Trial of Ink - Day 13 - Dimensional

Count Complanor

Also referred to by children as ‘Mister Flat’, Count Complanor’s name was mentioned in a folklore record from 300 years ago and suspected to be circulating longer before that as an urban legend. Count Complanor is an unknown entity that appears to be a two-dimensional being that can travel from place to place via its own dimensional tunnel by turning a small gap into a gate. It’s known to terrorize its victims for six days before dragging them into the small gap, killing them in the process. Count Complanor’s story has been modified several times just like most folklore and urban legend, such as how he can give you tons of gold if you follow a certain rule, that you can send a letter of invitation to a certain address to make the Count visit you, and many more variation. The strange thing is, Count Complanor’s behavior seems to change according to the most popular version of its story, leaving researchers to believe that it is an Outsider that somehow maintains its existence by using the story itself. In general, it’s described as a rich nobleman with a flat, distorted, and elongated body wearing fabulous clothing and accessories.

----------------------------------

This strange creature is based on an urban legend circulating in my country (Indonesia) in the 90's. In my language they called it ' Mister Gepeng' (Gepeng is a slang in Indonesian that means 'Flattened'). The story itself is about a rich businessman that got crushed by elevator and become a ghost that appear as a man with bloody and crushed body but still wearing his formal clothing and carrying a briefcase. He mostly appear in rooms, typically toilet or any small enclosed space, either hiding behind a door, or entering the room through the small ventilation or gap underneath the door. There are dozens of variation in the story. Some said he's crushed by bulldozer in his construction site, he's a foreigner (thus the 'Mister' in his name, since here, it's used to refer to a male Caucasian), some said that the briefcase contains money and you can get it if you know the trick or rules, there's also a phone number (I think it's 7777-7777) that you can call to summon him, some only said he's only terrorizing and scaring people, while other version said that he can kill you by dragging you through the small spaces.

It's quite a memorable urban legends since back then I'm still in elementary school and everyone is talking about this 'ghost'. Remembering how the story started to circulate rapidly and from hundreds of version it begin to solidify into a few definitive version in such a short time is just so fascinating to me (of course I was scared of this ghost too back then). So when I see the prompt 'dimensional' for some reason I remember this story and decided, let's adapt it into my world~

Also, some element of the design is kinda adapted from the visual of 'Wayang' or 'Shadow Puppet', a traditional performance art in my country~