The video appeared on my recommendation feed at 1 in the night.
I promised my wife that I won’t use any electronic devices while in our vacation home (or a mansion) but I thought it won’t hurt to use it when she was asleep. I was extra careful to not wake her up as along with walking outside, me breaking her promises are the two things she hates the most. The silence was making me feel lonely as well but sitting down on the chair in the balcony made me appreciate the beautiful forest around us. Yet I knew this will be one of the rare chances that I’ll get to use my phone in this week long vacation especially since she had already urged me to have a hard-drinking game tomorrow night.
Then as I was scrolling down on my feed a video that was uploaded only an hour ago by a channel named “Aa12eightythree”. I usually avoid channels with wacky names like that, especially if they’re not verified but something about the bluish thumbnail with a shadow being illuminated on the radio made me think why don’t I give this video a shot. The video had no title which was nothing new and within a second I realized that it was a music video.
Except that there wasn’t much of a “video” in that.
The instrumental went on for the first 40 odd seconds, and then a vocaloid began singing. The lyrics were sounding gurgled and for the next 30 seconds I couldn’t recognize a thing. But the repetitive, soothing melody made me stay. The other thing that made me stay was the slight motion of the shadow. I could make out more of the shadow now. The shadow was definitely a female with an hourglass figure and it had a tinge of familiarity. I squinted my eyes hard enough to realize that she was dancing to the melody but before I could make more out of the song just screeched to an end.
“Did I stare into the figure for too long?”
No I didn’t. It was only 20 seconds past 2 minutes even though the video was 3 minutes and 22 seconds long. Then it appeared as if the shadow was closing her face in on the radio, but it shouldn’t have been possible. I could make out the facial features of the shadow and it was the most least feminine thing one could think of.
Its eyes, cheekbones and nose were the most definite of them but all of them were a bit too big for a face that petite. The eyes were looking down so far but the moment they looked towards the screen I turned my phone off. I couldn’t get a look in its eyes but I felt like I shouldn’t. I quietly returned to the bedroom with the phone still in my hand. It was irrational to be scared of a disproportionate face on the screen of an electronic device but I wasn’t irrational enough to just rest the phone in the balcony out of fear. I placed the phone on the desk near our bed and put up the blanket she had kicked away while sleeping back on her. As I saw her laid on her stomach I realized why I thought that figure was familiar.
“Hey sleepy-head wake up would ya? You can’t sleep that deep when we’re in the time of our life!”
These loud words woke me up. I opened my eyes slowly to see my vibrant wife, with a radio held in her hands.
“Look what I found under the stairs!” – She said as she proceeded to put the radio in my hands. I wasn’t about to hold a heavy object seconds after waking up so I put that thing on the table and went to wash my face. As I cleaned my eyes I remembered about the video last night. “What a coincidence” – I thought.
I returned and asked my wife if that had always been there but she claimed to not know a thing. This vacation home was owned by her aunt but for some reason she lit herself on fire and then jumped into the lake. I’ve never seen her and neither did I hear much about her so I didn’t know if it was natural for her to commit suicide. All I knew was that she never married and my wife heard from her mother that she didn’t if she even had a boyfriend in her life, ever. She left everything she had to her only sibling.
Neither I nor my wife knew how to operate a radio so I opened my phone to Google it. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it but my wife was.
But she wasn’t. I don’t know why but I felt that she wasn’t. It was almost as if she had burdened to operate it.
The more the day went on the more the feeling crept up on me. She was romantic, but not romantic enough to appreciate the beauty of dining table that seemed pretty boringly normal to me. The walls (which looked good I agree) were never short of compliments by my wife. And the same went on for nearly everything about the house until I said, “Let’s go explore the roof, there’s a lot of beauty in the nature that surrounds us here.”
Her tone changed and it didn’t take a moment for me to realize how insensitive that might’ve been.
Even though I’ve known her for years I still had no clue on how to proceed but she changed herself almost forcefully and proceeded to hold my hand and take me to the forest outside, on foot.
After all that, the drinking game came. Neither I nor my wife was much of a hard drinker so it ended quickly. She could only tolerate three shots though I cranked it up to five. We were to bed by 12, but I didn’t feel sleepy. My wife was groggy though. At around 12:50 I decided to go to the balcony to spend some time on my phone when the memory of last night came back to me. I opened YouTube to have the same video recommended to me.
But this was uploaded only an hour ago. The thumbnail was the same and it too didn’t have any title but it was only an hour old. I clicked on the channel but it was the channel’s first upload.
Well that was creepy.
But that didn’t stop me from watching the video. I didn’t have my headphones on me so I watched it on no sound and this time inside the first 20 seconds the face appeared. Knowing what will come I didn’t feel scared but before the eyes were revealed I did have a fleeting thought of turning my phone off. The eyes despite being enlarged were human-like. Despite the utter darkness I could make out that her eyes were hazel colored. She was mouthing something so I turned the volume up just a bit and got it close to my ear.
“She shouldn’t have done that.”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
Two distinct voices came to me simultaneously, one from the phone and the other from my bedroom. It wasn’t new to have my wife sleep talking but this was a creepy co-incidence. Not more came off the video but this time I did complete the full length, which was still 3 minutes and 22 seconds.
The next day I was about to put the tray of tea-cups on the table for my wife when they fell to the floor. She tended to my wounds made by the scathing tea right away and cleaned up the floor as well. I think she came here in her childhood as she had a very good idea of where all the cleaning equipment were kept.
Looking at the radio in our bedroom I remembered the videos of the night. I thought about telling my wife about those but thought she might be angry at me for breaking my promise. As we both sat dull on the bed I decided to break the silence.
“So there was this video last night-”
Shit. I didn’t intent to break the silence with those words. Her eyes gleamed back to me, not with anger. I decided to keep on with it and told her the story. I was so into telling her about the videos that it was only after I finished did I notice the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Can you please get out of the home with me for a sec?”
She had requested me many things in her life but somehow I realized that it was the most important thing she has ever wanted for me.
Under the tree she told me everything.
“Remember the day we fought about none of us having a future because of the way things are going? I went straight to my mom after that and she requested me to go visit my aunt as she’d feeling quite depressed lately. I went to her house, or mansion you should say. She was happy to see her niece after ages but somehow I wasn’t. I didn’t like how that loner of an old woman had so much yet she was feeling what, depressed? How privileged. She had a whole mansion to herself when me and you had to live inside that cramped apartment, both of us having to put up with each other’s shit. Each day I saw her, closely and for the love of my life I couldn’t understand why she was so down all the time. You have everything I could ever want! That’s when it hit me. I can just put her out of her misery. It would benefit her and benefit myself, greatly. I imagined a life where both of us could live here with all the freedom one could want. But I knew that the thoughts will only remain as an imagination. Never could I kill my aunt. But I think one cheat code that old people have is experience. One evening as I was tending to her she told me, “You’re having dark thoughts, haven’t you?” I was taken aback. “What do you mean”?
“You are right, I don’t deserve this.”
I decided not to delve further as I was scared that perhaps she was just rambling about and I would mistakenly let thoughts be known to her. The next day I heard a loud shriek from the roof and by the time I reached there I saw my burning aunt fling herself to the lake.”
I didn’t know how to feel about all this. I couldn’t anger up on her since I knew the thoughts she had were to improve the condition of our lives. She didn’t even act on those impulses. This mansion is nice though, I wondered. “Would I have been able to conceal my desires if I had been in her place?”
“I was absolutely lifeless as I saw the scene.” – She restarted. “But after I read the letter my feelings were left nowhere to shelter itself. The letter was kept under a radio on the table. I tore down the letter and burned it as it could be used for evidence against me as it mentioned my dark thoughts in the end but I don’t know what anyone would’ve done knowing her dark desires in her youth. Getting a girlfriend, a rich one at that in an age where she wouldn’t even be accepted by her own family she moved in with her at this mansion. Secretly, they put each other on their wills as well. Not that my aunt had anything to leave her to. But somehow, someway she killed her. She described it as strangulation but didn’t go much into the details. The guilt had been eating her up ever since and I think my desires pushed her off the edge on the day.”
She was near tears at this point and I held her close. I forgave her. How could I not? Her tears couldn’t stop falling, but mine didn’t fall. It never did.
Until now. Five years later I’m writing this, thinking it would absorb me of my guilt somehow. It won’t. Someway, somehow I killed her. I don’t know if I can enjoy living in this mansion now, but I hope that whoever finds me here can even if that comes at the expense of my life.