(dramatic orchestral music)
(expressive piano and orchestral music)
- [Narrator] The city wasn't abandoned.
The blight here was imagined.
We've stopped asking ourselves what is.
What matters is whatever he imagines.
Whatever he feels comes to be.
(expressive piano and orchestral music)
The kids call him King Ripple.
He adds, he subtracts, he plays,
he gradually changed the skyline.
Where did the old building go?
Where did the new ones come from?
He imagined less and less people in his city.
(Donruss mimics being electrocuted)
(Donruss gasps)
- Stop it, Donruss.
- He's pulling me in!
He's pulling me in!
- Go ahead, disappear!
- Look, I haven't vanished yet,
I haven't turned into diamonds or (gasps), or wha, were--
- Okay, stop, that's enough!
You're making us nervous.
- Yeah, buddy, (scoffs) what are you doing?
- [Donruss] It's insane, no one, I don't care who you are
deserves an entire city to themselves.
- It's not about deserving.
He wants to be alone.
- [Donruss] Well, maybe he died alone.
18 years and not a peep from the king.
It's crazy!
Look, I've been standing here for, what, three minutes,
and it's not the first time I've done this.
There is nothing living in this city!
(eerie electronic tones)
No supreme being, no king.
- It's not folklore, though.
People died.
- You think that someone can turn someone into water
and then just go for a swim inside their bodies?
- He is not well.
- Yeah, that's probably what his shrink
told him back in '96, Val.
Look, he only got 20 feet.
- You want me to go 20 feet?
- I want you to go 20 feet, yeah!
- Yeah?
- Yeah!
- 20 feet or five miles, you can go in there,
but you're not coming back.
- Come on, let's just go catch a movie.
- No, I'm goin' in.
- I wanna show everyone he's dead, too.
(hands slapping)
- [Valerie] Are you guys insane?
- You guys have no plan!
- Sh-she wants a plan. (Walla chuckles)
The plan is to go find his dead body
and bring it back.
- Absolutely not.
(eerie and tense ambient tones)
(Sonata sighs)
- Yes, yes, Sonata, yes!
- Sorry, no way.
- All right, suit yourself, Val.
Tell you what, we'll bring him back for you.
(groans) I forget, how do you like your corpses these days?
Sunny side up, side of hash browns,
runny and bleeding all over your toast?
- How are you guys gonna find him?
- [Donruss] We're gonna smell him is how.
(Walla inhales and sighs heavily)
(chain rattling)
- [Narrator] In '96, they sent in a psychiatrist,
a man who might reason with King Ripple.
Desperate, the mayor and other city officials
waited at the border.
They watched the doctor enter the city alone.
The doctor had made it some 20 feet past the border
when he screamed. (muffled screaming)
They watched as water gushed from his pants,
his sleeves, the neckline of his shirt,
and then the doctors clothes lay in a puddle of water
and the doctor was no more. (shuddering electronic tones)
King Ripple imagined him away. (pulsing electronic tones)
(bird cawing over tense orchestral music)
Is there a limit to his imagination?
(bird cawing over tense orchestral music)
(eerie and ominous ambient tones)
(birds cawing over unsettling chime tones)
- (gasps) You guys smell that?
(fire whooshing)
(flames crackling over ghastly echoing voices)
Donruss, stop! (eerie ambient tones)
(woman gasping and screaming)
(eerie ambient tones)
(woman chattering and gasping)
(eerie chime tones and ambient music)
(buzzing electronic accent)
(menacing electronic music)
(echoing ghostly voices)
(Donruss gasping)
(flesh crunching)
(both gasping)
- [Walla] What do we do?
- We leave, Walla, we leave right now.
(menacing electronic music)
Walla!
Walla, where'd you go?
Come back!
(sobs) Walla, where'd you go?
(Sonata gasping and sobbing)
(Sonata shrieks over menacing electronic accent)
(wind howling)
(expressive electronic music)
- [Narrator] We don't know when King Ripple was born,
but they say he wouldn't stop crying.
The doctors who tried to calm him just disappeared.
Other nurses vanished, too.
His own mother went missing.
Can a baby know happiness?
King Ripple did not want to be held.
He wanted to be alone.
He preferred solitude. (expressive electronic music)
(footsteps clacking over eerie electronic music)
(ominous ambient tones)
- Valerie!
(ominous ambient tones)
Hey.
- [Valerie] Where are my friends?
(eerie electronic music)
- Um, oh, right, your friends.
Well, they're right here.
Come.
(Valerie sighing nervously over eerie electronic tones)
You are just in time.
- In time? (eerie ambient tones)
- For a bath.
(water splashing and bubbling over menacing ambient tones)
(birds cawing over fluttering wings)
(rumbling ambient tones)
(eerie electronic accent)
- [Announcer] Watch new scary bits
every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.
(throbbing electronic music)