Check was restless. He was always restless - sleep was for people who hadn’t been cursed by Danish paintings - but that night, particularly so. His head was full of ghost stories and true crime facts from an ESPN special. The answer to this story that made the most sense was that Eddie Drummer did the dang thing and the football players of Creek U were all suffering from a strange presentation of athlete’s foot.
That didn’t mean Check could give it any less thought. Because what if. What if Eddie’s life had been ruined for something he hadn’t done?
Check was restless.
He sat alone in the old manufacturing facility that had become his residence. The inside had been refurbished into a modern-looking, two-bedroom apartment. Chic if you were into exposed pipes. Check currently sat on the floor of his den area, stacking cans of Chef Boyardee into a makeshift city of which he was the mayor. Just one elected official who’d voted for himself. Alone. Like always.
Fuck. He really needed to mellow out. But he’d already searched for stray nugs of weed and there wasn’t even anything in the grinder to scrape. It was desperate times in the township of New Boyardee. And desperate times... well... they called for desperate measures.
Check dug his phone from the pocket of his shorts and shot a text Enoch’s way.
u up? come over. will trade ravioli for weed.
He followed it with the air and leaves that everyone knew meant weed and the little guy with something dribbling from his mouth that was highly suggestive but also absolutely hilarious. Then Check laid his back against the floor and waited for a reply, his body a makeshift boulevard for the main drag down New Boyardee.
It was a beautiful day in Conner’s Creek. Afternoons like this, with the sun beaming over the mountains in the distance, Check really started to feel at home in Washington. It reminded him of Vermont. The good memories, like little bees that buzzed around the dandelions, working hard while 20-somethings slacked off with Ultimate Frisbee and old men gathered together to play Chess.
Well, old men and one young ultra nerd.
Check came upon William from behind, rounding the Chess board where it appeared he was playing both sides. He traced five moves with his finger, showing William what he’d meant.
“See? Your destiny’s all laid out for you and it’s a losing one,” he said, sitting down in the seat on the opposite side of the board. “Unless you mean for black to win, in which case...” He bumped his fist against his chest. “My brother.”
He moved the knight to the space he’d traced only seconds before.
“You really concentrating on the game or are you thinking about the ghost of football past?”
Check had spent most of his life with tunnel vision. He had a single goal and every choice he made was to accomplish it. He didn’t know how to live any other way. So when Unsolved Inc. was tasked with The Case of the Haunted Locker Room, he was less than enthused. Dead football players likely did not have the answers that Check was searching for. He didn’t particularly care if the Wranglers lost the state championship because they were afraid of getting booboos while they changed. Buck up. People had worse shit going on.
But. However. Never The Less.
It was necessary to play along. Not only to see what this group of self-proclaimed ghost hunters could actually do when put to the task, but Check supposed doing good things for other people was the type of karmic energy he needed. His life had been tilted indefinitely toward negative juju. Helping out a bunch of dudes with jock itch wouldn’t quite balance the scales, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Ozymandias!” Check rolled up to Oz on a busted skateboard. They had agreed to meet up and head to the prison together in order to take advantage of visitor’s hours. Eddie Drummer had been rightfully skeptical of two randos asking to chat, but if any of the Unsolved members could speak jock, it would have been Check and Oz, and Eddie seemed desperate to tell his story to anyone that would listen.
“King of kings, pharaoh of Unsolved,” Check continued in greeting. “You know, this’ll be my first prison interview. Gotta say, I’m a little nervous. And excited. Horny...?” He squinted, as if considering it. “Anyway, please tell me you have a super detailed plan that you’re gonna divulge on the ride over.”
my wonka death would be asking mr wonka why he doesn’t solve world hunger, and he plays a little song on his flute and then the oompa loompas come and beat me into twinkie batter for my hubris
“How do I heal a wound that’s still being cut?
How do I outrun a knife that follows me wherever I go?”
CHECK BISHOP
the comedian
age: 21
pronouns: he/him
sexuality: bisexual, aromantic
major: anthropology, senior year
other activities: member of the hornets, creek u’s snowboarding team
fun facts
✧ takes absolutely nothing seriously. always has a joke on the tip of his tongue, most often when it is least appropriate.
✧ smarter than he seems. able to translate both latin and hebrew. has worked with ancient greek but isn’t the best at it.
✧ head full of myths and legends, both local and international. he has a contact in denmark who is a folklore scholar that he will often call to run clues by.
✧ friends with everybody but close to nobody. he never divulges much about himself beyond the superficial.
✧ dresses very loudly. lots of colors and accessories, always has painted nails, often wearing novelty sunglasses indoors.
✧ trust fund baby that does not work but instead spends most of his time at frat parties, snowboarding, or working on stuff for unsolved. he lives in an abandoned but refurbished manufacturing facility on the outskirts of town.
✧ claims to be part of unsolved because it’s a laugh riot.
✧ loves smokin’ weed, looking at art, and hooking up with people whose names he forgets the morning after.
full bio →
[trigger warnings: family death]
Love is a kind of death. The death of the life you had before. The death of who you used to be, before you met them. For Check Bishop... love and death were one and the same.
He was born to a lovely couple in Montpelier, Vermont. His father was a museum curator. His mother, a Mathematics professor and world Chess champion for three non-consecutive years. The three, along with Check’s two older sisters, formed a tight-knit, loving family. Until.
It was the painting. Nathaniel Bishop had been ecstatic when it was donated by an anonymous benefactor. “The Widow in the Woods” was a highly sought-after piece. Around 96 x 82 inches, the work was large and exquisitely detailed. The canvas displayed the image of a woman in white, weeping on her knees at the edge of a dark wood. After its completion in the late 1600s, the painting was bought and sold many times, jumping from wealthy estate to wealthy estate. Because the artwork was beautiful... but also sad.
So sad, in fact, that nobody could bear it. Stare into the widow’s face for too long and you began to know her pain. Hang her tears in your home for all to see, her sorrow became your own. Eventually, the painting was donated to a museum in its home country of Denmark. It was - rather promptly - stolen. It became a work of art lost to time, disappearing for centuries until its existence was only a rumor among the knowledgeable. Until.
Until it was anonymously donated to a museum in Vermont.
Check remembered the first time he ever saw the painting... he stared into the darkness of the woods for so long, his family left the museum without him, drove all the way home, and ate dinner together before they realized he wasn’t with them. They found him standing right in front of the widow just as he’d been when they left. Gazing into her face.
It quickly became his favorite piece of art in the entire building. Every day after school, Check would race to the east wing of his father’s museum, keeping the widow company. He sat next to her while he did his homework, while he listened to music... for hours and hours before heading home to bed, only to do the same thing the next day. Until.
Until the day they destroyed the widow. Check was sitting in the east wing as always, propped on a bench with his schoolwork. Three boys had wandered from their chaperone, rough-housing in the small room where the painting was displayed. It started with one boy remarking how bored he was; then the second exclaimed how much he hated the painting of the crying woman; then the third said two very important words... “Watch this.”
Before Check realized what was happening, the boy had pulled a can of spray paint from his backpack and marred the painting with thick, garish lines. Ruining it. Covering the image of the crying woman in dripping red paint until she was no longer there.
Alarm bells were supposed to ring. A security guard was supposed to rush in. There were protocols in place for tampering with the art work, but nothing happened. Check - a mere eight years old at the time - rushed toward the three teenagers, yelling for help, but they laughed and ran off, leaving behind only an emptied can of spray paint.
His heart felt empty as Check stood alone in the room with the ruined widow. Alone until.
Until the woman walked in. For years, Check would try to remember her face. But it was lost in memory. Shadowed. Painted over. All Check has ever remembered are the words she said to him:
“How could you do this?”
His mouth opened, but his voice wouldn’t work. Tears started to stream down his face.
“You must have no heart,” the woman said, her whispered words dripping with sadness. Then, anger. “You are a child. You have never known pain like this. But you will.”
The room grew darker. They were surrounded by four walls, but somehow Check felt the wind. Leaves fluttered past. Branches swayed where the ceiling should have been.
“You, who is cruel and callous, will learn what it is to grieve. A curse upon you and all that you shall ever love. May death forever be close behind.”
Check’s parents found him an hour later. Security camera footage would show the three teens ruining the painting. It would also show Check standing in place. Alone. For the entire hour.
Three weeks later, the car accident happened. Check survived without a scratch. His mother, father, and both sisters were pronounced dead at the scene. He moved in with his maternal grandmother, only for a heart attack to take her after the first month. Social services placed Check in a foster home and while he was still in the process of moving in, his best friend from school was hospitalized with what would be a fatal case of Meningitis.
The first foster family was nice. Check lived with them for two years until the deli they owned and ran was robbed at gunpoint. Check hid behind the counter with their bodies until the cops showed up.
The second foster family was not nice. But Check would grow to learn that not nice was better. Not nice was easier. Because with eight dead bodies behind him, Check understood his new truth:
Everybody that Check loved was going to die.
His life began to revolve around the curse. He was fearful of making friends, terrified of others’ kindnesses. Check lived his life ensuring he kept the world at a distance - not through cruelty of which he was incapable, but rather through apathy. Lightheartedness. Making everything into a joke so he didn’t dare care too much.
And he searched. Check dedicated himself to finding a way to break the curse. Fortunately, his parents had been very well off and well connected. Not only had they left him with a trust fund that was untouchable until the day he turned 18, but they had left him with contacts. Historians, scholars, theologians, artists. Check contacted them all, researching folklore, myth, legend... everything and anything he could find about curses, and paintings, and the woman.
By the time he graduated high school, Check had learned two different ancient languages and made exactly zero close friends. But loneliness did not matter to him... because he had a lead.
Conner’s Creek. It was a little town in Washington, unremarkable save for one thing: it was a hub of strange activity and it was where Eugene lived. Eugene who had donated “The Widow in the Woods” to Nathaniel Bishop ten years prior.
Check was antsy for a confrontation as soon as he stepped foot in Washington, but he is taking it slow. He enrolled in Creek University’s Anthropology program. He joined the college’s snowboarding team, The Hornets, as a means to familiarize himself with the forest and local mountain range. He’s been playing it cool... until.
Until he joined Unsolved Inc, a group of likeminded individuals who might be able to help him. Check can’t let them get too close, but if he’s finally going to confront Eugene, it’ll be nice to have some backup.
