Chapter Text
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Archivist:
Lets see… testing.. testing 1 2 3…. FINALLY it’s working… ahem
My name is Kyle Broflovski. I was recently promoted by the owner of the South Park institute, Colorado, Timmy Burch to take the job of head archivist. I will be continuing the work of the previous archivist, Lianne Cartman to complete academic research of the esoteric and paranormal activities of our area.
I’ve been working here for the past four years and all I can really say is that most statements are- very unlikely to ever be substantial. Most of the time it seems to be a person’s hallucination or dream and even if researchers find a single lead, it most likely will stop there at a dead end… and when it hits the dead end it reaches down here. Into the archives.
Even worse with a century’s worth of recounts all bundled up in one deep, barely heated basement, it will take a shit ton of work and time to gather information. Now, you would be thinking that the previous archivist must have had a good sense of organisation and filing due to being the head archivist for decades, but no. Not at all.
From what I can see, there’s hundreds of statements strewn across the floor and being squashed by the useless filing cabinets with disordered dates. Then, some files even seem to be damaged from what looks to be burn marks and coffee stains.
The most annoying part though is that when searching through the archives sometimes I come across pictures of, what I believe to be Mrs Cartman’s son. They don’t look to be put in any certain order so it is definitely annoying to see pictures of random fatass every time I attempt to search through this godforsaken place.
It’s going to take a while to clean but it won’t just be me in this messed up basement. I have managed to recruit a total of two assistants to help me around the archives. Technically three but Clyde’s really only good at seducing the receptionist in his free time.
…
Anyway, I’ve been attempting to get the statements up on my laptop but all that I get back is… absolute unintelligible distortion. So, I’ve had to use this tape recorder that was on the desk before I got here and this analogue camera that can be used to video anything that requires visual additions.
Alongside these statements, my assistants: Stan, Wendy, I guess Clyde too, and I would be doing some supplementary investigation. This will be promptly presented upon post statement although I cannot guarantee these investigations will go anywhere. I also cannot promise any organisation of the order of statements being digitised and would like to apologise to any future researchers using this resource.
That’s… probably enough justifying the state of this place, I guess we’ll begin the actual statement.
Statement of Rebecca Cotswold regarding her time being homeschooled. Original statement given November 10th 2001. Audio recording by Kyle Broflovski, Head Archivist of the South Park Institute, Colorado. Statement begins.
Archivist (Statement):
For all my life, I’ve been homeschooled. It’s just been me, my brother and my parents in this house. They gave me everything. Everything that I could have ever wanted and needed. What more could I have asked for really.
They told me how exceptional and amazing I was at my young age, how fast I was learning all of the topics. Even though, to be honest it was always my brother, Mark who far surpassed me at everything. I don’t hold any grudges against him though, I admired him for it as he was always one to help through the lessons when our parents failed.
Everyday, we’d wake up together, eat together and learn together. All in our oasis called home. We still went “outside” of course, during our recreational time we’d go outside to the backyard and hide treasures in the Earth and dig them back up after a few days. It was my brother’s favourite time of each day. I could see his eyes sparkle every time we’d feel something rock hard hit our shovels to find the same old toy truck that we buried some few days ago. Probably because it was the farthest we had ever gotten from those walls.
Now I know what you’re thinking but my parents weren’t like that. They never really talked about outside nor did they ever give those spooky stories of whatever crimes that can and would occur. I think we all sort of thought we would just stay here, safely confined. And I didn’t see anything wrong with that.
It was like that for eleven years until my brother started to want more. I remember that it was autumn when he first asked. He said that he wanted to begin public schooling and join all the other kids with their backpacks and rowdy school buses. So, after a lengthy conversation behind closed doors, he went out.
From then on, I woke up alone. Mark had to be early for the school bus anyway and I’m not the best at changing a schedule. What was odd though is that, the walls . They felt… more suffocating. It was a subtle feeling in my chest but my room felt just a little bit tighter , as if the walls were closing in on me. A shiver went through my entire spine but in the end I just reduced it to not waking up with Mark. That could’ve been it.
The day went just fine really, the only difference was the absence of my brother of course. I just simply continued to go to school, all the same. My parents never mentioned Mark’s absence but they were aware of it. They kept eyeing the window every few minutes of silence, and when Mark came home the two immediately ran to the door suffocating him with hundreds of questions.
He didn’t say much. All he said was that he planned on going back. It was only until mom and dad went to go prepare dinner he suddenly dragged me to our room. In a quiet voice he desperately implored for me to join him in public school and that I’m going to suffocate here. But I noticed the bruises on his arms and legs. I knew that the school wasn’t a safe place either.
I could have trusted my brother right then and there, but I didn’t. I knew our parents could protect us after all and we were just kids; of course we would have been imagining things. Oh how I wish I came with him.
The next day; I woke up alone, again. Now the walls seemed even more tight than yesterday. For a split second it felt as if there wasn’t any air in the room as I let out a sharp breath. The windows looked smaller too, there was only a tiny bit of sunshine being let through my desolate room. Even my bed became smaller, my legs could now reach over the bed forcing myself to put my knees to my chest when I slept.
As expected, my parents never batted an eye. I tried to tell them, I really did but they didn’t see anything wrong with the house. Mom attempted to reassure me that the walls were fine but when she put her hand on my shoulder, I just felt the air in the room dissipate uncomfortably.
After mom and dad failed me, it was my brother. More injuries started to appear and he was coming home at ungodly hours of the night. So late that I was already tucked in that desolate bedroom until he came. He also stopped trying to convince me and instead refused to let me come with him. Instead, he was thinking of going back. Back to where it all used to be safe.He still kept going to school though, my parents couldn’t stop him. But they did stop me as they knew I couldn’t protect myself from whoever was dealing Mark’s injuries.
And so the walls kept going. The rooms shrinked into smaller and smaller dimensions as I was struggling to breathe throughout those days. And I must tell you that I don’t even have asthma nor have had any previous trouble breathing.
The windows disappeared too and I was let with no sight of the outside. It went up to a point where I had to squeeze my body through the hallway just to get breakfast. Yet my parents just figured that this was how we have always lived somehow.
I had no other options. The more I talked to my parents, I felt even more squashed and suffocating as they tried to hug me in attempts of stupid comfort. I needed to escape, reach that front door. But I couldn’t. Even the front door had shrunken into an impossible size.
Mark stopped coming home from then on. No more cars driving through the street, sun reaching my eyes and no more children clamouring to get in that bus. It was just me and my unknowing parents slowly getting crushed by the very place we called home.
There was only one opening to the outside left. The back door.
One day during one of my parents' lessons, I finally suffocated enough. I immediately sprung up and made a run through the door. As I ran through the layers of my skin sanded off as it slid against the rough walls. They burned through me but I kept running.
It was already hard to breathe even without expending my energy, I began to cough out my own saliva but I kept going. Squeezing myself through the sharp attack corners of each kitchen counter, I could no longer hear my parents. I looked back for just a split second and saw another barrier coming right for me. No longer that subtle uncanniness, it was closing on to me faster than ever. It was ready to crush my flesh and bones into red bits of meat and white speckles of dust.
I pursued through, holding onto the sharp breaths that I could barely muster whilst the wall’s friction was clinging on to my skin.
In what felt like the longest few seconds of my life, I saw the back door. No light shone through it, only darkness peeked through but with the last few pieces of adrenaline I hurled through it. Going right through the glass as it pierced through my already destroyed skin. My nerves were too numb to even feel the cuts.
Once I ran outside, it wasn’t done yet. What was supposed to be the exit had shrunken and the fences were taller than ever. They just loomed over me telling me that I could never get out and that I would simply be crushed. But there was one more thing outside.
I looked down to my feet to see that I was nearing the edge of a hole . In the hole spread all across it were familiar toy trucks, dolls and trinkets Mark and I had buried. But, the most shocking object was what was right in the heart of the hole, the deepest area.
That was where two half buried beds laid. A familiar green bed where I usually slept now back to its original size to fit me perfectly and another deep teal bed, where my brother lay half covered in earth. He’d been lying there for at least a few days from how much dirt was enveloping him but I couldn’t tell if he was still alive.
The gaping pit enticed me to its centre. The end of suffocating within these walls and to join my brother who looked to be only peacefully asleep. In a trance I slowly walked towards it. I mean what choice did I even have?
Walking through the rough dirt and filthy toys, I never seemed to lose my balance for some reason even as the pit got steeper down below. As I reached towards the middle, my breath steadied but I remained light headed.
When I reached the bed, I looked up to see the night sky, there were no fences from where I was, it was just simply space. And with that final euphoric fleeting freedom I fell. It was far past my bedtime.
The world closed in as it covered me and my brother’s unconscious bodies bringing us closer than ever to the Earth. And I closed my eyes to see the next day.
Archivist:
Statement ends.
Well, despite the eerie ending, Rebecca and her brother seem to be doing fine in the present day. Wendy found records that show after the events of the statement, she joined her brother in public schooling for a year but then quickly reverted back. It is true that her brother did indeed suffer from bullying amongst the other boys but persevered through school for the rest of his time. Wendy also found out that Rebecca is now working as a full fledged architect after completing a degree in archaeology. Kind of an interesting choice of career if you ask me. Looks like homeschooling worked for her after all, as she even got into a pretty good school.
Stan found the address of Rebecca’s childhood home but the parents seemed to have moved out. The people currently living there don’t have any knowledge of the Cotswolds new locations either and the house wasn’t in any odd shape or form. Clyde, unsurprisingly, couldn’t get the family to allow us to inspect the home or at least get the floor plans; leaving us with nothing about the interior.
We tried to get back in contact with Rebecca and Mark Cotswold but Rebecca is currently off the grid on a business trip. Meanwhile, her brother Mark is not at all willing to do any follow ups on the events, so another dead end.
Of course, as Rebecca mentioned, she was only a child at the time this can be concluded to just be a recurring nightmare being mixed with the reality of her brother leaving for public school. Especially with the beds near the end.
So with no practical evidence of walls moving by themselves and an unreliable statement giver… there really is not enough to work with on this statement. So that concludes our very first statement. One out of… who knows how many….
Recording ends.
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