Faisal Farouk was streaming live from a head mounted GoPro as he sprinted through the ruins of ancient Babylon. His popular YouTube channel Aggravating the Undead had millions of subscribers, many of whom were watching at this moment. Thanks to technological advances in wearable cameras his audience was treated to a dazzling, high definition, shake free view of what was either Faisal’s terrifying and controversial last moments or one of the best hoaxes every perpetrated online.
Annoying the Undead was Faisal’s ticket to social media stardom. While you can’t swing a dead carp in cyberspace without hitting a paranormal investigation show streaming on Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, etc., he had a unique, if controversial, approach to interacting with the post-living. His hook was that instead of trying to communicate with the denizens of the spirit world, he would simply piss them off. Theoretically they would lash out in anger at him and inadvertently hand him proof of their existence. This would be far more interesting for the audience then watching a red headed Stevie Nicks wannabe chanting her way into spiritual communion.
This method set his show apart. It also meant that Faisalwould often treat the line between investigation and desecration like something you stood behind while peeing. Close enough to get it in the urinal but not so close that you get hit with backsplash.
Faisal and his show crossed over into the American mainstream after investigating a supposedly haunted native American burial ground. During a cantankerous CNN debate about his methods, he defended the act of mounting a Sitting Bull piñata atop a burial mound at Sioux Falls’ Sherman Park and at midnight, whacking the candy out of it while dressed as General Custer. In his opinion, the investigative value of provoking a response and exposing the truth of the haunting outweighed the self-evident cultural insensitivity. He even presented himself as courageous as he put himself in harm’s way to prove that the spirits that stalked burial mounds were real.
There was so much debate over his methods that nobody looked too closely at his actual results. Had anyone examined that aspect more closely they could have made a fairly solid argument for the possibility that he was a complete fraud. And they would be correct. Faisal didn’t really care about the truth behind the paranormal. The only truths he really adhered to was that money was fun, real jobs were boring and bison are vile, murderous beasts that taste great on a Kaiser roll. That third truth has very little to do with truths one and two, but it is a solid truth nonetheless.
The only one who really challenged his methods, results, and testicular fortitude was Kallen from the popular Slapped Ham YouTube channel. He and Faisal had developed a bit of anacrimonious online relationship. It ended with Kallensuggesting that if Faisal had anything that resembled a Y chromosome, he would hang out in the Babylonian ruins after dark. Faisal responded with a tweet that simply said “F*ck You Kallen”, along with a picture of a plane ticket to Iraq.
It was past midnight as Faisal ran through the sands of the ancient city of. Hot on his heels was his greatest childhood fear which had come impossibly, homicidally and hungrily to life. He could hear it bellowing in the dark behind him. For every ten steps he ran Faisal could feel one of its heavy footfalls shaking the ground. He started running in a zig-zag pattern in an attempt to confuse it but all he managed to do was further tire himself out and violate all sorts of Euclidian geometry about point A,
point B and how best to travel between the two. While his point A was the spot where he wetted himself while staring up at a beast that shouldn’t exist outside of George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, there actually was a point B he was running towards. That point B was the stone obelisk about fifty yards in front of him that marked the border of the old city.
The Bedouin who call the desert home had erected several such stones along Babylon’s perimeter and chiseled warnings into them. Those standing outside the city knew not to cross these markers after the sun had set. For those caught inside the city after dark they stood as some sort of finish line; a boundarythat the evil that stalked the city ruins could not cross. It was hope. With that said, it had not escaped Faisal’s notice that the obelisk, backlit by moonlight against the curve of the dunes,looked a lot like the desert was giving him the finger. Sometimes hope was a bit of an ass.
Faisal poured on as much speed as his overtaxed lungs and calves would allow while sprinting the last handful of yards towards the promise of safety. Suddenly something sharp sliced just below his calf. He felt the white hot pain of his Achilles tendon being severed and the sudden loss of control over his foot as the sinew that was previously stretched tight between his calf and heel went slack. It was as if someone had a go at a fully extended bungee cord with a machete. Faisal went down, face first into the sand.
Those viewing at home, (including Kallen who had laughed himself into an asthma attack…which was odd seeing as he didn’t have asthma), got a moment of disorientation has the camera popped off Faisal’s head and rolled through the sand. For a moment the audience to appreciate the fine Iraqi sand as the camera landed lens down dirt. While this soil porn was enough to shorten the trousers of any pedologist who happened to be watching the feed (which would eventually lead to a ruined picture of Scarlet Johansson and a sock nobody would ever want to wear again), the camera did not stay there.
Those watching the action saw the camera image slowly rise from the sand and turn towards Faisal. He was scooting backwards in the desert sands, screaming and staring up. It looked as if all the blood had drained from his face as wide, terrified eyes stared out from ashen skin and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Out of the darkness a Rancor beast from the Star Wars filmReturn of the Jedi strode into view. Faisal had seen this twenty-five-foot terror when he was a child. His brother had forced him to watch the scene when the Rancor grabbed a Gamorrean guard in one hand, and bit its head off. Going old school OzzyOsbourne on the man sized guard was not the end of it. Faisal remembers watching the arm of the sentry turned entrée slide down the monster’s throat before it turned its attention to Luke Skywalker.
Faisal was six years old when he saw that. At that point in his childhood there were aspects of the Muppet Show he found scary, so the Rancor scene was a brand new level of terror for his brain and one he never quite shook. After that day Return of the Jedi was forever off his watch list, even as an adult.
This was no movie he was staring at. It was no special effect, animatronic creation or big ass puppet. This was a real animal. It howled in anger and hunger a mere stride or two of its massive three-toed feet away from him. The camera panned to the obelisk and border that was less than six feet away from Faisal. About a dozen Bedouin had heard the commotion and came over to shout encouragement to Faisal, but none of them dared reach across the boundary line.
Faisal turned away from the Rancor and crawled on his belly toward the promise of safety the people of the desert offered him. The Bedouin reached their hands to border. He didn’t speak their language but the message was clear. If he could get one hand over the line, they would pull him the rest of the way. His finger tip touched that of weathered older man. Faisal could see in Bedouin’s kind eyes that the man was as anxious to save him as Faisal was to be saved. As their fingers touched Faisal felt long fingers wrap around his torso and suddenly he was off the ground.
The camera zoomed in close on Faisal as he screamed and cried incoherently. It ended abruptly when the Rancor forced the terrified man’s head and shoulders into his mouth and bit down hard with stalactite like teeth. Faisal’s spine make a crunching sound as it splintered and was torn away with his head and upper back.
The Rancor made a quick meal of Faisal. The last, gory image the camera caught was the YouTube stars arm sliding over the creature’s tongue and down its throat.
The camera turned and for a moment focused on the Bedouin who were filing sadly away and heading back into the desert, to their tents. It then turned again and focused on the back of an impeccably dressed and coifed man. His long white hair fell in shiny, arrow straight, sheets across his back. It was in stark contrast to the deep black long coat he wore. The man turned to the camera. The wind desert wind ruffled the wide lapels of his coat but it seemed that the sand was almost afraid to land on his clothing.
His coat was buttoned all the way up to the red hunting sock tie he wore. Were the colors of the coat and tie reversed he would have looked like he was dressed for a proper fox hunt. A gold pin winked out from just over the top button of the coat, holding the two ends of the tie together. He turned toward the camera and stared into it. He was an albino, well, almost an albino. The man’s eyes were all wrong. They were a mixture of yellows, oranges and reds and spread out from his pupils like circles of flame.
He clicked his tongue at the camera and spoke in a posh, London accent, “He tried my friends, he tried. And while his effort ultimately ended in failure, we must applaud his determination and his struggle to succeed. If Mr. Farouk were still with us I am quite certain that he would have hoped you’ve enjoyed his little video offerings over the past few years. I’m sure he would thank you for allowing him to entertain you while you provided him with a lifestyle well beyond even his most fanciful dreams, but this has obviously been the last episode. Cheers!”.
At that final word the camera cut out. Across the internet Faisal’s last broadcast was universally panned as an elaborate hoax. The Disney corporation sent him letter after letter that were a mix of cease and desist orders and lawsuits for his use of their intellectual property, the Rancor, in his swansong episode. Of course he never appeared in court or anywhere else. The disappearance of Faisal Farouk became one of the young centuries bigger unsolved mysteries.
Six months after his disappearance, Kallen from Slapped Ham narrated an episode called The Top 10 Sightings of Faisal Farouk.