Red Mist Reloaded

## Red Mist Reloaded by PumpkinSpice

(This story is a remake of Squidward's Suicide.)

A lot of things in this world are unexplainable, with no answer or logical conclusion to come to. Just the frightening prospect of the unknown, the mystery of the dark depths and the depraved creatures lurking within.

A few years ago, I used to work for Nickelodeon. More specifically, the team working on the American side of SpongeBob's production (storyboarding, writing, and such).

Now, I wasn't very high on the production team's "totem pole" per se, I was just a production assistant, but I had hopes and dreams of one day possibly being a storyboard artist down the line or perhaps a spot in the writer's room.

Of course, this was all before...an incident that made me leave my job at Nickelodeon forever.

Part of my job involved setting up meetings for the crew, bringing them lunch and coffee, and managing production assets for the team. So often, I would be there to witness rough cuts of episodes long before they'd hit the air-oftentimes in different forms than the end products would end up taking. There was always just a bit of magic watching the episodes come together from rough animatic to rough animation to the almost finished product, and then comparing to the episode that actually ends up airing.

The day of the incident, I'd finished setting up a meeting for the writers, animators, and editors to look over this batch of rough-cut episodes, so the team could go over what did and didn't work in said cut and what fixes were necessary, on a script or visual level in the animation.

The other production manager (for this story, I'll call him Kevin) was logging onto the computer and pulling up the office network to retrieve the files for the episode cuts we'd be looking at.

I stood to the side, setting up the connection between the room's television monitor and the computer, as other members of the production crew all shuffled into the board room, taking seats with their coffees and notepads.

Once I was sure the wired connection was good, I let Kevin know, and he already had the folder with the rough cuts open.

Everything was going well; we watched the first couple of rough cuts and they seemed pretty good so far. But then Kevin put on the next cut, and that's when things got...strange.

Now, the previous two episodes didn't have proper title cards yet. As per usual in this stage of production, a rough cut would only contain the raw animation, no titles or transitions. Not always, there's a rare couple that have filler titles, such as Plankton's Army having the filler title "Plankton's Last Stand" in its' rough cut. But a lot of the time, they don't, since a final title may not have been chosen or no art had been made for the card yet.

This episode started with a title card that read simply "Red Mist".

Now, not every SpongeBob episode title is necessarily descriptive of the episode's contents, but I struggled to imagine what kind of episode would justify a title such as Red Mist. Perhaps an episode relating to red tide? That was the only ocean-related thing that came to mind when I thought of Red Mist.

After the title, it cut to Squidward playing his clarinet, sounding much more shrill than usual, resembling a shrieking cat more than a woodwind instrument, but he seemed prideful in his skills, nonetheless.

That is until something led him to stop playing with one last extremely off-key note. A knock at his door caused Squidward to sigh in his usual fashion and walk to the door. His walking sound effect seemed a lot louder than was typical of the show. I chalked that up to this being a rough cut, however. Of course, the editing wouldn't be perfect, as it was minimal in these animation clips.

He opened the door and there was a fish in a kilt and Tammie outside the door with a concerned look on his face.

Squidward was just about to slam the door in the stranger's face, but he pushed his hands into the door before Squidward could shut it.

"Sir, please take your hands off my door.", Squidward said with an annoyed sigh, but his voice felt...off, somehow. More like someone doing an impression of Rodger Bumpass, and not actually him. Perhaps Rodger just hadn't been in to record his lines yet, and this was just temporary scratch audio for the purpose of this cut and would be replaced later in production.

"*The Red Mist is coming.*", was all the man said before pulling Squidward's door shut himself.

Squidward, chalking this up to the world just trying to get on his nerves again, went back up the stairs to resume practicing his clarinet.

He got a few notes out before SpongeBob's signature laugh interrupted him, and Squidward looked furious. I could have sworn I saw his eyes flash red for a moment. At first, I wrote it off as just an animation error. I'd seen plenty in my time working there, viewing rough cuts, but something just felt strange about the look of his eyes for that brief frame.

He turned to his window and opened it.

"Would you two IMBECILES keep it down for ONE HOUR?" Squidward yelled out of his window, waving his hand (the one holding his clarinet) out of the window. "Unlike you two morons, I'm actually successful at life, and I have a concert tonight! So keep it down, will you?!"

"We're sorry, Squidward... We'll try to be quieter.", SpongeBob said-and this barely sounded like Tom Kenny doing his voice.

"Yeah...yeah, we're sorry, Squidward.", Patrick added, but did not sound like Bill Fagerbakke at all.

Maybe all the cast members were busy when this cut was being put together. So, again, I tried to think nothing of it.

Squidward closed his window and commenced practicing his concert set once again.

The episode jump cut to the end of Squidward's concert, reusing the same audio as his practice earlier in the episode, but the frames were choppier than was even typical of a rough episode cut. I looked at Kevin, but he shrugged, as there seemed to be nothing wrong with the file or the program the video was being played on, so I just looked back at the screen again and continued to watch.

The animation smoothed itself out, and Squidward moved into a resting position and froze there.

There was silence in the episode, and I swear one of the animators coughed for a moment as Squidward was just staring directly into the camera.

I looked at Kevin again, and he shook his head. He hadn't paused it, but while I had been looking away, the sound of the in-show audience began booing, and I immediately looked straight back to the television.

The audience wasn't moving, but they were booing louder and louder as if the volume was being raised. I looked over at Kevin again, but his hands weren't even on the keyboard or mouse. In fact, he wasn't even looking at the computer; he was looking at the television like everyone else had been, so he certainly hadn't messed with the volume.

Eventually, the booing crescendoed into more of a loud, warped roar than a crowd yelling. Many of the other crew members and I had to cover our ears while Kevin frantically turned back to the computer and adjusted the volume of the clip to not blow out all of our eardrums.

When it was safe to uncover my ears, they rang faintly, but I continued to watch the episode.

It cut to a close-up of Squidward's face, his eyes rendered in an... uncomfortably realistic way. I could almost see the tears welling in them, glossing them over, making my eyes water.

Every single detail of his eyes, the pupils, irises, and even the capillaries of the sclera looked more like a high-resolution photograph of a man's eyes than something that could've been drawn, and this was eerie to witness.

Was this supposed to be some sort of joke? Because it was coming off a lot more disturbing than funny.

It cut back to the audience, and they all had the same extremely rendered eyes as the sound of television static began to fade in.

I glanced for a moment at some of the writers for the show in confusion, but they all looked just as confused as I did. So, whoever was behind this was not in the room. As far as I was aware, at least.

The energy of the room also became a lot tenser and a lot more uncomfortable.

I looked back to the episode. It had cut to Squidward on his bed that night, sobbing into his tentacle hands. The odd thing was, this felt more like a genuine cry of pain than the cartoon-like crying Squidward had done in previous episodes. His sobs were almost painful for anyone with any sort of empathy to hear. The scene of him crying lasted uncomfortably long, and I really started to question this episode. Was this some sort of prank? I doubt children would want to watch a character they've come to grow attached to be in this much pain and sorrow.

Then it happened.

It cut to directly in front of Squidward with his hands over his eyes. He then lowered them, revealing his overly rendered, blood-shot eyes once again.

They felt even more uncomfortable and unnerving than the first shot of them. They also looked a lot more bloodshot...and tinted slightly red.

The recognition washed over me. That must have been that one odd frame from earlier in the episode.

He stared into all of our souls, and loud static washed over the room, enough that most of us clapped our hands over our ears again in discomfort-and this was with the volume turned down.

Kevin tried to turn the volume down, but even the lowest setting was painful to our ears-until the sound stopped entirely.

During the static, it must have zoomed in on Squidward's face because the screen was just now entirely his overly realistic, rendered eyes: tinted red, and staring.

Unsettling whispers came on, and several images flashed over the screen. It was too quick for anyone to tell what was on screen. It cut back to a full view of Squidward and a deep voice rasping out, "**Do it!**" while the titular red mist began filling the room.

Squidward suddenly had a gun in his hand, and I was just barely able to cover my eyes. Just as I heard the gunshot in the video, I listened to the reaction of the other members of the crew in the room. Those who hadn't looked away gasped and yelled out in horror and shock.

I peeked through my fingers and saw highly rendered blood and brain matter strewn about Squidward's bed and the rest of his room, as well as his now partially collapsed head. It was rendered as if referenced from an actual photo of a suicide.

My guts churned, and I ran for the trash can in the room and released my lunch.

Kevin immediately went to the room's phone and called for Paul (the supervising producer) and Stephen (the show's creator, now creative production consultant, after the movie had come out) to come in and see this. He also took a turn at the trash can when I was done puking my own brains out.

Both showed up within minutes, and the rest of the crew speedily filed out (I don't blame them). Unfortunately, Kevin and I were forced to relive the horror as we showed Paul and Stephen this...monstrosity of an episode cut.

Worse yet, during the final scene, Stephen asked Kevin to go over the brief frames that flashed on the screen, and that was when the true horrors were revealed.

Several crime scene photographs of mutilated, dead children filled the screen, and each frame Kevin clicked onto was worse than the last. I returned to the trash can again, but this time it was just dry heaving.

Paul just sat there, staring deadly at the screen. He shook his head and occasionally rested his forehead on his palm, clearly horrified by what he had seen.

After the episode finished, Stephen looked at the computer to see if there was anything of note about how this episode ended up in the batch. He found the time stamp on the file.

It was minutes before we began watching, clearly added on by someone else connected to the studio's network when we were watching one of the other episode cuts.

"We can't let this get out to the public. I'm going to talk to Mr. Scannell!", he said, burning off a DVD of the offending episode and then leaving the room.

Following that day were weeks of investigation into all the crew members, including me, Kevin, as well as the security of the studio's computer networks, and the possible origins of the photos found in the episode.

Unfortunately, no solid leads ever came from this, and the investigation was shelved eventually.

I only stayed in that job for a month afterward. I just couldn't bear to enter that boardroom again without thinking about what I saw and how it affected me. I put in a resignation letter and ended up going to a trade school to get into a new career, far away from animation, far away from Burbank.

But even all these years later, that episode and those photos haunt me.

The part that I find most terrifying was that I could see the shadow of the photographer in the images.

I might be crazy, but I think they matched Kevin's silhouette...