RoanWolf
Jeremy C. ShippThe calcareous cavern under the video rental store has all the best tapes. There's the tape where everyone you know is made of crudely-carved foam and they speak to you of embarrassing things you said years ago. There's the one where a homunculus crawls out of the screen and tries to eat your hair.
There's the one where a man in a tight top hat lists off all the birds he's ever seen only he doesn't know their actual names and calls them things like red-tailed tooter and snappy wingbat. There's the one where the man in the previous tape tries to pull his top hat but the hat devours him.
There's the tape where you're working at the video rental store above, only you don't actually work there, but the tape goes on for hours and hours and you start to believe that yes, you do work there, and you're late for your next shift.
There's the tape where a woman with a turtle on her head searches through a pile of pebbles. Sometimes she looks into your eyes, and you feel as if she can see too deep. Finally, she finds the two pebbles, and when she taps them together, a tiny version of yourself crawls out of the turtle's mouth.
There's the one with the man descending a spiral staircase, and every so often he comes to a door and tries to grab the handle but he can never quite grip them properly. He fumbles at the handles more frantically as the tape progresses. He never pauses at any of the doors. He won't stop walking.
There's the one with the man who touches his TV remote and the thing explodes into splinters of plastic and metal, and you see him talking to his friends, family, scientists, trying to understand what happened. He does research online. No one can give him any answers.
Sometimes he dreams of the splinters rearranging themselves, forming words that he can't quite make out most of the time. Once, the splinters tell him he's on a tape in a cavern. Once, the splinters spell out this whole thread. He doesn't understand.
[object Object]@jeremycshipp every time I try to post about this man it’s always about how he’s a heroic but tragic everyman and simultaneously about how he’s a monster who deserved to have his remote explode. every post attracts an uncountably large number of replies disagreeing with it. every reply has an uncountably large number of replies disagreeing in turn. every time I think about this man, a new fan club and sneer club form
Shae Erisson@jeremycshipp I dreamed I sent myself notes from the future under my fingernails. Those white marks were tightly folded bits of paper. There was an obvious cost to reading them early as they only appeared at the roots of my fingernails. Usually I would wait until my fingernails had grown out, but in times of desperation....
Dr Alice Violett@jeremycshipp then there's the one that features the very video you're watching, ignored on a table in your house over a period of weeks. You urge the version of yourself on the screen to return it as the late return fee mounts and mounts, but they seem strangely resistant to taking it back.
(I regularly that I have very overdue library books.)
phooky@jeremycshipp oh shit, is that place still open? i have like sixty thousand liters of heavy sludge in overdue fees there, i was honestly kind of hoping they'd closed