I sat on the floor of John’s empty apartment, numb. His things were still scattered around—half-read books, dishes left in the sink, his jacket tossed over the back of a chair. But he was gone. Really gone. I didn’t want to admit it, but deep down, I knew it. No calls, no messages, just... vanished.
That’s when I noticed the box, dusty and shoved into a corner. Something compelled me to open it, though I wasn’t sure why. Inside were a stack of VHS tapes, each labeled in John’s shaky handwriting: Colouring with Steve. I felt a chill when I read it, recalling him mentioning it once, offhandedly, almost as a joke.
But now, it didn’t feel funny.
The tapes seemed ancient, with cracked cases and faded labels. I held the first one, feeling that familiar ache of desperation—maybe, just maybe, these tapes would tell me where he’d gone. Why he’d left. What had happened to him. Ignoring the tightness in my chest, I grabbed John’s old VHS player, hooked it up to his TV, and slid the tape in.
It began simply enough. A cheerful tune played over a bright cartoon forest, where a character named Steve sat with his crayons. He was… off. His smile was wide, but his eyes seemed a little too big, a little too bright, as if they’d been drawn on over and over. Still, I tried to calm myself. It was just a kids’ show.
Steve started coloring the trees, his crayon strokes filling the page in short, jerky movements. I could almost feel the scratch of the crayon on the paper, as if it was in the room with me. For a while, it was just a typical episode of some weird, old show.
Then, Steve stopped. He looked directly at the camera, smile fading slightly, and leaned in as if he could see me.
“John is still here,” he said softly.
I froze. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to turn it off, to run, but I couldn’t move. The camera cut away from Steve to a different scene. The bright forest faded to black, and the screen was filled with static. The sound crackled and hissed, as if fighting to break free. Then, slowly, the static cleared, revealing a dimly lit room.
My heart hammered. There, on the screen, was John.
He was staring, unblinking, his face expressionless. Dark circles lined his eyes, making him look worn, hollow, as if something had drained the life out of him. His hand reached forward, fingers trembling slightly, as if he was trying to touch something just out of reach.
I whispered his name, forgetting I was alone. But it felt like he could hear me—or was listening. His eyes were locked on me, a hint of recognition, desperation even, flickering in them.
“John?” My voice cracked, sounding thin and distant in the empty apartment.
He didn’t respond. The screen flickered, and his face wavered in and out, like he was being pulled deeper into the darkness. My fingers hovered over the remote, itching to turn it off, but I stayed. I couldn’t abandon him, not now.
Steve’s voice came back, eerily calm. “John is here, Sarah. He just needs a little more help.”
The image cut back to the forest, where Steve resumed coloring, his crayon strokes now harsh and frantic, as if he was drawing with more than just wax. Red streaks slashed across the trees, turning the once-bright forest into something twisted, corrupted.
My hand flew to the remote, fingers shaking as I hit the stop button. The tape whirred, ejecting from the player, but my eyes stayed glued to the screen as if I’d see John one last time. It went dark, filling the room with a silence so thick it felt alive.
I didn’t know what to believe. Part of me wanted to throw the tapes out, to pretend I hadn’t seen anything. But another part of me, the part that loved John and couldn’t let go, whispered that I had to watch more. I needed answers.
Even if it meant losing myself in the shadows, too.
I wasn’t sure why I wanted to keep going. Part of me felt like the smart thing would be to leave this cursed box of tapes in John’s apartment and forget any of it existed. But I couldn’t. John was still out there—somewhere. I could feel it, a connection I couldn’t explain, like he was calling out to me from the darkness.
So I pushed the next tape into the player, half-bracing myself for whatever nightmare would unfold. The screen flickered to life, showing the familiar sight of Steve’s crude, exaggerated face. His smile was too wide, and his eyes were still too large, almost as if someone had drawn them on separately, made them sharper somehow.
This time, Steve wasn’t in a forest. Instead, he was sitting at a small table in a dark room, his crayons laid out in a perfect row in front of him. Behind him, I could make out what looked like a hallway, long and dimly lit, stretching far beyond the limits of the frame.
He began coloring, his crayon scratching along the paper, rough and grating. As he colored, the drawing took shape—a hallway, lined with doors. They were strange, mismatched things, some tall and narrow, others squat and wide, with peeling paint and rusted hinges. Each door had a name scrawled on it, and I felt a pang of recognition as I realized the names were of people: Martin, Ellen, Peter, and… John.
My stomach twisted.
Steve colored the door with John’s name in a deep, sickly red, and his eyes narrowed with what almost looked like regret. A deep, unsettling hum began to fill the room, building slowly, like the rumble of some unseen machine. Steve glanced up from his drawing, his gaze piercing right through the screen.
“Some of them won’t come back,” he said, his voice low and almost mournful. His eyes flicked toward the door labeled Martin, and something in his expression changed. His smile faltered, just for a moment, as if he was holding back something far darker than the childish drawing he presented.
The hallway on the page started to twist and stretch, as if it were alive, contorting into grotesque shapes that no crayon should have been able to make. The doors warped, their edges dripping like paint left out in the rain, and the names began to blur, the letters elongating and melting into strange symbols. The hum grew louder, resonating deep in my bones, until it felt like the entire room was vibrating.
I leaned closer to the screen, feeling a strange, eerie familiarity with the hallway. Something about it tugged at the edges of my memory, as if I’d walked down those warped corridors before, brushed my fingers against those names on the doors. I couldn’t place it, but it felt real, like I was somehow part of whatever nightmare world was unfolding.
“Sarah,” Steve whispered, his voice so faint I almost missed it. He didn’t look at me, but his smile tightened as he added, “You’ve walked these halls, too.”
My blood ran cold. It didn’t make sense, and yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I could almost remember it: the echo of my footsteps on darkened floors, the low, persistent hum that followed me as I passed door after door. I tried to shake the feeling, telling myself it was just a trick of the mind, that this was just an old, cursed tape. But it felt like more. Like it was meant to feel familiar.
Steve’s crayon slowed, drawing another door at the end of the hall. It was plain, unmarked, a blank square on the otherwise chaotic hallway. His hand paused over it, fingers trembling slightly, and he looked at the camera, a shadow passing over his face.
“Some doors are meant to stay closed,” he whispered.
The screen flickered, and the hallway on the page seemed to come alive, stretching toward me, pulling me in. My pulse raced as I stared at that last door, a cold sense of dread creeping up my spine. I knew—deep down—I was meant to open it. That it held answers, or maybe something far worse.
But before I could move, the tape ended, the screen going black. I sat there, staring at my own reflection in the dark screen, feeling a chill settle over me. The hallways, those doors, that blank space at the end—it felt too close, too real, like a memory clawing its way to the surface.
I had no idea what I’d find on the next tape. But I knew, somehow, that I was already part of whatever horror lay beyond those doors. And for John’s sake, I couldn’t stop now.
After watching the second tape, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was stepping into something far more dangerous than I’d imagined. The twisted hallways, the warped doors—they felt too real. The tape was pulling me into its world, a world I wasn’t sure I could escape.
I needed answers. That night, I started researching everything I could about Bright Kids Television, hoping to understand what had consumed John—and now seemed to be consuming me.
The network barely had a footprint online, as if it had been wiped from history. But after hours of digging, I found a single article in an obscure entertainment archive. It mentioned Edgar Holstein, the founder of Bright Kids Television, a reclusive man whose eccentricities bordered on the bizarre. Rumors surrounded him: that he had an almost religious belief in the power of media, that he thought TV could do more than entertain—that it could change people.
Holstein’s obsession had driven him to experiment with media as a psychological tool, blending images and sounds in ways that supposedly triggered responses in the viewer’s subconscious. He’d called it “immersive conditioning.” The article claimed his ultimate goal was to blur the lines between fiction and reality, and his last and most ambitious project was Colouring with Steve.
The article left it at that, but I felt a gnawing dread at the realization that Holstein had succeeded, at least partly. Somehow, he’d created something that lived beyond the screen, something that had pulled John—and now me—into its orbit.
Still, I had to know more. I returned to John’s apartment the next night, heart pounding as I slid the third tape into the player. The screen crackled to life, the grainy image of Steve appearing once again. His eyes seemed darker this time, as if some shadow had fallen over him.
“Hello, Sarah,” he greeted, his smile thin, almost strained.
I froze, every nerve in my body telling me to stop, to run, but my hands stayed clamped on the edge of the table. He shouldn’t have known my name. He couldn’t have known my name. But somehow, I felt like he’d known all along, that this was part of the show’s design, waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.
“You’re closer to the truth than they ever were,” Steve murmured, his voice low and knowing. His eyes never left mine, and for the first time, I felt something akin to pity in his gaze.
Then, he turned back to his drawing, slowly coloring in a crude logo for Bright Kids Television. But as he worked, the shape began to change, twisting into something darker, a vortex of black and gray spiraling into itself. His strokes became rougher, and the colors deepened, swirling in layers that felt bottomless, as if the image were alive, sucking in everything around it.
“Holstein wanted to see how far he could push,” Steve continued, his tone almost confessional. “He wanted to create a new kind of reality… a place between here and there, where people like you could find their way in.”
The edges of his mouth trembled, and his once-wide smile faltered, giving way to something weary, almost haunted. I could sense that Steve was fighting something within himself, struggling to hold onto whatever humanity remained in his cartoonish frame.
But as he shaded the center of the vortex darker and darker, a figure appeared behind him in the swirl—a man, barely visible, cloaked in shadows. His features were indistinct, but something in his bearing, the way he loomed behind Steve, sent a chill through me. I knew, without needing to be told, that I was looking at Edgar Holstein.
Steve seemed to feel his presence too. His hand stilled, the crayon hovering just above the paper, and he glanced back, his face pale and tense.
“He’s still here, you know,” Steve whispered, almost as if speaking to himself. “Watching. Waiting for the right ones to find him.”
The vortex continued to twist, expanding outward, and I felt myself being pulled into it, my eyes locked on Holstein’s shadowed face. For a split second, I thought I saw him smile, a cold, thin line that barely touched his eyes. Then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the image flickered, breaking apart into static.
The screen went dark, and silence filled the room. I stared at the blank TV, my pulse pounding in my ears, trying to process what I’d just seen.
The boundary between me and the tapes was fading. I could feel it, a presence—Holstein’s?—lingering in the room. Whatever he’d created wasn’t just a show. It was a trap, a doorway meant for people like John, and now, me.
I didn’t know where this was leading, but I knew one thing: Edgar Holstein’s work wasn’t done. And if I kept watching, I’d be walking straight into his world.
When I started the fourth tape, I expected the same unsettling cheer from Steve, his painted-on smile and cartoonish enthusiasm somehow more chilling with each episode. But this time, Steve looked different. His face was worn, almost gaunt, and his smile was gone. He sat in front of the paper, hands trembling slightly, and for the first time, his eyes looked truly human—tired, even haunted.
He lifted a crayon, staring down at it as if it were something foreign, something he didn’t recognize. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, almost hollow, the usual sing-song tone replaced with something raw and broken.
“You know,” he began, barely looking at the paper, “I had a life once. Before all of this.”
My breath caught. I leaned forward, afraid even to blink.
Steve’s hand moved slowly across the page, shading the outline of a small house, a tree beside it, but there was no joy in his strokes, no flourish or excitement. Just the slow, mechanical motions of someone performing a task they’ve done countless times before.
“I wasn’t always… this,” he continued, his voice cracking slightly. “I had a family. A wife. Little girl… she used to watch shows like this, back when we thought TV was just TV.”
The screen flickered, static washing over his figure, and for a brief moment, I could see something else: a man in his thirties, with dark hair and soft eyes, sitting in a different room, smiling gently at someone just off-screen. The image was faint, barely there, but unmistakable—it was Steve, or whoever he’d been before all of this.
The scene cut back to the Steve I knew, his cartoonish form slouched over the paper. He didn’t seem to notice the interruption, didn’t flinch or react, as if the flashback was as much a surprise to him as it was to me.
“They called it Bright Kids Television,” he said, bitterness creeping into his tone. “But it was never about children. Never about education or entertainment. It was a trap. A front for something far bigger.”
He colored the house darker, the edges smudging as his hand shook. “Holstein wanted more than viewers. He wanted… participants. People who would get lost in his world, who would forget where they ended and the show began.”
Another wave of static washed over the screen, and I saw flashes—a dimly lit studio, cameras lined up, all focused on a single chair in the center of the room. A man sat there, chained to the arms of the chair, eyes wide with terror, as shadowy figures whispered and moved around him, adjusting lights, preparing him like he was just another prop. And then a face loomed into view—Holstein’s face, eyes gleaming with a sick fascination as he stared down at the man in the chair.
When the static faded, Steve was still there, but now he looked more desperate, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the camera, as if he were trying to hold onto a memory that was slipping through his fingers.
“I tried to leave. Tried to pull myself out,” he murmured, his voice shaking. “But Holstein had other plans. He didn’t just want a show… he wanted subjects. People he could break down and reshape, blend into his twisted world.”
The drawing changed under his hands, morphing from the little house into a cold, sterile room, empty except for a single chair bolted to the floor. Steve’s hand paused, hovering over the image, and he looked directly at the camera, his eyes filled with a silent plea.
“They took me,” he whispered, almost inaudible. “Made me into this… this puppet, this thing that smiles and colors like nothing’s wrong. But I remember, Sarah. I remember what he did to me, and I know he’s still here, watching, waiting for more…”
Another static burst cut through, and this time I saw a man pacing in the darkened studio, muttering to himself as he glanced around like a trapped animal. It was Steve—no, the man who’d become Steve—his face drawn and exhausted, staring up at the lights, calling out for help that would never come.
The image twisted back to the present, and there was Steve, his painted smile cracking as he whispered, “Help me.”
He pressed his hand against the paper, fingers smearing the crayon into a dark, chaotic mess, as if trying to break through it, trying to reach me. His eyes held mine, filled with a desperation so raw, so human, it made my heart ache.
“Sarah,” he murmured, his voice barely audible, “please… don’t let him win. Don’t let him trap another soul.”
The screen flickered once more, showing a quick, jarring image of Holstein lurking in the shadows, watching Steve, his face contorted into a cold, satisfied smile. Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, the tape cut to black, leaving me alone in the dark.
I sat there, trembling, the weight of Steve’s plea pressing down on me. Holstein’s twisted project hadn’t just created a show—it had created a prison, a trap designed to ensnare anyone who dared to watch.
And somehow, I was next in line.
When I pressed play on the fifth tape, I felt a new kind of dread settle over me, heavier and colder than before. This time, I didn’t know if I could handle what was waiting for me on the screen. I’d seen enough to understand that whatever Holstein had done, whatever horrors he had unleashed, had trapped not just Steve but others, too—John and Martin included. And now, I was bound to them.
The screen flickered to life, but instead of the usual crude animations or Steve’s small workspace, I was greeted by darkness. A dim, heavy silence filled the screen, and after a moment, faint shapes began to emerge from the shadows. I squinted, trying to make them out.
I was looking at a room—no, the room, the Bright Kids Television studio, but twisted, darkened, like a nightmare version of itself. The walls seemed to pulse, coated in grime and cracks that looked almost organic. Something was alive here, hiding just beyond the light.
And then, I saw them. Shadowed figures drifted in and out of the darkness, their movements slow, ghostly. Their faces were obscured, their bodies blurred, as if they were caught halfway between this world and another. But even without seeing them clearly, I knew. I felt them.
These were the souls Holstein had trapped—lost, wandering through his twisted creation. One of them looked up, and I felt a pang of recognition. His eyes were hollow, his face drawn and distant, but it was unmistakable.
It was John.
I pressed my hand against my mouth, holding back a cry. This was real. Somehow, against all reason, my best friend was here, captured in the static of this cursed world.
“John…” I whispered, reaching toward the screen, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. But then, as if my voice had cut through the darkness, he looked straight at the camera, straight at me.
For a moment, he opened his mouth as if to speak, but static washed over the screen, drowning him out. Desperation clawed at me as I watched his lips move, the faintest whisper barely audible, struggling to break free from the distortion.
“Sarah…”
The voice was weak, muffled, but it was his. I could see him struggling against the interference, his face twisting with effort. Around him, other figures loomed in the background, shifting in and out of view—Martin among them, and others, too, people I didn’t recognize but who had that same blank, haunted look, all trying to reach me, to warn me, maybe even to escape.
John’s face came into focus, clearer than ever, and I heard him call my name again, more urgently this time. “Sarah… don’t… keep watching…”
A deep, unsettling hum began to fill the room, vibrating through the speakers. The figures began to blur, pulled back into the shadows as the darkness thickened, engulfing them one by one. Only John remained, his face twisted with fear and sorrow as he mouthed words I couldn’t quite understand, his voice cutting in and out, drowned by static.
And then he shouted, “Get out! Stop watching!” His voice was frantic, filled with a terror I’d never heard before, but before I could react, a sharp screech of static cut him off, distorting his face into a smear of light and shadow. The image twisted, his features dissolving into an unrecognizable blur.
The camera shifted suddenly, and I was back in the studio, but now Steve was standing there, motionless, staring at a blank canvas. He was no longer coloring, no longer smiling. His face was a mask of despair, and he looked more hollow, more broken than I’d ever seen him.
The screen began to flicker again, and through the static, I saw figures moving behind Steve, reaching out toward him, desperate and silent, trapped in a loop they couldn’t escape.
“Steve…” I whispered, my voice trembling.
He didn’t respond. He stood there, staring at the empty canvas, as if he couldn’t see them—couldn’t see the souls swirling around him, their faces twisted with silent screams. His eyes were glassy, distant, as though he had long ago surrendered to this prison.
And then, just as the screen began to glitch and darken, Steve turned his head, looking directly at the camera. His lips parted, his voice barely a whisper, but I heard it clearly.
“Help me…”
The tape cut out, leaving me alone in the silence. I stared at the blank screen, my heart pounding, every nerve in my body screaming at me to leave, to run as far away from this place as possible. But I was rooted in place, haunted by John’s words, by Steve’s plea.
They were all trapped in there, caught in Holstein’s twisted experiment, and now I was closer to the truth than ever. But was I brave enough—or foolish enough—to keep watching?
A part of me already knew the answer.
The sixth tape was different from the start. Instead of the usual opening, the screen flickered and jumped, settling on a dim, crumbling room. The walls were streaked with cracks, covered in strange, dark scribbles that seemed to crawl and pulse with a life of their own. Steve was in the center, huddled on the floor, crayon clutched tight in his hand as he scribbled frantically on the walls. His movements were wild, erratic, like a man possessed.
“Sarah,” he whispered, glancing over his shoulder at the camera, his eyes wide and terrified. “You… you’re still here. I didn’t think anyone else would still be watching.”
My skin prickled. He knew my name.
He dragged the crayon across the wall, looping dark spirals that warped into strange symbols and faces, twisted and contorted. “You have to understand,” he said, his voice quivering. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was all Holstein’s idea, his… his experiment.”
I watched, frozen, as he pressed the crayon into the wall so hard it snapped, leaving a jagged streak. “It was never just a show. It was a bridge—a way for Holstein to… to pull people in.” His voice grew louder, more desperate. “It was always the plan, Sarah. To make a world where he had control, where he could play God with people’s minds.”
Steve looked directly at the camera, his expression raw and panicked, like someone facing the edge of a precipice. “You have to destroy the tapes, Sarah,” he pleaded, his voice trembling. “The more you watch, the closer you get. The deeper you fall in, until there’s no escape.” He clawed at the wall with his hands, smearing the symbols as he continued, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.
“It’s a cycle, Sarah. He draws people in, traps them, feeds on them. I was the first, the prototype. But then… then came the others.” He stopped, his gaze flickering with the slightest hint of recognition and grief. “John… Martin… they’re all here. And you’re next, Sarah.”
The camera zoomed in, focusing on his face, drenched in sweat and shadows. “Holstein won’t stop,” he hissed, his face twisting with rage and desperation. “He’s gone, but his cycle lives on. Every time someone watches, it starts again. The tapes find new hands, new eyes. And it grows… more powerful with each viewing.”
The image on the screen flickered, showing flashes of a dark corridor lined with doors. Each door bore a name, and with each new viewing, another name would be added. I saw my own name for a split second, flickering across a door that seemed to grow closer with every passing second.
Steve screamed, his voice piercing through the static, snapping my attention back to him. He was scratching at the walls with his broken crayon, hands bloodied from his frenzied writing. “Destroy the tapes!” he shouted, his voice a desperate wail. “Please, Sarah, before it’s too late! You have to end it—end me, end all of us! Holstein left a piece of himself in here, a part of his twisted soul. He’s still watching, still feeding, and if you don’t stop this… you’ll be next.”
The screen shuddered, warping around him as he continued, his voice breaking into sobs. “I don’t want this anymore. None of us do. But we’re trapped, caught in his world, forced to play our parts, again and again.”
He stopped, sinking to the floor, his hand reaching toward the camera one last time, his fingers stretching through the screen like he was reaching for my help. His eyes met mine, a flicker of the man he’d once been, and he whispered, “Please, Sarah. Burn them. Before he pulls you in.”
The screen cut to black, leaving me in silence, the weight of his words pressing down on me like a stone.
I sat there, staring at the blank screen, my heart racing. I could feel the cold weight of the tapes in the box beside me, could almost sense Holstein’s presence lingering over them, waiting, watching.
I knew what I had to do. Steve’s voice echoed in my mind, raw and pleading.
But the fear gnawed at me, that terrible doubt… What if destroying them wasn’t enough? What if it was already too late?
The seventh tape whirred to life, and instantly, I felt a chill crawl up my spine. The familiar bright pastels of Steve’s set were gone, replaced by shadows and a sense of decay. Broken crayons lay scattered across the floor, their once-bright colors dulled and smeared. Steve himself was hunched over his desk, his back to the camera, moving with a strange, jittery energy that made my skin crawl.
He turned slowly, his face hollow, eyes darting like a trapped animal’s. His hands trembled as he picked up a crayon, clutching it so tightly that his knuckles were white. Without a word, he began to draw on the tattered paper in front of him, his strokes hurried and uneven, like he was barely holding himself together.
I leaned forward, heart pounding, trying to make out what he was drawing. As the image took shape, I felt the blood drain from my face. He was drawing my living room.
Every detail was perfect. The couch, the bookshelf, even the half-drunk cup of tea on the table—it was all there, sketched with a terrifying precision. As I watched, frozen in horror, he added the flickering lamp in the corner, its shadow stretching across the wall just like it did in real life. I glanced at my own lamp, feeling my stomach twist as the light began to flicker in time with his strokes.
The room around me seemed to come alive, shifting and warping with every line Steve added to his picture. My furniture creaked, the air grew colder, and an unnatural silence settled over everything, as if I were no longer alone.
Steve’s hand stilled, and he looked up, his eyes meeting mine through the screen. His face was pale, lined with exhaustion and fear. “Sarah,” he whispered, his voice thin and trembling, “you can stop this. You have to go… where I cannot.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I didn’t understand. Where did he want me to go?
He looked down at the paper again, his hand shaking as he drew something else—a darkened doorway in the corner of his crumbling set. The door seemed to pulse, its edges blurry, as if it were barely holding its shape. His hand traced it again and again, each line darker and more jagged, like he was trying to etch it into the very fabric of reality.
I could feel a presence behind him, a shadow growing larger and more distinct with each stroke. I watched in horror as the shadow solidified into the unmistakable form of a tall, thin man—Holstein.
Steve’s movements became frantic, desperate, as he scratched out the door, pressing the crayon so hard it snapped in his hand. He didn’t even react, just kept drawing, his eyes wild and terrified.
“You have to find him, Sarah,” he gasped, his voice cracking. “Find the place he left behind. He built it to last, to hold us here. It’s where he waits… where he watches.”
The camera zoomed in on Steve’s face, close enough that I could see the lines of despair etched into his skin, his pupils blown wide with terror. “If you don’t go,” he said, barely louder than a whisper, “he’ll bring you here. And once you’re here, there’s no way back.”
Behind him, Holstein’s shadow loomed closer, his face obscured but his presence suffocating. The man’s hand reached out, long fingers stretching toward Steve’s shoulder, and I could see the slight tremble in Steve’s body as he felt the cold grip of his captor.
“Please, Sarah,” Steve whispered, his eyes shining with desperation. “End this. Break the cycle.” His voice quivered, and he looked at the camera one last time, his face twisted in anguish. “Before he finds a way to reach you…”
The shadowed hand closed around his shoulder, and Steve’s expression twisted into one of pure terror. He opened his mouth to scream, but the tape cut to static, filling the room with a harsh, grating noise that made me jump.
I sat there, staring at the blank screen, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst. Steve’s words echoed in my mind, cold and urgent. Go where I cannot. Find the place he left behind.
Holstein had left a piece of himself here, a doorway into his twisted world—and if I didn’t find a way to destroy it, I’d end up just like Steve, John, and Martin.
But where could I go? What was Holstein’s “place”?
I looked around my apartment, everything feeling colder, sharper, more real than it had before. And then, like a memory surfacing from the depths of my mind, I saw it—a faint, almost forgotten mention from my research. Bright Kids Television’s studio headquarters.
It was the one place that had held them all, that had housed Holstein’s dark experiments and given birth to the tapes. If I was going to end this, I had to go there, to the very source.
A sense of dread settled over me, heavy and suffocating, but Steve’s voice lingered, pleading. There was no choice now. I had to go.
The old Bright Kids Television studio loomed ahead, its windows dark and hollow, the walls crumbling as though they were trying to forget the past themselves. The silence around me was thick, suffocating, as if the building were holding its breath. But I knew this was where it all had to end.
As I stepped inside, the stale air pressed down on me, heavy with dust and a lingering sense of something long abandoned yet somehow waiting. The hallways stretched out, empty, yet familiar from the tapes. Each step echoed, and with each echo, I felt the walls shift, the way they had in Steve’s drawings—a claustrophobic, twisting maze. Old posters for forgotten shows peeled from the walls, their faded colors washed out, as if they too had been drained of life by Holstein’s sinister legacy.
Eventually, I reached a door marked with symbols etched into the wood—shapes I recognized from the tapes, symbols that had haunted the backgrounds of Steve’s world. It was locked, but the old wood gave way easily under a firm push, creaking open to reveal a dark room lined with old equipment and a large, dusty control panel.
In the center of the room sat a single, untouched reel of film on a pedestal, as if it had been waiting for me. The label, barely legible through the layers of grime, read: Holstein’s Final Cut.
With trembling hands, I loaded the reel into an ancient projector, its machinery groaning to life in the eerie quiet. The film flickered on the wall, revealing Holstein’s face, his eyes dark and hollow, yet filled with a terrible, calculating intelligence. He stared directly at me, and though he was just an image, his gaze felt real, piercing.
"Welcome," Holstein’s voice rasped, a cold, dead sound that seemed to chill the room. “I had almost given up hope of finding another one willing to come this far.”
The camera panned to Steve, who stood behind Holstein like a ghost, his face blank and defeated, his eyes red and hollowed, exhausted beyond anything human. Holstein looked back at him, a cruel smile twisting his lips.
"Steve was my first," Holstein said, almost fondly. “An experiment, proof of concept. You see, Sarah, I wanted to create something more than entertainment. Something... eternal.” His smile widened. "A doorway."
Steve flinched, and as the camera zoomed closer, I could see faint words scratched into the walls behind him—Help me, written over and over in Steve’s frantic scrawl. Holstein continued, his voice a mix of pride and malice, “Steve was only the beginning. Each new viewer opens the door a little wider, inviting me further in. Through him, I was able to reach the others… like John and Martin. And now, you.”
Suddenly, I felt a presence in the room with me—a shadow on the wall, shifting as though something were trying to break through. I whipped around, my breath catching as I saw figures forming in the dim light. First John, then Martin, their faces pale and drawn, their eyes pleading. But the worst was Steve, his form flickering as if he were caught between the reel and reality itself, stretched thin by whatever kept him tethered to Holstein’s twisted world.
"Sarah," Steve whispered, his voice barely audible over the whirring of the projector, "it has to end. Destroy them... while you still can."
Holstein’s laughter echoed, drowning out Steve’s voice. “Foolish girl,” he sneered, his image growing larger, more real. “You think breaking a few tapes will end this? My reach extends far beyond these reels.”
But even as he spoke, I could feel a pulse of energy building, a raw desperation radiating from Steve and the others. Holstein’s image flickered, and his smile faltered.
With a surge of defiance, I turned to the pile of tapes, gathering them in my arms. The dusty film felt brittle beneath my fingers, and with a quick, fierce motion, I threw them to the ground. Holstein’s voice rose, furious, a guttural scream of protest as I brought my foot down, shattering the tapes under my heel, grinding the cursed media into shards.
The projector flickered violently, the light twisting and sparking as Holstein’s image began to distort, his face warping into a grotesque mask of rage and desperation.
“No!” Holstein’s voice was a shriek now, stretched and broken. “You can’t destroy me! I am eternal—I am—”
A final, piercing scream filled the room, and then silence. Holstein’s image crumbled into static, his twisted smile fading as he dissolved into nothingness. The projector sputtered, the last of its light flickering out, leaving me in the dark, surrounded by fragments of broken tape and lingering shadows.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw them—Steve, John, and Martin—standing in the faint glow of the ruined equipment. Their expressions were calm, peaceful, no longer haunted.
"Thank you," Steve whispered, his voice soft and full of a quiet relief I hadn’t heard before. Slowly, he and the others began to fade, their forms melting away like mist in the morning sun, leaving me alone in the darkness, a weight finally lifting from the air.
I stumbled out of the studio into the pale morning light, the silence following me, feeling as though I’d been pulled back from the edge of something vast and terrible. Holstein was gone, his cursed cycle broken.
The world felt quieter, emptier, but for the first time since this nightmare began, it was finally free.