Recess - An Episode Gone Horribly Wrong

I do not know how the tape came into my possession.

All I know is that I found it in one of my drawers while I was clearing them out, in preparation for moving to a new house. It was a VHS tape with a plain white label. "Recess/R1109 New/Return to C" was written on it in a thin black permanent marker. Whoever wrote it had very poor penmanship; it was barely legible. Like anyone who had watched Recess as a child, nostalgia overcame me. I placed the tape in my old VCR and pressed play.

It began with a blue screen. It stayed like that for a few minutes, and then started flashing red. Thirty seconds later, it cut to black.

Thinking that the tape was wrecked, I went over to press eject. Before I reached the button, the Recess opening started, albeit with really poor compression quality. The video was blurry, and the audio was muddy, but I kept watching to see if anything weird would happen.

The episode "The Rules" started, and began playing out like the television broadcast version.

Since the previous owner apparently took poor care of this tape, the vertical hold became progressively worse as it went on. Another thing that was off was the voice acting. The voices seemed to randomly fluctuate in quality, even in the middle of a sentence. For example, in one sentence Gus would sound like himself, in the next he would sound like the voice actor really did not want to be there.

The animation was technically sound, with the exception of some of the facial expressions. In certain scenes, the main characters' faces did not match what the emotions they were trying to convey. In these peculiar scenes, TJ looked angry, Vince looked tired, Spinelli looked anxious, Gretchen looked depressed, Mikey looked high, complete with bloodshot eyes, and Gus looked as if he genuinely hated everyone around him.

A couple of minutes in, the episode completely jumped the tracks and went insane.

At the scene where Vince was ordered to go into the dumpster and find a piece of fruit, it was taking him longer to find it  than it should have. Then the sound of a garbage truck pulling up could be heard.

"Um... Guys?" Gus said.

Everyone turned and saw the garbage truck.

Everyone, except TJ, ran. TJ tried to help Vince get out, but eventually failed and ran away. The garbage truck picked up the dumpster and emptied its contents, including Vince, and began to crush them.

Vince's screams in this scene sounded incredibly genuine, like the person doing his voice was actually being crushed to death. This whole time everyone was looking in shock. When the screaming ceased, Randall began crying for a moment, and ran off yelling "MISS FINSTER!" like he always did. Everyone else started crying. The screen faded to black.

Thirty seconds later, the scene abruptly cut to TJ walking home with his hands over his eyes. There was no sound at all for this part. The animation had really dropped in quality, like it was done by someone in their basement as opposed to a professional animation studio. It focused on TJ walking down a long road for a couple of minutes, with the vertical hold getting worse the whole time.

After a while, it cut to TJ lying in bed, crying quietly. It was quite genuine too; I could really hear the pain in his voice. Rather than cutting to black, after this scene ended, it showed the remaining five students walking to school in the rain. None of them cared about the rain.

In addition to some cuts and bruises, Mikey looked even more bloated than usual. Gretchen's glasses were shattered. Spinelli's hair was dirty, and all over the place. Gus was wearing a black sweatshirt, as opposed to his usual getup. TJ's hat was on with the bill facing forwards.

They all were incredibly depressed.

The vertical hold was so bad at this point, that I could barely tell what was going on. It looked like the remaining children were just sitting in class, occasionally cutting to an empty desk. Finally, the vertical hold finally calmed down to the point where I could see.

The depressing mundane atmosphere went on until Gus pulled out a pen. He rammed it through his eye. TJ tried to stop him, but Gus ended up bleeding out until he fell over dead. Blood continuously dripped down his desk and pooled onto the floor. Nobody else seemed to care.

Everyone went to lunch after that class. Mikey engorged himself on whatever he could find, until eventually he grabbed his chest, and rolled around on the floor screaming. Ultimately, his eyes rolled back in his head, he twitched once, and then stopped moving. TJ barely tried to help this time; nevertheless, he still became more depressed after Mikey died.

The scene cut to the playground again.

TJ and Spinelli were kicking a can back and forth, both expressing minimal interest in what they were doing. They looked as if they were on the verge of killing themselves. Gretchen silently walked past them, and began climbing up Old Rusty. When she was at the top, she got ready to jump off.

What was especially strange was that instead of looking depressed, the kids at the playground, with the exception of TJ and Spinelli, were shouting angrily at Gretchen. Most of them were chanting "Do it!", "Jump!", or something similar. Randall called Miss Finster, and even she came over and joined in the chanting.

"We've gotta stop her!" yelled TJ, and he and Spinelli ran over and climbed to the top.

TJ tried to get Spinelli to help pull Gretchen to safety, inside of the platform at the top of Old Rusty. Instead however, Spinelli simply glanced at him with a pained facial expression. She then stood up next to Gretchen, pulled a rope out of her pocket, and tied their ankles together.

TJ begged and pleaded to them.

"Don't do it! Come back inside!"

Gretchen and Spinelli looked at each other, closed their eyes, and jumped off.

They splattered into bloody bits when they hit the asphalt. TJ leaned onto a bar and began loudly sobbing. The crowd below was becoming angrier still, despite being covered in the blood of Gretchen and Spinelli.

The crowd began screaming "Jump, fucker!", "Do it, faggot!", "Come on, you little bitch!", and other phrases to that effect. TJ just curled up and covered his face. When the bell rang, everyone but TJ went inside.

The screen was black for several minutes. After a few moments of fast-forwarding to see if there was anything else, the scene faded in to TJ sitting on the edge of his bed, crying. There was an ambient sound of what I recognized as a tornado off in the distance, though outside the window, everything appeared normal.

Throughout this scene, the tornado sound got louder, and TJ's crying got more pained. Eventually, the tornado sound stopped. TJ lifted up a handgun from under his pillow, aimed it at his temple, and closed his eyes.

After one more tear slipped out, he pulled the trigger.

Photorealistic blood and brains splattered all over the bed and wall behind him. The scene held on TJ's corpse for a few more seconds, until the tape abruptly cut to black. I heard what sounded like a telephone dialing, then the tape stopped completely.

I sold that damn thing on eBay. I never wanted to see it again. Maybe the guy who bought it will upload it to YouTube or something, but I did not even want to watch it a second time to capture the footage. One time was all I needed to get every detail.

I do not know if the Recess production crew made this as some sort of sick joke, or if it was just made by some guy with too much time on his hands, but I do not give a damn anymore. I just do not want to see it again.

I will never be able to watch Recess the same way again.