They always said cartoons couldn’t hurt you. That cartoons were safe. Innocent. Designed for laughs and comfort.
But no one had ever seen what I saw. No one had heard what I heard, deep in that cursed animation vault. I used to work for GoldenDraw Studios—an animation cleanup artist responsible for remastering old reels for streaming platforms. That’s where I found it. Or rather, it found me.
It began with an old, dust-caked film canister marked in black ink: “TWEETY—DO NOT RESTORE.”
Curiosity is a dangerous thing.
I pried it open. Inside, brittle film stock coiled like a snake, stained in places with something dark—dried like tar. A tag fluttered from the reel, yellowed and torn: Prototype. Test Cut. Unreleased. Destroy after viewing.
It wasn’t even labeled with a date. The first frame I paused on showed Tweety standing in a cracked birdcage, far darker and more twisted than the colorful cage I remembered. His eyes were black pits. His beak appeared slightly unhinged. Blood—not ink—splattered the wall behind him. I thought it was an elaborate fan hoax.
Then I hit play.
The screen flickered violently, and a sharp whining buzz filled the room. Tweety’s voice came on, but not the cheerful chirp from Saturday morning TV. It was slower, deeper—raspy and broken.
“I tawt I saw… you.”
I paused the reel. My hands trembled. Maybe it was just a joke. Maybe someone made it to mess with future animators.
But when I came into the studio the next morning, my nameplate on the office door had changed.
It didn’t say Daniel. It said “I TAWT I SAW YOU.”
No one else noticed. No one saw it. They thought I was overworked, seeing things. But from that moment, things started to go wrong.
Small, at first. Birds crashing into windows near the studio. Dead ones. Yellow feathers littered the parking lot. Then came the smell—sweet and sickly—like rotting sugar. My work monitor flickered to life at night. Even unplugged. Playing the same twisted frame of Tweety’s cage.
Then he began to speak.
“I’m not your fwiend,” the voice hissed through my headphones as I worked on another restoration.
I spun around. Nothing there.
But every morning, the reel was back on my desk. No matter where I hid it. Or if I destroyed it. I even burned it once. But it came back whole, sitting neatly on top of my keyboard, dripping some black fluid like old engine oil.
I started having dreams.
In them, Tweety wasn’t small anymore. He had grown tall. Elongated. His once-round eyes were stretched open, lidless and full of veins. He dragged his mangled wings behind him, clawed feet clacking on wooden floors.
He never chased me.
He waited.
Always in the shadows. Watching. Smiling with a cracked, chipped beak that pulsed open and shut like it could unhinge.
One night, I woke to hear birdlike scratching outside my apartment door. I looked through the peephole.
A yellow eye stared back.
That same night, my cat vanished. I found a feather in her bed. A yellow one, stained at the tip. The same yellow as Tweety.
I left town after that. Quit my job. Went off the grid. I stayed at a secluded motel near an old lumber mill. Remote. No internet. No TV. Just to get away.
But he followed.
My mirror fogged on its own. The phrase “I DID! I DID TAW A PUTTY TAT!” etched into the steam, followed by long claw marks.
The staff said they never entered my room.
At night, I heard wings flapping inside the walls. Not bats. Something heavier. With claws.
One morning, I found a dead crow outside my door. Its eyes were missing. Replaced by cartoonish Xs, drawn in marker. A gift, maybe. Or a warning.
Desperate, I tried to find the original creators of the episode. A few animators were still alive, old and retired. I tracked down one—Elmer Voss. He lived in a trailer near the desert, off-grid.
He opened the door holding a shotgun.
“You seen it, haven’t you?” he asked before I said a word.
I nodded.
“Then you’re marked. Like the rest of us. It’s not just a cartoon anymore. We summoned something. That reel—it wasn’t made by us. We found it. Came in a crate. No return address. We thought it was a gift. A prototype. We laughed at first. Then we watched it.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He looked past me, into the distance. “It’s not Tweety. It wears him. Like a skin.”
Elmer died that night. They said heart failure. But I saw the inside of his trailer. Every wall scratched with the same word:
TWEET.
I tried to warn others. I posted online. Uploaded screenshots. But the files would corrupt. The images blurred. Forums banned me.
Then came the messages. From untraceable emails. Always the same phrase:
“I TAWT I SAW YOU.”
I checked into a sleep clinic. Thought maybe it was psychosis.
They monitored my sleep. I was strapped to machines. But every time I dreamed, the screens flatlined.
Until one night, the nurse screamed.
She said she saw a tall, birdlike figure standing over me, its eyes glowing, talons clicking against the floor. She quit the next day.
The clinic burned down a week later.
Now I live in abandoned places. Warehouses. I never sleep in the same place twice. I never use screens. I avoid anything with cartoons.
But still, sometimes, I hear him.
That voice. Twisted. Gurgling.
“I tawt… I saw… YOUUUU.”
And if I listen long enough, I swear I can hear bones cracking as he walks.
They said Tweety was just a cartoon.
But I know better now.
He’s real.
He’s hungry.
And he’s looking for his next viewer.
(To be continued…)
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