CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The ███████ VHS" Creepypasta

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

Here's the 11th Year Anniversary special Creepypasta I've written. Hope you enjoy.Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCbYe7lO8&list=PL376vJF9hLjgPUnjn6NhkRS4Vig2TTbvv&index=2&t=0s►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R9ccNyk&list=PL376vJF9hLjhrM4s5jYmj4mTAYvhC-3PX&index=3►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RAQRi6Rc&list=PL376vJF9hLji9re9eY7PLsn9a_orMALmd&index=2&t=13s►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL376vJF9hLjiwgtok34Ugxu6nSQ2YxcrPFOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

I collect random home VHS tapes. A simple hobby, very niche too. So it can be quite cheap compared to more common hobbies. A lot of young people clearing out their deceased relatives home find tapes in droves, either blanks or random taped shows. There's a fun feeling to finding snippets of old shows. Sometimes they're not even well documented and there are forums dedicated to post findings to. People love finding lost episodes of the shows of old.

There are many in the space who solely dedicate themselves to this side of the hobby. But personally, I like the real-life loopbox feeling of simply watching what's on the tapes. I have a room dedicated to my collections. On top of my memorabilia sections, which have some toys and collectibles from shows I used to love, I have two main shelves. One of random shows that I label and categorize. The other shelf is of home videos that were mixed in with the blanks or unmarked VHS batches. These I collect after I try get back in touch with the seller to try to send them back to no avail. As for the blanks, I have them boxed away.

I later resell them since I have no use for them. One of these tapes, however, has taken my whole attention. attention. It came in a box of mostly blanks, white labels unmarred, except for one, which had most of its sticker blacked out with a thick marker. Either there was something written on it that was blocked over, or it was heavily marked to stand out from the rest. If that was the case, it worked, because I picked it out immediately. I haven't acquired a new tape since because I've been obsessed over this one. So, I'm sharing its contents that I've seen so far.

Once you see what I mean, you'll know why, and you'll know why you can never see it. It started with my first watch. I made sure it was fully rewound and sat back, hoping it was a good one. The shot started with a man at his watch. desk. He seemed to be working on something challenging, as all his attention was on the papers in front of him. His brow furrowed constantly as he meticulously chipped away at the mountain of literature in front of him. It seemed rather inane at first, just a man working hard, and for some reason filming himself. I hoped the scene would develop, trying to piece

together a plot if this scene was from an old TV show. This made my eyes wonder, hoping something would happen. But as he continued to dive deeper into his work, I noticed the mirror slightly off-angled behind him, a common narrative device in more artsy visual storytelling. In it was a small snippet of the wall behind the camera. Every time he pulled his head up from his desk, he would clip into the frame of the mirror.

but something seemed off. I couldn't figure out what I found off about it, but keeping an eye on it made the many minutes of this shot more amusing to watch, as I wasn't getting any enjoyment from watching a man struggling late into a nine to five. There was one part that solidified what seemed strange about it though. It was when he swung back far to stretch his back out a bit. as he ended up in the mirror's frame for a bit longer than usual, I noticed this reflection wasn't perfectly mirroring his actions.

It seemed a bit out of sync, almost like the reflection wasn't a reflection, but another person trying to be a reflection. I thought it could have been a shoddy attempt from the director of trying to replicate a mirror. However, that seemed way too elaborate for this kind of work. Once I noticed this, the offness became much more apparent. Even on the tiny snippets, the reflection seemed to be like he was slightly more turned than he should have been, or just a few frames too late in response. Before I knew it, the scene ended, the tape snapped black, and the whir of the VHS player spanned to rewind. It was the end of the tape.

It was only about 20 minutes, but the time flew by after my fun little game started. So, as soon as it clicked back to the start of the tape, I immediately hit play to try to see how early this strange, unsinked mirror started. But instead of a man at a desk, it was something else entirely. It was now a woman in a shopping aisle. She was deciding between two similar brands of cereal and trying to figure out which one she wanted. It seemed the decision between strawberry or chocolate was a hard one because she was at this for a while.

But while she was engrossed in her thoughts, something in the background started to move. A colourful box of cereal slightly further up the aisle started to shift slightly. It moved so slowly that she took the, no notice. However, I could see it in full, just slowly inching out little by little. Eventually, it was almost all the way out, teetering on the middle of its own weight, before it toppled over and fell. She immediately turned at the noise of it hit in the ground,

staring at it for a few moments. Once she realized it was just a box that fell, She went back, picked up the strawberry option, put it in a basket, and walked away. At this, the scene ended, and the tape went back to black and started rewinding. This established the pattern of my new obsession. For a start, this scene wasn't nearly as long as the first one, yet it still hit the end of the tape. More importantly, it was completely. different to what was on the tape before. I hit play once more, and once again, it was a different scene entirely.

I don't know how it worked, but I knew I had something strange in my possession. So, I took to seeing what else would happen if I kept watching the tape over and over, at first for fun. But later, not so much. I took to the forums, but as you can imagine, they were no help. This obviously wasn't how tapes worked, so even the most vague description of my first experience was either ignored or made fun of. But this didn't deter me.

I never did this hobby for attention, so since then, I've just kept this to myself, something I can enjoy in my free time. and plus it saved me money too I no longer had to hunt down new tapes knowing this one provided new content to watch each time it was my own personal heaven the goose that lay golden eggs my next few watches went similar to my first two

a person sitting at a park feeding ducks but instead of ducks the sheveled children came to eat the bread which the patron didn't seem to bat an eye to A man fervently driving his car, making sharp turns to the wheel and looking around frantically, which, after a slow, long zoom out, the car turned out to be unmoving, stuck in a ditch. Some impatient patrons outside a bar waiting for it to be open, yet the building looked derelict and boarded up, so it couldn't open.

They were like little dark comedies, twisted punchlines for no one to appreciate but me. but my last watcher that night set a different tone. The scene was of a figure lying in a bed. The skin was jet black, charred and crisp. Whips of steam danced around the body. Between the dried cracks of skin, there were thin lines of red where it split. This caught my attention as it was significantly different from any of the previous times I viewed the tape. They were dead still, the camera too.

The only light colour in this dark scene was their eyes, leaking softly out of the socket. After many chilling minutes of silence, the body twitched once, then twice, and started spasming violently, jitters and jumps, flinging around wildly periodically, until it was all they were doing. As they constantly span around and,

writhed, colour slowly returned to their skin. Panic restored on their slowly forming face. I figured they were screaming, but couldn't confirm with the lack of audio. Eventually, they were back to

human, a middle-aged woman twitching in her bed until she settled down back to a peaceful slumber. No sign of danger on the way. Like they somehow burned alive and the tape was reversed, yet no fire was ever seen.

I thought this was a hint to reverse the tape, so I hit Rewind to see if anything would change. But when the scan line shot around and the tape word, the shot went to black. And for the rest of that scene, no picture showed. That was a new lesson I'd learned. Any interference with the tape, and it would cut to black

until the tape ended and rewound itself. The next day I took off work, I wanted to see as much as possible, even though some of the snippets were a bit dark, seeing it through the scan lines of an old CRT TV dampened the blow somewhat. My thirst for knowledge had just gotten started. I sat down with my early morning coffee

and popped in the tape. The first watch was, Watch started with an over-the-shoulder shot of an elderly man standing in front of his bathroom mirror. Though I couldn't seem directly, I could make him out clearly through the cleaned mirror he stared into. He stared intently at his reflection, seemingly willing it to do something. After a few tense moments, he slowly raised his right hand and hesitantly waved at himself. The reflection followed along. which seemed to anger the man slightly, the reflection mimicking his furrow demeanour.

He tried again, slowly raising his hand, giving an uneasy wave. And again, the reflection seemed to follow along, perfectly reflected. He tried this over and over, the same movements, the same reactions. I almost thought the tape was looping until he started acting more and more. more frantic, waving and waving, not seeming to get the reaction he wanted. Defeated, his shoulders sunk and he turned to leave. But his reflection didn't, and it continued to stare in the direction of the camera. The tape ended there. After the whir of the VHS stopped, I hit play again. This next scene faded into a panning shot of a room.

full of plushes and toys, a mix of relatively old releases and very retro collectibles, from old mechers to soft plushes. Though I could tell there was some marring from dust, they looked like they were placed with pride, something I did myself with my own collection. After the slow pan, the shot centered on one of the dolls in the middle of one of the shelves. Slowly, it zoomed in, the frame getting smaller and smaller. However, as some of the toys were getting cropped out of the shot on the sides, I swear I could see them twitch a little.

Some would lean as if push slightly, but some looked more deliberate, like a leg jerking or a joint pivoting. Eventually, the camera was so zoomed in that only a few toys remained, and when enlarged on screen, I could see it more clearly. Toys were moving autonomously when they were almost out of shot, like the timing was just off from trying not to be caught or trying to be deliberate enough for me to see. Eventually, the shot landed squarely on the scented toy's eye,

a disturbing, extreme close-up of the glossy bead that made up part of its face. The shot lingered for a good few moments Before its eye blinked And the scene cut Each watch seemed to bring something new Yet I pieced together that there seemed to be a vague, Reoccurring theme of mirrors And the eye stood out to me

As it made me think back to the woman in bed I watched the tape over and over Taking small breaks to eat and do general tasks throughout the day. But when away from the screen, my mind never left my one-seater in front of my dusty CRT TV. If the tape was coming up with these scenes on the fly, then it never seemed to run out of ideas. However the effects were done, they were pulled off immaculately, way ahead of their time. If there was some trick to the tape that did this, like it was somehow connected online,

pulling random horror scenes from lesser-known movies. It was beyond me. Like the goose that laid golden eggs analogy I've already mentioned, I didn't want to cut the goose open out of greed. After eating the quickest meal I could make, I popped back into my collector's room, hoping to get some new watches in before bed. Even though I took off work,

I knew I couldn't stay up, obscenely late. The scene sparked a little. life with flickers. The lighting seemed to be sketchy in the room, but when it lingered long enough between the flashes, I saw tile and old bottles. It was a ceramic-coated bathroom, a sterile white veneer that screamed cheap rent. Eventually, there was a final crack of energy, and the bulb clung to life enough to light the scene. The camera led with a tilt-up, tracking. across the bathroom floor. All the while, an occasional sloshing could be heard, the tub sounding very full.

Sometimes a squeaking sound would sting, like skin shifting on porcelain, the movements of someone uncomfortable in the bath. The camera tracked up, slowly leading to the lip of the tub, where the sloshing and jostling got louder. The frame lingered level to the edge. for a few moments, not revealing the innard of the tub. And the first sign that something was off was when some of the liquid spilled over the edge. It was only slight, but a thin red streak glistened down in a fast red line. This was the camera's cue to lift over. The reveal was not what I wanted.

was a viscous and thick red, rumbling with little movements underneath, a meek struggle beneath the shallow depths. Occasionally, a pale arm or leg would bob up briefly, momentarily freeing itself to the surface before plunging back under. An arm, a leg, and an arm again, like they were coming up for air in sporadic intervals, yet no head ever came up. The shifting became more erratic, so much so that the liquid looked like it was boiling. The water splashed over the lip, spilling over the now pink-hued floor,

until it all came to a sudden still. And whatever was under rested on the surface. The parts weren't of a person trapped under the water, but many parts dismembered. arms and legs of a half dozen similar-looking people. The only one that wasn't a limb was an eye that floated haplessly in the middle. The tape cut black. After this, I was unsettled.

Sure, there was some things that bordered on dark that I'd seen before, but this was so many steps up. The others I could pass off as tricks of the camera, or at best the cundrians from the mind of directors being too experimental. But this went too far. I cut my viewing session shorter than I'd wanted that night. At work, I weighed up if I should just stop.

Let me tell you, if I had, life would have been simple. I'd go back to working my regular job and hunting for tapes in my spare time. But as you can tell, the story doesn't end here. See, this hobby had me addicted. The thrill of finding some rare or unique footage was exhilarating. I'm sure you can liken it to the biggest rush in whatever hobby you're into. Make your own simile for how it feels. So to get that on demand, rather than waiting days for a listing to show up,

fighting over others like me in a bidding war, and then waiting the sometimes weeks for it to get here because sellers cheap out so much on shipping, and that also causes some tapes to be wrecked by the time they arrive, not to mention package thieves. It was easy for me to cope that that last episode was a one-off, something that could just randomly happen in the pool of footage it seemed to hold. So, maybe I could keep going?

What were the odds of something like that happening again? I decided to challenge those odds. I tried to resist when I got home, give myself some breathing room for a bit. But after finishing some chores around the house and taking some time to make a nice meal, the downtime was deafening and I wanted to fill it with my obsession.

The tape was already in the player, untouched since the bathtub scene. I sat down and hit play. The camera panned over her serene park on a cloudy day and the camera revealed a young woman on a bench. The camera was close enough to make out the name tag on her chest. Anna. She looked like she was feeling directionless

and came to the park to try and clear her head. She gazed up, lost in her mind for a while. Eyes glazed and thought, but something got her attention and snapped her out of a stupor. A whisper in the wind that caught her off guard, yet I could hear it too. Look up, was all it said in a low, soothing voice. She must have been desperate, because instead of looking around, or even contemplating whether or not to follow a randomly given direction,

She followed it like divine intervention. Anna stared at the dull sky, scanning around for something, though not knowing what. But it didn't take long for her to find what she was looking for. Anna's face switched through so many emotions. Whatever had her attention must have been otherworldly, because I can't think of anything that could appear in an open sky that would garner that kind of reaction. Maybe the cloud sending a message or a vision of some sort. I would never know, because the shot only stayed on her.

Her face settled and beheld. Something in the sky had a smitten in a divine way. Anna was soaking in the bliss of whatever she gazed upon. Hope returned to her face, which seemed like something she'd been missing for a long time. However, the sky soon got darker. A thick cloud passed over the lowering sun and a face dropped. Whatever she was looking at, twisted, something grotesque, yet she never once looked away. And the scene ended, hooked on the mystery, I hit play again.

The room in the opening was sterile. A large mirror was centred on the wall There was obviously a two-way to me But not to who they were observing The subject was a girl Definitely in the single digits of age She was in a hospital gown with pyjamas underneath And in front of her were a number of old dolls

A clack sounded And over a fuzzy intercom speaker A voice asked her Can you talk to one of the dolls. Okay, she replied meekly, and she proceeded to introduce herself to the first one. Not that one, a low voice said, though it didn't have the intercom static like the previous voice. It said not this one, she said back.

The interviewer must have been confused by this, as there was a pause of contemplation. before he reformed a new question. Which doll is speaking, honey? It seemed that the girl could hear the voice, as could I, with a man observing, and possibly others behind the screen, could not. She turned back to the dolls and asked them who was speaking. Me, glow voice responded. She turned towards the doll in the middle and pointed at it.

"'Okay, honey, can you ask him some questions for me?' the man said. "'M-hmm,' she obeyed. When addressed, the doll seemed to move slightly, almost as if trying to turn to face her. However, she was unfazed by this. "'What is it that you want, child?' the doll quizzed, which she repeated back to the hidden man. The man on the other side of the two-way mirror, intrigued by the doll's response, asked, Can you ask him who he is?

The girl turned back to the doll and repeated the question. The doll's head tilted slightly, as if considering its answer. I am a vessel, it said. His voice a groan, which she echoed back. The silence lingered. as the man seemed to ponder more about what to ask. But just as he hit the intercom button, sounding that awful clack,

I was about to ask the doll another question. Something happened. The doll's eyes began to twitch, blinking rapidly, unsinked, and its head spun around to face the two-way mirror. I see you, the doll said,

his voice echoing throughout the room. I see. All of you. The man frantically called out, What's going on? What is he saying? It seemed they had never encountered anything like this before. But before she could answer, the dull spoke again.

The eye sees all, it said. And now the experiment ends. With that, the dull fell silent. Its eyes returning to their normal, lifeless steps. There was no response as the girl asked over and over if she could be let out, unfazed with a whole ordeal, as the static rattled out from the intercom from the button that was still held down. No more voices came from behind the screen. The scene abruptly cut to black. I had seen a handful of thematics of eyes, or rather a singular eye, but this was the first.

true mention addressing it as some sort of thing. This was enough for me for the night, so I turned in, now wanting to figure out the narrative theme of the clips. The weekend was the perfect time to try and pack this. I swore that I'd watch over and over no matter what I saw. I was in deep and I wanted to weather the deep end for a satisfying conclusion. If something disturbing came up, I'd simply get over it and watch again. There was a message here and I wanted to figure it out.

Scene after scene, I watched the tape over so many times that day. A shot of a person sitting on a couch reading a book. As the camera zoomed in on the book, I realized that it was not a normal one. It was some ancient tome with a strange symbol on the front. A scene of a person standing in front of a window watching the rainfall. As the camera zoomed in on the raindrops, I saw that they were not normal water droplets. They were black and oily, and they seemed to be eating away at the window pane. The person was nonchalant about his impending danger.

A shot of a man walking through a forest at night, with strange symbols etched on the trees. He hears strange otherworldly whispers all around. him but can't make out what's being said. Suddenly, a figure appears behind him, its face hidden. The figure speaks in a soft, whispered voice, promising to reveal the secret to the universe to the person if they're willing to make a sacrifice. The person hesitates, but the figure's words are hypnotic, and they find themselves drawn in. The scene ends with a person making a pact with the figure.

the details of which are left unclear. I had a pad and paper to jot down things I thought could be important. I saw a reoccurring symbol in a handful of the clips. It looked like an uppercase H with a cruelly drawn circle in the middle. A new reoccurring theme that would occasionally pop up. As I watched, I felt unnerved. At first, I thought it was from the more disturbing scenes that would occasionally happen, but it lingered even as I wandered my room while getting a drink.

It felt like eyes were upon me. A thought implanted into my head from what I'd seen, but I wasn't wrong. I was being watched. My collectible memorabilia, the things I collected outside of VHS tapes, were in the room with me. Inane decoration for most of my life that now loomed in the corners with watchful. eyes. I collected them all up in a box and store them up in the attic, far enough away that I hoped they'd be out of sight, out of mind. But even with them in the house, I felt uneased, though I couldn't

bring myself to outright throw them away, because they meant so much to me. My sense of unease never left. I found myself catching glimpses myself in my mirrors, never seeing anything off, but feeling like something was amiss when I wasn't looking, doubting myself when it felt like my reflection was out of sync

in the corners of my eyes as I turn away. I eventually caved in and boxed them up too, and left them in the attic in a box next to my collectibles. But it didn't help. Even without mirrors, I'd

my reflection in the dark cola in my cup or the back of a clean spoon but one I could never avoid was myself looking back at me from the blacked-out CRT screen after each episode ended fervently denying anything off about my reflection one more I kept telling myself one more and I'd be done I just needed one more scene to satiate my curiosity. Even though I was reaching new levels of anxiety and stress, there was still an adrenaline rush of catching a scene that felt like I was progressing through this nightmare. I hit play. The camera showed a person trapped in a small room with walls that seemed to be closing in on them. The person tried to push against the walls, but the pressure was too strong. Strange whispers

and screams echoed through the room. The person looked like they were on the verge of going insane. As the walls got closer and closer, the person started scratching at them, which were marred with the strange symbols from before. They looked like they were carved with a sharp blade, and they seemed to be pulsing with an otherworldly energy. Suddenly, I heard a clear, sinister voice above the whispers. You can never leave.

the voice said, You're trapped here, forever. The scene ended with a person realizing that there was no escape. Though I wondered if there was a hint of irony that the message could be about me. This wasn't what I wanted, so I hit play again. Next was the shot of a person entering a derelict house. The camera followed them as they explored the many rooms. of this place. The air was thick with dust and cobwebs, and the only sound was the person's

footsteps on the creaking floorboards. As he went deeper into the house, he stumbled upon a room filled with old dolls. The doll seemed to be looking at the person with accusing eyes and unease washed over the man's face. Suddenly, the dolls started to move on their own, the joints creaking as they turned their heads to look at the person. They seemed to be controlled by an unseen force and the person realized too late that they were in danger. The scene ends with the person trying to flee the house, but the dolls seem to be blocking their escape and the scene fades to black. The reoccurring themes of curiosity and danger was lost to me as I searched for what I could deem my last watch. All I could do was ignore my unmatched reflection on the black.

screen and keep hitting play. One more time, I repeated again, this will be the last one, a lie I try to reaffirm myself with. The tape popped to life once more, but instead of a shot that could start a new narrative, it just lingered on an extremely uncomfortable zoom of an eye. The shot so grainy from the zoom and lighting that I couldn't make out the color of the eye nor the shade of skin. It just stared.

The only indication that it wasn't frozen was the occasional twitch of the eyelid, though it never blinked once. I could swear I saw something what could be a clue in the black of the pupil, a swirling movement that caught my attention, but it was too small on the screen for me to see from where I sat. So I stood up to get a closer look, and as soon as I was. I did, it moved. The eye tilted slightly upwards and stayed in that new position.

I didn't dare move in case I missed something, but it now lingered at this new angle in the same motions as before. So I slowly edged around my coffee table to get that closer look I wanted, trying to not let my eyes leave the screen for even a moment. And as I did,

It moved once more. A slow bank to the right, exactly where I was moving. It watched me. I don't know how, nor did I want to entertain that idea, but it was tracking me like an animal tracks its prey. I froze at the realization, only to confirm my fears. It stopped too. I slowed my breathing, not knowing what to do, frozen like a dead.

deer in headlights, though at least a deer would sooner and later know what kind of danger it was in. I was completely in the dark. Eventually, an intrusive thought came to me, that if it really was watching me, that it was something I needed to stop as soon as possible. So I dove down to my coffee table and hit all the buttons on my remote, the eye snapping in the direction I moved as I did so. The screen cut black at the moment of interference as it had before and played out with a black screen until the end. I racked my brain trying to think of my next move as the machine clicked and started to rewind. The scene was not long enough to give me pause for thought as it hit the start of the tape much too quickly and played automatically.

The shot didn't give me the reprise of fading in. It cut instantly to a shot of my room, framed directly from the point of view from my TV. The brightness of the shot lighting me up enough to be visible in the screen, which seemed like a cinematic paradox I didn't even want to try to unpack. The fluorescent of the screen flickered with life, enough for me to see myself, frozen at the side of the coffee table, remote still in hand, and I was once again frozen in thought. the while none of the buttons were working to stop this nightmare I was now in.

A new time limit was added as I stared at the screen. With the angle of the shot, plus the right amount of illumination, a glass pane on one of my units I used to display. Some of my more prized collectibles just caught my reflection in it, something I didn't think the consequences of, until my reflection started moving. out my accompanied action. It slowly turned, fighting some unseen force that tried to pull it back to how it should be. All the while, movement caught my attention from my coffee table. My car keys had a keychain of a small rubber duck fashioned into a facsimile of a superhero.

I heard that laboured plastic bend as its head tried to lean up to look at me. It seemed whatever moved the toys from the scene wasn't constrained to logical humanoid shapes looking back at the screen against all odds my reflected self managed to turn enough to face me

through the screen and was trying to raise his hand like someone reaching towards a window pane an idea that scared me into a fight response I ran over to the TV and kicked it over with as much force as I could

something I felt needed as old CRTs have some hefty weight to them. It was enough to send it reeling back, and I used this opportunity, like I'd somehow stunned the person by kicking their head and grabbed the VCR player from under the unit and ripped it out of its nest of wires. I ran all the way to the front door, and much to the behest of my confused neighbours, threw it out as hard as I could, and slammed the door shut. locks slammed into place.

I caught my breath, trying to suck back in my sanity with each gasp, hoping that I wouldn't suffer any of the fates of the many whom I'd witnessed over the many times I'd watched the tape. I locked the door to my collector's room, resigning it to a problem for future me. For then, I was content to letting the dust settle

and paranoidly staying awake until sleep forced itself into me. Since then, I'd only been in that room once. The TV was still kicked over. The VHS tape shelves were unmoved. My couch was where it always sat, neatly where the indents of the feet had rested for the years since it was placed there. The VCR remote still scattered to the side

from how it bounced off the coffee table when it fell. The cabinet was the last place I wanted to look. But, no matter how much I tried to rationalise what I was seeing, there was enough for me to know that this was real. The sweaty remains of a handprint pressed on the other side of the glass. Sure, I could say I might have done it myself from the last time it was opened many months ago, and I'd somehow forgotten to clean it, despite myself always keeping that glass crystal clear on a regular basis. But the symbol etched in the centre of the palm was much too specific to explain a way

I yet do not know if whatever ritual happened was far enough for something worse to happen whether I stopped it in time or delayed the inevitable The VCR was gone in the morning And I hoped it was collected as refuse And left a rot in a dump somewhere I can't imagine the demographic of a retro media collector had somehow thought they stumbled upon a new find,

and that a neighbour took the hint that it was not worth salvaging from the condition I left it in as it cracked around on the concrete outside. I've since boxed up all my tapes and disposed of them. So many great memories, many of which were unique, now gone. All my childhood toys and memorabilia from that era gone too, along with anything reflective enough to see a shape of myself in. For things I couldn't move like my bathtub or windows, I simply coated them with a matte finish spray.

I don't have a profound message to tell. Just don't be stupid.