Looking back I can still remember thinking to myself “Who even owns a VCR player anymore.” Sitting on the couch eyeing the black and plastic rectangle in my hands. I flipped it over time and time again like I was expecting to notice something new. It never changed though, just a regular looking cassette. The only thing worth noting was the name printed on the front of it.
“Charles,” I said aloud, repeating my name back at me. Well, I suppose the fact that the tape was left at my doorstep overnight was quite the oddity as well. Of course, I considered calling the authorities, but I figured if I did they would take the tape to review the contents. And I figured that the tape was harmless and that I could just take a peek at it and decide what to do after depending on what was on it. Strange sure, but it wasn’t exactly an explosive device.
I eyed the entertainment system in front of me as I searched online for any second hand shops nearby. They were all over the place, I guess you don’t notice places like that unless you’re looking for them. So I set the tape down on the coffee table and gathered my things for a short journey. I had intended for it to be short anyways. Anyone who still owns a VCR must be clutching to them like pearls because I had to drive to four different stores before finally stumbling upon one.
After some small talk about aging tech with the cashier, I headed home and started to hook up the VCR, well after digging through the attic to find dust-covered cords that would plug into the thing. Before the sun had even begun to settle, I had my fresh “Like new” VCR up and ready to go. As excited as I was, sometimes life doesn’t line up with a constructive narrative timeline and I had to head off to work.
I’m just a security guard who watches over a mostly empty building at nighttime. Gives me plenty of free time to look at my phone and catch up with the news, when I can stomach it that is. I found myself listening to the local news station. They were talking about a recent murder that occurred. I listened, dull-eyed while watching a dozen actionless screens. They were talking about what a nice guy he was previously. Family members said it just didn’t make sense for him to crack like that.
Within a matter of a week, he had turned into a completely different person. They refused to go into details about it and that was fine with me. Hearing the gruesome description of murder wasn’t on my to-do list while stationed completely alone in the middle of the night. I just kept thinking about the tape, sitting on my table waiting for me to come back home. The hours passed, and every so often the news would revisit the murder case but as details developed, my shift ended.
Walking in the front door I could feel the fatigue setting in, a heavy gloom of darkness still resting outside. I should have headed straight to bed, it could have waited till the morning but I was curious. I didn’t even know if the player I purchased even worked yet. So I powered it on, little red light chiming on, beaconing my actions like a siren. After navigating video sources I landed on a bright blue screen.
There were familiar clunks and chugging coming from the player that I hadn’t heard since I was a child. It immediately brought me back to the days of sitting on the rug in my mother’s living room. My young eyes were being assaulted by movies that someone my age shouldn’t have been watching while my mother was sleeping. There was a pulse of nerves running over my body as I pressed the tape in and walked back, waiting for it to stir up.
The blue screen remained for a while as if the machine was considering whether or not I should see what it had in store. Though I chalked it up to the machine likely not having been used in ages. It was startling when the screen finally changed. I expected some kind of menu to come up but it went right to the video.
It started with what looked like footage shot from inside of a moving car, looking out at the street as houses passed it by. Then a low-spoken, gravel-filled voice began to speak. It said, “Our story begins in the small sleepy town of…” Well, where I live. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t wish to give that information away. But the voice couldn’t have been more spot on, small and sleepy are just the right words for my town.
Hardly thought anyone even knew this place existed, much less cared enough about it to make any kind of video on it. But since it had to do with my hometown, the curiosity I had felt before was increased tenfold. Sitting on the couch my body leaned forward, being pulled towards the angler fish. My Chin resting on my fingers, my intent narrowed in. Watching the car drive down the street, I started to recognize the houses it was going by. It was a bizarre feeling, almost intrusive.
The footage showed houses I had visited, belonging to friends and family, all covered in a thin sheet of glistening snow. “This is where it all began, the troubled life of Charles…” the voice said my last name. You’d think my heart would race or my stomach would drop but no, just confusion. Using the remote I paused the video and my living room was filled with an uncomfortable silence.
There was this sensation that escaped me, the feeling of being watched but knowing that there wasn’t anyone there to watch you. The feeling of longing for loneliness despite having it. The feeling of needing to know more. Just watching a tape can’t hurt you. This isn’t a horror movie, no little girls are going to climb out of the screen and grab you. So I pressed play again.
When the man spoke, all my focus was on his voice. Was he someone that I knew, an older relative? It’s hard to recall people’s voices but for the life of me, nothing rang a bell. As far as I was concerned I had never heard of this man before. Eventually, the car came to a halt, and almost as if the gods decided to pursue cinematography, a cloud rolled overhead darkening the view of the house just outside the car’s window.
My house, the one I grew up in, the one I had inherited from my late parents. The one I was sitting in as the tape played in front of me. That’s when the tightness in my chest started to settle in. The couch suddenly felt like it was full of worms, wriggling underneath me making it impossible to get uncomfortable. Pausing the video again I rose from the couch and walked to the front windows. Looking outside as light started to creep over the horizon, nothing looked unusual. The same cars that were always there sat where they always did.
“A tape can’t hurt you,” I repeated to myself, shutting the blinds and walking back to watch more of the tape. It was strange that the time had said my life was “Troubled times’ ‘. My life, I would never describe myself like that. My life was very blessed and privileged if I’m being completely blunt. My parents had a rock-solid relationship. We weren’t rich but we never struggled. I had friends, solid relationships with the people I dated. I was lucky and didn’t live with regrets. Anything but troubled.
“Starting at a young age Charles had an obsession with animals…” The video cut to me as a child. It looked like the home video but it was filmed from a distance with no one else around, just me around 5 or 6 playing in the backyard. My eyes were so full of childlike wonder. I in the present though was filled with a much different wonder.
An obsession with animals? I liked animals, sure but no more or less than any other child would. I liked dinosaurs more than anything else. Thoughts drifted in and out of the grooves of my brain. The only conclusion there was at the time is that this was possibly some fun project my parents started before their passing. Maybe it was never completed and some relative found it in their house and dropped it off?
Watching myself playing with a small white bunny on the screen, the memory of what I was seeing came back to me. I remember that the bunny had bitten me and hurried away after doing so. I remember it because my parents had to drive me to the hospital and bought me Mcdonald’s on the way home. Just as the memory of that bunny running away played in the back of my mind, the voice continued.
“He had a fascination with watching them suffer.”
Just as it was in my memory, I could see the rabbit twist around and clamp its mouth down on my small hand. What the narrator said barely registered as I waited for my younger self to react the way I remember reacting, Instead he reached out and grabbed the bunny. My focus was so dialed in, i could’ve been floating through space. My little hands seemed to close tighter and tighter on the midsection of the bunny.
The white ball of fur was squirming, having since let go of the kid’s other hand, which he used to grasp the animal’s neck. The feeling of a long night of binge drinking started to fall over me, that sensation of needing to vacate the contents in my stomach. The scene played for far too long as that animal struggled. It couldn’t get loose though, the grip I had on it seemed almost inhuman.
And the camera. It picked up way too much detail for how old it should’ve been, I could see thin veins or red running down those small fingers. The boy was digging his nails causing pools of blood to rush. The bunny’s movements got slower and slower until it just stopped moving, enough of the red having left its neck. My stomach at this point was competing at an Olympic level for gymnastics.
The little boy on screen looked around the yard checking to see if anyone saw what he had done. His eyes landed on the camera and he held his gaze like he could see the person filming. There was an artifact on the video, like a short glitch that was barely noticeable, it was around the boy’s eyes. The video flittered and made his eyes quickly become out of focus and vibrate before returning to normal.
I cannot express to you just how wrong the footage was. I’ve never hurt an animal, certainly never killed one so brutally. The footage and all the ones that followed weren’t right. All the time it cuts to me hurting something else. Shooting a pellet gun at a seagull, I’ve never owned a pellet gun. The narrator claims “This behavior would only increase as Charles got on in age.”
In each clip I looked a little older, it was me. I kept trying to deny myself that it might just be someone that looked like me. But it wasn’t. At some point the photobook my mom kept around the house ended up on my lap. Every time the footage would cut to a new scene I would look through the photos. So often I was able to find a picture where it looked identical, right down to the clothing of my younger self. The only thing that set me and that boy apart was when the glitch would briefly appear.
It wasn’t in every clip but it was there, dotted throughout. My stomach was a wreck, I couldn’t have done those things. Hurt those animals, the way he played with cats, pulling at their tails until they ripped his arm up. He stuffed a pill into peanut butter and rejoiced when a dog lapped it up, only for it to start frothing at the mouth moments later.
Some of the clips were taken from inside the very home I sat in. Watching as my younger self sat in my room. The way it looked back then with posters of movies and shows I liked back then, I still know where some of them are. “Charles’s pension for violence was unable to be contained.” The narrator almost sounded fed up with me, like he hated me. “Nor did it remain an exclusively outward expression.”
Intuition kicked in and I knew what was going to happen next. Knew what the young boy was reaching for at his side table. Once the metal shined on the screen my body leaned forward, halfheartedly committing to turning the VCR off, just being done with it. The thought lingers, a metaphorical finger hovering over the power button. No, the finger was frozen. I was frozen watching the pocket knife I had stolen from my dad, dig into my skin on the screen.
My wrist started to itch as the footage showed in excess the blade pulling apart the skin, separating edge from edge. The warm liquid that poured out of me looked so similar to what came out of all those animals. Almost like a cathartic retribution. The sensation of my younger self knowing I was watching him wrapped me out of nowhere, kept expecting my young dark eyes to peer up at me.
“Charles would continue to cause violence to himself and the animals he sought out. But bloodlust is ever growing, and when Charles reached 18 he would commit his first murder.” My finger finally pressed down on the power button. The TV turned off and my face was reflected dimly in the dark space. It looked fake, I had been so enraptured by that younger version of me I had forgotten about my present self. I watched with my eyes in the reflection waiting for them to flitter as they did in the footage.
My heart was pumping so hard, standing up would surely have put me back on my ass again. Sitting in the darkness that swirling in my stomach dissipated as the distance was created between me and the tape. It would be another few hours before the sun was going to rise, the urge to stop and the desire to watch more were at war. Then I remembered the news, going on about the man who committed the murder.
Soon phone was in hand, there had to have been some more in-depth information online and sure enough, there it was. My eyes scanned through all of it, the gruesome details. How he put his hands around his wife’s throat, closed his fist so hard that his fingernails cut through her veins. Reports called it almost inhuman. Then there were the revelations. People claimed he was always a good guy. They were all shocked to discover this wasn’t his first murder, and that he had a long history of death.
How did they find all this out? The police searched through the contents of the VHS tape sitting in a haphazard set-up VCR in his living room. My tape had to be destroyed, with its contents I certainly couldn’t just call the police. But before it was, I needed to know. There was a small finite chance that I don’t remember my childhood as it actually was. But murder? There’s no way, nothing even close comes to mind. I needed to see it played out.
Once again, nearly against my will. The power button was pressed and the TV sang to life. The blue screen was brief this time like the film was eager to show me what it had in store for me. It picked up right where it left off, the narration having just finished. The footage played, me sitting on the bus with my hood over my head, intentions having been set in stone. His eyes were so focused, almost angry. The person sitting in front of him was singing a song that I recognized, some pop garbage that was popular at the time.
At least that was accurate, I never really enjoyed that kind of music and I hate when people are singing out loud in public. Complete disregard. Not THAT angry thought. Not angry enough to follow them off the bus in the middle of the night. To walk behind them for three blocks knowing they couldn’t hear me over their music. So angry that I’d wrap the headset wire around their neck to pull them to the ground.
Of course, the wire wasn’t strong enough to hold up, it snapped halfway down but his anger was set in motion. The camera captures sweeping shots like it was some cool action movie. Instead of cheering in my seat though I could only try to stifle the shivers that pricked at me. I was so afraid, so afraid of myself. My face had never contorted like that before, it hardly resembled me anymore. The eyes kept glitching out, looking completely black as he reeled his fist back and brought it down.
He kept hitting the side of their head like he was attacking the earbuds instead of the person. The earbuds didn’t hold up either though, their cheap plastic shattered and I could see the bits embedding into my fist which would, in turn, get stuck in the victim. The poor victim could only stand to get a few cries out until they were drowned out by curdling moans. Sitting in the living room with my fingers together I could feel the sweat pooling between my palms.
So badly, I wanted him to stop, that darker version of me. Just as the bunny had at the start of the movie, the victim’s body started going limp and soon, didn’t move at all. It was done and he got up and walked away like it was nothing. Didn’t bother to brush the blood off his knuckles, just walked away. “From here Charles would go on to…” I turned it off before the voice finished.
There was no interest in finishing that movie, however much left of it there was. As the tape was ejected I wondered about the man on the news. Had he watched to the end? It wasn’t real, it looked so exact. Just like my home, just like my clothing. It was as if someone filmed an alternate reality where every dark impulse came through. With tape in hand, I stared at the mirror. Looking at myself waiting to see if my eyes would flitter. It started to feel like I was a fake. Like the version of me in the tape, that was the real me. Dark and deep desires fished to the surface.
Even as I stood in front of the small fire I set in my backyard, the tape played over and over in my head. The moments I witnessed shrouded the memories I did have. The film was so clear in my mind it felt like the childhood I had was being replaced. My first even began to feel sore as I remembered pummelling the guy’s face in. But it wasn’t me.
Plumes of fog left my mouth as I tried and failed to control my breathing. Looking down it felt like it took forever to burn the tape. Its dark plastic giving little quarter to the flames. Try as I might, those dark memories kept coming back until they were all I had. I wonder if I had watched the whole tape, and completely thrown myself into it. Who would I really be when it finished? If that documentary continued until the present, all my memories would be replaced.
I’m not who I was in that documentary. But… I can feel him. I know him. “What’s on it?” The voice broke me from the flame’s spell. Lifting my head I was met with my neighbor’s gaze, concern plastered on his face.
“Just some old footage.” I replied, my voice sounding static.
“Should I watch it?” He replied, his voice just as distant as mine. I eyed him for a moment, reading his expression. He wasn’t talking about my tape. My expression dropped and my heart tugged at something awful. Without a word I turned away and rushed around the side of my house. Trying so hard to contain the overwhelming panic.
The power of suggestion. Humans have been victims of it for as long as we’ve been grunting in caves. You can convince yourself you’re sick. You can convince others that a house is haunted. You can convince your partner that they’re acting strange. And as I ran from one house to the next, looking at the tapes sitting on their porches, gathering up the ones that I could. Troubling was how many houses didn’t have tapes. But I could almost see the outline of where they once were. I knew then, thinking about all those people watching the darkest versions of themselves.
That seeing is believing.