This Will Become You

From a www.Ghoultalking.com post by Walking_the_the_line:
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The other day, I was on my laptop, and my T.V. was on. It was set to comedy central, because there was one of those random stand-up blocks. Anyway, I paid no mind to it, I'd already seen most of them anyway but it's good background sound for messing around on the internet. Every so often I would look up and watch a little of a special, then go back to doing whatever I was doing.
That day my cat was acting funny. I'm not sure if he was sick or what, but he would not stop meowing or running, and he wouldn't even eat his food. And every so often, he would hiss at the T.V. More specifically, he would hiss at the cable box. I figured he was sick and made plans to take him to a vet.
Anyway, as I was sitting there, my cat comes bounding in the room, as though he had been chased. Then he got in a sort of pouncing/stalking position, and just stared the cable box that was on a table in front of the T.V. For a good five minutes, he hissed at the box until I told him to get out.
He started at me, but he didn't have those cute, innocent cat eyes. They were full of fear. At least I think it was fear…I'm not sure, but he just looked terrified. Hadn't seen him like that since he first met my dog.
Instead of leaving, he jumps up on the cable box and starts to urinate all over it. All the time looking at me with those worried eyes. So I get up, swearing, and pick him up and toss him out of my room. To my surprise, instead of trying to get back in, he bolts down the hallway and jumps into a closet.
I rush back into my room to see that the T.V screen had turned a bright, mean red, with a sort buzzing, like feedback. Words and phrases were flashing all across the screen. One was something like, "You will now see into a deep deep sea…"
There were a few in a couple different languages, but there were a few more in English, 'We will watch and you will perform,' and 'Channels, channels everywhere but not a show to watch.'
One that stood out to me was this phrase that dominated the bottom, it was, 'Please change the channel, you're not supposed to watch.'
'You're not allowed to even know about this. This will become you'. At this point, I figured that the cat urine had pretty much scrambled the signal or messed up the insides of the box, making the box generate words out of nothing.
I tried to turn it off, but before I could, there was a blast of feedback that made me jump on my bed. The screen began pulsing, until it finally went blue, and then rebooted. After some static, and some disorientation, it went back to comedy central…so I went back to my laptop.
This is where I started to get mildly unnerved…
I looked once more to see that the stand-up had changed. Instead of a typical stand-up special, I saw a grainy, blurry scene of a man standing on a stage. It was as though it was footage from an old VHS. It looked like he was standing on a comedy club stage. The point of view was from the audience, as though it was being held by an audience member.
The light was unusually bright, making the man's face just visible. Matter of fact, the lighting in general sort of gave the whole thing a black and white tint. The man was short thin, and…dumb-looking. I mean he had a dumb-looking face. Just really bushy eye brows, eyes that were a little too close together, any closer and he'd be a cyclops. Also, he had a bowl cut.
Well the volume was turned down, so I cranked it up a little.
The comedian was trying to tell really bad jokes, and stumbling over them pretty bad. Stammering, muttering, pacing, and putting the mic on its stand, taking it off. Audience was booing him hard. Not sure what it was. Maybe comedy central thought it would be funny to show stand-ups bomb… you know, try and go for the 'so bad it's funny', like Tim and Eric.
Maybe it was some sort of highbrow performance art that was above my head. As I stared at the screen, the boos would sometimes change octaves. One second it would sound normal, next it would sound like a pack of wolves growling. Then it would go to an ear-piercing pitch, so loud that I had to plug my ears. For some reason, I couldn't turn the sound down, it would only go up for a while, at least. After a while though, I could, but it took a little longer.
"So…women are so you…know…they sure do like to talk…have you noticed this?" the man half-mumbled into the microphone, hunched over, no longer looking at the audience. He was turned slightly, as though a bitter wind was coming from the crowd.
What the man was saying was a pretty generic stand-up routine. But the more I watched, the more I began to dislike him. Not just his jokes. But him as a person. A vile hate bubbled up from somewhere. Not sure how to articulate it, but he was wasting my time. I didn't come out with my date to go see a shitty comedian, with unfunny shit to say.
Do you see how bored she is? Do know how long it's been since she went down? You're ruining my chance here, you're cock-blocking me, bro. Get the fuck off the stage. These thoughts and more swirled in my mind. It took me about two minutes to notice I was booing as well. I tried to stop, but I just got even madder, and booed harder.
Then the hecklers started.
One shouted, from somewhere in the back: "Stan, you know what would make this funny? If you didn't push your wife down the stairs, so she miscarried."
Tears welling up in his eyes, he turned around and shouted, "Well I did it for my…our dreams…but she said that she wanted to keep it, and she wanted me around to raise it, and I wasn't ready for that and I didn't want to give up on my stand up…"
"What do you mean you didn't want to give up, Stan? You gave up high school, gave up on family, friends. Pushed 'em all away cause you thought you were a big shot, Stan…" Another one yelled. A few others began to yell and shout over each other, with each word, Stan pacing more feverishly.
Someone next to me…I mean someone next to the camera, I guess, shouted, "Stan, stop telling jokes, you don't need to. You are the joke." The picture quality improved so dramatically, I jumped a little. Everything was H.D. now. And now, I could see Stan clearly enough to see that he was nearly crying, eyes bloodshot and filled with despair and abhorrence.
He looked exhausted, as though he'd been up for days. Stan chucked the microphone to the ground, shattering my ears, and I winced and groaned along with the audience.
"You all think I'm a joke?" Stan shouted, weepily, but there was an intense rage, a lonely bitterness under it that made me fear for my life. As he paced back and forth, he began ranting, and the camera cut to a shot that was more professional, more like regular T.V. It was still in the audience, but now closer to the stage. It was also slightly more colorful.
"I'm not a joke, goddammit," Stan was growling, face twisted into a mask of rage, "My life was, or is, I don't know anymore. No, I'm not the joke, my life was and I'm the punchline. And you people, you people are the jokes. And I'm the punchline. Punchlines end jokes. And tonight I'm going to end a few jokes, cause that's what I do. I do it every night. And I don't think any one of you will really get it, get me. No one ever really gets me. They can't."
The crowed was giggling and clapping a little now, as Stan produced a gun. They stopped when they saw that he was holding a Desert Eagle. It gleamed in the stage light, reminding me of a sword, as Stan began pointing it at the audience, who all watched with mild amusement. Not a shadow of fear on their faces, it was more eager anticipation than anything.
"Hey Stan," another heckler jeered from behind me, I mean the camera man. Off-screen. It was just off-scream, screen I mean, "Remember the night your mom called and begged you not to leave your cancer-stricken dad, to go on yet another failure of a tour? Failure, that's the word…" He was cut off by Stan's eagle, which made my ears ring, but I didn't move an inch. I wanted to, but I was afraid I'd get shot.
The camera cut to the corpse of the heckler; half of his head was nothing more than a smashed pumpkin on Halloween. His pulp splattered all over the surrounding crowd, who were laughing and playing with it. The slain heckler was still smiling, despite having only half a jaw.
Soon, he sat up in his seat, gurgling, or laughing. He began flicking parts of his skull and brain playfully at those around him, until they were all having a macabre food fight. Without taking my eyes off the screen I casually bent over my bed and vomited on the floor, and sat back up with a little still on my lips. I didn't really care.
The crowd was in an uproar, in hysterics, as he turned the gun on the rest of them.
At this point, the camera kept jumping around, cutting to a new point of view every time someone was shot. There was blood everywhere, bone fragments and hunks of flesh flying through the air, splattering the screen. No one died when they were shot, but they kept on laughing. The laughter began taking on almost a harsh, sitcom quality. No one was trying to get away, or call for help. I saw a few jump in front of shots that was clearly going to miss.
It was chaotic, and things kept going from H.D. quality, to grainy and imprecise. In all the chaos, I felt something whizz past my head at one point, ruffling my hair. There's a fan on in my room, so that's what it was. And I won't be told otherwise.
Finally, it cut to a close-up of Stan's blood-splattered face, which was soullessly frozen, blank. Stan's eyes were a vacant blue, and yet piercing. I kept trying to break eye contact with the T.V. but whenever I tried, my eyes would stick to the screen to the point that if I tried to turn myself all the way around, my eyes would begin to roll into my head, and start to burn.
"You'll get the joke." Stan told me…the camera…the viewers, in a calm, almost soothing monotone. Was there anyone else watching this? Should I call someone about this? Maybe I should burn my house down. What would the cable company say? By this time I had realized that this was not Kansas…I mean…Comedy Central. It wasn't Comedy Central at all.
"You'll get the joke, soon. And you'll laugh. You'll laugh until you cry…and I'll laugh with you, never at you…because this will become you." Stan said again, the camera panning out as he put his gun in his mouth, wincing because the barrel was still hot, putting it to the roof of his mouth. The crowd was doing…something, it was hard to tell if they were laughing or crying or screaming, but I think I could hear a roar beneath, but the sound cut out when the shot was wide enough so that the whole stage could be seen.
There was no one in the seats. No blood or guts. Just an empty, endless row of seats. The picture at this point began to go white until Stan was just barely visible. No sound. No movement. For about ten minutes, Stan stood there. A few times he took the gun out of his mouth, and put it to his temple. I was holding my breath, and felt like telling him to do it. Do it. Do it.
"Do it." I whispered. Stan decided to go with his original plan of the roof of the mouth and without hesitation, he pulled the trigger. The back of his head and his brain splattered against the wall. The screen faded to white, and was followed by blackness. No credits. No station I.D. Just a deep darkness, a void.
I picked up the remote for the cable and pushed the info button to see what the hell I just saw. What the hell I just saw. What. The. Hell. Apparently the special or whatever was called, 'Stan Watson bombs at the Happy House.' And the description: 'Failed comedian relives the pain of bombing at a local club for the 10027th time.'
When I turned my attention back, I found that the channel was in the middle of a series of commercials. Well…what I think were commercials. There was one that was just a 30 second shot of chickens crossing a wide, desolate, desert road. The next one was a priest, a monk, and a rabbi walking into a bar…can't remember the rest, but the next one was really kind of terrible.
It was a sad-faced clown hurling…dead babies at a wall hard enough to leave blood splotches. Took me longer than it should have, but I saw the pattern, but it didn't make it less…unsettling. I checked to see what was on next. The show was called The Aristocrats. It started out with a guy going into a talent agency and claiming that his family had a great act, the talent agent asks what the act was about, so the guy…I don't know…I only saw little of the episode…I don't really want to talk about what I saw, it was…just…I'm trying to forget what little I saw, and typing it out again, well…it'd give me nightmares. It'd give you nightmares.
I shut off the T.V. and the cable box. The cable box made a sort of sighing sound, I think. It's going to turn back on, I think. I leave the room for about half an hour to find the cat and come back, it's still off.
I turn on the cable box and it turns on, like always. But things have changed. Instead of a blue light, the light is orange. The clock keeps jumping ahead and then back again.
I don't really know what to do with this. It seems to function like a regular cable box. Did it only affect that one channel, or are the others similar? Would my neighbor care if I ate her out while she slept? Do I want to find out about the others?
The best course of action would be to throw away the box, and get a new one. Last Sunday, I did unplug it and put it outside in the garage, expecting it to appear back next to my T.V. After a few days, I went to see if the box was still there. It was, and I put it back in my room and plugged it in. Haven't turned my T.V. on yet. Not sure if I will or not. Don't know, I know I can throw it out if I want to, but I've always wanted a paranormal experience, to see crazy stuff.
Think it would be a waste…I don't know. I'm reluctant to show it to anyone, in case they tell me to throw it away. I might channel surf later, I might not. I might kill my friend's sister…I'll check in later if I do…I've taken to putting a blanket on the box because it's aware of me…I really want to know what else is on. If I get a chance, I'll post another session, but it might be too much…I feel as though I need to, though.
It's like this is becoming me….
Has this happened to anyone? Should I shit in a bowl and eat it like cereal? How much danger am I in?
First follow up post:
Read over some of my posts. I don't remember typing some of those lines. I won't remember typing this one.
Category:Television
Category:Mental Illness