure words of prophecy… Still, I knew something was amiss. That situation yesterday was just TOO far fetched for me to shrug off.
I invited my friend Allan over, he was a bit of a weird dude, but we shared a lot of interests. We were pretty close. As we played some video games, secretively smoked a bit of weed, and listened to music in my basement, it happened again.
“I think I’m dumb, but I feel crappy…”
The same part of the same song, ‘Dumb’. A chill ran down my spine. I turned to Allan and asked if he heard that weird change.
“What do you mean? I don’t really know all the words to the song well enough to know if it was wrong.” He shrugged.
I started the song over, and made him sit intently with me, focusing on the words. I pointed out the “I think I’m dumb, maybe just happy…”
He nodded silently. We finished listening to the song, there was no change.
“I didn’t hear it man,” he muttered, obviously dubious, “maybe you’re just stoned.”
“Nah dude, I definitely heard it! It was wrong, something about it was kinda creepy too!” I protested. He just shrugged, raised his eyebrows and frowned before going back to playing Fable 2.
About a half hour later, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I decided I’d tell him about the weird tux thing with my dad from last night.
“It’s not the first time this weird lyric change has happened man, last night…” I was cut off mid-sentence. Allan IMMEDIATELY turned green and ran to the bathroom. He started puking like crazy in the toilet, and I really mean puking. He was almost screaming through the upchuck.
I ran to the bathroom, standing behind him, asking the typically unhelpful “Are you okay, man?” to which normally anyone would reply dismissively with ‘I’m fine’ or ‘yeah’ but what struck me as odd was his wording.
“I just feel crappy…”
“Dude! It’s the song, that’s what the lyrics said!!!” I admonished.
“Shut up man, it’s not funny anymore…” he said as he attempted to sit upright.
Allan was fine about fifteen minutes later, kept saying he still felt crappy, but wasn’t puking at all. He got pretty frustrated with me when I pressed the whole ‘Dumb’ thing, and left pretty abruptly. It’s as if he just refused to hear anymore about it.
----
June 29th 2016-
“I think I’m dumb, I’ll just burn something.” That’s what the song said the last time I willingly listened to it. It didn’t even rhyme anymore!
I was in the car with my girlfriend, Dana, when it played. I immediately stopped the car and started trying to get her to admit that she heard it.
“Stop yelling! I heard it, I heard it, jeeze,” she conceded.
I’d told her all about it, but she just shrugged it off, like everyone else until now.
“The lyrics were wrong! They didn’t even sound like ‘maybe just happy’!”
“What do you mean?” she stared at me, genuinely confused “it was your voice, you recorded your own version of the song.”
My heart froze. Things just seemed so abstract. I gazed back at her, or rather, through her.
“The lyrics were the original ones though, from what I heard. Is this one of your parody songs or something?” she continued.
“No... No, something's really wrong here,” I muttered.
“Whatever, I’ll be right back, I gotta do something,” she said as she grabbed my lighter from the compartment.
She was already out of the car, shutting the door behind her when it hit me, what the lyrics said.
I burst out of the car looking for Dana, but I didn’t see where she went, she moved unnaturally fast...  I looked around, but was unfamiliar with the area. It was a quiet residential neighborhood, kind of suburban. That’s when I heard the scream. I turned around to see an old woman, maybe in her late 80s early 90s, struggling to try to get off her porch. She was blocked by a railing in front of her, and a sizable fire toward the door and steps down to the driveway.
I immediately knew how the fire started, but I had no idea how it got so big, so fast. As I ran to help the elderly woman get over the railing, I saw Dana, pouring the remnants of a jerry can on the steps of the porch, and side of the house. I’ll never forget the absolutely blank look on her face. As I regained focus and finished helping the old lady down from the railing, I could hear the sirens in the distance.
Dana was taken away by the cops later. She told them she didn’t know why she started the fire, but she felt that she HAD to. My uncle reached out to me about the whole thing, but I didn’t tell him much. We pulled over, she got out, next thing I knew there was a fire. How could I tell him about the song? No one would listen. No one would care, let alone believe it. I destroyed the CD when I got home. It wasn’t mine to break, but I couldn’t risk anyone else being affected by it.
----
July 15th 2016-
I’d almost moved past the stupid shit with the song, I thought I was free. It had been over half a month since I last heard the song, or one of its weird renditions. That is, until I heard it on the radio at work.
It started playing in the kitchen. After hearing the intro I’d heard so many hundreds of times without issue, I raced over to change the radio station.
“Dude, what the hell, I thought you like Nirvana?” the dishwasher yelled from the other side of the kitchen.
I successfully changed the station away, averting the song. Sort of. It started playing on the next station, and the one after that. EVEN the CLASSICAL station was playing it!!! I kept trying to shut off the radio, but it wouldn’t stop. I ran to the outlet it was plugged into, before the chef stepped in front of me.
“What the hell are you doing, I don’t go in the front and fuck with your radio. Don’t touch it again.” He leered at me, seriously. I tried to push past him, but he pushed me to the floor. As I stood up, I heard it. Just as Dana said, it was my voice singing the song.
“Dude is that you? That’s sick, why were you so embarrassed? You’re on the radio man!” the dishwasher yelled from the pit.
“You don’t understand it’s not..” I was left speechless as I heard the changed verse.
“I think I’m dumb, I’ll put my hand in hot oil…”
Before I could react, the chef had already stuffed his right hand deep into the bubbling oil. It hissed loudly, and gurgled ferociously as the moisture from his hand, then eventually his flesh, evaporated and rushed to the surface. He made no reaction. The dishwasher started to push past me, placidly eager to crisp up his own hand. As I held him back, I smelled the most awful smell. The chef removed his hand, horrible blistered and bubbling flesh dripped still with oil, the finer areas of his fingers, and webbing between them were reminiscent of pork rinds. The stench of his seared flesh mixed with the fryer oil was so pungent I thought I’d barf, but I stood there, still holding back the dishwasher in a daze. A few moments later, the song ended, the dishwasher stopped trying to wriggle free of my grasp, and the chef began to scream bloody murder.
As predicted, when I looked online at the classical station’s playlist, there was no indication they ever played Nirvana. I don’t know why this keeps happening to me, but I don’t want to live like this.
----
July 16th 2016-
After the incident at the restaurant, I decided that I needed to get as far away from any source of music as possible. I don’t know why this started happening, or how I’m the only one who seemed to notice it, but I don’t want it to hurt anyone else.
I packed my backpack with some water, the journal, and a ton of ear plugs. Maybe if I can’t hear it, it won’t affect people? Either way, I don’t want to risk exposing anyone else. I headed up to my family’s cottage. I needed to take the bus, I hoped that between the earplugs and the short time frame, I’d not hear the song again.
Unfortunately, I had myself fooled. There was little enough I could do to escape from the song, it always seemed to find a way.
We were maybe a half hour outside of the closest town to the cottage when someone on the bus dropped their headphones. I heard nothing, with the earplugs on. I just stared at spot on the floor where the headphones laid. The owner of them was staring too, not picking them up. That’s when I heard it again, like it was playing directly into my head.
“I’m not like them, but I can pretend…”
I knew the intro all too well, I was filled with dread immediately. I knew I had about ten seconds before the verse would happen. I ripped the useless earbuds out of my ear as I stormed to the front of the bus and demanded the bus driver stop and let me off.
“I only stop at the registered stops and stations kid, sit down.” he casually muttered, as if he’d used the line hundreds of times.
“The day is done, but I’m having fun…”
“Let me off the goddamn bus!” I screamed at the driver. He hit the break and we halted, but it was too late, I heard it.
“I think I’m dumb, maybe just happy…”
The lyrics were normal. Could it all have been in my head? Or rather, did whatever this curse was, finally lift?
“Well, get off then!” the driver snorted at me. I stood there with the door open to my back. I considered getting off and simply going back home. I looked down the aisle to see the guy lean down to pick up his headphones. He stared into the audio output of one of the ears vapidly.
“Sorry,” I muttered as I walked back up the steps. The song was still playing off the headphones in the background, but strangely, it stopped feeling like it was playing in my head.
Suddenly, as the driver shook his head and began to accelerate, from every phone and every audio device (including the bus radio) it blasted, louder than ever.
“I think I’m dumb, I’ll take you all with me…”
The driver continued accelerating as I ran up to the front of the bus.
“Stop the bus!” I yelled again. This time, no answer. He had that blank stare.
I almost fell through the bus doors as he hit a sharp turn, down a small country road, not built for buses. I knew this wasn’t the bus route. I didn’t know exactly where we were going, but I knew it couldn't be anything less than fatal.
I began struggling with the driver for control of the wheel. Without taking his eyes off the road, he stuck out one of his thick, stumpy legs, and plunged his boot straight into my chest. I fell down the bus’s steps, and through the door.
As I laid there winded, attempting to recover from the hard fall, and the kick to the chest, I could still hear the bus crunching branches of trees, and kicking up stones. Then the high pitched reeling of acceleration with no friction, then nothing.
About 40 meters further was another sharp turn on the road. It had been completely ignored, launching the bus through some shrubs and small trees, off of the ledge beyond them. Even from the ground I saw the swath cut through the foliage, and knew exactly what waited on the other side.
After what felt like hours, I finally gathered myself enough to get up. I felt strangely emotionless, like I was removed from the whole ordeal. Deep down I could feel that I was on the verge of bursting into tears, but I didn’t want to succumb to that just yet. I walked over to the edge of the cliff, it was a pretty drastic drop. The scenery of the trees in the distance, and the sun lowering itself over the horizon could, in any other situation, be described as beautiful. To me, it felt mocking.
‘Prepare for another day.’ it was telling me. Another day of abstract hell.
Suddenly a strange urge came over me. Not an unfamiliar one. That feeling when you look in front of an oncoming subway train, or into some other dangerously fatal experience. When you feel curious enough to listen to that little voice inside that says “Well what if we did?”.
I’ve finally decided I’m going to end it. Not in a reckless succumb to the call of the void, I’ve been deliberating with myself for over an hour now. The sun is setting, and I’m nowhere near enough to town to make it before sundown. Even if I did, I’m sure some radio, some phone, some random boombox or earpiece would start playing that song… I can’t take it. I can’t live like this.
This will be my final entry in this journal. I don’t have any idea what this is going to look like to someone on the outside looking in. Maybe it has all been a dream? Maybe I’m delusional? All I know is that I had no willing part in the fire, what happened to the chef, or the people on that bus.
Tell my parents I’m sorry.
----
The inspector put the journal down wordlessly. He sat for some time, debating internally. It definitely answered a lot of questions, but was absolutely too ridiculous, too supernatural to really be true, right?
Just as he rose from his chair, and walked over to the door of his office, he caught the sound of something peculiar. He heard mildly, muffled, from behind him.
“I swear I turned that off…” he mumbled to himself, as he stared puzzled, at the radio. He recognized the song, and felt his heart sink as he realized it was his own voice he heard singing.
“I think I’m dumb…”
All credit to the works of Nirvana and the song Dumb go to the musicians, and the respective publishers / owners of the works in question.
Category:Music
Category:Diary/Journal
Category:Disappearances
Category:Tewahway
Category:Videos
Category:Reality
Category:Crime