Thomas the tank engine: The Lost Beta Episode

Alright kids, shut the hell up, it’s time for yours truly to tell a terrifying tale of… shit… I don’t know, just wanted to keep the alliteration going is all. I was a train repairman several years ago for ITV employees. One of the higher ups, Christopher Awdry, who earned the nickname Dickface Poptartson around the workplace after eating 20 specially made dick-shaped Pop Tarts in under a minute and 30 seconds. He also crafted a penis out of chalk. The retros was the greatest period in the history of the world.

He brought his train into my shop one day after Jigsaw BBC tv had debuted on air, and said it was running funny. I did my usual inspection, checking wheels, checking spark plugs, checking coal, heat, the whole nine yards, until I decided to start up the train detect anything unusual. There was what sounded like plastic clanking around in the engine. I took another look in the engine, and there sat near the coal was a musty VHS cassette tape. It said “Thomas the tank engine” on the label written in brown Crayola washable marker. I thought it to be some kind of train showcase video, so I took it home with me. Big, big mistake.

I popped the VHS into my VCR and sat down in front of my idiotbox with some fruit snacks and began this wonderful vehicular viewing. Little did I know that I was in for a shock that would resonate with me to this day.

The first thing to pop on screen was a note in white text on a black background that said “Thomas the tank engine: Copyright 1979, The Britt Allcroft Company. Not to be viewed by the public.” So apparently this was a preview of an upcoming kids show from Britt Allcroft about trains! I was indeed excited about this. The short opened with heavy talking. “Hi I’m Thomas the number one engine in the world.” It then showed the protagonist of the soon to be franchise finishing up snorting something white and powdery. What the hell? They showed a character snorting cocaine?

It then cut to Thomas, white powder still on his face, chasing with other trains. Thomas was designed a bit different in this compared to the final product to be released just 5 years later. His shape was more boxy and his color was green instead of blue and his engine number was 70 instead of 1. He was quickly gaining the first place spot when the antagonist, Diesel 10 came up behind him. He also looked different. He had a more generic train shape and had a Super Mario mustache.

He came up behind Thomas and pushed him, sending Thomas spinning out of control and tumbling down the track, highly realistic train parts flying everywhere, then getting run over by every single train on the track. The music that had been playing stopped as the dust settled, the scene now completely silent as the camera slowly pans in on Thomas’s mangled body. He’s still alive, but barely. He’s moving slowly, shakily, trying to get up. Oddly, no one’s coming to his aid at all. Just letting Thomas sit in his crashed state, bleeding bloody blood everywhere. Now I’m pretty sure trains cannot bleed. However, they can’t talk or move on their own or have any sentient capabilities either so who am I to judge?

It gets even freakier. After a cut to black, it cuts to Thomas in a hospital, surrounded by the people and trains from Sodor island. Percy, Sir Topham Hatt, James, Toby, Gordon, Emily, Edward, Henry, and Mr. Conductor were all at Thomas’s bedside. He was dying from his previous injuries. His whole body was completely bent and dented, his spoiler was dangling off his body, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he had bitten his tongue in half during the crash. The recording was absolutely terrible here. It looked like it was made by a child holding a camera. It was shakey and robot-like. The shading, lighting, texturing and everything else was in perfect order however.

“Well, looks like this is the end.” Thomas stated with a small, half-hearted chuckle. No one else spoke a word. Just watched as Thomas’s life slowly started to fade away. “You know something, if everything happened for a reason, and everyone has a purpose for living, then why am I sitting here taking my last breaths at my young, young age? If you think about it, I don’t have any real purpose in this world, and what happened is a result of God weeding out the bad apples. So you see, God hasn’t abandoned us, but has certain ones he hates. Why? I don’t hold the answer to that question, nor does anyone else on this beautiful earth.” His human-like features begin to fade, and turn into real-life train features that you and I call normal. One by one as Thomas spoke, features began to transform or fade completely away. “Enjoy your time on earth everybody, for it might not last as long as you may think.”

It cut to Percy wearing a monocle and wooden teeth, holding a Pop tarts, listening to what Thomas had to say. A piece of paper with a heart with a crack down the middle appeared on Thomas’s face as he continued. He began to speak in tongues, what sounded to be Yiddish mixed with a hint of Wales. Subtitle slides that were used in silent films appeared translating what he was speaking. It said “Before I breathe my last breath, I want you all to also know I have seen Heaven, and I have seen Hell, and I know which one I’m going to.” When the slide was done showing, it cut to Thomas again, having a piece of glass for his nose like a real life train, and no mouth. He was still speaking, but it was muffled. He was also holding a acorn with googly eyes, a bowtie and a top hat, which transformed into the Hebrew Bible. Another slide appeared showing the words “Goodbye everyone, I am about to enter a new world of unending suffering and pain, much like in this realm, only many times worse.” It then cut to Thomas again, but as a picture of a real life version of Thomas pasted onto the hospital bed, much in the style of something from the first 3 seasons of Spongebob. He had a Star of David etched onto the driver’s side door and was what I think would be dead. Then Sir Topham Hatt lets out a belch of sadness. It was the saddest, most heart-wrenching belch I had ever heard in my 39 years of life.

It then faded to Thomas in Hell, perfectly normal and intact. What followed was the demon himself and Thomas the tank engine competing in a rap battle. Weird since I thought Demons could just play a mean fiddle, I guess he got with the times. Demon was the first to go. “Yo, yo, I’m a demon and I wish you luck, hope your rhymes don’t suck a fuck.” Woah, there was swearing in this tape. Thomas retorted with a rhyme of his own. “You can keep up with the beat, can rhyme in time, but your rhymes are more sour than a lime!” What the fuck is this? This is some low quality, SHITTY rapping. If this was ITV’s idea for two gangstas spitting straight fire bars at each other, then they also probably think the earth is round. Pfft, idiots.

A Demon responded to Thomas’s shitty rhyme with another shitty rhyme. “My words are poetry, yours are booed, my rhymes are 9 out of 10 quality, yours are like fast food!” The only thing about this scene that’s worse than the rapping, is the fact that several dead people are in the background, cheering after each line is dropped, including Lee Harvey Oswald and John F Kennedy.

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK.

Thomas responded with, surprise surprise, another shitty rhyme! “Shut the fuck up, my lyrics are fire, yours aren’t even worthy to lick the dog shit off my wheels!” The cheering from the onlookers was so loud after that last rhyme that my TV speakers started crackling. They cheered and cheered some more, more onlookers joining in on the cheering, more and more start cheering until nothing can be heard except white noise. The Demon and Thomas’s ears are now bleeding, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the intense amount of cheering, or just their piss-poor rapping, or maybe it was the fucking worst beat ever coming from an old 70s boombox that was positioned between the two contestants.

As I reached for the volume button on my television since the white noise was too loud, Thomas and A demon both turned and looked at the camera, out the television, at me, into my soul. They were crying tears of incredibly realistic blood and had razors for teeth. “Turn down that volume and I’ll turn up at your house, Billy Sammy Slik III.” Thomas said in a menacing, demonic tone. How the hell did this tape know my name? I restrained myself from turning down the volume as the tape faded to black, then ended. I sat there for what seemed like 2 days, replaying everything I had seen in my head over and over again, without even getting up to go to the bathroom.

Then I heard my doorbell ring. As I stood up to answer the door, all the fluid in my bladder that had built up from the past approximately two days immediately exited out my dickhole, soaking my underwear and pants completely. I quickly ran to replace my soiled trousers and opened the door. It was Christopher Awdry. He had a crazed look on his face and was wearing a hawaiian shirt with Poptarts on it.  “I NEED THAT TAPE BACK!” Awdry sputtered, spitting and salivating all over my brand-new expensive antique rug that I spent several years of hard-earned train-repair dollars to purchase. I told him that I don’t have a return policy, but I would oblige anyway, handing him a roll of duct tape and a tissue to wipe the retarded slobber off his chin. “Ha, ha, very funny,” Awdry cackled heartily, “You and I both know what kind of tape we’re talking about. Not Scotch tape, not masking tape, not filament, electrical, friction, or hockey, and certainly not FUCKING SHITTY ASS COCK DICK BITCH CUNT BOLLOCKS TWAT FART BASTARD HELL PISSING DUCT TAPE.” He handed me back the duct tape, and I went and grabbed him some surgical tape. Awdry became red as a beet, and had several veins popping out of his sweaty head. “I WANT THAT MOTHERFUCKING VHS TAPE BACK YOU LITTLE SHIT!” Awdry pile-drived into me like a football player, knocking me down and rushing to my VCR. He pushed eject and waited patiently for the VHS to pop out. I snuck behind the television and unplugged the VCR, unbeknownst to Awdry. He just sat there for several minutes, waiting for the VHS to come out of its VCR caging. I strolled into the kitchen and grabbed myself a delicious canned soda from the refrigerator and came back, Awdry still seated perfectly still in front of my Videocassette Recorder. I was almost done with my soda as Awdry all of a sudden in a fit of rage, picked up my VCR and smashed it against my big-screen TV. My VCR was in bits and the VHS fell out. Awdry grabbed it and ran out of my house faster than motherfucking Michael Johnson’s bitchass. I started to feel kinda woozy. A little dizzy. My ears started to get hot and I suddenly passed out.

When I awoke, I felt different, but I couldn’t tell how. Christopher Awdry and the rest of the ITV team was surrounding me. When they realized I awoke, Awdry started speaking. “So, how do you like your new body?” He held up a mirror for me to see myself. I was absolutely appalled. I was a train. My eyes were the Circle, my skin was grey, my internals the engine. I screamed, but it was cut short by the realization that I sounded exactly like the Canadian actor Edward Glen. “What the hell did you do to me?” I shouted. Christopher told me that he had tampered with the drinks I had in my fridge before I drank the can of soda. I should’ve known not to drink from an already opened can of soda. “Come on, Thomas the tank engine,” Christopher said, “We have a show to make!”

I would like to close this story off by saying, all Thomas episode are not models and CGI. They’re real. I played Thomas the tank engine in all of the episodes, and other tortured souls play the other characters. It could have easily been done in models and CGI, but Christopher Awdry and the entire ITV crew are a bunch of sadists. I am writing this as I am attempting suicide by eating Tide pods. Goodbye everyone, it was nice knowing you for the time it took you to listen to this story.

Mom, dad, I’m coming home.