Thomas and the Unfinished Bridge

== Disclaimer: This contains both a rewrite and the original. The original has mentions of corpses and the rewrite has mentions of suicide. ==
=== Original ===
It was March 5, 2015. The Adventure Begins, my favorite Thomas and Friends special, had just been released on March 3. I was proud of myself for helping with it. That day, I was browsing through a bunch of documents about the show when I discovered one called "Thomas and the Unfinished Bridge - Restricted". This got me confused. I kept track of all of the Thomas and Friends episodes, and I knew that there wasn't one called "Thomas and the Unfinished Bridge".
I asked my boss about this document. And he answered.
"Oh, that?" His answered, seeming slightly concerned. "In 1986, a planned episode was going to be made called 'Thomas and the Unfinished Bridge'. But it never aired on TV."
"Why, what happened" I asked.
"From what I was told by some people that worked here before, it was supposed to be a regular episode." My boss explained. "It was supposed to be the finale of the show's second season but as you know it got changed later on. It was going to happened like this. Thomas was doing something normal, and suddenly his brakes began to fail. He was going towards an unfinished bridge with a bunch of passengers inside a coach he was pulling. Luckily, Edward saw this and managed to stop Thomas by coupling up to the coach and applying his brakes. Somebody working at the company made a draft of the episode and sent it to the show's main creators in a VHS tape you know an old tape. I think the guy's name was Eric. Then the company noticed some things off and disturbing in the draft and fired the person who made it and cancelled the entire episode."
"But why?" I wondered.
"We don't even know, and we don't want to know it, either." My boss answered.
"And what happened to the VHS tape?" I asked.
"I've been told that the company kept it, but it was stolen by somebody. Nobody knows where it went." He spoke.
It got me creppy vibes and i always about the episode for a while. When I got home that same day, I searched Amazon for anything called "Thomas and the Unfinished Bridge". Surprisingly enough, I actually found an old VHS tape with that same name being sold by an account which had a username of a bunch of random characters (letters and numbers specifically). I ordered the VHS tape. It took eight days for the tape to arrive before it finally did on March 13 (Friday the 13th, what an odd coincidence). I connected my VCR to my old TV and inserted the tape into the player.
There was no title screen. Instead, the episode just started. This was understandable, because apparently the tape contained a draft. It started off normally enough, with a shot of Thomas chugging through a forest happily, carrying a coach full of passengers behind him. There were two things that were slightly odd, though. First off, there was no narration, even though there is narration in practically every other episode of the show. And secondly, instead of pulling Annie and Clarabel like he'd usually do while transporting passengers, he was pulling a green express coach. The episode then showed Thomas approaching a station, presumably the one where he would drop off the passengers. He tried to apply his brakes, and they failed. That's exactly what my boss said was supposed to happen.
Thomas went straight through the station, unable to stop, as the people on the station gave confused looks. The classic runaway theme used in the show during situations similar to these started playing. Next, there was a shot of the front of Thomas. There was a scared expression on his face. It showed him passing a sign reading "DANGER! ENGINES MUST NOT PASS THIS BOARD!" similar to the one seen in the 25th episode of the first season Down the Mine. This episode was already slightly intense for children, but it didn't seem too bad yet. Then, there was a shot of the passengers inside the coach. They were all screaming in terror.
A wide shot showed Thomas passing a siding where Edward was resting. Edward noticed what was happening and sped onto the track, going towards Thomas. Soon, we got to the coach. However, since it was a coach, there was no one there to couple Edward up to it. This was a serious problem. There was another shot of the inside of the coach, with more screams. There was an extremely wide shot showing Thomas getting dangerous close to the unfinished bridge. His driver said, "The brakes are working again!" By far, that was the only speaking line in the entire episode besides the screams. Then, it showed Thomas. He was probably supposed to apply his brakes, but he didn't. The runaway theme began to slow down and become lower in pitch. He plunged straight over the side of the bridge with the coach.
I saw Edward brake behind him, just before he went over too. Thomas and the coach landed on a bunch of rocks, getting battered, before falling into a stream. There was one more shot of the inside of the coach, now half-submerged in water. Dead bodies were everywhere. The screen faded to static for about ten seconds before a scene was then shone of Edward watching in terror as Sir Topham Hatt used a blowtorch to take off a now broken and battered Thomas' face, which showed an expression of pure pain and horror. Tears were running down his cheeks. Sir Topham Hatt took off his face, which immediately came lifeless, and threw it into a nearby pool of molten metal. The face melted.
"You deserved this, and much more." Topham said, angrily.
It showed Edward was at the smelters yard, pushing a flatbed of Thomas's remains towards a giant metal claw hanging from the ceiling. "Goodbye Thomas. I never expected it to end like this, but it did." Edward murmured. I watched as the claw came down and grabbed Thomas's remains. It pulled him upward and dropped him into the huge pool of molten metal. He melted in the pool, on screen. His face melted last, which was horrifying enough. The last shot of the episode showed Edward leaving the smelter's yard with a depressed expression on his face.
I took the VHS tape out of the VCR and snapped it in half. Nobody would ever see this horrific excuse for an episode again. Later, I noticed that the username of the Amazon account which sold me the tape wasn't just random letters and numbers. It was something encoded in Base64, an encoding scheme that converted words into random letters, numbers, and sometimes other characters. After running the username through a Base64 decoder, it came out as a URL for a website. When I visited the website, it was just a couple of sentences written on a blank page, but those sentences scared me.
Children need to know what really happens in the world.
I'll make sure it's not hidden from them.
- Eric
=== Rewrite ===
Do you ever feel like you’ve seen something you weren't supposed to see? I once felt that when I was the one unlucky enough to find something that took a childhood memory and twisted it into something beyond my comprehension.
I still remember that day exactly. It was 2015. The second and third Five Nights At Freddy’s games released, Super Mario Maker came out, all sorts of things I liked got new additions.
left|236x236px|A recreation of the OG creepypasta for your viewing
But one of the things that was released this year was The Adventure Begins and Sodor’s Legend If The Lost Legends, Mattel’s newest Thomas specials which ultimately boosted my addiction to Thomas The Tank Engine and his friends. I got some of the new merchandise, watched some YouTube videos, and all was well for my Thomas addiction when I stumbled on a 4chan article asking about this thing called "The Unfinished Bridge", being some Thomas thing you could get online that nobody had heard of. Me, being myself, searched all around the many online stores on the internet for anything related to this "The Unfinished Bridge". Surprisingly enough, I actually found a listing for a DVD on Amazon with that same name being sold by an account which had a username of a bunch of random shit. I ordered it, and it took eight days for the DVD to arrive before it finally did on, coincidentally, Friday the 13th. I connected my DVD player to my parent’s TV and inserted the DVD into the player, waiting for something.
I was greeted by a title screen stating this was somebody’s gift to their niece. It started off normally enough, with a shot of Thomas chugging through the countryside happily, carrying a train full of passengers behind him. There were all sorts of things that were slightly odd, though. 
Likely being of some uncle and/or aunt attempting to give their niece their personalized experience, what I was seeing of course was nowhere near to what the actual show looked like, being made with a bunch of the Thomas Wooden Railway toys on strings instead of some fancy pants models, with this homemade charm to the whole short’s environments. I watched, comforted by all the aspects as Thomas, Annie, and Clarabel happily went down the main line on my screen.
I was then shown Thomas approaching Knapford station, but he didn’t stop there. Thomas went straight through the station, unable to stop, as the people and trains gave all sorts of worried looks. A rendition of a runaway theme started playing. Thomas was panicking, his coaches looking scared, fearing the inevitable. The episode was already taking quite a dark turn, but it was child’s play compared to what was to come next.
Thomas passed a yard, where Percy was resting. Percy noticed what was happening and sped onto the main line, getting towards Clarabel and being coupled up by the guard, attempting to brake the train to a halt. There was another shot of the inside one of the coaches, with the passengers freaking out and hugging one another. There was an extremely wide shot showing Thomas getting dangerously close to an unfinished bridge. 
His driver said, "Thomas, your brakes are working again!", and both engines began braking, with them stopping inches from the edge of the drop. Thomas and his passengers complimented Percy for his acts, and they all went back to the station, some cutesy music playing in the background.
Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. The tape cut to black, and then an OO gauge model of Thomas on a layout popped up on screen. It wasn’t the Hornby one, or the Bachmann one, but a scratch built model with an embedded face reminiscent of the original Troublesome Trucks on a smokebox door. It had a year under it: 1997, a year before him.
I was then shown another image of said model of Thomas, this time more dirty and deteriorated with the smile being wider and the eyes more bigger, with the year reading 1998.
Then, it showed yet another photo of the now more deteriorated Thomas model with the year 1999. But there was a hand written sentence beneath it.
My lovely niece, while I may be gone by the time you see this, I will have been gone. You need to know how harsh this world gets. It read. 
Another image of the more decayed Thomas model appeared dated 2000, the more sloppily done sentence at the bottom now read: I'll make sure it’s not going unnoticed by you at such a young age. I’ve always been trying my best to be a good uncle, and I'm going to continue that by showing you how bad things can get on this cruel planet. I feel like that's what your parents want: for me to teach you something.
At last it cut to one more photo of the model (dated 2001), but it was looking more like a nightmare caught on camera than an image of a model of the most profitable talking train to grace the face of the earth. “Thomas” had a wide white smile that looked more sinister than ever, his decrepit big eyes staring right into my soul. His body was worse for wear, with tattered paintwork and lots of parts being broken or just torn off.
But the near unreadable text at the bottom was what freaked me out the most:
- Eric Williams.
That was the name of my uncle, who according to my parents “Took himself from our world”, with him being found dead shortening his life in the attic with his layout of The Island Of Sodor, and because I was so young, I never really got to know much of him. 
The Thomas I'd just seen deteriorate must have been one of his custom engines, which he had made before the Bachmann line hit western store shelves. That Thomas was one of my favorites, so it was not only unnerving, but also saddening knowing my aunt once made a remark that she threw the trains away because they "looked like they'd been possesed".  And the wooden trains? Those were mine. The same ones in fact sat on my bedroom shelf with my other toys and other memorabilia from my addictions on other fictional things (I even started remembering that my older sister gifted me a similar tape when I was younger). I wasn’t going to get rid of them, as the model train and Uncle Eric’s writing were the only scary parts, but I took the DVD out and solemnly destroyed it, knowing it contained the last moments of a toy that meant a lot to me, and also knowing my friends would probably find it and get confused if they got to my house.
I had ordered the only one, and I got a refund from the seller (who turned out to bey aunt) for the six I spent on it and felt lucky knowing that I, someone who knew the creator of the DVD, had received it instead of some unknowing child that could’ve had nightmares or something from it thinking they watched “The real Thomas turn into a scary monster”. 
The DVD didn’t traumatize me or kick me out of my Thomas hyperfixations, but it did somewhat give some closure to my deceased uncle and his short lived layout.
Category:Thomas & Friends
Category:VHS
Category:Death
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:Kids shows
Category:Internet
Category:Deaths
Category:Sad and scary