In the small town of Fremont, California, there was an obese 14 year old boy named Cornelius who had a lot of trouble controlling his anger and his food intake. Cornelius was always talking about taking revenge on his mother’s lover, Rupert. Whenever Rupert would pull into the driveway of his mother’s house, Cornelius would be standing by the window ready to attack with whatever he could find at hand: baseball bat, frying pan, or even just his bare hands if necessary. Rupert tried to simply shrug off the attacks, not wanting to create tension with Cornelius’ mother, but the conflict between them escalated over time. One day, when Rupert got into bed with Cornelius’ mother, after a night of making love, Cornelius’ mother noticed bruises on Rupert’s body and found out that it was her son’s fault for hurting him.
“How could that fat, inconsiderate brat do such a thing?” she screamed. “I should call the police!” She began screaming at the top of her lungs. “After all I’ve done for this family! It’s only because of me that we have a roof over our heads!”
“It’s okay Martha, calm down.” Rupert replied. “It was my own fault anyway. Let’s talk about it in the morning. I’ll come over to your place tomorrow around noon and we can sort things out then.”
What the two lovers didn’t know, was that Cornelius was in their bedroom closet listening to every word they said. The following afternoon, Rupert was looking through some books in the living room when he heard a thunk and a thud. He stopped reading and listened carefully. After a moment of silence, he decided it was nothing, and continued with his book. Moments later, he heard the same noise again, this time sounding like it came from the basement. Rupert crept down the stairs slowly and put his ear up to the basement door, but couldn’t hear anything. Thinking that maybe Cornelius had gotten stuck somewhere, Rupert decided he would need a flashlight to go check it out. Just as he turned to leave, the door opened behind him and Cornelius leaped onto his back, wrapping his arms tightly around his neck and pinning him to the floor. Rupert struggled and thrashed around wildly causing the pair of them fall down the stairs, eventually landing on the bottom step. Rupert fell hard onto his face and lost consciousness momentarily, and when he opened his eyes, he saw his assailant kneeling above him, trying to strangle him.
“Help! Help!” Rupert screamed as loud as he could.
“Oh shut up already, you disgusting cretin!” snapped Cornelius. “You want to stay in my house, then you can stay here forever, buried underneath it. You don’t deserve a place in this world!” With that, Cornelius picked up a metal lamp stand from the basement floor and held it above his head like a baseball bat, preparing to bring it down on Rupert’s skull. Rupert had never been so terrified before. He shut his eyes, bracing for the imminent strike aimed straight for his head, when the basement door swung open, revealing Cornelius’ mother.
“Cornelius, what the hell are you doing?!” she yelled. “Get away from him!” Cornelius took one look at the frantic woman and immediately let go of his grip on Rupert. “But mom, Rupert is being awful to me! He keeps chasing me around the house, beating me up!”, he lied. You should be ashamed! If dad were here to see you in bed with this loser, he would throw both of you out of the house right now!”, Cornelius tried to reason with his mother, but to no avail. His mother’s face contorted into a horrible scowl, her eyes wide and filled with anger. She launched herself down the basement stairs, crashing into Cornelius and taking him to the ground with her. There was a brief struggle between the Cornelius and his mother, which resulted in her hand finding the metal lamp, and, without thinking, smashing it over Cornelius’ head.
“Mother, please, please stop!” cried Cornelius. But his pleas fell on deaf ears, and the violent outburst quickly spiraled out of control. Their mother was merciless in her onslaught, beating the boy with all her strength. Rupert tried desperately to pull Cornelius’ mother off of the boy, but there was no way he could overcome the sheer power behind her assault. Cornelius screamed as loud as he could, begging his mother to stop, until the screams subsided to moans, and finally silence. Cornelius’ mother turned her gaze upon Rupert, who cowered under her wrathful stare. Slowly, she stood, walked towards him, and tried to put her bloodied hand to his face, which Rupert pushed away firmly, his face locked in a horrified expression. “Rupert, I’m so sorry about this…” she began. “I don’t know what happened to him. He’s always been such a sweet child.” Rupert stared at her blankly, his mouth half-open in shock.
“You… you’re a monster”, he managed to stammer out.
“No, baby, I love you”, she replied softly. “Now get your stuff and come live with me”.
“Oh my god, you… you killed him.”, Rupert said, staring at the lifeless body of Cornelius at his feet. Tears came streaming down his cheeks, splashing onto his shirt, and dripping off of his chin.
“I don’t know what came over him, Rupert… he was always such a sweet little thing… I swear I’ll find out what went wrong with him. Just help me bury him; we’ll say he died an accidental death. Don’t tell anyone anything. Promise?” she begged, putting her arms around him and trying to comfort him, but Rupert pushed her away roughly.
“Don’t touch me, Martha! I don’t want anything to do with you ever again!” Rupert spat at her, shoving past her and stomping up the basement stairs. “I want you to forget about me, and everything else. Do whatever you have to do. I’m leaving this place forever!”, he shouted over his shoulder.
“Rupert, please! Please, baby, I need you! Don’t make me lose you too!” she sobbed loudly, her hands clutching at the basement door, desperate to follow him up the stairs. Rupert pushed her back inside of the room, and shut the door in her face, before sprinting towards his car in the driveway, and driving away from the house as fast as possible. As he drove, he looked at himself in the rearview mirror, feeling absolutely miserable and utterly distraught. When he arrived at his home, he simply put his car in park, buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears.
As the weeks went by, Rupert found himself back on his feet again, returning to work at his accounting firm after a long hiatus due to the unfortunate events that took place that day. One night, after hours, Rupert found himself working late, and became more than just a little tired. After a few minutes of aimless web surfing on his computer, Rupert’s phone rang, making him jump slightly. “Unknown Caller”, it said. On the other end of the line, there was dense static, and Rupert thought he could barely make out the sounds of a fat boy’s voice speaking from the phone. “Reeeeuuperrrrrrrrttt?”, it croaked. Rupert let out a startled yelp, knocking over some papers that had piled up next to him, sending a few across the table. He immediately hung up the call, and was left to sit quietly for a moment, taking deep breaths. Finally, a bit shaken, he went back to his job, pulling out all the necessary paperwork to complete a simple audit of one of the companies he was currently working with. But, it wasn’t long before his mind wandered back to the incident that occurred earlier that day. A loud creaking noise made Rupert look up, wondering where it had come from. He leaned back in his chair, eyes wandering to the open doorway behind him. Suddenly, his desk lamp lit up the dark corners of the room, revealing a fat shadowy figure lurking near the hallway outside of his office.
“Who’s there?”, Rupert asked, fumbling around nervously against the wall, trying to hit the switch that would illuminate the room in order to see the intruder better. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to get the light turned on. His heart started beating wildly in his chest, as the sound of shuffling footsteps seemed to be getting closer. Unable to contain his panic, he got up from his desk and sprinted into the break room, his eyes looking behind his shoulder for pursuers. He slammed the heavy wooden door behind him and tried to flick on the lights, to no avail. For a moment, silence. And then, suddenly, there was a loud thud against the heavy wooden door, followed by another - more intense thud. The young accountant held his breath, unsure of what was happening. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with an enormous boom, the door crashed open with such force that the entire room shook, sending Rupert flying out of his seat, collapsing on the floor. The windows in the break room shattered, raining glass upon him, sending shards onto his clothes. He struggled to get up, almost hyperventilating, until his cell phone began ringing in his pocket. He opened it up to see a text from an unknown number, reading “Time’s up, Rupert”.
His eyes look up from his phone, revealing Cornelius’ wicked grinning face, his fist clenched around a steel lamp, which struck against Rupert’s face with tremendous force, instantly cracking several of his teeth, breaking several others, leaving his jaw hanging limply off to the side. Blood trickled down his chin, pooling under his chin as he gurgled. When Cornelius had finished with his blow, he smiled menacingly, looking over Rupert, before vanishing into thin air, leaving the bloodied lamp on the ground next to Rupert’s limp body.
The following morning, the Fremont Police Department were called into the building over a suspected murder, discovering Rupert’s lifeless body just inside the front doors of the building. An investigation ensued, but no evidence was ever found linking any suspect to the crime, as security footage revealed that there was no intruder present in the building, and so it is widely believed that Rupert simply committed suicide, despite the circumstances. His death certificate to this day simply states ‘Undetermined’.