Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - The Tale of Elric Tumbrel, the Bad Ones, and the Thought That Broke the Factory Forever #9

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #factoryhorror #darkfantasy #paranormalfiction #eldritchhorror #mindsnap  Elric Tumbrel was just another cog in the machine — until he started thinking. In a sprawling, soul-crushing factory run by unknowable entities called the Bad Ones, Elric’s forbidden thoughts spark a quiet rebellion. But thinking comes at a price, and the deeper he dives, the more horrifying the truth becomes. As paranoia and insanity spread, the factory unravels — not with an explosion, but with a whisper. A haunting tale of control, forbidden knowledge, and the devastating cost of awareness. horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, factoryhorror, darkindustrialtale, paranormalfiction, eldritchterror, cosmicdread, mentaldecay, disturbingthoughts, unsettlingtruths, psychologicalhorror, industrialnightmare, forbiddenknowledge, workplacehorror, creepyatmosphere, unravelingreality

There's so much rugby on Sports Exter from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter Sports Extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place.

Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampact with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months, further terms apply. The weather.

Tomorrow, expect a... Biting cold front. Mmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise, slowly but surely, reaching their peak in the afternoon.

Not in the mood for miserable weather? Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express. Sun Express, non-stop sunshine. If you are looking for a cheerful story full of warm cookies, helpful adults, or even a single kindly janitor, I would advise you to stop reading this immediately and run away, possibly to a place that smells of vanilla and not of oil and regret. The tale I am about to recount involves a rebellious outcast, a sinister factory, and the sort of adults who smile like sharks do.

That is to say, with far too many teeth. Our unfortunate protagonist is a boy named Elric Tumbral. He was not the kind of boy who liked to follow the rules, especially the kind of rules written in all capital letters and posted on doors you weren't supposed to open. He had a habit of reading forbidden books, asking dangerous questions, and wearing mismatched socks in an institution that demanded conformity down to the length of your shoelaces. For these grievous crimes, and one regrettable incident involving a flock of pigeons and the headmasters to pay, he was deemed a bad one and shipped off to a place so grim it was simply

known as the factory. No one quite knew what the factory produced. Some said it made screws the size of grapefruits. Others said it made laws, or lies, or sadness in convenient glass bottles. All anyone really knew was that once you went in, you did not come out. Except for that one girl who returned three years later, only able to speak in riddles and allergic to sunlight. Elric was delivered to the factory in the back of a rusted truck marked deliveries and disposals. He was greeted not by a kind teacher or even a moderately hygienic adult, but by a man named Mr. Vexley. Mr. Vexley wore a gray trench coat that reeked of burnt paper and disinfectant. His eyes were the color of overcast skies, and his mustache curled like it had sinister intentions.

Welcome to the factory, Mr. Vexley said, his voice sounding like it had been sanded. down. You are here because you are a disruption. A stain. A smudge on the face of order. You will be scrubbed. I don't need scrubbing, Elric replied. I bathe every Tuesday. Mr. Vexley's I twitched. Sarcasm is step one of rebellion. That will be extracted, and so Elric's life in the factory began. The factory was a sprawling maze of iron hallways, steam belching pipes, and rooms that served no understandable purpose. Room 12b had 27 clocks, none of which told the correct time. Room 3Q was filled with mannequins that whispered when you turned your back. The cafeteria served gray cubes labeled food substance 47 and any attempt to describe the taste resulted in

temporary loss of tongue function. Each child in the factory was given a uniform, a job, and a label. Elric's label read Instigator, Class C. His job was to sort thoughts. Not his own thoughts, mind you, those were strictly forbidden, but the thoughts of others, which arrived daily in small glass jars through a humming pneumatic tube. Do not think your own thoughts, instructed Matron Lurch, a skeletal woman with a permanent squint.

Sort. Label. Dispose. That is your purpose. Elric tried to comply, but thoughts are slippery things. Sometimes a thought would rigged, out of its jar and whisper things like, What if this is all a lie?

Or, why does Mr. Vexley never blink, or, escape is not impossible, merely inadvisable. It was in the thought-sorting wing that Elric met the others. There was Trinket, a girl with a bionic arm made from spoons and stolen parts. She claimed to have built it herself after losing the original in the puzzle room.

She didn't say what the puzzle had been. There was Bodge, a mute boy who communicated solely through elaborate eyebrow movements and had memorized the entire ventilation system. And then there was Finch, short, pale, and alarmingly intelligent, with the unnerving ability to recall any rule in the factory's 972-page handbook of discipline and stillness. We're not meant to survive, Finch said one night as they huddle behind the Cogwell generator to avoid the drone masters. We're meant to become useful.

Or disappear, but what if we escape? Elric whispered. Finch smiled grimly. That's what the last instigator said. Before they put her in the reverse room, Elric shuddered. No one quite knew what the reverse room did, but everyone agreed it made you come out, different. The last boy who'd returned from it now only walked backward and apologized before he even did anything wrong. As the days turned into weeks, Elric began noticing things, hidden patterns in the job schedules,

odd inconsistencies in the thought jars and a locked door marked simply office of the architect. The architect, they learned, was the founder of the factory. A mysterious figure spoken... There's so much rugby on Sports Exeter from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed

I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've met every Champions Cup match exclusively live, bus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European Rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra.

Jam packed with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. The weather. Tomorrow, expect a...

Biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperate. Temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching their peak in the afternoon. Not in the mood for miserable weather.

Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express. Sun Express, non-stop sunshine. ...of irreverent tones by the adults, as though he were a God who demanded perfect posture and quarterly efficiency reviews. No one had seen him, but it was said that he designed the factory after a dream in which the world was ruled by children who giggled too much. Elric, Trinket, Bodge, and Finch hatched a plan. It involved three jars of rebellious thoughts, a contraband magnet, and Finch reciting an entire

chapter of the handbook to distract the drone masters while Bodge accessed the vents. They made their move during the midnight silence, when even the pipe seemed too tired to creak. Bodge led the way through the ducts, his eyebrows twitching with grim purpose. Trinket disabled the lock using a spoon wrench she'd made from a toothful. brush and sheer defiance. And Elric stepped into the office of the architect. The room was surprisingly small and warm. It had a desk, a single flickering bulb, and a figure hunched over blueprints with eyes like smoke. You're not supposed to be here, the architect said without turning. Neither are we supposed to be miserable, Elric replied. The architect looked up and Elric saw that his face was stitched

together from pieces of paper, inked with formulas and orders and lists of names. I built this place to make them better, the architect said. To cure disorder. To make them useful. But we're not machines, Elric said, heart pounding. We're kids. The architect blinked. Slowly.

Then, almost sadly, he asked, then why are you all so broken? That's when Elric realized, the architect wasn't a man. Not really. He was a system. A program. A collection of rules wrapped in a suit of flesh and fantasy. They didn't destroy him. That would have been too easy. Instead, Elric uploaded a single rebellious thought into the architect's mind. What if I was wrong? The result was immediate. Sirens wailed. The factory groaned. Lights flickered, then dimmed. Doors unlocked. themselves. Thoughts spilled from their jars like butterflies escaping a dusty net. They ran. All of them. Elric, Trinket, Bodge, Finch, and dozens of others. Past the cafeteria. Past the mannequins. Past Matron Lurch, who was screaming something about order and protocol as the walls themselves began to shift and melt. Outside, the air was cold and real. Stars blinked above, of like curious eyes. The factory behind them collapsed, not with a bang, but with a sigh.

As though it were tired of being what it was. They didn't all live happily ever after. Some were never quite the same. Finch developed a fear of handbooks. Bodge eventually spoke, only once, to say, worth it. Trinket built a sanctuary for the other bad ones, full of light and noise and absolutely no gray cubes. And Elric? Elric kept running. Because somewhere, in some other town, another factory was being built. Another architect was dreaming of silence and efficiency.

But now there was a flaw in the system. A rogue variable. A single mismatched sock. And sometimes... There's so much rugby on Sports Exter from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes.

This winter sports extra is jam-packed with Rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jam packed with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months.

Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. The weather. Tomorrow, expect a... Biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off.

The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching their peak in the afternoon. Not in the mood for miserable weather? Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express. Sun Express, non-stop sunshine. That's enough. If you were expecting a happier ending, perhaps you've confused this with a different kind of story.

perhaps one with rainbows or petting zoos or hugs but this was the tale of a rebel outcast and a place for the bad ones and in tales like these escape is the best ending you can hope for and even that comes at a cost