The Old TV

By Tabitha .Z.

George finally woke up after hours of sleeping in his own sweat and filth. Crusty-eyed and well hungover, he looks around at his mess from the night before. He finds the TV remote next to him on the couch and hits the power button. He takes a moment to realize nothing but blackness remains and, at a snail’s pace, he remembers that his TV set stopped working two days ago. 

“Piece of shit!” he grumbles, annoyed, and throws the remote at the screen.

He stumbles up the basement stairs to the kitchen of his Grandmother’s house. 

“Good afternoon, George. Look who’s here, it’s Mr. Steven Romwell!” his grandma Patty boasts. 

Not fucking Steve, George thinks. Steve is just a couple years older than George and much more successful. Since high school, he has loved to make George feel inferior and incompetent.

“Georgie! Just stopping by to make sure your grandmother’s air conditioner is still working. I installed a new one for her yesterday. I thought you might come up to help me out but I see you were… busy,” Steven glares at him judging.

“That’s right Steve,” George replies while grabbing the milk out of the fridge. “Feels pretty cool in here to me man, I guess you can leave now.”

Steve continues, “You know your grandma Pat could use your help around here bud. I mean, how long have you been here now? The yard needs cleaning. The place can be done with a real man’s help.”

“Why don’t you go do that then, asshole!” George snips, knowing he is about to be berated by his grandma. 

She starts up defending the prick but luckily George’s cereal bowl is all set to go. He exits back through the basement door, slamming it behind him. Was it really afternoon already? 

George stiffens at the fact that he must soon get ready for his shift at the nearby fast-food restaurant. It is close enough to walk to, which is fortunate seeing as George lost his driver’s license months ago from a D.U.I. incident. What George finds amusing is that he isn’t nearly as fucked up then as he had been the night before, taking the same drive. Being sober was the worst thing that could happen to him anyway. He sparks up his weed and glares at the television screen reflecting himself back at him. 

George stiffens at the fact that he must soon get ready for his shift at the nearby fast-food restaurant. It is close enough to walk to, which is fortunate seeing as George lost his driver’s license months ago from a D.U.I. incident. What George finds amusing is that he wasn’t nearly as fucked up then as he had been the night before, taking the same drive. Being sober was the worst thing that could happen to him anyways. He sparks up his weed and glares at the television screen reflecting himself back at him. 

Soon, he takes his usual walk to work but halts when he hears a woman crying from the house he is passing by. It is a shabby, simple little place with a moving truck in the driveway. The sad, slow, persistent crying seems like it’s coming from an open window, which George could only see lace curtains flowing out of. Past those curtains is nothing but blackness and sobbing. Something unsettles him when he becomes distracted by a glaring light coming from the window on the other side of the house. It moves back and forth, changing from white to red. It blinds and annoys, so he quickly moves on. 

He shuffles into the back door of his job, wishing he had smoked just one more time before coming into work. It wasn’t so much the work he hated. In fact, it was sort of amusing for him to watch the bubbles roll up in the deep fryer. He liked to think about how much the thick oil didn’t look hot at all, but instead like the bubbler in his fish tank. Sometimes, he would forget how hot it was until he’d splash a little on himself accidentally. 

It is the people at his job that he really loathes. Every single one of his coworkers got on his ass about something. The worst one of all is his boss, Mira. She is an old hag who loves being in charge of things, even if it is a shitty fast-food restaurant. She is a short, bossy curmudgeon, even worse than George’s grandmother. It is her signature move to talk down on her employees, as if they are tiny stupid children. She did this in front of anyone and everyone. Even her favorites were not immune to this treatment, but they would still mock others together openly like a group of horrid teenage girls. 

Luckily, it isn’t Mira who gets to him first but his coworker Sam. Sam isn’t so bad, it’s just that he never shut the fuck up. Too many times he told the same unbelievable stories over and over again. And of course, he started talking about that one time he got abducted in the desert by a sexy alien who did freaky things to him.

“Yeah, you told me that one already man,” George interrupts the ending.

“Well, I bet you haven’t heard about this,” Sam starts up again. “You know that milf with the blond hair and the two kids that come in here every couple of weeks?”

“No,” George said matter-of-factly. 

“Naw you know her man! Remember the big heels and the ankle tattoo?”

“Oh, yeah… that chick,” It clicks in Georges’ head.

“Well guess what man! This bitch went crazy and killed her kids man! I saw it on the news. They didn’t say how though. But she killed herself after that. Murders-fucking-suicide, bro!”

“The hot ones really are crazy,” George looked mildly surprised. 

“Naw, the craziest part is she lived right down the street from you, dude. You should have smashed it when you had the chance!”

“I HEAR TALKING!” Mira suddenly appeared and yelled. “That’s not what I have to pay you for! Can you freaks get back to working! You know… what you came here to do!”

Not just her voice, but her whole presence is like nails on a chalkboard to George. He did his best to avoid her and everyone else for the rest of his work shift. 

On his walk back home from work, he saw the old familiar moving truck in the driveway of the small house. He started to realize this might be the house that the murders took place in. Maybe that’s why he heard the sobbing earlier and why someone is moving away. 

The house was dead quiet now but even more unsettling in the dark. As he went to pass the moving truck, he saw that the door to it was wide open, with all kinds of furniture and boxes inside. A glimmer of light reflected off his pupil and he spotted this time what was catching it. 

An old box television sat near the opening of the truck. It was small enough to carry the rest of the way home, he thought, but big enough to not be a total piece of junk. 

“What a perfect opportunity,” he says to himself. 

He looks around one more time to see if anyone was around before he picked the TV up and walk away as if nothing ever happened. 

He could see it better when he got to his basement room. He set it up on the same small table the old useless one was on. This thing actually looked kind of cool, with its green transparent border. It looks like it was made in the early 2000’s. Little of this matters to George, as he plugs it in and removes the small remote that was taped to it. He can’t be sure, but it looks like there is a face that flashes on the screen when it first turns it on. The whole TV has a soft green glow to it from the green plastic border. 

“Finally,” he sighed. 

George would settle in for the night to go through his usual routine. That was, getting high, getting drunk, watching TV, eating, jerking off, and finally passing out. The only responsible thing he ever did was feed the 3 fish he kept in a small tank on top of his grandmother’s old dresser. 

The old TV worked well enough and picked up all the same old channels just fine. The only problem with it is that sometimes it would change channels on its own. Some sort of malfunction that a smack to the side would cure. The next morning, it was still on but playing only a static screen. George turned it off, but when he did, he thought he saw that face flash again on the screen. It seemed to be grinning at him. 

That day at work was full of more bullshit. His boss Mira decided to pit him and his coworker Claire against each other. 

“You’re the slowest at getting orders out, you know that? Everyone knows that! Claire is slow too but I’m sure she’d win if I put you two in a contest,” She cackled loudly. 

He made awkward eye contact with Claire, who seemed to glare at him a little. She loves sucking up to the boss and meeting her every need. She is a lame showoff who takes her job way too seriously. George hates her constant need of Mira’s validation and he hates her for her beauty. No matter how much she annoys him, she is still hot and George would still think about her every night. 

He thought about the comment Mira made all day and he felt a tension between him and Claire. He did his best to block it all out, getting lost in the sizzling sounds of the fries, fresh out of the deep fryer and the meat on the cooktop. 

When he gets to his room that night, the TV set is already on, which he thought was strange because he was sure he had turned it off. He smoked his weed as usual and opened up his drink for the night. Almost forgetting, he went to feed his fish but immediately he noticed one of them was dead, floating on the top of the water. 

“Shit,” he said, watching it lay lifeless but bouncing around from the bubbler. He plucks it out, throws it in the trash can and continues his night. 

His body begins to sink deeper and deeper into the couch while he gazes at the late-night cartoons on the green TV set. He is dazed but annoyed when again, the channel changes on him. It switches to the news, showing some violent riot going on in some other city. He smacks the side of the TV and it goes back to his cartoons. 

Just as he settles back in, the channel changes again. This time it was an old war movie showing soldiers getting shot and blown up. Again, he gets up and smacks the TV, only this time he can swear he saw that smiling face again, looking at him in a flash. He notices it’s toothy grin. Back to the cartoons now, he forgets about it, entranced with the images and the light. He is so out of it, so hypnotized by the TV that he doesn’t notice all the cartoons he is seeing turned violent and brutal. He only sits there, like a zombie until he finally blacks out. 

“I don’t know what you were watching last night but you need to turn it down George!” his grandma scolded him in the morning. “All sorts of strange sounds coming from the basement all night!”

“How about, you don’t tell me what to do!” George rudely talked back to her. 

She gasped. 

He is short-tempered this morning and woke up with a raging headache. His attitude doesn’t improve by the time he gets to work. Mira berates him for not having the cooktop at the right temperature and burning a burger. Sam won’t shut the fuck up, as usual, and Claire is laughing about him with Mira in her office. He hates everyone there, even the annoying customers. 

As he watches a new hamburger patty sizzle on the cooktop, he wonders if the sound would be at all similar if he put Mira’s ugly face onto it. Or would he hardly be able to hear the sizzling over her wretched yelling? Would her skin become darkened and charred like the meat patty? 

Her shrill voice rings in his head for hours. 

On the way home, he notices the little house again. The moving truck had been gone, the house obviously empty. It all seems too quiet and peaceful. 

Back in his room, he goes to feed his fish but another one is dead and floating. 

“What the fuck,” he says irritated. 

He leaves it to spark up his weed and turn on the TV. He is to get as high and fucked up as he can tonight. He doesn’t want to think about anyone, not Mira, not Steve, and definitely not Claire. That prissy little bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone else. Why does she hate him anyways? She doesn’t even know him. He can’t stop himself from thinking about her body and all the things he’d like to do with it. This just makes him more angry because he knows it would never happen. Everyone knows he is a big loser. 

As the night grows later and later, he becomes stuck in a TV trance and woozy from the high. He doesn’t even notice the TV changing channels this time. He doesn’t register that the green glow of the TV border became a bright red light, filling his basement room. The smoke from his blunts had made the room hazy. The TV screen flashes more erratically. The channels change more quickly now. From one scene in a movie where someone is attacking another, to a cartoon who is getting run over, to the news again where there is death and violence. 

Still it keeps changing quickly until it slows and stays on a young blond mother, giving her two children a bath. A seemingly calm moment but the mother’s eyes are wrong. Her eyes are still and empty like Georges’, which are half open watching her. She is like an emotionless shell until she snaps, her eyes growing large and angry. She grabs both children by the neck and plunges their heads under the bath water. Her face angry, her chest heaving, her teeth grinding. Both she and George are now breathing quite heavily. 

And again the channel switches. The lighting in the room growing more and more red. 

From the television a voice comes, “Kill.” The sounds of screams and chaos behind it. 

“Kill.”

George is still in his trance, practically drooling. That grinning toothy smiling face flashing onto the screen. 

“Kill them all.” 

The voice now transcends the speakers of the TV. It has no known source but it is all around the room.

“The fuckers need to die.”

The next morning when George wakes up, he doesn’t remember much at all from the night before, just his anger which is still there. The television is still on and he finds the remote to turn off the static sounds. When he does, he sees his reflection on the screen but suddenly something quite large moves behind him. He spins around to see who is there but there is no one. He looks back at the screen to make sure and it is just him in the reflection. No large looking figure standing behind him now. 

Maybe he just got too fucked up last night, he thinks. He decides on that because he still feels fucked up and in a haze. He doesn’t even remember getting to work. Can’t even remember what Mira yelled at him for as soon as he walked through the door. Just that he hates her. Just that he wants to grab her by the neck and shove a burger in her mouth so she would just shut up. 

“Bro, you look like you got fucked up last night!” Sam said impressed. 

“I remember one time I came to work high on three different kinds of drugs dude,” he laughed maniacally. “That was the day I…”

“Fell asleep in the walk-in cooler. Shut up Sam, I already heard you tell that damn story 5 fucking times!” George interrupts angrily. 

“Whatever, dick.” Sam walks away. 

Things only got worse when George was having his dinner at one of the restaurant tables and a familiar face walked in. It’s Steven fucking Romwell, who immediately notices George in the corner table glaring at him. Claire takes his order and when he was done he comes right over to George’s table. 

“Hey champ! Say, why aren’t you going out with that girl who just took my order?”

“Go away Steve,” George mumbles, not making eye contact.

“No really!” Steve persists, “You two seem equally yoked working a dead-end job like this. Maybe you two could give up on life together. Move into her grandparents basement and be drug addicts. She already looks like she could be a crack mother. She’s perfect for you Georgie.”

“Fuck off Steve,” George retorted.

“Oh, you don’t mean that. You’re not the angry type of guy George, just the useless kind.”

“Order number 66,” Claire yells from the counter.

Steve chuckles as he leaves to get his bag of food. He stops for a moment, leaning in close to Claire to tell her something. They both look over to George. 

George puts his head down seething with rage, despising everything about the situation. 

He feels Steve’s presence walking towards the door. 

“Relax George, you’ll pop a blood vessel! You don’t want to look more demented than you already do.”

He walks out of the door. 

There is a noise building in George’s mind as he sits there. A deep rumbling, a growling sound, as if coming from under the surface of sanity. A frustration building stronger and stronger as the images of violence run through his mind and as all the muscles in his body tense up. He imagines all the things he would like to do, not just to Steve, but everyone who pissed him off. Everyone who undermined him and treated him like shit. 

A faint whisper in his head slowly says, “Kill.”

Suddenly Mira is standing there ready to say something wretched. 

“Break time is over. You’ll be closing the store tonight with Claire. Try not to be a lazy creep… I know that will be hard for you.”

All he wants to do is get the night over with so that he could go back to the basement and get out of his mind again. He does his best to stay out of Claire’s way but he feels like she keeps watching everything he does. It seems like she is going back over every area he is cleaning up to do it over again. She looks annoyed with every action he takes. 

“You know it’s easy, right?” Claire spoke. 

“What?” George is taken aback.

“Everything in this job. Showing up on time, cooking burgers, cleaning the kitchen. All you have to do is try.”

George doesn’t respond. He is shocked she was actually talking to him and that this is what she has to say. 

He hears her whisper to herself, “Everyone is right about you.”

“Who?” He asks sharply. 

She’s confused, “Who, what?”

“Was it Steve, that asshole who talked to you earlier? What did he say about me? That I’m useless? That I’m broke? That I’m not man enough and I live with my grandma?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” She looks concerned. 

“Sure you don’t. It was Mira then, right? That old bitch you follow around like a dumb puppy. She told you I’m a lazy creep,” He sounds angry now.

“Chill out dude,” She raises her hands up in defense. 

“Everyone thinks they know me. I’m a moron, hu? Slow in the head from all the drugs I take.” He takes his finger and makes a screwing motion on his temple. 

He is walking towards her now with anger in his eyes. She is slowly backing up.

“I’m not capable of anything great am I? Maybe I should just give up and die already!”

Claire backs up into the deep fryer and burns her hand on it. She turns to look at the burn when George quickly grabs Claire by her ponytail.

 He plunges her face into the hot oil. The bubbles begin to rage and overflow. Her body flails and fights. He can hear her trying to scream and he can hear the loud sizzling of her flesh in the heat. He holds her there with one arm until the oil turns from red to black and the screaming finally stops. Finally her body goes limp. 

He lets her fall onto the floor lifeless. Her face is red and blistered. Her mouth is wide open, her lips gone, her teeth exposed. The beautiful brown eyes she once had were now melting down the side of her face. She is ruined, ugly, and dead. George feels a peace come over him while he watches her skin still reeling from the heat. She has no power over him anymore. He goes home. 

He’s already intoxicated by the time he gets to the basement. He walks right past his fish tank, where the last remaining fish is floating dead on the surface of the water. That same evil looking face flashes on the screen again, this time looking more satisfied. As the glow of the box set turn from green to red, George lay on the couch watching the television with blurred eyes. He sees that evil looking face again, taking over the screen. It’s smiling wickedly and laughing. 

“You’ve done well George,” the voice comes from the television. “You liked killing her, it felt good. You have more power now.”

George’s consciousness is coming in and out but he feels the voice resonate deep within him. Images of Claire struggling under his control flash in his mind and gets him excited all over again. He laughs in his delirium. 

“You’ll do it again George,” the voice continues. “There are others who need to die.”

The TV begins to flash now and shows George himself committing heinous acts of murder. He was strangling his grandmother to death. He was stabbing Mira in the chest and gouging out her eyes. He was beating Steve to death with his bare hands until his face was unrecognizable. 

George watches hypnotized, as again the evil face appears on the screen. 

“You’ll do it George!”

Slowly, the face on the screen begins to rise. Behind the television box the same evil face appears and reveals a whole figure. It is a huge black shadow with horns like a goat. It stands there staring down at George. Its sharp-toothed smile glinting in the red light of the room. Its eyes are wide and hungry. George falls asleep to the sounds of low whispers, describing all of the pain he will soon inflict. 

A week later, George wakes up in a cold prison cell. Now that he’s been caught for the brutal killing of Claire, he doesn’t feel powerful at all. The police had found him the very next morning. Although he is slowly remembering what he did and how he did it, it all seems blurry. He keeps questioning if he really committed such heinous acts and actually planned to do more harm. 

 George looks out to the common area where the other prisoners watch one small singular television. He wonders if this TV is anything like his last one, if the creature inside of it followed him here, or if it has abandoned him to suffer alone. 

Back at the house, his grandma Pat is having a small yard sale to clear out the basement. She wants to get rid of everything that reminds her of George and the evil that he had committed. 

“At least he’s gone for good now Patty,” Steve tells her, as he casually looks around at George’s junk.

He spots the green bordered television and walks towards it. 

“You know my daughter has been begging for a TV to put in her room… I’ll give you thirty bucks for it.”

“Oh that sweet young girl! Please just take it, my treat,” Patty says happily. 

“Oh no, I insist!” Steve handed her some cash. “Maybe this will take her mind off of boys.”

They both chuckle.