Lazytown: Stingy Bites The Dust

I arrived home after a very long day at school, looking exhausted and miserable. I just wanted to relax and unwind, thankfully it was a Friday so I could. There was nothing on TV at 4:00 PM, nothing but news about certain stuff. I switched to the ABC for kids channel and on a blue screen, it said that the next show that was airing was a lost episode of LazyTown. This made me turn my frown upside down because I was a huge LazyTown fan back then. The episode then started to play.

What I saw was completely different from an original LazyTown episode. It also terrified the living hell out of me.

The episode started with its usual intro, but something was up. There was absolutely no sound at all! I tried turning the volume up and down, but nothing was working. Finally, after the audioless intro. The title card showed up, "Stingy Bites The Dust" was the episode title. "Huh? strange" I thought to myself. Why would they deal with such a serious topic in a program targeted at infants?

Stingy and Ziggy were at the playground, they were chasing each other. "This is so much fun!" Stingy exclaimed "I know!" Ziggy replied "I could do this all day" Stingy then saw a monkey swing set next to building. "Ziggy, look!" Stingy yelled excitedly "That looks like fun" Ziggy said. They went over to the monkey swing set.

Suddenly, the episode cut to another scene. Sportacus was just mopping around in his airship looking as miserable as I was before. Apparently, Robbie rotten had gotten into his airship and stole all his supplies. He also looked very weak, he kind of looked like a stick. He then sat down on a chair and started sobbing rather loudly. He didn't say anything, he just sobbed.

It then cut to Stingy and Ziggy playing on the bar set, "I feel like an actual monkey" Stingy said smiling. This surprised me, because in the actual show non of the puppets smiled at all. "I can picture you as an actual monkey right now" Ziggy said. "What?" Stingy said. Then, the most horrific shot happened. Stingy fell off the monkey bars and onto a slide. His dead body was nearly bloodless! I was shocked to see this happen, even at the age of 9, I didn't know stuff like this existed. "**STINGY!**" Ziggy screamed before running over his his dead body. Ziggy then started to sob the same way Sportacus did near the beginning of the episode. It then zoomed in onto Stingy's face. There was greek text that said "γεια, δυστυχία, χαίρομαι που σε ξαναβλέπω μετά από τόσα χρόνια" (Which translated to "Hello, misery, I'm glad to see you again after so many years") But that wasn't the end of the episode just yet.

It then showed footage of a group of people testing a needle on some birds, apparently it was the virus to make the birds rabid. What's even worse is that it was live action footage, meaning that this actually happened. It then cut back to Ziggy still crying about Stingy's death. Again, stingy's body could still be seen. But this time it was a little bloodier. One of his eyes was bleeding but I can't remember which one. Ziggy then started to run away as fast as he could, he ran so far that he wasn't even in LazyTown anymore. He was in Iceland next to a river. Suddenly, a man from behind started to stab Ziggy. Ziggy started screaming but it wasn't his usual scream, it was more of a quiet scream which he never let out. Again, this scene was bloodless. And all you could see was Ziggy's dead body without any blood.

The program ended there, without any credits.

Then on a blue screen there was text that said "We are sorry if that scared you, we never thought anyone could submit anything to the ABC for kids channel. We never thought the episode would be this horrifying, sorry for the inconvenience. Now here's a regular episode of LazyTown"

I was now petrified. I called the creator of LazyTown to see if he knew anything about this. And this is what he had to say:

"Oh yeah, that episode. Well, I don't know if I've told anyone about this before. But there was a writer at the studio who went by the name of Zack Guðmundur Deskaft (Not really an Icelandic name I know) that edited the episodes for the show. Zack was rather a quiet guy and never really talked much due to his severe autism. But he was a good friend, a good friend right up until a few years ago. Zack's pet Fish and Dog died and this put him in a long lasting depression. He started submitting rather disturbing ideas for the show that I really can't talk about with a child this young. Soon enough, Zack was arrested for robbery and murder. Which he got the death penalty for. His last words were

I don't know what the hell I've done to deserve this"