Frank came home from Hewitt Book and Record with an armful of Laserdiscs. He couldn't believe his luck at finding any as the medium had been deemed obsolete for over twenty years. As he tromped upstairs to his apartment, his phone buzzed with multiple messages. Usually, he prided himself on rapid response times, but his enthusiasm over his recent acquisitions made him ignore the notifications. He lay the discs across his coffee table and smiled at them.
Terminator 2 – Judgment Day (Special Edition), The Gate, C.H.U.D., and House II: The Second Story were all classics, and now he owned them. The best part was that T2 was the only one out of the four films that he'd seen all the way through. It was gonna be a fun night, mostly full of first-time watches. Maybe he'd invite Athena over to watch with him. She liked to make fun of his cinematic obsession, telling him that eighties and nineties nostalgia was for their parents' generation. She almost always came around after taking the time to watch movies like these, though. Deep down, she knew they were good, just like him. Movies were one of the few things that generation got right.
He took out his phone to snap a picture of his purchase, but the message alerts made him stop and frown. Two were from Athena.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?! read one.
Don't I fuck you enough? read another.
A third message, from Tanya, was a lot less emotional but stung just the same.
I don't understand why you would think sending me this is okay. All this time, I thought you respected me as a person and valued me as a friend. Even if you didn't, I thought you loved Athena too much to harass someone close to her.
He opened the full message chain between him and Tanya, and his heart dropped like a stone from a skyscraper. His dick, pictured fully erect, stared back at him accusingly. He had no idea what to say or how he could possibly explain himself. It was his penis, and he'd taken the photo. He remembered the day. It was one of a series of sexts he'd exchanged with Athena a few months back when she was in Florida visiting family. She'd sent him a closeup of her crotch with her black panties pulled aside.
Show me how much you miss me, her corresponding message had said.
He'd gotten himself hard and taken the very same photo that now threatened to blow up his whole goddamn world.
A fantasy overtook him. He imagined dropping his phone in the toilet, locking his door, and drawing his curtains, then watching one of these laserdiscs alone in the dark, ignoring his problems. It was the most attractive thing he could imagine. He could always fix this later, but not now. This fallout from a message he knew for a fucking fact he'd never sent seemed way too huge.
Frank slumped to his couch and set down his phone.
There had to be a logical explanation for this.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!
Don't I fuck you enough?
He bit back a sob that threatened to escape. He reached for his phone to formulate a response. As his hand closed around it, the television switched on. The screen showed the dark surface of a lake at night. The shot was through a patch of trees, branches of varying lushness framed the water like a decorative border. Light came from an unknown source. It could've been the moon, but the color was wrong, even if the angle was right. It cast illumination closer to green than silver or blue. It reminded Frank of what might come off a glow-in-the-dark toy.
He sat up and checked for the remote. Only his phone occupied the space where he'd sat. He scanned the room and spotted the remote on one of the end tables. The television had switched on by itself.
But that was impossible.
So was his phone sending a dick pic to his girlfriend's bestie.
He started for the remote to turn off the television.
On the screen, the water rippled. A thump of static echoed through his sound system. The image jumped and split with multicolored cracks. He smelled something inexplicable: a dual aroma of algae and melted plastic. Somehow, the stink of the lake had found its way through the television and warped the hardware.
No, no, no, he thought. Turn the dumb TV off, text—no, call—Athena, and once you've smoothed things over, buy a new TV.
But he couldn't bring himself to move. He stared at the fractured image, hypnotized by the flow of colors through the cracks. They moved as one, like a river of multicolored blood. Between the rifts, the dark water rippled again. Something orange and amorphous pulsed beneath the surface like a silent explosion.
The screen went blue. The cracks were gone. Feedback whined through the stereo, faint enough not to hurt but audible enough to set his teeth on edge. It was like a mosquito had found a way to plug itself into an amp and broadcast its tinny buzz through Frank's apartment.
"Fuck," he hissed and marched to the end table where the remote sat. He snatched the remote and pressed the power button. The blue screen remained. "Goddamn it."
He took a step forward, meaning to unplug the television, but halted when the fractured image of the lake reappeared. The orange, amorphous thing beneath the water had nearly doubled in size. Either that or it had simply gotten closer to breaching the surface. Frank stared, unable to do more. The mass expanded and contracted like a fiery heart. Flamelike tendrils slithered and twirled at the edges of its body, making tangerine trails in the liquid darkness.
Something heavy settled into his guts, held in place by a cramp of anxiety. Something terrible was making this light, lived in this lake, meant to break through his TV. It seemed irrational, but his emotions were already high from the phantom sext, and the fact he couldn't switch the TV off only heightened his discomfort.
No, dumbass.
The batteries are just dead.
Unplug your TV and everything will be fine.
Well, except for the whole dick pic Tanya situation.
One thing at a time! One thing at a fucking time!
He forced his feet to move and powerwalked to the television. On his way over, he mashed the power button a few more times, hoping desperately for better results.
Just a few more steps.
Something bit into his right hand. It felt like he'd stuck his hand in the mouth of a rabid dog. The pain made him yelp. When he looked to see what attacked him, he screamed. Six hooks had sprung from the sides of the remote and embedded themselves into his flesh. They pulled at the skin, stretching holes weeping streams of blood that ran over his wrist and drizzled onto the white carpet.
In desperation, he tried to pry the offending instrument free but only managed to scrape bone and widen his wounds, spilling more blood, expelling more screams.
In terror and disbelief, he faced the television. The orange, amorphous thing had breached the surface and stretched toward the screen like a translucent, gelatinous worm. Its luminescence had swallowed all other light in the image. The cracks in the screen seemed to emanate from its body, new ones splitting open as the entity drew closer.
"What the FUUUUCK?" he yelled as the head of the thing pressed against the opposite side of the screen, causing the monitor to bulge into his world, the real world.
But maybe this wasn't real. Maybe it was just some fucked up hallucination brought on by his anxiety over the message sent from his phone. Could that happen? Could he have been upset enough to lose his mind so quickly, so absolutely?
The entity oozed through. Frank turned to run with the remote still biting into his hand.
He only made it three steps.
The thing from the lake smashed into the back of his head with enough force to send him sprawling. Instead of letting him fall, the glowing blob encased his skull, sliding over his face like a melting mask. It lifted him, suspending his feet nearly twelve inches off the ground, and yanked him backwards. He crashed into the television screen, and the entire setup crashed onto him when he hit the floor. As consciousness slipped from him, he hoped it was Athena calling, even knowing it didn't matter now.