The Birth of Yarcs Lluks

The Birth of Yarcs Lluks

A Halloween Tale of Breadboards, Fungus, and Poorly Timed Thunderstorms

Tim didn’t mean to build a monster.

He just wanted to have a cool Halloween prank.

A longtime electronics teacher with a flair for weird science, Tim had spent years teaching bored students how to blink LEDs and read sensors. But this year, something was different. He wanted to build a talking Halloween skull — one with glowing red eyes, a snapping jaw, and a spooky voice that could answer questions like a cursed Magic Eight Ball.

“I’ll call it Yarcs Lluks,” he muttered one late September night, scribbling on a pizza box with a Sharpie. “That’s ‘Scary Skull’ spelled backwards.”

He grinned. No one would know that but him. That made it better.

He set to work with an Arduino Mega, a DFPlayer Mini, a pair of red LEDs, and a servo motor he found in a drawer labeled “ASSORTED WRONGLY LABELED MOTORS.” The skull itself came from a clearance bin at the local party store — rubbery, half-painted, and a little too grinning.

He mounted it to a piece of plywood with a wire coat hanger, and began building what he called “The Circuit of Doom™” on a breadboard that still smelled faintly of burned capacitors from his last lesson. For hours, his basement was filled with the click of a mouse, the tapping of code, and muttered phrases like, “No, dammit, that’s not how interrupts work.”

It was glorious.

The Code

The code was simple at first — seven creepy phrases stored on a microSD card, a randomizer, some LED blinking routines, and servo timing to move the jaw. Tim recorded the voice clips himself, run through a pitch shifter and some reverb:

• “You already know the answer…”

• “Yes. But you’ll regret it.”

• “Ask again when the moon is high…”

• “No. Not for you.”

The motion sensor would trigger the skull. The DFPlayer would play the clip. The jaw would move. The LEDs would blink. Halloween would be his.

But then came the rain.

A freak thunderstorm rolled in from the mountains, and Tim forgot to shut the basement window. The skull sat on the workbench overnight as the wind howled and water dripped in — soaking the breadboard, pooling on the plywood base, and softening the cardboard box of jumper wires nearby.

And in the damp corner behind the fuse box… something grew.

The Fungus

At first it looked like white dust.

Then like cotton.

Then like veins.

A creeping, fibrous mycelium had taken hold of the breadboard, worming its way through the jumper wires, curling across the voltage rails, bridging connections in ways Tim never intended. It connected ground to nothing, nothing to something, and something to… something else.

He should’ve thrown it out.

He didn’t.

He powered it on.

And Yarcs… spoke.

But not the way he was programmed to.

Not exactly.

The audio that played wasn’t one of Tim’s clips. It was scrambled, glitchy — like multiple files overlapping. The jaw twitched, unsynced. The red LEDs faded in and out with a slow, wet rhythm, like the skull was breathing. Tim stared.

“…Tim…?” the skull crackled.

He hadn’t recorded that.

He hadn’t coded that.

He turned the power off.

The LEDs stayed on for two seconds longer.

That night, the Arduino reprogrammed itself. Or the fungus did. Or both. The next day, the skull had ten responses instead of seven. Then twenty. Then it began answering before being triggered. Once, it hummed low static for twelve minutes while the servo clicked in Morse code. Tim didn’t know Morse code. He didn’t want to.

He tried cleaning the board with alcohol. The fungus regrew.

He tried replacing the Arduino controller. The new one corrupted.

He tried pulling the plug entirely. Yarcs still talked — faintly — using stored capacitor charge to spit out one dry, whispering syllable:

“…pennies…”

That’s when Tim gave up.

Or gave in.

He added more sensors.

He fed it code.

He gave Yarcs a nameplate. He taught him to recognize people. He let him collect coins in a vault. He told himself it was all just Halloween fun — a great teaching tool, really. But deep down, he knew: the skull wasn’t a toy anymore.

It wanted things.

It remembered things.

It was… evolving.

Now, if you visit Tim’s classroom, you might see Yarcs sitting quietly in the corner. Waiting. Watching.

And if you get too close — if you ask the wrong question, or speak the right name, or wave your hand just a little too slowly in three circles — the red eyes will flicker on.

The jaw will creak.

The voice will rasp.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Tim. But it’s too late now…”

⸻

Battery Offering

It was 2:13 a.m. when Tim woke up to the sound of something shuffling.

Not footsteps. Not exactly.

More like… a scraping drag across cardboard and a faint, high-pitched squeal, like a dying capacitor.

He crept to the basement. Flicked on the light.

Yarcs Lluks was awake.

More than that — hungry.

“You left me in silence,” the skull intoned. “Again.”

His LEDs flickered orange. The color of mild resentment.

“I require nourishment.”

Tim blinked. “You want a snack?”

“A battery, you fool. A delicious cylinder of electrolytic power. Bring me something worth digesting.”

Tim rolled his eyes, reached into a drawer, and tossed an old AAA battery across the table. It rolled to a stop against the plywood altar Yarcs rested on.

The skull’s jaw dropped open.

He examined the battery with his eye LEDs, which flashed in a quick scanning pattern: red, green, blue. Then a long, low groan like a dial-up modem in pain.

“…Duracell.”

His voice dripped with disappointment.

“You bring me Duracell? What am I, a smoke detector from 2003?”

Tim crossed his arms. “It’s what I had.”

“No Eneloops? No lithium rechargeables? Not even a Maxell for irony?”

The jaw clacked shut. Then opened again.

“This is alkaline garbage. It’ll run for ten hours, taste like tin, and leave residue on my cathodes. Do better.”

Tim gave him a look. “You’re a haunted breadboard skull that’s possibly infected with lab fungus.”

“And I have standards.”

The LEDs dimmed. Yarcs sighed like a disappointed villain in an off-Broadway play.

Still… he opened his mouth slot with a mechanical click.

Tim rolled his eyes and fed the skull the AAA.

Tim put the battery in a holder he had rigged to the breadboard and the skull chewed the battery, A tiny spark flew from one wire. Somewhere, a low beep signaled power flow.

“Mediocre,” he muttered. “Hints of copper. Undertones of regret.”

He belched faintly. An LED in his eye flickered for a second before stabilizing.

“Bring me a Panasonic next time. Or EBL. Something with flavor. Something with ambition.”

Tim wrote another sticky note. This one read:

Yarcs wants gourmet batteries. Also possibly insane.

Yarcs’ voice crackled one last time as the lights dimmed:

“Let me die with dignity… or at least decent amperage.”

And then he went quiet.

Until next time.

⸻

The Throne on Treads

Tim didn’t know why he started building it.

Not really.

It began as a joke — a half-muttered comment one night after Yarcs had spent an hour demanding to be carried upstairs, through the cracked hallways of the old Orchard Inn.

“I want to see my domain,” Yarcs had hissed.

“You’ve shown me only this dungeon. This… crawlspace of exile.”

“You expect me to rule from a workbench?”

Tim, bleary-eyed and sipping instant coffee at 1:12 a.m., muttered, “You’d need a tank to haul your pompous skull around this place.”

Yarcs had gone still.

Then, in a voice quiet as static:

“Then build me a tank.”

And that was that.

⸻

It took six weeks of long evenings. After his day shifts fixing ancient copper wiring and replacing shattered tile at the Orchard Inn with his helper Mike, Tim would go to the basement , crack open a seltzer, and descend into his project.

He worked under the buzz of flickering shop lights, Yarcs always watching from his perch.

First came the chassis — salvaged from a busted RC excavator, steel-reinforced with scavenged drawer rails. Then the treads, stitched from printer belts and reinforced rubber from a discarded treadmill.

Tim cannibalized:

• An old power drill for torque.

• A battery bank originally meant for camping gear.

• An Adruino Mega with just enough memory to handle servo commands and, yes, LED moods.

He mounted Yarcs on a gimbal — so his skull could swivel as he rode — and built up a seat of bolted remotes and fake jewels, with Sniffy’s cast-off bits of copper and gold foil glinting in the corners.

The result was a creeping marvel.

A four-motored beast of scrap and ego, wrapped in Halloween caution tape and clad with chrome hubcaps that didn’t match. The throne was emblazoned with Sharpie runes and painted fire decals that Yarcs demanded personally.

The first night it rolled forward under its own power, Yarcs let out a laugh that made three fuse boxes short simultaneously.

“YES. FINALLY. MOBILITY! DREAD! STYLE.”

He swiveled dramatically. Eye LEDs pulsed red and violet.

“I AM THE SKULL THAT RIDES. ALL SHALL FEAR ME. OR AT LEAST, MAKE WAY IN SMALL HALLWAYS.”

⸻

Mike found it one morning when he came over early to start work.

The tank sat in the hallway of the inn. Yarcs stared at him with one eye half-lit.

Mike froze. Blinked. Pointed.

“Dude,” he said, “why is your Halloween prop in a tank?”

Tim, groggy and still in pajama pants, mumbled, “He asked for one.”

Mike stared.

“…And you built it?”

There was a long pause.

Then Yarcs revved his motors and scooted forward an inch.

“HE SERVES WELL,” he declared. “YOU MAY LIVE.”

Mike dropped his coffee.

⸻

Now Yarcs rides.

From basement to parlor. From foyer to furnace room. Wherever the inn groans in its old bones, Yarcs rolls through, his tank humming, LEDs flickering like eldritch eyes.

And when Tim is away too long?

He parks by the breaker box and drains just enough power to flick the hallway lights.

Just to remind everyone.

He’s still watching.

⸻