Crystal Bubbles (PSA)

This was a public service announcement that only aired twice on Nick@Nite throughout the month. It was sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or the ONDCP for short, and funded by Nickelodeon. The times that this PSA came up were randomized, but still very late at night, with one of which being three in the morning.
I was one of the viewers. Each time it came up was unexpected, and I didn’t get to see the first airing of it. Part of me was expecting someone from either organization to post it online. For some reason, they didn’t, and I didn’t get many pictures. The closest thing I could find was a rare still from a Twitter post, clarifying that the broadcast only aired two times, but that’s about it.
The PSA was about five and a half minutes long. My guess is that based on the visuals and metaphors used, it was meant to bring awareness to meth abuse.
It started with SpongeBob running with Patrick through the Jellyfish Fields, having the time of their lives before SpongeBob heard his watch beep. He takes a gander at it and puts on a surprised look, before telling Patrick that his new bottle of bubble soap is coming in the mail, and he has to go home to “give it a test drive.” Patrick waved goodbye to him as he left. 
A bubble transition flew up, and we are greeted with SpongeBob walking home to a decrepit-looking fish man, holding a small box with bubble formula and a cartoon calabash pipe inside. SpongeBob took the box from the fish and shook his hand vigorously, before rushing inside. The fish waltzed off too, pulling out a fat stack of cash from his pocket and fondling it.
It cut to SpongeBob jumping onto his buoy chair and reading the instructions that come with the bubble formula, before pouring it into the pipe. Before he could even blow into it, Gary interrupted him.
“Meow?”
“Oh, Gary! It’s amazing! I got the new state-of-the-art bubbles early! For some reason, you blow it with a pipe, but still, I can’t wait!”
“Meow meow.”
“...what do you mean I should refund it? It’s just bubbles, Gare Bare! Don’t you worry!”
The scene cut to SpongeBob’s wall, with a calendar nailed to it. The page read “Saturday, 14,” but afterward, it disconnected and showed “Sunday, 15” behind it. As the page fell, you could hear SpongeBob inhaling and exhaling the pipe in the background.
SpongeBob was seen stepping into his house, groaning and tired with a very small barnacle on his cheek. He sat down and scratched at it before pulling out his bubble pipe. Gary curiously mewed. 
“Ugh, bad day at work, Gare. Krabs paid me with jack nematodes, Squidward got on my case AGAIN, the customers don't know what waiting is… whatever, nothing a little pipe and TV can't fix.”
“Mrreow.”
“I already told you… they’re just BUBBLES. They can’t hurt me. Quit being such a scaredy snail all the time…”
The same calendar sequence appeared, now switching to “Monday, 16.”
SpongeBob sank into his buoy chair, eyes wide open, staring at his TV. The background music was much more muffled than before, but it also had the ambience of commercials playing along with it. The room had little exposure to light, the only source coming from SpongeBob’s television. SpongeBob looked bad. Slight wrinkles covered his face, and a few more small barnacles grew compared to before. His teeth were tinted a mustard yellow, and his lower eyelids filled up with crust from his lack of sleep. Gary slithered in, exhausted, lifting himself up to show his empty stomach to SpongeBob, mewing in malnourishment.
“...what? What do you want this time?”
“Meow.”
“Go get some food in the pantry, or something, I don’t know.”
“Mreow!”
“YES, there IS food in the pantry! I made sure of it! NOW LET ME WATCH TV!”
“Mreow, meow meow!”
“...fine. If it makes you shut up, I’ll go check.”
SpongeBob stood up and stumbled over to the kitchen while repeatedly scratching his face, the barnacles worsening. Opening the pantry, the sight revealed that there was no food left. He sighed and checked the fridge for food, only for nothing to be in there either. Turning to poor Gary, he mumbled.
“Mmmm, I’ll get more t’morruh...”
“M-mreow-”
“BE PATIENT, GARY! Sheesh!”
Walking out of frame, he left the starving Gary in the kitchen alone, cloaked in gloom. Before SpongeBob could sit back down in his seat, he heard a knock on the door, making him groan with pure exhaustion. The used up, dry sponge slinked over to the door and opened it to reveal the rather irritated Crustacean manager himself. Mr. Krabs was not having it. 
“SPONGEBOY! Me profits are plummetin’, why aren't ye at the grill?! I didn’t tell ye to have a day off! Get off yer butt and go make some patties, boy, the customers are riotin'-”
“No.”
“No!? NO!? You’re not to tell me no! Are ye askin’ to get fired, boy!?”
“Get that moaner at the register to make your slop, Eugene. I quit.”
With that, SpongeBob slams the door in Eugene’s face, muffling his angry yells and barks.
Cut to the calendar again. This time, the walls behind it were beginning to mold with black smears. The date had changed to “Tuesday, 17.”
There he was. SpongeBob, heavily wrinkled and infested with a horrific number of barnacles littering his face, some black substance surrounding his lips, presumably his own saliva from how many bubbles he had blown. His teeth began to slowly rot, with one front tooth being chipped. His eyes were still a sickly yellow, and his pupils were shrunken into small squiggles. Gary now lied on his side, gasping for air, his body much more starved than before. The diver's helmet television was now reduced to a color pattern and long beep.
Outside of SpongeBob's pineapple, Sandy knocked on the door, and Squidward stood impatient, with a face of pure annoyance. Opening the door, irritated just as much as Squidward was, SpongeBob strenuously clawed his face.
“What? What is it?”
“Umm… SpongeBob, it’s been a hot minute. I’m worried about ya, buddy. Ya haven’t come out in days. Anything goin’ on? Are ya sick?”
“That’s what you came over here for? To ask me that?! Good Neptune, you're wasting your precious time, squirrely...”
“Woah, slow down there, bud! I just got here! What did I do to you!?”
“You’re here to take my bubbles away, aren’t you?! AREN’T YOU!? I already had to deal with a forceful greaseball and a tiresome excuse for a pet; now I gotta deal with you two barnacle-heads?! If you don't leave me alone, you'll have another thing coming!”
“SpongeBob, please, this is getting ridiculous-”
Before Sandy could even finish, Squidward’s face scrunched up and turned red, seething hatred overtaking his thoughts. He attempted to intimidate the already broken sponge, nose pressed against his.
“I’ve been at the register, sweating like a seadog, doing YOUR work, for TWO DAYS STRAIGHT! I keep getting screamed at by the customers if their order isn’t exactly how they want it! I’m a cashier, not a FRY COOK! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! ARE YOU GONNA GET BACK TO WORK, OR WILL I HAVE TO DRAG YOU THERE?!”
SpongeBob’s eyes squinted, and Sandy gasped with fear. The bastard violently yanked on Squidward’s collar. 
“Touch me. LAY YOUR TENTACLES ON ME LIKE THAT AGAIN, I DARE YOU."
"..."
"WELL?!"
Squidward was now fearing for his life. He ran back to his house and locked his door. Sandy, still shaking from the reaction he had, attempted to pull SpongeBob from his doorway, desperate to seek out a professional who can help him, but she ended up flung against the side of his house by her feet. Arising and gently squeezing her back from the sudden hit, she’d glare at SpongeBob as she limped off.
“...what happened to you?”
With that, SpongeBob slammed his door, causing a few bubbles to shoot out and float upward. However, the door would slightly creak back open, indicating that he slammed it to the point where it didn’t close. He made his way back to his chair, with Gary now limp and surrounded by hungry flies. The camera zoomed in on SpongeBob’s horrid, rotting face, staring down the color pattern on his TV.
Cut back to the final scene of the calendar. It flipped three days forward, with the wall behind it molding in a brief timelapse, until finally, it stopped on “Saturday, 21.”
SpongeBob still stared at his static-laden TV, though he was glued to the sandy floor. His teeth and gums were decaying to a horrible degree, his pupils now a sketched pair of messy, scratched lines. He had every condition that was mentioned before (albeit much worsened), except his clothes were drenched with moist stains, his holes dripping with sweat, and he looked pale, as though he were drying up. Poor Gary was now whittled down to a slithering mound of tubifex worms, acting as one living organism, and everything in SpongeBob’s house was now stained in a dark substance. 
He scratched his face. Again and again, unstoppable, before letting out a crazed laugh. Turning to his pipe and bubble solution, almost empty from how much he had been “bubbling,” he hollered.
“One more, ONE MORE, HAHA! Just ONE more! I can’t stop, I WON’T STOP! BAHAHA!”
Quickly, he swiped the pipe and blew into it, but this time, he froze. Dropping it, before clutching his tie, coughing and wheezing up dark bubbles. All with a rotten smile still stretched across his mug.
The background rang; a long, extended ring, like if someone fired a shotgun right next to your eardrum. SpongeBob fell to his side, arm extended over the floor, with his yellow, crusty eyes rolled to the back of his skull.
The view became slightly blurrier, until SpongeBob’s door whammed open out-of-sight. Patrick’s voice called out.
“SpongeBob? You in there, buddy? Hello?”
A light from the doorway shrouded SpongeBob’s dying state. A gasp and visceral, tragic wail from Patrick bellowed throughout his house, before suddenly being cut off. Everything blacked out.
Before the sponsor card came up, crediting ONDCP and Nickelodeon together, light yellow text faded into the screen. No sound and no music, before one of the Nick@Nite sitcoms followed, ending the PSA.
“All it takes is one puff. Life isn’t a cartoon.”
Category:SpongeBob SquarePants
Category:PSA
Category:Drugs
Category:Weird
Category:TV
Category:Animation
Category:Lafawnda's Reading Hour
Category:Sad Endings