Back in the 1980s when red phone boxes were everywhere in England, the Wombles were number three in the charts, and Sylvester McCoy was Doctor Who; a young would-be actress went to an audition for a kid’s math show. While waiting to go in, she got into a heated argument with one of the other actors about how appropriate her neck-line was for a kid’s show. She was upset but it didn’t hurt her performance.
She wasn’t successful, but then three weeks later the studio called and asked if she’d like to take the job after all. The first choice presenter (the young man she’d been arguing with) had died in what they would only describe as ‘a bizarre accident in a phone box’.
She did six hours work, which consisted of chanting about math formulas and cutting bits of paper into squares. The show was such rubbish that it never aired, but she made an impression on the management, and went on to work on BBC kids shows including “Blue Peter”.
Eight years later the girl had been married then divorced and had two kids. Her boy was about five and she also had a baby girl. She was staying at home with the children one evening when she heard a bizarre news story: a body had been stolen from a nearby graveyard and she recognized the name of the corpse but couldn’t remember where from.
She was pondering this when the phone rang, and a voice at the other end said: “The curse was mine and now it’s yours, cutting souls up into scores.” Unsurprisingly, this freaked her out a bit…
Knowing that there was very little she could do about a prank call, she went upstairs and checked on her kids in their separate rooms, then made a cup of tea and watched some more TV.
The phone rang again, and this time the voice said “Cutting the squares, cutting the squares; One by one, one by one” this really freaked her out, being a direct quote from the math show she’d done all those years ago. She immediately realized who that missing body was, the man whose place she’d taken. She hung up the phone and tried to dial 999 for the police when she heard her little boy scream. As she ran up the stairs the voice at the other end of the phone said “Cutting the squares, cutting the squares; Two by two, two by two”
In her baby’s room was a cot full of what looked like steak tartar… in perfect 1cm x 1cm cubes.
In her boy’s room the bed was also filled with perfect cubes of fresh meat, this time 2cm x 2cm. As she looked at this horrific sight, she spotted one of her little boy’s eyes staring back at her from a square of flesh.
She raced away from the manic laughter on her own telephone outside and into a red box, as she lifted the handset a voice said “Cutting the squares, cutting the squares; one by one, two by two; now who’s next? how about you!” at which point the glass in the phone box imploded, cutting her into perfect 3cm x 3cm cubes.
The next day the body of the man who’s place she’d taken was returned to its grave site. Although it was clear that they’d got the right body back, the mortician who examined it was still highly perplexed by it’s appearance. When the man had been buried originally he’d been so mutilated they’d had to identify him by dental records, and now he seemed whole and near-perfectly preserved, except for the strange lines of scars, making a grid of perfect 4cm x 4cm squares all over his skin.
Reader Submitted by,
Mrs. Large from Derbyshire Great Britain