I’m not a very high-octane person. I enjoy lying around in the comfort of a soft blanket. When I do lie around I find watching a bit of TV helps me relax, but now I don’t know if I can ever again. Yesterday I was watching TV and was flipping through the channels. I stumbled upon a channel named “Channel 12”. The name still sends goosebumps down my spine and makes me shudder. It seemed like an ordinary newscast, nothing different than Fox News or CNN, but oh how wrong could I have been.
As I was watching, the program stuttered every once in a while. I paid no mind because I had a bad TV and an old internet connection. so I kept watching, keeping it as background noise to write to. Once I did slightly tune in though, it sounded weird. it was saying things like “Hungary will have a high of 2,857 tomorrow.” “2,857!?” I muttered alarmingly. “That’s weird,” I thought, “ maybe I misheard it or something.” I’m an author, so I had been focusing on writing a paper instead of looking at the screen. Once I peeled my eyes off of the story I was so very invested in, I saw that the small glitches I had seen before had turned into large jumps, making the newscast appear as if it were a slideshow. It had gotten so bad at some points, that the TV colors would invert. This was when I started to pay more attention to the newscast.
I texted my friend, Frank, when I saw it was getting weird.
“ yo u up?”
“yuh whatchu need”
“could you come over rq I need ur help”
“aight i aint got nothin better to do lol”
When he arrived the glitches were already worse than when I texted him, now the audio was glitching too, cutting out every so often. Sometimes, it felt like I could feel screams of fear and pain crawling through the TV. My friend looked at the TV. “Wow, that is messed up,” he said. We muttered about it for a while until I thought I heard the TV say something. “Help.” it sounded like a small girl, I’d say 7 or 8 at least, but it was louder than the whole conversation. We both heard it and stared at the TV curiously. “Don’t try to fight it.” the TV said, now in a dark, deep, haunting voice. At that moment I realized I couldn’t move. Whatever that voice had said or done, I was stuck in a trance, staring at the screen. “Don’t worry,” the voice said. “Just let go.”
Suddenly, I started descending. I looked up and watched as my body went limp. This random channel just took me out of the mortal plain. I watched as the generic, but nice house I lived in drifted away into the dark void and a horrifying deep red shun from below. I tried to stop it, grabbing onto the rocky walls as I went down and screaming for help. That’s what those screams were. The same voice from earlier echoed in my head. “Just let go.” I watched in despair as another soul pried into my cold, dead body. I believe it was the voice that stole it.
And now I sit, stuck in hell, waiting for someone to receive this message. This is a call for help. I don’t know what you can or will do, but I need something. I have fallen victim to Channel 12.