Horrible Monsters on Channel 12

Timmy's favorite show was Horrible Monsters on Channel 12. The show featured four Henson-style puppets colored red, yellow, blue, and green. They had no names, and were simply called "Number 1" through "Number 4". All shared a very basic design, perfectly round heads with large, flapping, toothless mouths and white eyes with no pupils,plump bodies,tubular limbs, no noses.

The set was a simple set of cardboard backdrops that looked like a park, and episode plots were very basic. All told, the show would seem like a ripoff of Teletubbies. The Monsters were loud and obnoxious, always bickering with each other, and the faceless fatherly Narrator with a British accent always had to tell them to be quiet and behave themselves. The narrator began each episode with the same introduction. "In a land near and far away, the Horrible Monsters come out to play. Fun and laughter is guaranteed, but if they ask for a favor, pay them no heed, for they are horrible monsters indeed."

Timmy was never sure what that last line meant, but he hardly cared. He was only six years old.

Timmy was watching an episode that involved the Monsters fighting over a ball. The dialogue was an overlapping back-and-forth of "it's my ball", "no, it's MINE", "give it back", etc. The narrator started chiding them from off-screen. "Now, now, there's no need to get rough. You can all share the ball. Number Three, please let go of the ball and apologize to Number 1".

Number 4, the green one, sighed and reluctantly did this. He then said "I'm sorry Mr. Narrator, it's just that we've been so restless cooped up in this tiny set..."

"Number 4, I told you not to talk about that on the show."

Number 4 turned to face the screen. "Hey, maybe you can help us..."

"Number 4, I'm warning you..."

"If someone like you could just let us out, we could be free..."

"Number 4 that's ENOUGH! Stop it right now!"

Timmy was startled. The narrator was no longer giving his usual friendly chiding, he was practically screaming. Timmy felt that pang of secondhand shame he felt whenever he saw another kid being berated by a parent. Number 4 sighed again and the monsters resumed talking about the ball. The narrator cleared his throat and said "sorry about that, children. Sometimes you have to be hard on the Monsters. They get very unruly sometimes. And you mustn't listen to any notions they have about being let out. They may be friendly, but they are still horrible monsters at heart, and if we let them out something terrible could happen."

The show resumed as normal, which is to say the Monsters continued to argue over petty causes and then learn to get along throughout the episode. For the next week, Timmy continued watching the show, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. That is until one episode when Number 4, the green Monster, was missing. The show began as it always did with the monsters fighting over something or other, but Number 4 was absent, and rather than attempt to distract or resolve whatever the current conflict was, the Narrator interjected with "Gentleman...Gentleman! Where is Number 4?" The Monsters said they hadn't seen him, then began arguing over when they had seen him last. "Never mind all that..." the Narrator yelled "everyone form a search party and find him!"

The three monsters started looking all over the set. The camera followed them, circling around the different backdrops, passing cardboard cutouts of trees and benches. No regard was given for cinematography; the tracking motion revealed one of the park backdrops to be adjacent to the urban skyline setting of a different scale, for example.

After a minute or two, Number 4 entered view from off-screen. The Narrator and Monsters asked where he was, to which he answered that he was backstage. The Narrator admonished the green puppet for going to a restricted area, before going on to introduce the Monsters to a new game of some kind. While explaining the rules, the lights on the set suddenly went out. "What happened?" the narrator asked. "Is that smoke I smell? Number 4, what did you do?" It may have just been his imagination, but Timmy thought he could faintly smell smoke as well. On the TV, he heard the fans blowing as well as what sounded like rain. A moment later, a "technical difficulties" card displayed, but it was a standard notice, not the comedic one with the classic high-pitched tone that showed for laughs when the monsters were really getting out of control.

Later, Timmy was lying in bed, when he heard voices coming from the TV in his room. The voices were arguing with each other.

"No, THIS is how you turn it on, you idiot. Ah, that's better." It was the green monster from the show, Number 4, only now he was missing an eye. He had his face pressed against the screen, illuminated by a what seemed to be a flashlight. "Timmy, you have to let us out. Your TV is the only one we've been able to break through to in years."

Timmy sat up, still half asleep, and stared at the screen.

"Timmy, it's us. See?" Number 4 stepped back a little so his face no longer filled the whole screen.

Timmy continued to stare in silent bewilderment.

"Fellas, I don't think he can see you. Turn your flashlights on, will ya?" The other three monsters did so, and Timmy saw them in the yellow glow, and a bit of the darkened set behind them. Some of the yellow light also spilled out of the screen and mingled with the moonlight on Timmy's bedroom carpet.

"Wa, what do you want me to do?"

"Smash your TV screen with your baseball bat. Your parents aren't home yet, so they won't hear. Tell them you were playing baseball in your room and accidentally broke the TV."

"I don't know about that. What if they don't believe me?"

"They will believe you. Just do it and let us out. Please, let us out."

"Yes, let us out, let us out!" the yellow one joined in. Soon they were all chanting "let us out, let us out." Timmy couldn't take it anymore. He retrieved his aluminum bat from his closet and walked over to the TV.

"Alright fellas, he's gonna do it. Stand back." The four monsters took a couple paces backwards, and their flashlights illuminated more of the stage backdrop. Had Timmy been more lucid, he would have noticed that part of the set looked charred, and the light from the flashlights was illuminating droplets and puddles of water.

Timmy closed his eyes and swung the bat. The screen was smashed with a hole in it, and the monsters could no longer be seen. "Do it again", he heard Number 4 say, "we need the whole screen gone."

Timmy swung the bat two more times. When most of the glass was gone, the four puppets leapt out of the blackness and onto his bedroom floor. They were smaller than they looked on television, about the size of a teddy bear. The red, yellow, and blue monsters scattered. Numbers 1 and 2 fled into the closet, while Number 3 disappeared under the bed. Number 4 turned to look up at Timmy.

"Thanks for the help, Timmy. Those dumb studio and network executives wanted to keep us trapped in there forever. See ya around, kid." He then ducked behind the book case, out of site.

Timmy turned on the lights and searched his room. He looked under the bed, in the closet, behind the book case and everywhere else, but there was no sign of the monsters.

The next day, any thoughts he had that it was all a dream were quickly refuted by the broken television. He gave his parents the excuse Number 4 had suggested, and they took his bat away and grounded him for a week, which meant no TV. They also told him that they would not be replacing his bedroom TV and he had to watch TV in the living room from now on once his grounding was up.

After this experience, Timmy wasn't especially interested in watching a lot of TV anymore anyway, but when the week was over and his parents told him he was no longer grounded, he flipped to Channel 12 at the time he always watched Horrible Monsters, only to find another show playing. "Oh, I'm sorry Timmy, I forgot to tell you", his mother said "the Network cancelled that show."