Freddie freaker

Ever heard of "Freddy Freaker?" Like a lot of other 900 numbers in the 80's, it came with a commercial. The day, the commercial was aired was the last day ever, it was aired. It started normally with 'it's the freak phone and here's the party freak' and then, it happened. Freddie came onto the TV. He was... not what any of us had been expecting. My smaller brother, who was only three at the time, immediately left the room crying. The gremlin did not even resemble a gremlin. The ears were far too big. It had a mouth lined with lots of teeth, and the inside of the mouth looked almost swollen. The most striking part about the thing, though, was the eyes. They were large, glassy, and fish-like.

I asked, then bothered, then begged my mom to turn it off. Freddie Freaker suddenly shouted loudly, screaming and wailing, saying "2 dollars a call!" in a demonic, low-pitched voice. In the background, we could hear the narrator saying "DANCING NEW SENSATION GRABBIN THE NATION DOING THE FREAK" over and over again in an overly serious tone. The video was... indescribable. Images crossed the screen in quick succession, overcut with Freddie's expressionless eyes. The images were some of the things I was afraid of at the time. A person looking over a balcony, a hornet slowly stinging someone's eye, an extreme close-up of a tarantula, a pit full of writhing cobras, and a bloodied syringe filled with green fluid. We immediately turned the TV off, and I ran out of the room screaming, slamming my door. It took my mom twenty minutes to convince me that the video was gone, that I would never, ever see it again. I had nightmares all week about Freddy Freaker.