Thomas & Friends: Thomas and the children (LachStar's rewrite)

Have you heard of Thomas & Friends? Well, that’s kind of a silly question; everyone knows Thomas. When I was young I was fan of Thomas ever since I first saw it air on CITV in 1984. I stayed a fan, collecting every VHS and Ertl toy for many years. When my son was born in 2001, I introduced him to Thomas. In the next few years, he became an even bigger fan than I was.
Our story begins in June of 2004. I was at the flea market with my son, when we saw a stand selling bootleg DVDs. One of them was a bootleg Thomas DVD with a fairly official looking front cover. At first I wasn’t planning on buying it, as I already had every DVD and VHS of the show released at the time, but the guy at the stand saw me looking at it, and told me that it had an episode never aired on TV, and that he’d give it to me for half the price. I didn’t really believe him, but my son was really excited about it; so I decided to buy it just for him. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I thought.
As soon as we got home, I found out. The DVD menu was a picture of Thomas with the show’s logo and text reading “Thomas and the children”. There was only one button on the menu, which read “Play episode”. The episode was in low quality, somewhere between 240p and 360p, and began with the season 7 intro. The episode’s title appeared when Thomas went under the bridge, but the rest of the credits from the intro were missing. The episode then properly began with stock footage of Thomas, as the narrator (who sounded like someone trying to do a Michael Angelis impression) began talking:
“Thomas the tank engine loves all the work he does his branchline! He likes pulling his coaches, he likes shunting trucks in the yard, he likes greeting his friends. But one of Thomas’ favourite things is when he gets to take children in his coaches."
“The joy on and laughter from the children;” He’d always say. “There’s nothing quite like it.””
It faded to Thomas in the shed. Edward, one of Thomas' friends, was next to his shed birth.
“One morning, Thomas was waiting for some workmen to arrive,” explained the narrator. “His brakes were getting rusty, and the workmen were going to come and clean them up.
The Fat Controller arrived. “The workmen are busy today, so you’ll have to have your brakes fixed tomorrow,” he announced. “In the meantime, you are to take some children to the seaside. But don’t forget to go slowly.”
“Oh, yes sir. Thank you sir!” whistled Thomas excitedly."
“Be careful out there!” warned Edward. “Don’t forget about your brakes!” but Thomas was so excited, he’d already left.”
It then showed Thomas collecting the children from the station, before playing a short montage of shots of Thomas heading to the seaside, while the narrator talked about how everyone was having a good time. Then it showed Thomas about to go down Gordon's hill.
“Thomas didn’t move his wheels at all when he went down the hill, but he still went down very quickly. The children were loving it. They wanted him to go even faster! Thomas forgot all about his brakes, and began to speed up, but then there was trouble.”
It showed Bertie the bus, stuck on a level crossing.
“Bertie had broken down at a crossing. The crossing gates had been shut, and the signal had been changed to red so engines would know to stop before running into him. But Thomas tried to slow down at the signal, but he couldn’t!”
It showed Thomas and Bertie, looking terrified as they got closer, before cutting to the tracks on the moment of impact. Violent crashing sounds could be heard. It faded to a shot of Thomas, knocked over on his side, slowly opening his eyes.
“Thomas hadn’t been badly hurt,” The narrator commented.
Thomas’ face was switched to his scared face, and he began shaking. It cut to Annie, Clarabel and Bertie, all knocked over, with the children been thrown all over the place, with blood painted everywhere and several disconnected limbs.
"But the children weren’t so lucky.” The narrator finished.
It showed the Breakdown Train team, picking up the bodies. “Soon, workmen cleaned up the terrible mess,” the narrator explained. “Thomas had his parts mended at the works, but then he stayed in the sheds for the rest of the week. He was too traumatised to move, or even talk to anyone.”
It showed Thomas alone in the back of Tidmouth Sheds. He had his usual sad face, but there were bags and dried tears under his eyes, and his eyes had been edited to look a little bloodshot.
It showed Percy entering the sheds, looking worried.
“The other engines were worried, especially Percy.” the narrator explained.
“Are you okay, Thomas?” asked Percy. He didn’t expect to get an answer, but suddenly, Thomas spoke for the first time all week."
""Why did I kill the children, Percy?” He asked quietly."
“You didn’t,” replied Percy. “It wasn’t your fault; it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“It was someone’s fault," said a familiar voice. It was the Fat Controller. 
He had come to talk to Thomas. “It was my fault, Thomas. I should’ve known better than to send you out to work with faulty breaks. I’m sorry I took so long to come and see you; I’ve been busy dealing with a lot of lawsuits recently. But, rest assured, that terrible incident wasn’t your fault. If those children were still alive, they wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, and they wouldn't want you to stay in here forever. I’m not going to force you to leave the shed, since I know you’re still going through a lot. But, don’t ever forget, you’re my number one engine and always will be, no matter what happens”
This made Thomas feel just a little better.”
It faded to more stock footage of Thomas on his branch line as the narrator finished the story:
“Eventually, Thomas overcame his trauma and went back to work. Thomas is still scared of working with faulty brakes, but I think now he knows that all sadness and pain is temporary, and no matter what happens things will get better. Don’t you?”
It cut to the image of Thomas used for the credits, except Thomas wasn’t there and the credits never appeared. At this point, I look at my son, who had gone pale. He looked a mixture of horrified and confused, as if his young mind couldn’t even fully comprehend what had happened.
I carried him to bed, tucked him in and gave him medicine and milk to feel better. I then returned to the living room to see that the credits had ended. The HiT entertainment logo was on screen, but now the globe in the logo was a back hole and the background was red. Suddenly an eyeball appeared in the logo for a second, before it abruptly cut to black, then back to the DVD menu.
I was absolutely mad about this whole thing. This DVD had traumatised both me and my son! I took the DVD back to the flea market, only to find that the markets had ended, and no one was there anymore. So instead, I went home, hid the DVD in the attic, and then went online to see if I could find out more about this DVD.
I found a few articles about the DVD. From the articles I learned that the episode was in no way official, and that the people who made it were not yet known, but HiT entertainment had announced that they were planning on recalling every copy of the bootleg DVD they could find and hiding them in their archives. I thought about sending my copy to them, but decided to keep it as a personal collection piece.
After that, things went back to normal. My son, being so young, eventually forgot what had happened, and we went back to collecting Thomas toys and DVDs and building model railways together. Then, when he moved out, I gave all our Thomas stuff to him, so he could share it with his kids one day. Him and his wife are actually expecting their first child in a few months (as of when I’m writing this.) I can’t wait to come over one day and watch some Thomas with my son and grandchild!
Category:Thomas & Friends
Category:Hit entertainment
Category:Hit Entertainment
Category:Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends
Category:Thomas And Friends Creepypastas
Category:Retake
Category:Rewrite
Category:DVD