It all started with my co-worker Jason. He was the one who introduced me to Daddy Dearest.
Jason had just started working at the garage a couple months earlier. None of the other guys, including me, really cared for him much. It wasn’t just that he was a total neckbeard – a creepy, off-putting fat slob with terrible hygiene, an obnoxious laugh and the social grace of a toadstool – but also the fact that he was without a doubt the worst, laziest, most incompetent auto mechanic any of us had ever worked with; the kind of guy who was always stretching a fifteen-minute break into a half-hour, always needed to be told to do his job multiple times, and usually screwed his job up when he did get around to doing it. The rest of us had made it an unspoken rule that whenever we could, we would discreetly double-check his work to make sure he got it right, but we weren’t always able to do so. God help the poor, unsuspecting motorist who got out on the road after entrusting their new brake job to that moron and none of us were there to fix his mistakes.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do about it. Jason was the nephew of the garage’s owner and whenever we complained, he would just brush us off and tell us to get back to work. Nepotism at its finest. So finally, we stopped trying. Things would have to run their natural course, the inevitable accident would eventually occur due to Jason’s negligence, a lawsuit would surely follow and only then would he be fired. In the meantime we would just have to put up with him.
Whenever Jason wasn’t pretending to work, he was usually sitting on his fat ass, shoveling junk food into his greasy mouth and engrossed in his phone, watching some stupid video and making that hideous donkey-braying sound that passed for laughter. And he did it all the time. It really got on our nerves after a while.
One day, after I had finished putting a new transmission system in someone’s Honda, I finally had enough and demanded Jason tell me what was so fucking funny.
“It’s this channel…” he wheezed out between bursts of hysterical laughter, nearly hyperventilating, his face beet red. He looked like he was on the verge of having a fatal stroke…not that that would have been a tragic loss to humanity. “You gotta check it out, Bryce. It’s the funniest fuckin thing I ever seen.”
He showed me his phone screen. A YouTube video was playing. A girl of about ten was speaking to whoever was holding the camera. She looked upset. I only glanced at the video, not really paying attention to what was being said, but noted the name of the channel: Daddy Dearest.
I lost interest and walked away from Jason, getting back to work and trying to ignore his irritating laughter.
But that evening, after I got home, with nothing else better to do, I decided to check out that channel just to see what Jason had found to be so amusing. I brought up YouTube on my laptop and did a search for “Daddy Dearest.” I found the channel pretty quickly.
I was surprised to see that it was pretty popular – 1.7 million subscribers. There were over a hundred videos, the oldest posted two years ago, the newest posted just the day before. I scrolled through them, my curiosity piqued. As best as I could tell, Daddy Dearest seemed to be a family prank channel chronicling the shenanigans of a family named the Campbells. Titles of videos included “Dad Plays Rat Poison Prank On Tyler,” “Rabies Scare Prank,” “Serial Killer Prank Goes Wrong,” “Jamie Gets Abducted Prank,” “Mom Plays Spoiled Milk Prank On Twins,” etc.
I raised an eyebrow at some of the titles, which struck me as seeming a bit…extreme, and not at all the harmless, goofy “loosen the top of the salt shaker/smear peanut butter on the phone” variety of practical jokes I had been expecting.
Interested, I clicked at random on a video titled “Spiders In The Shower Prank.”
The video began with a close-up of a trashy-looking man in his mid-thirties filming himself doing an intro. I presumed this was the father. He favored his audience with a shit-eating grin that displayed a mouthful of rotting teeth and gaps were several were missing altogether. There was a scuzzy-looking beard on his chin. He looked like your typical redneck white-gangsta-wannabe meth head.
“Wuzzup, Team DD, it’s your boy Randy! Yo, dig this, Tyler’s got this fear of spiders, so check this out…”
He reversed the camera and tilted it down to a Tupperware container sitting on a kitchen counter. He lifted the lid, revealing that the container was full of large brown spiders. It looked like there were at least several dozen of them, crawling over each other.
“Tyler’s upstairs takin’ a shower, so what we’re gonna do is give him a little surprise…”
He picked up the Tupperware container and then switched the camera around so that we were seeing it from his point-of-view. We followed as the man, Randy Campbell, headed upstairs and crept slowly down a hallway to a door. As he got closer, we could hear the sound of a shower running.
Randy’s hand reached into view and opened the door. It was a bathroom. Randy crept to a closed shower curtain. He raised the spider-filled container up so that the audience could see it, then popped the lid off with his thumb and raised the container, dumping its contents over the shower curtain. Immediately we heard a child’s high-pitched screams of hysterical terror coming from the other side.
Randy backed away, laughing like a jackass (in much the same way Jason did) as whoever was in the shower thrashed around in a wild panic, still screaming in horror, the shower curtain shaking.
The shower curtain was yanked roughly aside and a blond-haired boy of about ten, naked, his private parts censored with pixels, leaped out of the shower, flailing around and slapping at himself. Several spiders were still clinging to his wet, soapy skin.
Randy just stood there laughing his ass off while the boy Tyler, who I assumed was his son, burst into tears.
I paused the video, disgusted but not particularly disturbed. It was an extremely cruel prank to play on the boy, and I felt sorry for him for having such an immature jerk for a dad, but I had seen videos like this before. Low-IQ bullies with a warped and mean-spirited sense of humor playing sick so-called “pranks” on their kids. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
I un-paused the video and resumed watching.
Randy the Idiot Man-child was still laughing while his son was freaking out. Then there was a cutaway and the video picked up to show the aftermath. Tyler, now dried off and wearing a robe, was sitting on his bed, staring balefully at his father holding the camera. His eyes were still red from crying but he seemed to have calmed down.
“So, Ty, how did you like playing with your eight-legged friends?” Randy snickered from behind the camera.
Tyler just glared at Randy.
“What, got nothin to say, boy? Cat got your tongue?”
Tyler lowered his eyes and muttered something inaudible.
“What? What was that?” All the humor was gone from Randy’s voice, which was suddenly cold and had an edge of menace to it.
Tyler looked up defiantly at his father. He spoke, his voice climbing to a shout with every word. “I said…I…HATE…YOUUUU!”
The camera closed in quickly on Tyler as Randy darted forward. His free hand swung into view and connected with Tyler’s right cheek with a sharp WHACK! Tyler was struck so hard the blow knocked him to his side on the bed. Instantly he began to cry again. Blood was clearly dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
I sat there, watching in shock. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen.
“DON’T YOU EVER FUCKIN TALK TO ME THAT WAY, YOU LITTLE FUCKIN PIECE OF SHIT!” an enraged Randy bellowed from off-screen at his sobbing son, the camera shaking in his hand. “YOU BETTER HAVE SOME RESPECT FOR ME BOY, OR I’M GONNA DROWN YOU LIKE THE RUNT OF THE FUCKIN LITTER!”
I paused the video for a moment, stunned. That had to be an act, it had to scripted. It couldn’t be real.
I un-paused it again and watched, but the remainder of the video just showed Tyler, curled on his side in bed, weeping in anguish while Randy filmed him wordlessly. It went on for several minutes before the video abruptly ended. No outro, no cutaway revealing Randy and Tyler laughing together to show that Tyler was perfectly fine and the slap had been fake and the whole thing had been staged as a prank on the audience. Nothing.
What I had just witnessed was clearly and flagrantly an act of child abuse. There wasn’t anything funny about it. It was sick. What kind of psychopath would find that amusing?
I checked the comments section below to see how others had reacted to the video, to see if any of them had called Randy out for his cruel and abusive treatment of Tyler. What I found only shocked me even further. Every comment that I read - there were over five hundred - was overwhelmingly positive. Comments ranging from “Best one yet, LMFAO,” to “LOL keep up the good work, DD!” I couldn’t find a single comment which vilified Randy for the abusive white trash scumbag he was - not one.
I sat there flabbergasted. What the fuck was wrong with these people, why were they praising this lowlife? Didn’t they see how horribly he treated his son? Maybe most of them didn’t watch the video to its completion, maybe they clicked it off after the spider prank and didn’t see what happened afterwards in Tyler’s room. It was the only explanation I could come up with that made sense.
I clicked on another video, this one titled “Tyler and Jamie Pranked, Soaked and Locked Outside.”
I glanced at the date of the video. It was from last January.
Already I had a bad feeling.
It began with Randy filming a heavyset red-headed woman around his age. She was grinning mischievously into the camera.
“Hey, ya’ll, it’s Lindsey, aka Mommy Dearest. Tyler and Jamie should be home any minute from school, and when they get to the door we got somethin real special planned for them!”
She indicated something below frame and Randy lowered the camera to reveal a plastic bucket full of water sitting on the floor.
Randy suddenly turned the camera sharply in the direction of the front door. “I think I hear ‘em coming up,” he whispered to the woman, Lindsay.
Linsday picked up the bucket of water and positioned herself next to the front door, stifling a laugh of anticipation of what was to come. Faintly I could hear the sound of someone approaching the front door, murmuring voices.
“Get ready!” Randy hissed at her and she raised the bucket of water, poised to splash it.
The doorknob turned and the door opened. A boy and a girl bundled in heavy winter clothes started through the doorway. Their breath was visibly steaming and outside a thick blanket of snow covered the ground.
Instantly their mother flung on the bucket of water on them both, drenching them head to foot. In unison they screamed in surprise.
Lindsay quickly slammed the door on them and turned the deadbolt. The two kids could be heard shrieking outside. They began pounding frantically on the front door, screaming to be let inside, that they were freezing.
Both Lindsay and Randy burst into hysterical laughter, ignoring their children’s desperate pleas.
I felt sick at my stomach.
There was a time-lapse effect in the video and next it showed Lindsay approaching the door and finally unlocking it to allow her freezing children into the house. Both of them were in appalling physical condition. They were shaking uncontrollably, their teeth chattering audibly, and looked near hypothermia. Their skin was too white, except for red blotches on their cheeks and noses that were unmistakably the onset of frostbite. Their wet clothes were frosted over with ice.
Jamie and Tyler collapsed against a wall as soon as they entered, shivering violently. Randy zoomed in for a close-up of their faces while Lindsay taunted them gleefully.
“Cold enough for you out there?” she asked mockingly, then laughed.
Neither of the kids answer her. They just sat there clutching themselves and shivering, trying to warm their freezing bodies.
“Ahh, come on,” Lindsay chided them, sounding put out, “don’t give me that. It wasn’t that bad. You were only out there for an hour. Can’t you kids take a joke?”
Jamie and Tyler finally looked up at their mother. I saw their faces clearly for the first time. I recognized Jamie as the girl from the video Jason had shown me at the garage. Jamie and Tyler had identical blond hair and blue eyes and looked the same age. It was clear they were twins. The expression on both their faces was a combination of misery and incomprehension.
Jamie opened her mouth and started to say something, but then the video abruptly ended.
I checked the comments. Once again they were all glowingly positive (“couldnt stoP lauffing my Butt off, Jamy & Tiler looked so COLD ouTsite!”).
No more, I thought to myself, don’t watch anymore. But something in me felt compelled to keep going. Something in my darker nature, some base and morbid element of my character wanted to see how much worse it could get. The same way we involuntarily want to slow down at bad car accidents to see the blood and gore. To satisfy our ugly inner desire to see the true horror of the world.
I scanned through the other videos in the list.
“Battery Acid In Shampoo Bottle Prank.”
“Maggot Cheeseburger (Tyler Pranked).”
“BB Gun Sniper Prank On Jamie.”
“Urine Lemonade Prank.”
“Snakes In the Pool Prank On the Twins.”
“Firecrackers In Bed (Surprise Wake-up Call!”)
There were at least fifty others.
I watched several more, and all of them were the same, or in some cases worse. Randy and Lindsay Campbell playing, cruel, abusive, disgusting and sometimes outright dangerous pranks on Tyler and Jamie. And every single comment heaped them with praise, as if watching these two psychos tormenting their kids was the funniest thing these people had ever seen. Were all these people insane, or were they just as warped and sociopathic as the sorry excuse for parents who made these videos?
Something else I noticed was that the “pranks” seemed to escalate as they went on, becoming progressively more extreme. The older ones were more tame and (relatively) harmless, such as “Aftershave in Mouthwash Bottle Prank,” but from there they became increasingly more dark and violent.
And as the videos escalated in content, the views and comments also increased.
I went back to the top and looked at the title of the most recent video. “Jamie Tricked Into Eating Her Kitten Prank.”
Already I felt growing dread and apprehension. No, they couldn’t, they wouldn’t. It’s got to be trick. These people were freaks but even they wouldn’t go so low…
Don’t do it, a voice pleaded in my mind. I ignored it. I clicked on the video.
It began with Randy standing in the Campbell Family kitchen. Lindsay was holding the camera. Randy was holding a small calico kitten in his arms, petting it gently.
“Wazzup, Team DD, it’s Randy. We got a special prank in store for Jamie. This here”–he raised the kitten to the camera and waved one of its tiny paws at the viewers–“is Mr. Sox. Grandma gave this kitten to Jamie last Christmas an’ she just ‘bout loves ‘im more than anything in the world. We’re havin’ meatloaf today, but what Jamie don’t know is there’s gonna be a really special extra ingredient in her servin’…”
He placed the kitten, Mr. Sox, on a cutting board. There was a meat cleaver sitting next to it.
I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. No, this could not really be happening…
Holding the squirming kitten firmly with one hand, Randy picked up the meat cleaver, raised it, and…
I lost control of my queasy stomach and grabbed the trash container under my desk, lifting it to catch the vomit.
He did it, the sick, sadistic fuck actually did it, right there on camera. There was no way it could have been faked, no way it hadn’t been real.
I looked back up, wiping tears away from my eyes. I didn’t want to see anymore, but I had already gone past the point of no return. I had to see how the rest played out.
I watched, numbed, as Randy skinned and ground up Jamie’s kitten. Then there was an edit, and now Randy was filming Lindsay preparing a meatloaf and placed it in the over. Another edit, showing the family seated at the dinner table. It looked like they were just finishing their meal.
Lindsay suddenly stood up and produced a small wrapped gift box with a bright red bow on the top. She handed it to a surprised Jamie who looked at it, turning the box over in her hands, mystified.
“What is it?” she asked her mother.
“Go on, open it, it’s a surprise!” Lindsay urged her daughter with barely suppressed glee and anticipation.
Jamie just stared apprehensively at her mother, then at her father holding the camera, perhaps sensing this was some new sick prank.
“Open it!” Lindsay insisted.
“I don’t want to,” Jamie said in a voice that was somehow both bold and wary at the same time.
“What did you say to me?” Lindsay demanded icily, becoming livid in a flash at Jamie’s disobedience.
Jamie repeated, speaking assertively: “I said I don’t want to open the box.”
Without hesitation Lindsay brutally slapped Jamie’s face, knocking her out of her chair. Jamie lay on the kitchen floor, tears welling in her eyes, but looked up steadily at her mother in defiance. Enraged, Lindsay slapped her again.
“You little fuckin cunt, who the fuck do you think you are!!!” Lindsay screamed in Jamie’s face.
“I don’t want to open the box!!!” Jamie screamed back at her, standing her ground.
The camera closed in on Jamie as Randy menacingly approached.
“You don’t fuckin talk to your mama that way, you ungrateful little shit! Who the fuck’s house are you livin in, huh? Who fuckin feeds you an’ buys your clothes?”
“You’re just trying to trick me again!” Jamie wailed, her cheeks streaked with tears. A red handprint stood out clearly on one from Lindsay’s slap. “You’re both always tricking me and Tyler! All the time! Do you think I’m stupid? I don’t want to do these videos anymore! I don’t want to be tricked anymore!”
Randy’s voice was cold and matter of fact. “If you don’t open the goddamn box by the time I count to three, you’re gonna be spending the next month locked in the basement, in the dark, eatin nothin but dog food, just like last time! You know I mean it, girl! One! Two…!”
Seeing she had no choice, Jamie relented, defeated. She unwrapped the box and lifted the lid.
Inside was her kitten’s severed head.
She stared at it for a moment uncomprehendingly, then began to shriek piercingly, in heartbreaking anguish.
“Mr. Sox!” she wailed, sobbing, while those two fucking monsters stood over her chortling like a pair of ogres from a fairy tale.
“SURPRISE!” Randy and Lindsay shouted in unison, then resumed their cackling.
“You killed him!” Jamie screamed.
“Yeah, but look on the bright side. Mr. Sox may be dead, but part of him will always be inside you…well, ‘til the next time you take a shit, anyway.” Randy said in a loathsome tone of mocking consolation.
Jamie slowly looked up at her father, confused by what he had just said.
“What?” she said in a near whisper.
“What do you think you just ate for dinner?” Randy asked her.
A couple seconds passed in silence. Then Jamie realized what they had done. She shrieked again, a terrible, almost animalistic sound of grief, horror and disgust unlike anything I think I had ever heard before.
She began to gag and wretch, then vomited onto the kitchen floor.
“Goddamnit, look whatcha did!” Randy thundered furiously. “Your mama just mopped this floor! You get off you ass right this second an’ clean that up or–”
I stopped the video. I couldn’t take anymore. I didn’t think my sanity could bear it.
The video had over 900,000 views and over three thousand comments. I didn’t bother to check the comments; I knew what they would say. There were 400,000 likes…and no dislikes.
I sat there in front of my laptop, traumatized by what I had just witnessed. This…this went beyond child abuse, it was flat-out sadism. These people were inhuman. Those poor kids.
How could they get away with this? Why hadn’t the moderators caught it? Didn’t stuff like this violate YouTube’s guidelines and policies? Why hadn’t someone reported them to the authorities?
Well, if no one else was going to do anything about this, I would. I did some digging online and found out which state the Campbells lived in. I looked up the website for that state’s Department of Child Services and emailed them, telling them what I had found and giving them a detailed description of what the videos contained. Those evil bastards weren’t going to get away with this.
I went to bed, but had trouble falling asleep, still disturbed and sickened by what I had seen.
The next day, after work, I went online and saw I had an email from CPS. I clicked on it eagerly to see what they were going to do about Randy and Lindsay Campbell…and was completely nonplussed by their response. They said that there was nothing they could do in the matter, because as best as they could determine, there weren’t any issues that required the intervention of Child Protective Services.
I was flabbergasted. I emailed them back, asking if they had watched the videos I had described, then sent them a link to the kitten video.
The next morning, before work, I checked and saw I had another email. CPS told me that yes, they had watched the video attachment I had included, and reiterated that they could find nothing relevant that would indicate any abuse. They asked me to specify what exactly I found wrong with the video.
I couldn’t believe it. Were these people blind? Were they stupid? What did I need to specify? The fucking video practically spoke for itself, the abuse and cruelty stood out like a sore thumb.
I went back on YouTube and set up an account. I flagged the video then contacted the moderators directly and reported the Campbells to them. Just a few hours later, I got a message from the moderators notifying me that my account had been suspended indefinitely for “falsely reporting abuse” and “harassing content creators.”
I felt like I was having a nightmare. In desperation, I called my local police department and told them I needed an officer and wanted to report a case of child abuse. They sent an cop over to my apartment. I explained to him what was going on, then showed him the video.
He watched without much interest until it got to the part where Jamie’s parents gave her the box containing her “surprise.” When Jamie started screaming, the officer began to laugh. He laughed hysterically as if it was the funniest prank he had ever seen. He laughed right up to the end of the video, then he got himself under control and his attitude became stern…towards me. He asked me if I was pulling some stupid joke or if I was “on something” then proceeded to launch into a lecture about how the police line was only for “serious emergencies” and that the cops didn’t appreciate responding to “crank calls” and that if I called them again to make another “bogus report” I would be the one who went to jail. Then he left.
I stood there for a long time, dazed.
I felt like I was losing my mind. This was insane! What was this, some kind of fucking conspiracy? Why couldn’t anyone see what was wrong with these videos? Were they all crazy? Did watching the Daddy Dearest channel somehow brainwash people, hypnotize them into not noticing how fucked up their videos were? But if that was the case, why hadn’t I been effected? Why was I the only one who could see what was really going on? Was everyone else insane except me?
I had to find out what was going on. The next day I invited my brother and his girlfriend over that weekend, ostensibly for a visit. They came over that Saturday, and after dinner and some catching up, I told them, as casually as I could, that I wanted to show them something.
I brought up Daddy Dearest’s channel on my phone and played “Jamie Tricked Into Eating Her Kitten.” for them. They both began to laugh as soon as Randy killed Jamie’s kitten. They continued to laugh throughout the rest of the video.
Screaming inwardly in horror, but fighting to keep calm and sound nonchalant, I asked my brother and his girlfriend what they had just seen.
“What, are you blind, Bryce? You were watching it too! They killed that fucking brat’s kitten and fed it to the little shit! It was fuckin hilarious!” My brother looked at me and took in my serious expression, cocking his head, now frowning. “Why aren’t you laughing? What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you find that funny? Where’s your sense of humor?”
After they left, I had a nervous breakdown. Then I got drunk.
It’s been a week. I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t know who I can turn to. I’m more scared now than I’ve ever been before in my life.
What makes it even worse is that there’s a new Daddy Dearest video on YouTube, posted just today. I’m too afraid to watch it, I don’t know if I can stomach it or that my already strained grip on sanity could stand it. Especially because of the title.
“Jamie’s Funeral, Buried Alive Prank Goes Wrong (R.I.P. Jamie!).”