Poetic Justice

Poetic Justice is a scary story about a kind old man who is very lonely and a mean-spirited neighbor who wants to get rid of him. It is based on an old horror movie called Tales From The Crypt which was based on a story from an old horror comic, Haunt of Fear #12.

Old Mr. Grimsdyke was a garbage collector. He lived alone in a ramshackle house with only his beloved pet dogs for company. Ever since his wife died, he had been very, very lonely.

Mr. Grimsdyke adored children, even though he never had any of his own. He would collect all of the broken toys he found in garbage cans and take them home with him. Then, he repaired them and handed them out to all the kids in the area.

He also gave the children candy and allowed them to play in his garden. Watching the kids laughing and having fun made the old man feel less lonely.

One of his neighbors, Mr. Elliot, lived right across the street and couldn’t stand the old man.

He thought the house was an eyesore and was sick and tired of listening to the noise of kids playing and dogs barking. It irritated him so much that he was determined to drive the old man out of the neighborhood.

One night, long after all the neighbors had gone to bed, Mr. Elliot sneaked into their gardens and destroyed their flower beds. In the morning, he blamed the mess on Mr. Grimsdyke’s dogs. The neighbors complained to the town council and the police came to confiscate Mr. Grimsdyke’s dogs.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mr. Elliot pulled some strings with the town council, called in some favors and had Mr. Grimsdyke fired from his job. Then, he started to spread vile rumors about the old man so that all of the parents would tell their children to stay away from him. His plan was a success and pretty soon, Mr. Grimsdyke was alone.

Every evening, when the old man had dinner, he placed a photograph of his dead wife on the kitchen table. Somehow, it made him feel less lonely if he could talk to her.

“I don’t understand it, Helen,” Mr. Grimsdyke said. “Everyone was so kind to me before, but now this… No job. No dogs. No children. No one to make toys for. No one to keep me company. Well, never mind. We’ve always got each other, haven’t we, my dear? That’s all that matters.”

However, Mr. Elliot wasn’t finished. He was determined to force the old man to move out and he had saved the worst for last.

On Valentine’s day, he bought a lot of cards and wrote horrible, insulting poems on them. At the bottom of each one, he signed the name of a child in the area. When he was finished, he put them in envelopes and sent them all to the old man.

When Mr. Grymsdyke opened his mail and saw what was written on the cards, he was horrified.

“Noisy are children,
loud is a bell…
pungent is perfume,
but you really smell.”

“A tree is beautiful
if its owner prunes it.
But our town isn’t
Because your presence ruins it.”

“Some people live in the country.
Some people live in the town.
Why don’t you do us a favor?
Jump in the river and drown”

“Some folks are born to make money,
Others are born to rob.
I was born for one purpose,
To call you a dirty old slob.”

The cruel poems made Mr. Grimsdyke so depressed that he didn’t even have the energy to leave his house. All of the joy had gone from his life. He spent all his time indoors, with no one to talk to except the photograph of his dead wife.

Nobody had seen the old man for two weeks and the neighbors started to become curious. They knocked on his front door, but there was no answer. Eventually, they decided they would have to check on him, so one of the men broke a window and climbed inside. He was shocked by what he found.

Mr. Grimsdyke was hanging by the neck from a length of rope. He had become so depressed that he had taken his own life.

They buried him in a cemetery on the outskirts of town. The grave was right next to his dead wife. All of the neighbors attended the funeral and the children placed wreaths on the coffin. Mr. Elliot was at the funeral as well, standing at the graveside with a smirk on his face as they lowered the coffin into the earth.

One year later, on February the 14th, just as the church bells tolled midnight, something very strange happened. The soil on Mr. Grimsdyke’s grave began to shift and move. A hand emerged from the earth… a fetid, rotting hand… and something crawled out of the grave.

Mr. Elliot was at home that night, sitting by the fire. He was writing a few Valentine’s Day cards that he planned to send to some wealthy widows. he heard a knock at his front door, but when he got up to answer it, there was no one there. Then, as he stood in the doorway, peering into the darkness, a foul stench hit his nostrils.

For the next few days, nobody saw Mr. Elliot. After a week had passed, the police came to check on him. What they found made them recoil in horror.

Mr. Elliot’s corpse was sprawled across his desk, his face and body covered in blood. There was a large crumpled piece of paper lying on the desk beside him. It read:

“You were mean and cruel,
Right from the start.
Now you really have no…”

At the bottom of the note, wrapped up in the paper, they found a bloody human heart.