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Has something you’ve caught sight of a long time ago ever spontaneously popped up in your head? Something so indistinct, yet familiar to you, that searching for whatever you’re thinking of leads to naught? In addition, has it ever made you feel increasingly uneasy the more you watched?
That is what’s currently going on with me. I need help searching for a short animation from my country that scared me shitless for years to come. I felt like posting this would be the best option; to see if anyone else would’ve remembered. It can’t just be me, right?
When I was seven years old, I snuck into the living room while my parents were sleeping to watch some unattended programming. I didn’t bother changing the channel and assumed that I turned on Toonami, since anime promos were the first chunk of commercials to show up. I remember coming back after sneaking a chocolate bar from the pantry to see a split second of blotchy writing on the TV. Probably a title card, or a weird intro, but I’m not entirely sure.
Whatever it was, surely it belonged to that cartoon. I’ll provide a visual aid of what the characters looked like from my drawing tablet, as well as a description of what happened in the short. The ending is the only thing I can’t explain for certain, as I had my eyes closed. That “part” was too much for me.
Cue a piano tune, then a zoom-in transition to a house’s exterior. From what I can call to mind, everything was drawn in a squiggly art style that jittered per frame. Think of Ed, Edd n Eddy, but with slightly messier lineart.
The music stopped when I was shown who was inside: one of the main characters, sitting behind a small, empty dinner table. I couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl based on their features; such as a pencil-thin body with a shirt that went down to their two semi-circles for feet. They also had straight hair, long and black, no mouth, and an oversized pair of almond-shaped eyes that were somewhat more well-drawn compared to the rest of the body.
For the sake of consistency, I'll nickname this character “O,” short for “owner.”
O was eating what appeared to be a bowl of stir-fry. Gray steam lines waved above it as they picked at the vegetables and chicken. Every time they took a bite, a part of their face would just barely split open, showing stretchy, fissure-riddled strands of skin; like a wall of melting cheese, before closing and becoming invisible again. It lasted way longer than it should’ve, and was pretty unsettling to look at, but I pressed on.
O was suddenly startled by a raspy, hoarse chirp that filled the room, and made them collapse out of their seat. Chirp, there it was again. They scanned the room once it fell silent, and slowly sat back down. Only to be greeted with two more chirps. They instinctively turned their view back to the stir-fry and spotted a strange lump bulging from underneath the combination of ingredients. Moving and breathing.
Poking the lump with a fork emitted a squeak, and made their entire bowl vibrate. O stumbled offscreen and came back with a frying pan, holding it over their face in a defensive stance. Slowly, with a shaky grip, they gave the sliced carrots atop of the lump a gentle push. Peeking from behind the pan revealed to them what was infesting their food.
Out popped the head of a tiny, little, beige-colored mite. Eyes gazing back at O, as glassy and black as caviar.
The parasite-like creature didn’t even try to defend itself. It backed up to the side of the bowl in fear, its clawed limbs covering its face. Sorrowful from the bug’s evident distress, O slowly placed their “weapons” down on another chair and attempted to run their index finger along the louse’s back.
At first, the insect whined and squealed like a puppy, but progressively calmed down as it was eased into O’s caressing. O didn’t even seem to mind when it crawled on their wrist to nuzzle up. The creature was then nestled in their palms, and the two fixedly stared at each other with cozy joy.
A montage played.
Scene by scene of O and, as seen on the creature’s new collar, “Bitty,” passed by. The melody of a cheerful xylophone began. These clips ranged from O doing the usual things one would do when taking care of a baby, to how the two lived their everyday lives as Bitty evolved. Bitty’s stature grew taller, and wider, eventually reaching the ceiling of O’s house. O even ended up slathering walls with some sort of oily, slick material to ensure Bitty doesn’t get stuck in doorways. The last scene in the montage showed O squishing their pet’s cheeks as Bitty stuck out its tongue and panted like a dog would.
The music came to an abrupt halt, once O felt a stinging sensation in their hand. Bitty, well, bit them, by accident.
O clutched their wrist and looked at the damage. Skin was slightly purple in hue, bleeding profusely from the deep nip, but they made an attempt to laugh it off. By my guess, they might’ve perceived this as equivalent to having a kitten scratch your wrist.
Bitty's eyes sank into its dark-velvet sockets, and it sat there, dumbfounded by what it just did. So dumbfounded, that it didn't move a muscle. O waved their hands in front of Bitty’s face, snapping their fingers, trying to get it out of its thousand-yard trance, to no avail. Severely nervous, yet still wanting to show some affection, O laid Bitty's head against a pillow and tucked it in, before leaving the room.
Morning arrived.
O went to check on Bitty, only to be greeted with a sunken bodyprint on their couch. Scratching their head, they scavenge the place, whistling to get Bitty’s attention. Nothing. Knocking on walls; still nothing. Panic overtook them when they scanned outside, and didn’t even find a single clue as to where it could’ve gone.
Excerpts of O grieving over losing their beloved pet flew by. Nailing fliers around a dingy, black and white town, showing passersby a photo of this giant bug, causing them to run in terror and the like. Realizing that they have failed to convince anyone to help, O trudges home, slumping their head down with shame.
A timecard appears.
“Quatre jours plus tard.”
O sat on the couch in which their dear friend was last found, bags encircling their big eyes. Sleep encrusted their lids as they looked at the photo they had used to find Bitty on the streets, and droplets from their weeping stained the bottom of the picture. A dark vignette slowly faded around the corners of the scene. Gradually overcasting, until it rapidly vanished, once O heard light scraping from their walls. Low snarling echoed through their small home.
They instantly perk up. The more O followed the source of the noise, the happier they seemed to be from the familiarity. There it was, in the kitchen where it originated. Though most of its body was completely veiled in shadow, Bitty’s recognizable, pointy stubs for feet were able to be spotted from the nearest window’s faint moonlight. O ran up to Bitty, tears flowing down their cheeks like miniature waterfalls, and hugged the monstrous figure the tightest they could. I heard feeble whimpers and wheezy breaths from O. They really must’ve missed their pet.
Not long after, O felt a strange, sticky liquid drench their torso. Upon looking down, they noticed that the fluid was clear, yet bubbly with hints of crimson on the inside. Assuming that Bitty had been hurt somehow, O panicked, before running out of sight and coming back with a bath towel. They hastily wrapped it around their hand and flipped the light switch beside them, to get a good look at what they were going to clean.
Oh, how unsightly the greeting turned out to be.
Bitty was so large, that its size took up most of the cooking area, even destroying a few objects with its massive weight. Its stomach was consistently pulsating and rumbling, and the fattened tissue in its face rendered its eyes hardly seeable. The blood of who or whatever Bitty could’ve possibly devoured oozed from its mandibles, trickling into a small puddle on the floor.
O backed away from the giant, only to be latched on the legs by its fat, sausage-like fingers. An unworldly, somewhat extraterrestrial cry emits from Bitty’s throat.
Cut to darkness, for a short, yet uncomfortable amount of time.
O pried open their watery eyes, and their vision was assaulted with the insides of a roomy, spacious stomach. They were drenched in a grotesque mixture of saliva and gastric juices, soon to dissolve their skin and own internal structure. Their gaze shifted around the room.
My screen was plagued with nauseating imagery of Bitty’s squelching, slithery digestive tract. Clumps of deep yellow, beige, and oxblood goop clung onto the walls, and I swear, I saw faces. Faces of unrecognizable beings melting into flat, skinned pancakes.
That was all I saw before I shielded my face. At the time, I could definitely handle violence and bloodshed, as I occasionally watched horror flicks with my dad during the weekends, but whatever this was felt nearly impossible for me to take in. Maybe it’s because of the insane detail put into the animation for this specific part. I have no clue.
So, what were the last things I heard?
I recall a haphazard piano number, faint wails, the sizzling of meat, and a voice line. The tone had a certain pitch, one that made it hard for me to discern whether the actor was male or female, so I can only assume it came from O.
“Je… je t’aime toujours…”
Following a moment of deafening silence, I peeked from between my fingers right as it ended, only to be met with adverts for South Park. As if nothing had ever happened.
That’s all I can bring to the table. It’s been sixteen years since I’ve viewed this, and as of right now, I can’t find any results, no matter how many specific keywords I look up online. Sometimes I wonder if it was aired only one time, or what it was even made for to begin with. Maybe some pilot that went nowhere? A promotional thing?
Whatever its purpose may have been, the subject surprisingly did end up teaching me, along with some of the other people who viewed it, something important in the long run.
Pet or not, animals are wild by default.