write about jeff the killer
ok so basically one fun thing about me is that every original creation ive ever made has had Jeff the Killer in it because hes public domain and i find it unimaginably funny to think that he's in every setting ever
in the process i have thought about how id improve the original jeff the killer (including elements of other "fixes" and retellings with my own spin of hereditary nonsense and generational trauma) . jeffin it up under the cut . Sorry if i repeat his name too much its just really funny to read out loud that way
content warnings: sh, extremely lightly implied incest, homophobia, implied parental neglect, Jeff the Killer
When grandpa died, Jeff, 7 years old as he recalled, as if he could ever forget every little moment of his birthday, heard a lot of terms to describe it. Though no celebration before had been especially glamorous, Jeff's excitement for the day was bashed rather fast when there was not only not so much as the scent of cake in the kitchen, but the grim news of his grandfather's passing and his mother weeping in the kitchen.
Around the point he found out that what had occurred was apparently hereditary, in hindsight, Jeff thought that was probably the point where his life began to go downhill.
Fatal familial insomnia is a rare genetic condition, provoking dementia, muscle twitching, and most prominently, total inability to sleep. Like many prions, there is no treatment, prevention, or really anything you could possibly do if it happened.
He knew because the days he was allowed on the computer were mostly spent researching what happened to his grandfather. Something about it scared his little mind so much that it generated what his mother titled an "obsession." His older brother Lou was kinder, dubbing it an interest in learning or some other equally flowery way of saying Jeff was thinking way too fucking much about this goddamn disease.
His father did not notice. Indeed, the whole ordeal from his grandpa's death to Jeff randomly getting too scared to sleep (counterproductively...) seemed lost on the salaryman.
----
Somniphobia is the irrational fear of sleep.
As stupid as it was, Jeff found the news that his blood may carry something that will kill him through the lack of something so inoccuous to be a vessel to avoid it completely.
The standard age of onset was 50 or so, but it could be as early as 13, and Jeff's constant self-torture went above and beyond in developing paranoia that he had finally gotten FFI. At that point Lou's endless empathy had somehow been expended, and even he had to giggle when Jeff opened up about it.
Jeff didn't like being laughed at.
Lou shooed him out of his room, and the young Jeff went back to reading case after case from Reddit to 4chan to forums with inconceivable names he didn't even remember, all throughout the night, up until he inevitably conked out whether he wanted to or not. Little awaited him but nightmares.
----
Jeff's first time seeing a dead body was rather formative. At 14, he and some friends (far be it from him to remember their names,) went out into the woods, and there it was: a dead boy around their age, charred beyond recognition. They gazed at it wordlessly, and when each went home, the image stayed in most of their minds in a place of horror, a reflection of something that could happen to them.
Not for Jeff.
Jeff saw the closed eyelids, and in a moment of awareness admittedly rare for the boy, he saw rest he noted he was keeping himself from getting. Every day was marked by the lack of it, and for a moment he envied that dead boy, not in the sense of death, but in the sense that he looked like he was asleep.
That night, his nightmare consisted of his grandfather, finally waking up in the coffin he was buried in. Not dead.
Merely an unfortunate subject of sleep debt.
As he clawed at the wood, as his nails sloughed off in his desperate attempt to escape, as blood began dripping down onto him, Jeff got closer and closer to waking up, but, well.
For a nightmare, when he eventually did shoot up in his bed, he noted he got such restful sleep.
----
Lou was frequently bullied. The poor guy had a birthmark that made it look like one half of his face kinda smiled all the time but not really. It was actually kind of uncanny to look at to a few kids.
This bothered Jeff. He cared a lot, maybe a little too much about his darling brother, and seeing it really upset him.
Because Jeff didn't like to be laughed at.
So it was up to a few dumb ideas on his part. He admitted it wasn't a very smart plan, and he would probably be caught. A cop was gonna come to his house and take him away for the rest of his life, maybe. But on the off chance that that wasn't true, he decided to play a little prank on the main 3 guys that picked on his darling brother.
Contrary to his expectations, there were no survivors.
Secondarily, there was no suspect.
The case went cold. Maybe Lou had an idea, but of course, his loyal big brother chalked it up to paranoia.
Jeff didn't like to be laughed at.
----
Jeff had problems making friends.
He didn't have a good memory (symptom 2, dementia), was frequently tired (symptom 3, total insomnia), and came off as what a teacher might refer to as "special." His mother disagreed, and he listened to his mother because she was always right, even if she was clearly wrong.
A misplaced "hey Charles" to a delinquent named some shit like Bob might have even gotten him hit. He didn't want to be hurt, nor did he want to have to hurt someone. He saw that as a rather steep inconvenience that took a lot of planning, one that can easily go wrong and send them straight to what he referred to, in his mind, as sleep.
He was scared to send the rest of them to sleep. Jeff was afraid of sleep.
Eventually, though, the band of delinquents at his school invited him to a party. Admitting it openly, he kind of idolized them. They found him kind of funny and almost cute, and more than one boy stared at him a little too much. Jeff didn't understand because he thought that was what boys did to girls, and Jeff wasn't a girl. Maybe the long hair made him look like one.
He appreciated the attention in any case. He liked to stare at that boy too. He actually bothered to remember that boy's name (or he did back then.) He couldn't tell you now.
----
At the party Jeff sat on the other side of that boy during spin the bottle, next to some guy named Bob apparently or some shit like it. He mostly recognized him because he had brought this bottle of whiskey for him and only for him. No one noticed or pointed it out, but he could hear his mother at the church going on and on and on and
The bottle landed on him, and the delinquent bunch started laughing.
The boy in front of him looked hopeful for a moment, but that disappeared with the first chortle and the bottle quietly spun again. Jeff felt disappointed.
He didn't know why.
It showed on his face, because first the girls started laughing and then went the boys and then went his mother in his head going on on and on and on and on. He was getting very tired of it.
Jeff didn't like to be laughed at.
He pretend to giggle as well for a moment. "I need to pee."
Blurting it out really awkwardly seemed to convince them. It sounded repulsive to him, personally.
Coming back from the bathroom, some girl had left. The boy he liked more than the rest and the boy apparently named some shit like Bob were, for whatever reason, squabbling.
He couldn't tell you now what they were going on about, but he remembered what he said.
"It seems like you're overreacting a little bit."
The boy named Bob(?) stared right at him, eyes like the headlights of a car, as he wrestled his lighter out of his pocket after unscrewing the cap on his bottle of whiskey.
"You little shit, I'll make you pay for that," he slurred.
----
At the hospital, he was informed his burns were relatively mild. Lou hugged him and sobbed and Jeff let him even though he thought he was just overreacting a little bit.
Jeff didn't like to be cried over, either.
He wondered if the boy he liked more than the rest would see him.
Of course he didn't.
When he was released, the looks he had originally boasted were fading. His hair was no longer the natural, deep black it originally was, and suddenly it seemed entirely ashy and generally upsetting and gross. The scars pockmarked his body, and they reminded him somewhat of a fractal he saw once, at least in shape. He looked awful.
Jeff stopped coming to school about as soon as Lou stopped forcing him.
He didn't really feel the same. He felt like there was a big wad of burning cotton stuffed in his skull, something the alcoholic flames had set alight.
The night he was discharged from the hospital, he took a good look at his darling brother. He saw a certain beauty in the "smile," and in the unblinking, teary eyes. He felt bad.
He felt ugly.
Standing before the bathroom mirror with a knife, he thought he could make it better. His pale face was reflected back at him with such a hideous series of scars that it felt like mockery.
Jeff didn't like to be laughed at.
----
Right as Jeff felt beautiful, his mother saw the devil.
He felt safe now that it hurt to close his eyes. The cuts on his eyelids burned, blood in his eyes, and dear god, what a radiant smile!
He would never have to sleep again, the way it hurt.
As she called for a priest nearby, his father finally looked at him as if Jeff mattered. Armed with a baseball bat, he saw the devil in his son and-
----
Blood on the floor. His mother face down, and his father face up, eyelids forced shut. He decided to give them smiles they didn't have in life. Jeff liked to make people smile.
Unfortunately, as Lou gazed down at Jeff, he was so unimaginably scared that not a single thing even comparable to a smile graced his face. He looked almost like one of those split masks, between tragedy and comedy.
Jeff cared a little too much about Lou. Killing their parents had felt good, but it felt a lot worse now that Lou didn't like what he had done.
"You see?"
Jeff uttered. The smoke in his lungs gave the quiet boy a rasp.
"I look just like you now."
His darling brother was too beautiful to kill.
As he turned and walked out the door, Lou waited for the police to arrive. He didn't run. Jeff's loyal brother didn't do a thing.
He saw his parents, sound asleep.
The police had taken him, but when more and more bodies turned up just like the ones they'd found, the cops found it harder and harder to justify keeping the catatonic boy.
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