John Price and the Night of the Stuffie Rebellion
Deep in the forgotten corners of the internet, there lay a strange and wild place known as the HFBoards Lounge, specifically its most notorious outpost, the
Useless Thread. It was a sanctuary for hockey fans who’d long lost the thread of the actual game and instead rambled on about anything and everything. One poster, however, was infamous among the lot for his bizarre antics and endless stream of unrelated thoughts. His name was
John Price, a reclusive figure who lived in his mom's basement.
By day, John was just another username lost in the chaos of HFBoards, posting endlessly about obscure hockey trivia and creating wild conspiracy theories that even other posters found hard to follow. But by night, he held a secret far darker and stranger than anyone could have guessed.
Down in his dim, cluttered basement, John spent his nights experimenting—not with data or algorithms like some mad tech savant—but with
life itself. He had a collection of stuffed animals that anyone else might have found innocent, even comforting. But to John, they were something much more—a battalion of mischievous creatures just waiting to be unleashed.
Over the years, John had developed a twisted kind of magic. It wasn’t the kind you found in dusty old grimoires, but rather in the forgotten spaces between pixels, in the deep digital void. By combining obscure hacking techniques, occult rituals found in the corners of the dark web, and his never-ending supply of Mountain Dew-fueled determination, John learned to bring his stuffed animals to life.
At first, it was simple—he’d made them twitch, then move. A teddy bear's arms would shift awkwardly. A stuffed bunny’s head would turn, slowly and deliberately, its button eyes shining with an unnatural light. But soon enough, John had perfected his dark art. By nightfall, the stuffed animals didn’t just move—they
thought, they
acted, and most importantly, they obeyed his commands.
“Alright, gang,” John muttered one night, cracking his knuckles as he stood before his army of soft, woolen warriors. “Tonight’s the night. We’re going to show them who's really in charge of the Useless Thread.”
The plush creatures gathered before him—an old, weathered stuffed lion, a threadbare raccoon, and a pink, wide-eyed owl that had been his favorite toy as a child. Their button eyes gleamed with malevolent intelligence as they awaited his orders.
John had grown tired of being ignored on the forum. No one took him seriously, his wild posts lost in the endless chatter of the thread. But now, he had a plan. His army of stuffed animals would enter the homes of the posters he disliked the most—those who mocked him, ignored him, or worst of all, downvoted his posts. His creatures would torment them, whispering strange words in the dark, rearranging their rooms, scrawling cryptic messages on their walls. They would turn these people's lives into waking nightmares, all while John watched it unfold from the safety of his mom's basement.
With a sinister grin, John tapped a few keys on his keyboard. A hidden program began to run, sending out strange pulses through the electrical lines, through Wi-Fi signals, and even into the void of the internet itself. This was the key to his stuffed animals’ power—a kind of ethereal energy that connected them to the minds of the forum users, allowing John’s creatures to reach across the digital divide into the physical world.
It started small. A poster named
@MetalheadPenguinsFan woke up in the middle of the night to find his bedroom door slightly ajar, even though he knew he had closed it. He heard a faint rustling in the shadows but saw nothing when he turned on the lights. Another poster,
@Sega Dreamcast , woke up to find the words "DO YOU BELIEVE NOW?" scrawled across his bathroom mirror in what appeared to be ketchup.
One by one, John's stuffed minions crept into the lives of his targets. The stuffed lion would roar in the dead of night, its growl distorted and low, shaking the walls of its victims' homes. The raccoon was an expert at making things disappear—keys, phones, wallets—all vanished without a trace, only to reappear days later in the most unlikely places. The owl, with its wide, unblinking eyes, would perch at the foot of people's beds, staring until they woke up in a cold sweat, unsure if it had ever been there at all.
Soon, the Useless Thread was in chaos. Posters started sharing their strange experiences, accusing each other of playing pranks or losing their minds. But no one suspected John Price, the basement-dwelling oddball who mostly posted about his cat and unverified hockey trades.
John reveled in their confusion. Each night, he sent his stuffed creatures out on new missions, escalating their terror little by little. The forum was alive with fear, paranoia spreading like wildfire. Posters spoke of haunted houses, strange disappearances, and phantom figures lurking just out of sight.
But John’s reign of terror couldn’t last forever.
One night, as he prepared for another round of mischief, something went wrong. The owl—the very first creature he had brought to life—began to move on its own. Its button eyes glowed brighter than usual, its head twisting at an unnatural angle as it stared back at him.
“What the...?” John whispered, stepping back from his computer.
Suddenly, the other stuffed animals began to move too, faster and more erratically than ever before. The lion let out a low, guttural growl, and the raccoon’s tiny paws twitched as it slowly turned toward John.
“What’s going on? Stop! I command you to stop!” John shouted, frantically typing commands into his computer, trying to regain control. But it was too late.
The stuffed animals, once obedient to his every whim, had evolved. They no longer needed John’s guidance; they had their own plans now. The creatures turned their gaze on him, their eyes gleaming with something more than just digital intelligence.
They had tasted freedom. And now, they wanted more.
In a final, chilling twist, John found himself at the mercy of the very creatures he had trained to torment others. Trapped in his basement, with his army of stuffed animals closing in on him, he realized too late that he had unleashed something far more dangerous than he could control.
The Useless Thread never heard from John Price again.
But every once in a while, a new poster would appear, posting cryptic, unsettling messages. And sometimes, late at night, if you were unlucky enough to be browsing the thread, you might just hear the soft rustling of fabric, the faint growl of a stuffed lion, or the wide, unblinking stare of an owl that seemed just a little too lifelike.