Habit Forming

I received a VHS tape in my mailbox this morning.

I sat down in front of my television and played the tape. A hazy black and white image appeared on the TV screen. The recording seemed to be filmed with an old 8 millimeter camera. It was a shot of a beach, at night. The ground was silt and sand, and the trees looked like tropical forest. It was a tripod shot, and nothing happened for the first few minutes of the video.

The recording was really grainy and shot without the benefit of the modern camcorder's night vision technology. I couldn't see that much, but I could clearly hear the waves crashing, and some garbled off-camera voices.

After a few minutes of the unintelligible voices I left the tape playing and made breakfast. I poured a large bowl of granola with dried strawberries and poured milk and peach schnapps into it. Mostly peach schnapps.

I came back to the television. The shot was the same, but the camera had been knocked over. I rewound the tape. Hastily, I shoveled some granola with schnapps into my mouth. The camera was upright again. I pressed play.

A figure came out of the tree line. The figure was shirtless, with pale white skin and wearing jeans. He was bald and looked at the camera with wild eyes. He was probably about 25 feet from the camera. His jeans looked frayed. His head moved from left to right and right to left like a bird's might. He took a few steps closer to the camera. I could see that he was extremely well-muscled.

Still about 15 feet away, he began to reach out with his arms. Long, long arms. His arms telescoped further and further towards the camera, intertwining and wrapping around each other. They twisted and untwisted.

I paused the tape to see a hazy freezeframe of the man's long, long arms.

I sat down at the table. I rolled a loose joint with some old marijuana and clutched it in my mouth. I walked to the bathroom to urinate. Just as I had finished urinating, a powerful piss shiver overtook me. I shook violently, and the joint fell out of my mouth into the urine-filled toiletbowl.

I heard screaming and moaning from the other room. I rushed in to see what it was. The tape had become unpaused and the volume was blasting. Apparently, whomever had made this tape had taped it over an 80s porno. The moaning and grunting of the blaring pornography eased my sense of alarm. Then I saw it: the man in the porno had long, long arms. They warped and undulated around the woman, and his misshapen penis entered her again and again.

I walked back into the bathroom and fished the urine-soaked joint out of the toilet. I broke up the joint and mixed it into my cereal. The man with the long, long arms was still fucking on my television. I left my house and went for a walk.