/bs/ - backstory

In the misty suburbs of London, on a drizzly Halloween eve in 2025, KGS, a chubby British bloke sat hunched over his laptop in his cluttered flat.

His mate Chino, a boisterous Mexican expat who'd moved to the UK for "the tacos… wait, no, the jobs," sprawled on the sofa, munching on a bag of crisps he'd insists on calling "chips" just to annoy KGS.

They were deep into their weekly ritual: scouring the dark web for lost media, those ghostly remnants of forgotten TV pilots, unreleased films, and cursed cartoons that vanished into oblivion.

"¡Ay, carnal! Check this out," Chino exclaimed, his eyes wide as he shoved his phone under KGS's nose.

It was a grainy forum post about "The Whispering Puppets," a 1980s kids' show episode rumored to drive viewers mad.

"They say if you watch it at midnight on Halloween, the puppets come alive.

Sounds like bullshit, but let's torrent it!

"KGS adjusted his spectacles with a sigh. "Bloody hell, Chino, you're going to get us possessed or arrested. Fine, but if a marionette shows up demanding tea, you're handling it."

They hit play as the clock struck twelve, the screen flickering with static. The puppets jerked unnaturally, their wooden mouths whispering indecipherable horrors names of the dead, forgotten sins.

But then, hilariously, one puppet broke into a falsetto rendition of "La Cucaracha," its strings tangling as it flailed like a drunk piñata.

Chino howled with laughter, spraying crisps everywhere. "¡Esa es mi cultura!

Even creepy puppets love mariachi!

The hilarity died as the video glitched, revealing a hidden frame: a man in a foggy alley, his face pale and pleading. "That's… me?"

KGS muttered, zooming in. No, not quite—it was another Brit, disheveled and wide-eyed, mouthing "Help me."

The name scrawled in blood-red text: AWW.

Driven by morbid curiosity (and Chino's insistence that "lost media is like buried treasure, but with ghosts"), they traced the IP to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town.

Flashlights in hand, they crept inside, the air thick with dust and the faint echo of laughter tracks from nowhere. "This is straight out of a horror flick," KGS whispered. "Where the posh one dies first.

"Chino grinned. "Nah, the funny Mexican survives to tell the tale. ¡Vámonos!"

They found AWW huddled in a corner, surrounded by stacks of VHS tapes labeled with titles like "The Episode That Never Aired" and "Forgotten Screams."

He was British too, with a thick Cockney accent, babbling about being "pulled in" while hunting lost media years ago.

"It's a world, mates! A bleedin' Lost Media world. All the scrapped shows, deleted films—they're alive here, trapped in limbo.

And Halloween? It's the night the veil thins, when the forgotten claw back!"As if on cue, the warehouse warped.

Walls melted into pixelated static, and they tumbled into a nightmarish realm: a sprawling, eerie landscape of half-formed sets.

Macabre figures lurked— a skeletal cartoon clown from a banned Looney Tunes knockoff, its grin stretched too wide, whispering invitations to "play forever."

Terrifying shadows of unreleased horror flicks slithered by, their eyes hollow voids promising eternal obscurity. But then, absurdly, a group of forgotten infomercial actors appeared, hawking "eternal life knives" that "slice through souls… and tomatoes!"

One tripped over his own pitch, face-planting into a pile of ghostly ectoplasm. Chino burst out laughing. "¡Híjole! Even in hell, they're selling crap. 'But wait, there's more—your soul for free shipping!'

"The trio pressed on, hearts pounding, dodging weird apparitions. AWW explained the secrets: Lost Media wasn't just forgotten files; it was a purgatory for ideas abandoned by creators, fueled by human neglect.

"The meaning of Halloween," he rasped, "is remembrance. It's when we honor the dead and the deleted.

Forget them, and they fester, pulling the living in to join the archive.

"Deeper in, they uncovered a colossal vault of tapes, guarded by a towering entity: a amalgam of every canceled show host, its voice a cacophony of canned applause and screams.

It lunged, tentacles of film reel whipping out, ensnaring KGS. "Join us… be forgotten!" it boomed.

Terror gripped them as the air grew icy, the macabre whispers turning to bone chilling howls.

But Chino, in a stroke of hilarious genius, grabbed a nearby prop a comically oversized sombrero from a scrapped Mexican sitcom and hurled it like a frisbee.

It lodged on the entity's head, triggering a glitch: the monster started dancing uncontrollably to mariachi music, its reels unraveling. "¡Take that, you pinche archive!" Chino yelled, as they bolted free.

The plot twist hit like a thunderclap: As they escaped back through the veil, AWW flickered like bad reception. "Wait… I'm not real," he confessed, his form dissolving. "I was a character in a lost British sitcom pilot. You two summoned me.

The Lost Media world? It's inside you—all of us. Every forgotten dream pulls you closer."

With a final, eerie chuckle, he vanished, leaving KGS and Chino back in the flat, the laptop screen blank.

Shaken but enlightened, they stared at the Halloween moon. "Blimey," KGS said. "Halloween's about facing the forgotten, eh? Lest they drag you under."Chino nodded, then smirked. "Yeah, but next time, let's hunt for lost tacos instead.