User blog:Dorkpool/Creepypasta Riffs: The Dawn Is Your Enemy

When I was younger, I would sneak out of my room and watch TV at night while my parents slept. Usually the channel I watched was Cartoon Network, which had Adult Swim on at those hours. They usually played shows that my parents watched and wouldn't let me watch (like "Family Guy", for example), which is partly why I watched it. I haven't watched Adult Swim in a while, but when I did, it always had some weird and kind of creepy stuff that played during the commercials and before or after shows. For example, the bump "The Dawn Is Your Enemy", which, according to the story I'm about to Riff, has a much darker extension. Is it true? Well, a Riff won't help find the truth, but you people seem to find my Riffs funny, so let's Riff this bitch!

Trying to look up background info on the bump, so I guess I will polish it later.

''Ah, you’re submitting an unfinished story. Lovely.''

You guys all know that Adult Swim sign-off bumper "THE DAWN IS YOUR ENEMY"? There's a reason they don't show it anymore.

(Narrator): The last time they did, someone replaced it with porn.

The last day the bump was used as a sign-off, instead of a normal running time of (estimated) nine seconds, it ran for an extended period of time until the automated services were overtaken by manual operation.

We all know the sound that shook our childhoods (or teen years). The resonating metal, the rumbles, the sound of metal scraping against metal. Feel free to look it up if you're a bit rusty.

Was that a metal pun?

Now, when the audio cut, it doesn't sound complete, it's not finished, not over. The producers of AS/CN were purposely cutting off the rest of the sound, and for good reason. The rest that followed was the exact reason why you'll never see this bumper again on the air.

(Narrator): The rest of the audio was a Justin Bieber song.

Once again, it's supposedly only run for about nine seconds, and this is a rough transcript of the usual audio: Resonating metal, followed by a rumble, followed by scraping metal, and other rumble. End bumper. So what could you put together with that?

I could probably add a trombone and electric guitar.

Nothing rings a bell, right? Exactly.

This part that they used is utilized effectively to scare off children that have still tuned in to Adult Swim. It even gives adults goose bumps because it's that good. It's closely rivaled with the hammer clinks in the "William Street" production card in nightmare fuel.

Getting back on topic, usually a Cartoon Network employee would enter the control room left by an Adult Swim crew member and take over for a day. It wasn't quite the case that day, however.

(Narrator): That day, that employee was getting hammered off his ass because he knew a show called “Uncle Grandpa” exists.

The usual man schedule to cue the sign-on and such programming for CN for some reason did not start up the day schedule. No one knows if he did this purposely, and whether or not his contract was terminated. This was the least of problems CN had at the time. What followed the common nine-seconds was an extended two-minute broadcast of some of the most horrifying audio ever heard on public television.

Fran Drescher trying to sing?

The metal continued to resonate, and the scraping continued. Slowly, an uncontrollable sobbing came clearer. Not one person was crying, but a multitude of people were screaming and yelling. As the metal scraped, the screaming grew louder. Soon, you could hear the slicing of flesh, the grinding of bones, the gushing of blood, and the guttural death rattles of people dying. All across the United States, millions of children and adults were being exposed to what sounded like a barbaric mass murder. People were calling in all across the country, crying or screaming or begging for it to be turned off.

Because they couldn’t, I don’t know, change the channel or something.

Something kept their eyes attached to the screen and kept them listening to the broadcast. People assume the control room was finally gotten into, and the bump was shut down, ending a traumatic experience no one could undoubtedly forget. In the last few moments as the resonating metal grew into an unbearable volume, the channel showed the peeking sun winking at the viewer, and the channel cut to Bars and Tones.

How was Cartoon Network going to cover this up? No one knows their exact tactic to this day. Multiple theories have been thought of, ranging from a pre-emptive "cease and desist" to possible news articles to subliminal viewer hypnosis over the following weeks.

''I knew Cartoon Network was able to hypnotize its viewers! That’s why “Teen Titans GO!” still has some ratings!''

While all public evidence does not officially exist, Cartoon Network officials do acknowledge a hijacking of the channel's frequency on the day but go into no further detail. All late morning bumps, including TDIYE, were replaced with the corresponding ones from the 1:30 AM timeslot. Word is, however, that somewhere hidden in an onion site (accessible only via Tor) is a recording of the bump played that morning.

You know, stories like these always say, “This video is only found on torrent sites or on the deep web” or something, yet the videos always end up on YouTube.

The question asked the most among the few who remember this is how Cartoon Network got the audio in the first place.

They got it from the test audience of “The Amazing World of Gumball.”

END RIFF

I'll admit, this story is actually pretty good. It's pretty creepy, and is based on a real thing. Yeah, I looked it up, and "The Dawn Is Your Enemy" is actually a real bump. I think it's the fact that it existed that makes it a tad creepy. That's partly why "Broadcast Interruption" scares me (also, "Broadcast Interruption" insinuates that in about two years, some green light is going to come and merge us with other solid objects, and that's a rather disturbing thought). That being said, this story still has some flaws. For example, suggesting that Cartoon Network used subliminal hypnosis to make people forget about what happened is kind of silly. But for the most part, this is actually a pretty good story. It's nice reading one of those.

So, what do you guys think? Was the story good? Was the Riff good? Do you wish I was one of the people in the "Dawn Is Your Enemy" audio getting brutally murdered? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!