Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30378490-20161031164124

These words just might be the last traces of me in this world, so i must take care in that they convey exactly what I desire them to. The experiences of the last few months have been such a strange journey, and now the next phase is to begin once i finish this last gesture of documentation, more for myself as a purging or release than for whomever chooses to gaze upon it.

It was a warm summer night, the road glistening and the air still smelling of the by-then ceased rainfall. I was walking down an unfamiliar street after walking out early of a movie that turned out to be all hype and no actual substance, when a peculiar sight grabbed my attention. Along the mostly deserted street were clusters of shops, and the particular store i was next to displayed a brash pink neon sign, seemingly leftover from the 80's, that said "VHS RENTALS HERE." l almost burst with laughter at the ensuing mental images and the perversity of some "hipsters" opening and operating a vhs-only store in this day and age. Having nothing else to do and feeling pecks of curiosity, I walked inside. The lighting was quite dim, almost nonexistent. There were no decorations on the bare yellowing walls, simply two long shelves in the middle of the room with numerous VHS boxes. There were some gaps in between the boxes indicating a few here and there were out, but many still remained. A quick glance down the aisle revealed them all to be horror, if the grisly covers were any indication of content. The covers were mostly drawings but a few were photographs, and each of the images were disturbingly haunting in its own way. A woman half-naked and screaming, eyes bulging and fingers desperately grasping for a knife mere inches away as a reptilian humanoid oozing translucent goo with long claws and two mouths reached out for her. A man in a pickup truck whose face was contorted into an expression of anguish and repulsed fear driving away as behind him a horde of children with glowing eyes, elongated limbs and gnashing sharp teeth, their hungry smiles stained red, were seemingly catching up to him. No titles, just a gruesome cover image and one or two stills from the film on the back, from the few I inspected. Being a fan of horror i did not recognize any of the images front or back. Everything inside of me froze as my eyes caught a glimpse of one particular box. The full-color drawing, rendered in the highest detail imaginable, was that of an alien-like structure akin to some sort of gazebo with a long flat table-like surface in the middle covered in blood and organs, as children attempted to flee, the vaguest hint of two terrifying eyes looking down upon it all from the sky. That image captivated and chilled me thoroughly. Before I was even aware of my own actions I had taken this box and walked up to the glass counter. The cashier looked more like the beefy bouncer of a shady nightclub one would never dream of angering.

"Membership card?" he asked in a thick deep voice. After indicating that one was not something I owned, he shook his head and said "OUT." I stood there confused. "I- I'd like to apply for one." He shook his head again. "It doesn't work that way. Out NOW." He lifted his arm, pointing a very thick finger towards the door. A thin tall and bearded man appeared from behind him, seemingly materializing from the darkness when in reality he most likely stepped from behind the black curtain that was difficult but not impossible to see in the dim light. "What seems to be the trouble here, Edward?" The thin man took a long look at me before seizing the video box from Edwards' hand, and the two stepped back and quarreled for a moment, before the cashier disappeared into the curtain. The thin man smiled at me, his fingers absentmindedly tapping the box still in his hands. "Greetings, I am Allen, the owner of this establishment. I do apologize for Edwards' behavior, as we tend to be very discerning about our customers, being that our titles cater to a specialized few." He pointed to the box in his hand "This... is a special product, fairly intense for newcomers. For someone not accustomed to our productions it may be a little too much." He gestured to a closed door to our right. "It actually should have been in there with the films of its equal, as opposed to on the main shelves. As owner of this establishment as well as someone who has seen and been involved in the creation of every film that graces our shelves, might i recommend something a little less revealing, that may help with one developing a taste for what we have to offer?" There was something in what he said that troubled me, but since it seemed the membership issue was being skirted I leapt at the chance knowing i would eventually see the film that i had a deep and sudden urge to view. He walked down the aisle and i followed. He stopped, picking up a particular box and handing it to me. "Oh good, i was hoping this one had not been rented already. Yes, there is a bit of a love story" He rolled his eyes at these words, echoing the mild loathing dripping from the words as he said them, "but it is actually well done and this is a wonderful introduction to our 30+ years worth of work in the industry." Winking at me, he then said "Return it within a week and based upon you're reaction we will pick another selection. And keep in mind, in the spirit of things as well as due to having other duties we are only open at night" Without looking i took the box, eager to watch whatever it was. I felt like I had been allowed into some sort of exclusive club, when i sensed the reality was so much more mundane. I suspected this whole scenario had been staged, some sort of desperate attempt of a floundering business to make a random potential customer feel more at home. I couldn't deny that if this were indeed the case, it had worked.

After a 15 minute drive and some thorough digging through my basement to rescue my dusty forgotten VCR, i was ready to watch the mysterious cassette. I still hadn't even looked at the cover and decided not to. I had no idea what to expect other than some long-forgotten low budget horror movie, perhaps even one i had seen before in my many years as a genre fan. It began almost immediately, no credits or title. Cheesy yet sinister organ music blared over the soundtrack sometimes drowning what dialogue there was, though the plot was quite easy to grasp despite this technical issue. It seemed to be filmed on a handheld camcorder in a fake documentary manner, a bit distanced from the action as if the cameraman and audience were voyeurs of the unfolding events. The simple plot concerned a man who found himself suddenly in some menacing woods and stumbles upon a coven of witches. He finds himself falling in love with a woman whom the Queen witch had captured and made her slave. The Queen offered to free the girl and allow them to be together on the condition that he sells his soul to her. Eventually he does so, and his love interest is then increasingly terrified of him as the man is forced to do the Queen witches bidding, culminating unexpectedly in the startlingly graphic, brutal sequence in which he slaughters his would-be love interest. Up to this point there had been not a single death or drip of blood, no indication that the film would become so grisly. The murder dragged out for a good five minutes or so, the actor becoming increasingly covered in blood as he slams this sacrificial knife into her flesh nonstop, occasionally struggling to pull the embedded knife out of bone, her body slowly transforming over time into an unrecognizable mess of meat. This was also the only part of the movie to not have that overbearing organ droning on, further adding to the shock value. The camera just kept zooming in closer to the horrific massacre until the film abruptly ended, leaving me stunned and with a lingering feeling of dread and slightly nauseous.

I slept little that night, thoughts focused on that film and some of the strange details I noticed during and afterwards. Every time i drifted off, something would snap me back to consciousness. What year was it made? Based on my experience with low-budget horror i would have guessed early to mid 80's, but the effects seemed too well done for that era leading me to believe older cameras were used in a more recent date. Who were the actors? I did not recognize a single face but that is nothing unusual in dealing with low budget films. What was unusual was the high quality of the acting. There were no flubbed lines or stilted acting, everyone was very convincing in their roles, the kind of acting that would lead to some recognition, even low-level. Where was it filmed? Those woods in which the film took place seemed quite familiar, as did the abandoned church that was the sole location shown. Most interior shots were simply a red curtain backdrop but at one point the pews could be seen, and i was certain I myself had been in that church at one point in time, long ago. Why no credits or title? I did my best to push these thoughts out of my mind, but others came to the surface or reappeared until the sun rose. I went about my day, consuming more coffee than usual to avoid sleeping until it could be fended off no more, and sometime afternoon I fell into a restless dreamless slumber. Needless to say, upon awaking i found myself back in my car headed to the video store.

I arrived just as Allen was unlocking the front door. "Ah, back so soon?" There was a faint grin in his words as he stepped onto the hardwood floor and flicked on those almost nonexistent lights. "That was quite an - " I struggled for the right word but wound up choosing the first that came to mind "Interesting movie. I'd love to see more." He nodded, taking the tape from me, checking the contents before nodding and setting it back on the shelf. "Well, as you can see, we have many more, of equal or greater quality than that title." he walked around to the other side of the shelf and began scanning thoroughly with his eyes. Someone entered, and without looking Alan raised a finger and said "I'll be with you in a moment, Nigel, I'm with a special customer," and reached for a tape on the bottom shelf. He glanced at the box for a moment, smiling slightly before passing it to me. "This is quite a good one, in my opinion. And admittedly that is a biased one given that I not only run this store but all of our productions are made in-house so to speak." Before i could ask him any of the several questions that I had about the first film, he was engrossed in a conversation with an older man whom i assumed to be Nigel.

Not wishing to make the same mistake twice, i went to sleep early with the resolve to watch this second film in the morning. The cryptic cover drawing was that of four teenagers surrounded by a glowing hazy fog, with several eerie zombie like shapes lumbering towards them in the background. Three hours my resolve had broken, and I was sitting in front of the television, a very large, black and strong cup of coffee in my hands.

This second video was recorded in that same pseudo-documentary style, this time the camera shifted between that stalker-like camerawork and a footage from a camcorder passed between the characters as they documented their experience. The story centered on four teenagers, two male and two female, vacationing for two weeks in an unnamed Asian city. They unfortunately picked an area that was still somewhat angry towards America over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. and the locals seemed mildly hostile. Due to a lack of subtitles it was hard to make out what all was being said by the Asian characters. In a nightclub, the one modern place shown in the otherwise old fashioned town, one of the main male characters angered one of five men wearing suits and ties. Not only were they the owners of the club but also seemed to be some sort of black magic practicing Yakuza, and cursed the main characters through eerie chanting. The singer at the nightclub, who spoke fractured English through a thick accent and seemed to be sympathetic to the Americans, said something about a "curse of 12 sorrows". The film then changed tone, and the rest was one nightmarish situation after another. Upon awakening the following morning, they were all covered in giant pustules and boils. One of the girls, a friendly blonde, screamed in agony as one of the boils on her face burst open, something strange falling to the ground. The camera panned down revealing a large thick centipede that crawled under the bed. Each event that took place was increasingly graphic or horrific, many of them too terrible to describe. Yet there were no deaths, just one sickening or startling occurrence to one or the group as a whole. Near the end, it seemed as if nobody in town could see or hear our four protagonists as they pathetically groped down rainy streets in search of some sort of reprieve or assistance from the agonies descending upon them. Eventually the black magic Yakuza members lured and trapped them in a large circular steel building much like a silo, but seemingly empty except rocks covering the ground and large scraps of metal. There seemed to be two windows high above, too distant to escape from but just enough to let a little moonlight in. From the outside there was a long tracking shot of the cameraman circling the building from the outside, and the rest of the movie was captured by the camera owned by the main characters. One of them had a pack of matches and after a bit of fumbling managed to light one and set the whole pack on fire. .Whoever had the camera dropped it with a scream, yet despite this it landed just right so the rest of what occurred was visible. A series of shapes emerged from the opposite end of the room, human-like figures in various states of decay, some gurgling and most barely more than bone held together with the barest amount of rotted tissue, slowly lumbering and shambling towards the main characters, who appeared frozen in absolute terror at this sight. Before anything else could be done those hideous remnants of what were once humans descended upon the main characters and one could only see a grotesque sort of huddle. one of the girls cried out in disbelief "They're HUGGING us!" After a moment, her boyfriend spoke up. "Don't you see, they were cursed too!" and with those words the girls began sobbing. The camera lingered on this uncomfortable image for a small eternity before fading out. I sat there as the tape rewound itself, fidgeting slightly and staring vacantly at the blue television screen lost in thought. That film had been unnerving in ways similar and different to its predecessor. The acting was quite good, very convincing, and yet I did not recognize a single face from my years watching various b-movies. Again, it was hard to place a year to the movie, though this was mainly due to it taking place or being filmed in a foreign location. The effects of those living corpses was utterly convincing and well executed way beyond the means of some low-budget project made in the middle of nowhere, though perhaps it was some sort of co-production with foreign backers putting up some extra cash and work into the props.

Now, at this point i must confess that the rest of what i have to say will not be easy for me to force myself to recall, so forgive any difficulty i have in conveying properly what unfolded next. Its not easy to go through such experiences once, let alone repeatedly. When I arrived at the video store, Allen was there, seemingly waiting for me. He locked the door behind me, and said "This will be a private screening, here, for reasons you will soon understand." He opened the door to our right and led me in. There was a shelf in the back with a few films, and a large screen television covering most of the wall on the opposite side, two fold-up chairs in front of it. In his fingers Allen held a vhs tape, THE vhs tape, sliding it into the player and turning to me. "This beautiful creature was my first film of this kind. I was sent to the location with no knowledge of what was to be filmed. My few years working in the documentary field had somewhat prepared me, but not completely, for what was to come." His eyes almost seemed teary as the play button was pressed. He sat down and gestured to the empty seat which i soon after occupied. My eyes turned toward the screen, eager but increasingly nervous of what this film contained. The television was abruptly filled with the image of a dirt road surrounded by trees, with a clearing seen on the right some distance ahead. The early morning sky began to darken as a school bus appeared to the left, gradually slowing and coming to a stop. The doors opened and a rotund man wearing suspenders stepped out, cursing after lifting the hood and peering inside. He lumbered to the doors and bellowed out "Ok,everybody out, we'll have to walk from here!" As children appearing to be 6-8 years of age filed out of the bus, as the driver called out for them to use the buddy system, the camera zoomed in on the woods behind the bus. Although the image was slightly out of focus, a shifting could be seen, some single source of movement which suddenly multiplied into a bustle of activity. The camera zoomed back, showing the driver and children walking down the road, toward the clearing. "Strange" the bus driver could be heard saying as the cameraman slowly walked to capture the images, the sound of twigs breaking distorting other audio. "That wasn't here this morning." The camera panned to the right. In the center of the clearing sat the hideous gazebo-like structure, and as the camera lingered upon it and the children walking closer to it, the skies above began to darken. The gnawing fear slowly blooming with in me exploded as the cameraman carefully crossed the street in order to switch positions and capture the childrens' faces. A pair of blonde twins stood out in particular. "No" somehow passed through my lips as the camera abruptly switched to the woods, and about five or six - things erupting from behind the trees, scurrying at a rapid pace towards the interlopers. "What in the he-" was all the bus driver was able to get out as his throat was shredded open and rendered useless  with a single swipe of obscenely sharp talons. The soundtrack became awash in a sea of high pitched screams of terror and pain as the images became increasingly red. The cameraman could be heard retching as blood, organs and limbs littered the ground. Some of the children were running into the woods, some in the opposite direction towards the bus. The camera followed the blonde twins, a boy and a girl, as they rushed towards the clearing and that structure clutching hands. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anymore. However I still saw the image from memory as two of the creatures materialized and tore the girl, in half, my hand still gripping hers as it became detached from the rest of her. I opened my eyes and leapt up to stop the tape and demand answers, but there was something oddly calming about the single "Don't" that Allen softly spoke that changed my mind. Shaking, nauseous and reeling with a form of terror and fear that had been brought back to life after being told for years it was all in my head and had all been just a nightmare, I reluctantly returned to the screen wondering what this madman intended me to further see. The blonde boy - it was best not to think of him as me at this point - was cowering behind the strange alter slab, crawling and trying to stay hidden. The camera shifted up as a rumbling overtook the soundtrack, revealing two large eyes in the sky. Most of the creatures appeared to have vanished, presumably to look for the dozen or so children who had escaped. One was sniffing the air and quickly approaching the boy. the camera panned down, its holder running away. It stopped at the bus drivers remains, a hand fumbling into the mans pockets and turning up a Swiss army knife. The camera was a blur of motion as its' holder ran back to the structure, where the boy, eyes shut and mouth open with screams barely audible overtop the increased rumbling, was being held by the shoulder by a creature, his legs flailing several feet from the ground. The cameraman shouted as his free hand buried the knifes' corkscrew into the creatures back, directly in center. It dropped the boy in surprise, a dark green substance oozing from the wound. the view shook and became barely watchable as presumably the camera was slammed into the creatures skull. The camera fell to the ground, landing in such a way as to be pointed upward. A young bearded man stood, holding his hand out to the boy. "Come, let's get you to safety" the man said, picking up the camera as the boy took his hand. The image slowly faded into blackness as they ran. Though the room was now silent, there certainly was much noise internally as my mind grasped to reconcile all of this. Thankfully i had something else to focus on as Allen quietly spoke. "Imagine being a 20 year old documentarian with a growing career in nature films, and receiving a very random call to be at this place at this time and being told not to interfere with the proceedings. I went out of sheer curiosity, and wound up witnessing - that." He swallowed before continuing. "I do not regret breaking the protocol to rescue you, it was worth the - reprimanding - to know that a life was spared and in doing so, the gateway was not fully opened so the owner of those eyes could not fully cross over into our world. But he is still here, looking for cracks in the surface separating our dimension from his, and he will in time find them unless we are vigilant." We talked, for a long time. All of my questions were in time answered, and i had a better understanding of things, as much as anyone could. That night, armed with a list of names, i made a series of phone calls. I traveled to various stores and purchased handguns and the proper ammunition. Half of the guns I armed with a single bullet. I selected one, loaded it fully and set it aside. That one would be mine. As much as i would like to play hero and attempt to save the day, that role was already chosen in the stars for someone else. After informing that individual of their predestined duties, i intend on taking myself out of the equation if the forces beyond will be so kind as to allow me this graceful exit. I fear they won't.

(This is kind of a "chapter zero" for a story i have been toying with writing for a long time. Videos do play some part in this and a few other sections but hope it is not mistaken for a "lost episode" based upon this) 