Frasier Truth Now - An Exclusive Short Story from Eliza Clark

Make it stand out

To the Keeper of Evil Knowledge – you know who you are,

In 2004, I saw a very strange episode of the sitcom Frasier. I was home sick from school, watching Channel 4. Friends was on at 7:30, and Everybody Loves Raymond at 8, and Cheers at 8:30 then Frasier at 9.

I would usually be on my way to the bus stop just after Raymond ended. And I would lament that Channel 4 forced me to sit through endless episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond – when a tiny adjustment to their schedule would put a far superior sitcom (Frasier) on at much more accessible time.

How I adored Frasier, and his weird hair, and big, tasteful apartment. I loved his brother Niles, who was fay, and prickly, and I loved his invisible joke wife Maris. Most of all, I loved Marty, and his little dog, Eddie. I wished Marty was my grandfather, because grandfathers hadn’t been hugely present in my childhood. I liked the easy humour, the cringe comedy and I liked when I understood one of the many high-brow references to be found in the script.

And when I was home sick, I could watch sleep through Raymond and watch Frasier. It was a great comfort to me – until I saw the strange episode.

I was definitely in Year 5 when I saw it – the strange episode – it was winter, January of 2004 and my mum had forgotten to organise my flu vaccine. I gotten sick within a week of returning to school from the Christmas break.

I remember this wasn’t the first day I’d been home sick, but it was the day I was sickest. I even missed the first five minutes of Frasier – which was very out of character for me. I switched on the television in my room (a small, CRT television with a built-in DVD player) and weakly flipped to Channel 4, annoyed that I had missed the first five minutes of Frasier. I was confused at first: they were playing an episode in or after the fourth season, as Niles and Maris were divorced, and Niles was living at the Montana. The episodes I’d watched from the previous days this week had all been from season one – Frasier’s hair at its worst, and Niles’ marriage in-tact.

(This is an aside, but I always think the series would’ve been far superior if Daphne were a man, and Niles were gay. It would further justify his trepidation in approaching her, and would make for truly ground-breaking television.) 

Any way, in this strange and possibly cursed episode of Frasier (which I definitely saw) (and is definitely real) Niles was in the apartment at the Montana and he was searching for his cockatoo, Baby. He was shouting Baby, Baby? And Where is my Baby? And Oh how I miss my Baby. And then Frasier arrived.

I was bewildered, of course. I had seen every episode of Frasier from seasons one through five, and was surprised to be seeing an episode I had no recollection of.

Have you seen Kes? Because it was a bit like Kes. Frasier and Niles began to argue about an investment. Niles had advised Frasier to invest money in an amateur opera, because he’d heard it would be the next big thing on the Seattle Opera scene. But the opera turned out to be terrible, as each actor had a personality quirk which caused the production to go badly wrong. Enraged at having lost so much money, Frasier alludes to having already had his revenge. 

“Where’s Baby?” asked Niles. “Where is my Baby?”

And Frasier gestured to a wastebasket in the corner of the room. Niles pulled Baby’s fragile, broken body from the bin. Then Frasier was gone, and Niles was left alone, in a single red spotlight cradling the body of the bird.

Now, you – like the users of the WeRListening, the number one Frasier fan forum on the whole internet – may be about to accuse me of having imagined, or dreamt this episode of Frasier. You may tell me this episode was a fabrication of my high-temperature, the product of a feverish childhood nightmare – but I know what I saw. And I saw this:

Baby’s body was suddenly not a bird, but a mass of gore, an undulating, twisted ball of birds who seemed as if they had been turned inside out. Niles dropped the ball in a panic, and it shattered wetly. Shards of glass, and bone, and beak spread out and crawled toward him, advancing. And then Baby rose from the mass, her white feathers red with blood, and she flew to Niles, and landed on his head. She picked grubs from his hair and whispered, I’m listening, Niles. I’m listening.

And then Niles screamed. He tried to call Maris who, for the purposes of this episode, he referred to as the Shadowed One.

He tried to summon the Shadowed One, but both Niles and we, the audience, know that no one is coming to help him. Niles then scaled the Escher-like structure which had erupted in his apartment at the luxurious Montana building – one of the most exclusive apartment buildings in all of Seattle. There is a throwaway joke that the doorman to the Montana lives in Frasier’s building, which irks Frasier, of course, as the brothers are terribly competitive.

Niles scaled the structure, and arrived at the roof of the apartment building. He jumped. And the keen reader will remember, of course, that part of Frasier’s backstory is his public humiliation following a suicide attempt. Frasier had to be talked down from the ledge of a building, after his wife, Lilith left him. This jeopardised his legitimacy as a psychiatrist. It is, I think, symbolically important that within the confines of this evil episode, Niles completed what Frasier did not. He jumped.

What did I feel at this moment? I felt nothing. For I had been absorbed by this dark, terrible episode. I remember only a faint sense that I should help Niles – then only a bleak and utter acceptance of his oblivion. I felt such a peace at that moment, for I had met death and known him via this episode of Frasier.

Any way, Niles then awoke to find himself in Cheers. Not dead, but in Cheers. Do note, however, that I still felt death’s peaceful embrace. All the regulars, Sam and Norm and Diane, they all called his name. Niles! They shouted, cheerfully. And then they looked out of the screen, toward me. But they did not say my name. They raised their glasses and then their faces sank, and blackened with rot. I was not terribly keen on Cheers, to be honest, and considered Frasier to be the far superior entertainment product.

Niles ran out of Cheers (the bar) and found that he had also run out of Cheers (the sitcom). He found himself at the home of Ray Barone, where he was promptly captured and tied to a chair at Ray’s kitchen table. Marie Barone was force feeding him lasagne. Better than Deborah’s, she said. I could smell the lasagne. It smelt like the void.

 Then Raymond appeared, behind Marie. He was holding a large baking pan, and struck her upon her terrible head. He freed Niles, as Marie crawled toward Ray. When faced with the choice to help Ray or flee, the craven Niles ran.

Where are you going? asked Ray. Help me. She’s lost her mind. You have to help me. Niles could did not get far before running bodily into Ray’s brother, Robert. 

Niles seemed afraid, but then he looked into Robert’s eyes. They recognised one another.

Robert told Niles he understood him. He understood what it was like to be the less-loved brother. He embraced Niles, then would not let go. Robert tried to absorb Niles. Robert screamed: with the power of a second less-loved child, I can finally become the Beloved One. Robert subsumed Niles.

I thought this was over. I wanted to be free of the episode. But I was not free. Niles, cowering and quaking, opened his eyes to find himself not inside the body. Of Robert Barone, but in Joey and Chandler’s apartment. You know, from Friends. But Hoey was there alone, in the dark. He span in his recliner chair. How You Doin? He asked. 

Then I no longer felt the peace of death. Only pure terror. For I knew that Joey knew how I was doin’. How we were all doin’. He knew the end was near, and that he was its harbinger.

 And then we cut to black. Hey baby I hear the blues a callin’ tossed salad and scrambled eggs.

It took hours for the episode to release me from the fugue state I found myself in. When my parents got home, they did not believe me. For years the memory of the episode has haunted me, and for years I have been denied absolution from its tyranny. The knowledge has weighed on me so horribly, and grows heavier with every un-believed forum post, and downvoted Reddit comment.

 “Oh no,” they say, “The cursed episode guy is back. He’s evading his ban again.” But I cannot, and will not be silenced.

That is why I demand that you, Kelsey Grammar, reveal the dark knowledge that you keep publicly and as soon as possible. If a scrap of humanity remained within you, foul wretch, you would help us find and destroy the cursed episode of you beloved sitcom, Frasier.

Kindest regards,

Your number one fan and the protector of humanity’s innocence,

David Jones, 28, Staindrop.

Email me at FRASIERTRUTHNOW@gmail.com

Words: Eliza Clark | llustrator: Szeyan