Mr. Cookie
The pages started appearing around the neighborhood during September, last year. I remember it was September because I’d just begun my senior year, and I was all excited, when sitting on my ‘welcome’ carpet was a sheet of paper featuring a bruised and beaten woman.
Believe it or not, that wasn’t even the creepy part.
The creepy part was that below her picture were the words “IF YOU’VE SEEN THIS GIRL, FIND AND KILL ME.” They were typed in Arial, in all caps. I’d turned the page over to find a watermark that said “Mr. Cookie”.
Obviously, it had to be some kind of weird prank. Maybe one of those alternate reality games on the internet being played out in my neighborhood.
Fucking theatre kids.
If only it was them who did it. If only.
I remember that a few other seniors in the neighborhood had received similar documents. It was all we could talk about during September, besides homecoming.
Of course, after a while, the pages faded into the background of our collective conscious. You can only keep a bunch of high schoolers entertained with eerie bullshit for so long. “Mr. Cookie” was well and behind us.
Then, right on time for Halloween, everybody started shitting themselves again. On October the Thirty-First, fresh in the morning, every board in class had the name “Mr. Cookie” scrawled all over it.
And an eerily photographic recreation of the picture on the document. And of course, the words “IF YOU’VE SEEN THIS GIRL, FIND AND KILL ME.” I’m not talking just one whiteboard. I’m talking every single one in the entire school.
The nighttime custodian didn’t know anything about it. When a few of us asked him, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was probably some prank. Maybe he was getting some kind of kick out of the whole situation. At the same time, I tended to agree with that school of thought–what else could this have possibly been? Some kind of crazy psychic shit? Aliens? A psycho on the loose?
None of those answers satisfied me.
My older sister, a graduate of my high school, came home from college for the winter break, around early January. The subject of the pages came up, and I told her all about it. She asked to see a picture of the girl, and I showed her.
I’ll never forget the way her expression changed in that moment.
“Who is it?” I asked her. “Do you know?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t look at me.
“Could you tell me? Please?” I begged.
“I can’t remember her name. But she was in my graduating class. Or, at least, she was.”
My chest went cold. “What do you mean?”
My sister took a deep breath. “She kind of… disappeared. Back when I was in junior year, I mean.”
“Wait, what? What was her name? Why wasn’t there some kind of investigation?”
“I don’t know. But right around the time she disappeared, the bio teacher quit.”
At this point, I was on the edge of my seat, and shaking slightly. “What was her name?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t know why I can’t remember. That’s why staring at her picture felt weird. She feels so familiar, but I have no idea who she is.”
“Fuck. Okay. Do you know who Mr. Cookie is?”
My sister’s lip trembled as she spoke. “T–That. That was the…bio teacher’s nickname.”
I felt my blood run cold.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s making me feel very, very weird.”
Her and I didn’t speak for the rest of winter break.
By March, I still wasn’t any closer to figuring out what was going on. I’d looked through a few yearbooks, to see if I could find this girl, and Mr. Cookie, but she didn’t appear anywhere. And the identity of Mr. Cookie eluded me just the same.
Since the incident back in October, most of my class had stopped caring about the whole ordeal. People looked at me like I was weird for still talking about it. Sure, it came up in conversations here and there, but I was the one kid still obsessed with it. I’d actually stopped hanging out with people during breaks because I was spending as much free time as I could figuring this whole thing out in my head.
In April, something happened again.
It was in the middle of third period. Somebody raised their hand and said they had a migraine. The teacher had one too. I felt my own head start to hurt. One by one, everybody in class started groaning and clutching their skulls.
It was agonizing.
But the worst part was that all anybody could see was the picture of the bruised and beaten girl. And all anybody could hear, ringing through their heads, was a low, neutral voice, saying: “IF YOU’VE SEEN THIS GIRL, FIND AND KILL ME,” over and over again.
Then, as soon as the migraines started, they stopped.
A month later it was like nothing had happened.
For a while, I genuinely thought I might be crazy. After the migraines, the image of the girl’s face remained plastered into my brain, as if it were held by superglue. Every night I thought of her terrified face, beaten black and blue beyond recognition. I noticed that every time the image came into my head, it got a little worse, like I was reaching deeper and deeper into my psyche and coming up with more and more distorted results the deeper I went. I had no friends at this point. Everybody thought I was nuts. I couldn’t blame them.
A week ago, after graduation, I decided to call my sister, who was out of town. She picked up after the first ring. “Howdy.”
“Hey. I need to talk to you about the girl. And Mr. Cookie. Please don’t hang up. Please. Please,” my voice was haggard with pleading.
“Uh, why would I hang up?”
I was silent for a moment, confused. “Last time we talked about this you said it was giving you a headache. You begged me to stop talking about it.”
“Huh. Weird. I don’t really remember that.”
“The fuck? Okay, whatever. Just–can you tell me who Mr. Cookie is?”
“Yeah, of course. That’s what we called Mr. Cook before he quit.”
“Mr. Cook? What was his first name?” I asked desperately. My eager hands clutched a pen to take notes with.
“Tom Cook, I think.”
“Tom Cook? Okay, cool. Thank you. What about the missing girl?”
“What missing girl?”
“The one with the bruised face? The missing person?”
My sister was silent.
“Hello?” I said.
“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
I blinked. “You’re kidding, right? You said the last time we talked that the girl on the pages was some girl from your graduating class. You said she disappeared in junior year, and that Mr. Cook quit after.”
My sister chuckled. “I don’t really remember any of that. Weird.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. Can you tell me more about Mr. Cook, though?”
“He was cool, I guess,” she said. “I don’t really know what you want me to say. He was just some teacher who quit.”
“Why is his name plastered in my mind, then? What’s going on here?” At this point, I was beginning to lose my temper.
“Hey. Chill out. Do you want me to come home for the summer?”
I scratched my nose. “No, no. Just–whatever.”
I hung up without saying goodbye.
It’s four in the morning. I’m typing this because I’m seeing the girl in my room, now. I’m seeing the name “Mr. Cookie” printed in arial on my walls. I’m seeing everything. I think he’s just toying with me, now. I’m scared. I haven’t slept in days. I’m starting to wonder if the pages ever really existed or not. I think I might be crazy. I’m not sure a crazy person would say that.
I spent a year of my life being tormented by a man named Mr. Cookie. How beautifully glib.
How beautifully glib, indeed.