The morning after the fire, a heavy fog swallowed the town of Little Crest. Jason awoke in his apartment, clothes reeking of smoke, heart pounding with the weight of unfinished horror. The cursed film reel was gone. Burned. But the whispers hadn’t stopped.
They were louder.
He rubbed his temples, hearing soft chirps coming from outside his window. Not birds. Not normal. This was something else—high-pitched and slow, like a tape being rewound over broken glass. When he peeked through the blinds, the power lines were covered in yellow feathers—dozens of them—each twitching in unnatural spasms.
Then, one by one, they fell.
Jason raced to the university. The film department was closed. Tape sealed the doors. But inside, the TVs flickered to life. Security footage from last night’s blaze replayed over and over. In every frame, just behind him—Tweety. Watching. Growing.
And he was smiling.
Jason found Professor Langley’s office shattered. Books strewn everywhere. But one thing remained untouched: a single reel canister. Marked with red wax and one word scratched in jagged ink:
RETURN.
His hands trembled as he picked it up. He had burned it. He had watched it die. So how was it back?
At that moment, a sound filled the room—soft claws tapping against linoleum. Jason turned slowly. There, hunched in the doorway, was Tweety.
But not the innocent cartoon bird. This Tweety had matted, blood-crusted feathers. His eyes were deep black sockets, leaking yellow fluid. His beak was cracked. Metal wiring protruded from his wings, twitching like veins. He shuffled forward, dragging something behind him.
A leash.
And at the end of it, a human jaw.
Jason fled. Through halls that now stretched impossibly long. Doors vanished. Lights stuttered. The sound of a laugh—Tweety’s iconic giggle—reverberated through every wall, deeper and more distorted.
Outside, the world wasn’t the same.
Children stood motionless in front of TVs in storefronts, blood leaking from their ears. Every channel—no matter the input—played only the same grainy image: Tweety in a cage, surrounded by darkness, whispering something to the camera.
“He sees you. He knows your name.”
Jason ran to the only person who might know more: Gloria Winters, a retired animator who once worked for the original Warner Bros. Studios. He found her in a nursing home, surrounded by birdcages—all empty.
She didn’t look surprised to see him.
“It’s not the cartoon,” she rasped. “It never was.”
She told him about Project Canary—a secret program to animate using occult methods. They wanted characters that lived forever. Loved forever. But they created something else.
“Tweety isn’t ink. He’s spirit. Rage. He was the first soul trapped. He wants out. He’s not done until you finish watching.”
Jason demanded to know how to stop it. Gloria smiled weakly, eyes hollow.
“Finish the episode. That’s the only way. But you won’t like the ending.”
That night, back in his apartment, Jason loaded the reel into an old projector. The screen lit up.
Black and white.
Tweety stood in a blood-splattered birdcage. The sky behind him was made of writhing bodies. He opened his beak and spoke.
“I tawt I taw… your soul.”
And the screen burst into color.
Jason screamed. Hands reached out of the light, dragging him forward. Into the world behind the cartoon. He fell through loops of animation—laugh tracks becoming screams, backgrounds melting like wax.
He awoke in a room that wasn’t his. Everything was hand-drawn. Flat. Saturated in colors too bright. Too wrong.
A mirror stood in front of him.
He was a cartoon.
His limbs thin and flexible. His mouth stuck in a frozen grin. And behind him, Tweety appeared. Full-sized. Towering. He opened a cage door.
“Your turn now.”
Jason backed away, but the walls closed in. The TV blinked on one last time—broadcasting him.
Looping.
Laughing.
Screaming.
Forever.
Somewhere, in a quiet town, a child flips to an old cartoon.
“Hey, that’s new,” she says. “I’ve never seen this episode before.”
She leans closer to the screen. Inside it, Jason turns.
“Please… don’t watch.”
But it’s too late.
The episode has begun again.
Tweety is free.
Again.
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