It was a bright Saturday morning and I had sat on the couch to watch the local news channel with a large cup of coffee and a bagel, like I always did. Something about the mundane stories out of our little town the anchors would report on had a calming effect on me, and it was always a nice way to start my weekend. I had moved here for a fresh start just over a year ago and managed to snag a room in a lovely townhouse with two friends - Julien and Luca - as roommates. The weatherman was in the middle of giving us the welcome news that it’d be a warm spring weekend when I noticed something odd on the annotated map. The temperature had read 60°F for as long as I’d been watching, but then displayed the word ‘run’ in lowercase before morphing back into the temperature. I thought it was odd and let out a chuckle of bemusement, but chalked it up to a simple production error and took another bite of my bagel.
As the weatherman said his goodbyes, the chipper anchors took back control with the story of our mayor running for state senator when another part of the screen snatched my attention. The ticker at the bottom of the broadcast had just read ‘LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE RUNS IN STATE ELECTION’ but was flickering into something different that I unfortunately could not quite make out. After struggling with this for a little while longer, I reached into my pocket and grabbed my phone so I could take a video and pause it when the flickering momentarily stopped to satisfy my curiosity about what was being shown. When I played the video back, the innocuous headline morphed into the chilling sentence ‘they are not your friends’. I felt a shiver work its way down my spine at the implied meaning, but the overriding emotion was still one of confusion.
I switched off the TV and decided to move on with my day, as we were supposed to be going to a concert tonight. The artists are all very well known and it was a big deal for our small down, which meant that Julien and Luca wanted to see the band leave their hotel so they could get autographs and a few pictures, but I wasn’t as enthused so decided to hang back and meet them at the downtown arena a couple of hours before showtime. I spent the bulk of the day lounging around and video chatting with a close friend from my hometown and only noticed that I had to get ready to leave because my phone buzzed with the reminder my forgetful but smart former self had left. After getting dressed, my phone let out a ping from my back pocket and I assumed it’d be my friends asking if I had left the house yet. I was surprised to see that whilst Julien had sent a message to our group chat, it read ‘hope u haven’t left yet, lead singer got sick and they’re sending us all home’ followed by Luca’s ‘so damn annoying, hope he gets better soon and we can make the new date’. I replied ‘was just about to leave, thanks for the heads up guys and sorry u couldn’t see the show tnight’.
I made my way back through the hallway and into the living room, figuring that the local news would have picked up on the story by now and I might get to see my friends amongst the crowd at the hotel on the TV. Oddly enough, there was no mention of a cancellation and in actual fact, the male anchor from earlier was reporting live from outside the arena and repeatedly mentioned his excitement at being able to see this live at no cost as a news reporter and a huge fan of the band. Whilst I was beginning to feel a strange gut feeling, my ever-rational mind convinced me that the news channel had been playing up all day and that this must simply be a re-run from an earlier report and so I switched the television off and decided to make plans with some other friends to head out that night. As I walked out of the living room, I heard the distinctive bzzzt sound that our old TV makes when it turns on and swiveled my head around to see the news was on. The headline read ‘ARENA CONCERT POSTPONED DUE TO BAND SICKNESS’ and the reporter was again broadcasting from outside the arena with a now dejected, depressed look on his previously joyous face. He went on to describe the same situation Julien and Luca had told me about, but the headline flickered again just as it had that morning.
This time I was able to read it clearly enough after squinting.
“let them in. they are your friends. let them in. let them in. let them in.”
Almost immediately after comprehending what the television read, I heard the familiar and distinctive knock of my roommates at the front door.
They are my friends, I want to let them in.