Buttercup.avi

One night quite a while ago, I was invited to dinner at a friend's house, who happened to be the nephew of Craig McCracken, the creator of Powerpuff Girls. The party was pleasant, and I was in for a surprise when Mr. McCracken himself was one of the guests. As a teenage girl, I was absolutely obsessed with the show. I would hog the TV for the premiere of every episode, and yell at my younger brothers if they so much as said a word before the commercial break. Being a somewhat moody, spunky teen, Buttercup was always my favorite of the three girls. I loved her sarcasm and her edginess. Upon meeting Mr. McCracken, I had told him what a big fan I was, and that I was ecstatic to meet him, but he seemed very uninterested and was speaking in a vague, rushed tone, no matter what we were speaking of. I supposed it was because of all of the show's fans could be quite annoying, so I backed off.

Somewhere a bit later into the night, Mr. McCracken left hurriedly, not noticing that he had left a small envelope with a single disc inside. I looked around quickly before taking the disc, thinking of the possibility of this being another cartoon invented by the genius behind the Powerpuff Girls.

After the party was over, I rushed home to see what this mysterious disc had in store for me. With my hands trembling, I lifted the shiny disc from the envelope, and my heart fluttered with delight when I saw that the DVD had "Buttercup.avi" written on it in purple sharpie. Buttercup, as I said before, had always been my favorite, and I was incredibly anxious to watch this episode, that for one reason or another, had not been released, but left next to a chair at a dinner party. I put the disc into my DVD player, and it started instantly, no title screen, no credits, nothing.

The episode started off oddly. The colors had been dulled down to an almost sepia tone, and the house looked all wrong. The windows were busted out, and the walls looked dirty. There were small, reddish-brown footprints going up the wall to the middle upstairs window. Confused and creeped out, I continued watching. The camera zoomed into the house, which looked even worse than the outside. Professor Utonium was sitting on the floor, sobbing. He looked up into the camera, his eyes looking too realistic for even the most advanced animation at the time, and had this horrid, pained expression on his usually smiling face. "Buttercup, what have you done?! What have you done to your sisters?! Why?! WHY?!! WHY?!!!" He sounded genuinely like someone that had lost everything, and my heart hurt for him. Behind him sat the corpses of Blossom and Bubbles, horribly mangled. Blossom was missing one eye, and photorealistic blood dripped from her empty socket. Her limbs were broken and twisted at unnatural angles. Her heart had been cut out and laid beside her, and blood stained her pink dress where her heart had been. Bubbles was killed in a similar fashion, except for the fact that both eyes were missing and shoved down her throat, and her legs torn off. Disturbed more than I had been in my entire life, maybe, I began to feel sick to my stomach, but I knew I had to keep watching.

The camera then cuts to Buttercup, whose eyes were also very realistic, like Professor Utoniums. She had an unusually heartless, bitter look in those all too realistic green eyes, and a twisted smile on her face. She was stained with blood from head to toe. She tilted her head up very slowly, then a maniacal laughter left her mouth, ringing throughout the room and my mind.

"Didn't you see it coming, professor? I'm sure all of our *adoring fans* did." She spat, sounding disgusted at the words 'adoring fans'. "They were so annoying, with their constant happiness, their love of always being in the spotlight, always being nice and good and perfect. I hated it! For years, it disgusted me, but not anymore, Professor, not anymore!"

Professor Utonium continued sobbing, and the horrid sound got louder and louder until a green streak with a silver glint flew across the screen. The professor's disembodied head then flew at the camera, his eyes staring directly at me for the remainder of the video before cutting to black.

Thinking it was over, I went to turn off the TV, but I stopped when I heard the sounds of screaming and singing.

Blossom and Bubbles' screams were quiet, as Buttercup's voice was loudly singing "Hush little babies, don't say a word, Momma's gonna kill you and make you burn, and if those corpses just don't burn, Momma's gonna bury you beneath the furns." Though the words were cheesy, the sound of Buttercup singing and the eyes of her and the Professor still haunt my dreams.