Bennett Cerf
eldritch punnery
I don't recall exactly why I wrote this, but it was a while ago, when I was first getting into H.P. Lovecraft. Guess which story I'd just read! Bennett Cerf was a guy who really liked puns and was on early game shows.
Bennett Cerf will haunt you. He's dead, but he has the power to move, and KILL. His shambling, once-human form will burst through your window one night. You'll sit up in bed, hyperventilating, staring into the darkness vainly looking for the thing that broke in.
Hours will pass, and no movement. You'll ease into a light sleep, planning to look for the thing in the morning. "It was just a raccoon, anyway."
The next morning, your scare almost forgotten, you'll feel the cool air from the broken window and curse softly to yourself. Swinging your legs out from under the covers, you'll sit on the edge of the bed, contemplating the price of plate glass.
That's when he'll grab you, by the ankles, just like you always knew something would when you were a kid. Screaming doesn't help, but you will anyway. It will seem as though your whole existence is one loud, shrill note, pushed out through burning lungs and hoarsening vocal cords as Bennett Cerf drags you under your own bed.
They'll find you a day later, huddled in the corner, gibbering like a madman. The deep scratches on your legs will be ascribed to the glass shards on the floor, and all your shrieks of warning about the "undead humorist under the bed" will be disregarded totally.
The stench from beneath the bed will emanate from an old suit, covered in some sticky, soupy substance, an evil black sludge that the police will consider taking samples from, then saner heads will prevail and the whole mess will be chucked in a Dumpster.
The scariest part, the part you'll remember, vividly and incessantly, as they wheel you in for the ECT, is how it almost seemed to be trying to talk. With body so decomposed, reeking dead tissue moving only through power of will, it was almost incomprehensible. But you knew what it was saying.
"transporting gulls...across staid lions...for immortal porpoises."
Its echoes never leave you.