The Muffin Man

You stand in front of the alleyway, slowly stepping into the darkness. You have always hated this part of your walk home from work, but every day you gather up your courage and ignore your instinct to be afraid.

Walking quickly, you keep your eyes fixed on the ground. But as soon as you hear footsteps, your head whips back at the blackness behind you.

Through the darkness, you can barely make out a figure about thirty feet away. It’s huge and round. Looking at its shadow cast on the wall, you could see something coming off of its face, something long and featherlike. You realize it was just a mustache.

You continue down the alley, intent on the idea that it was just a fat man walking the same way as you. But the footsteps grow louder. And faintly in the distance, you can hear the soft sound of… what is that… children singing? No, not just children. The sounds, enveloping you now, resemble that of men and women of many ages. Some are high-pitched, and others are low, but they are all singing the same tune.

The song brings a wave of nostalgia over you. You used to sing this song every day when you were a kid. But your flashback ends when the voices begin to turn sinister. They sounded like they were extremely pained, as if they had fallen off their roof into a pile of garbage three times over, and then were forced to sing a song.

No, it was worse than that. They were wailing and screaming, as if they had been forced to listen to the nyan cat song for five hours straight, locked in a closet with Will Ferrell slowly licking their ear.

Your pace starts to quicken, up until you are running full speed away from this thing. But it is much faster. Within one second, it’s right in front of you.

It is hideous. What you thought was its fat belly is actually an enormous muffin. His arms and legs stick out of it, and it reaches up to its neck. But one detail in particular strikes you as strange. On its side, there was a dent in the muffin, and it looked like someone went up and took a bite out of it. Blood drips from the wound and stains the delicate confection.

You scream at the sight of it, but every sound you made was drowned out by the voices. It walks closer, grabbing you with its chubby little hand. Before you can react, it holds you up three feet in the air.

It smiles menacingly at you before shoving you into the hole on its side. You fall down onto a pile of bodies that scream as you land on them. You try to get up and escape, but something holds you in place. That same something begins to make you sing.

You try to scream, but all that comes out is a wailing noise to the tune you know all too well.

“DO YOU KNOW THE MUFFFFINN MAAAANNNNNNN?????? THE MUFFFFFIFIFIN MANNNNNN……..”