written and illustrated by Iron Eater

Read this piece’s entry on the Shousetsu Bang*Bang wiki.

“This is where they keep the videos that kill you when you see ’em, right?”

Beau craned his neck over the well-worn piece of A/V equipment he’d been working on all afternoon and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “What?”

“You know, cursed video tapes and shit. Haunted DVDs found at a flea market. TV shows that never aired because demons ate the crew before broadcast. Those little, fuckin’, ansaphone cassettes with phone calls from other dimensions. You got any of that stuff?”

It had been a minute since Beau had last heard someone refer to an answering machine as an ansaphone. The locals sure didn’t use the term. Working in his chosen field made unfamiliar slang vastly more interesting than people asking for horror movies.

Had the archives (not technically what they were called) been properly located inside the library like they were supposed to be, there would have been a few more sign-in sheets and desks between Beau and people walking in off the street; his current unusual circumstances meant it was an awful lot easier for people to bother him, in exchange for making it an awful lot easier for him to know who was coming in and out. He placed a few smaller, more easily lost components on the cloth on the desk before answering whoever had invaded his space. “This building hasn’t always been part of the university,” he said, not bothering to look up from his toolkit. “Past faculty weren’t always as invested in preservation as they could’ve been. If you want a specific student project, I can’t guarantee we have a copy.”

“I’m not looking for a tape. I’m here ’cause I got one.”

“Uh-huh,” said Beau. “Can’t help but notice you aren’t dead.”

“Not yet,” said the visitor.

Had their roles been reversed, Beau might’ve said something about how he was still workin’ on it or maybe how he’d get there eventually, so his mysterious visitor either had a lot more self-restraint or was no fun whatsoever. At least it lent gravity to the claim of having a murder tape on hand.

Still, Beau felt it wise not to get friendly too quickly. For all anyone knew he was dealing with yet another tourist here to suck up all his time and ultimately go nowhere, of which he saw at least one or two every year. He also hadn’t eaten properly in an embarrassingly long time, which had him feeling irritable, and people who had business in the archives needed to be handled with kid gloves lest they bolt the minute Beau started giving less cheerful feedback. God forbid he imply he recognize people from anywhere. No, as long as he was behind the desk, everyone was a faceless stranger until otherwise established.

He kept his words casual. “You’re in in the film department, then? Or the arts? I can get you the paperwork to ensure whatever it is you’ve got there ends up enshrined well before the end-of-semester rush.”

“I’m not here running errands,” snapped the visitor.

“No? Then why are you interrupting my work?” A more normal academic archive would’ve had sign-ins and desk attendants and various other barriers between people off the street and the materials kept within, but nothing about Beau’s job was normal. For all the benefits of the arrangement it did mean he had to screen everyone himself.

“God, Hoshi said you’d be difficult but I didn’t realize it’d be this difficult.” Was Hoshi talking to people about him? That could be a problem. “I mean I’ve got a weird tape that does weird shit and the only way I had to view it broke, so I brought it here,” continued the visitor.

Beau arranged the last few bits of kit before pushing back from his desk and standing. “Well, bring it ’round and we’ll have a look,” he said.

The visitor faltered. “You’re not going to ask how I found it?”

They didn’t let Beau smoke in there or he would’ve ashed his cigarette as punctuation. Instead he grunted. “Doesn’t matter where it came from if it’s dogshit,” he said. He was in a unique position to not care that much about swearing in front of students. “What format is it? We’ve got a lot of working players.” Not counting the one still in pieces in front of him or the dusty junk he’d yet to resurrect, obviously. He’d get to them when he got to them. There were only so many hours in a day and he did have other duties in the archives, no matter what his title was on record.

A little rustling around in the visitor’s bag produced a boxy cassette with a single window for the tape inside it instead of the usual two. The label was completely colored over in black marker. Save for a little light wear and tear there were no other distinguishing marks on the tape. “It’s, uh, this?”

Beau couldn’t help but let his interest show. “What kind of curse lives on a fucking Betamax?”

“Is that what this is?”

Wasting time on the intricacies of outdated video formats risked losing momentum. Beau had learned too many times that dwindling momentum led to dwindling results more often than not. “Let me guess: you got it and the player at the same place?”

“How’d you know?” asked the visitor.

Cases like these had a thousand different moving parts, but in Beau’s experience they boiled down to a few basic archetypes. The weird old media found in a relative’s collection, or part of an estate sale, or a secondhand shop that was closing down soon? Those he all thought of as resurfaced. Always convenient, that origin story. Someone had owned them once, so they had reason to be in working-enough order, but they weren’t actively being owned, which made them unknown wild cards. You could make an infinite number of stories with that premise. Many of the projects in the archives did exactly that.

Housekeeping came first before they could start evaluating the mysterious find. “Lock the door behind you,” said Beau. “There’s countless thousands of dollars worth of equipment in here, and even more than that if you count the irreplaceable one-of-a-kind works. I don’t want anyone messing with the materials while my attention is divided.”

“Doesn’t that need a key in this part of the building, Mr. Larsen?”

Beau rolled his eyes. “They don’t pay me enough to bother with formalities like keys and titles. Call me Beau. And no, it doesn’t take a key, not in this room on this side of the door. Just pull on the latch, there, listen for the click, and that’ll be good enough. If there truly is something strange going on, we don’t need anyone barging in and causing a scene because they’re short on context.”

Digging out the appropriate VCR (itself a generic term, he not-entirely-patiently explained to the visitor, similar to how a PC and a Macintosh both counted as computers) and making sure it worked would take Beau a little time, so he tried to keep his unexpected guest talking. The easiest solution, it turned out, was to ask questions he probably wanted to answer in the first place.

The visitor—whose proper name was Victor, one of the university’s many film students, as Beau was told eventually—had found his tape-and-player set in the basement of a house a family member had bought at a bank auction. Victor had shown up to help clean. He was a bit of a technophile, because of course he was, and so when he’d found the old unit that needed standard-definition cables to connect to a screen, he’d taken it home to see if any of his own CRT collection would work.

It had. And he’d seen things.

“Don’t describe them to me,” said Beau as the aging monitor glowed to life before them. “I’d like to watch without any preconceived ideas of what I’m meant to be looking for.” That was more true than it wasn’t, at least for now.

Victor winced. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to other people cutting him off. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, it’s The Pitcher, so it’s pretty gnarly if you’re not used to the genre. I don’t want to get shoved in front of the Dean again.”

Explaining Beau’s personal history with atrocity cinema wasn’t necessary. Instead, he said, “It’s fine. You see a lot of weird shit in my line of work. Should it turn out to be evidence of a crime, we’ll call the cops.” He would not be calling the cops, he knew that much already. “Otherwise it’s just so much movie magic.”

“You don’t even care why I think it’s cursed?”

“I’ll find out soon enough,” said Beau, and he pressed play.

Familiar credits appeared on screen. Beau knew this one, though he hadn’t known they put it on Betamax. The movie wasn’t old enough for anything other than VHS to have been relevant at the time. Someone’s personal piracy project, maybe. He could relate; it was no accident that there were binders filled with burned archival DVD copies of analog works stuffing his shelves at home. He owned drives upon drives of data. Every year there was more to rescue. On certain cold and lonely nights he risked falling into despair from how he’d never be able to save everything, how every semester that passed saw countless master copies binned and untold drafts deleted. The need to do what he could with the options he had was what got him out of bed in the morning.

Technology was changing all the time. You couldn’t assume one single solution would work forever. You couldn’t even assume yesterday’s reliable answer would be relevant tomorrow. Beau had found that out the hard way.

The piece was short, so it didn’t take long for it to get to the meat of things, such as it was. Terrible things befell a man in a dark basement. It was an act of senseless suffering, of perfectly-simulated water torture, of the sheer cruelty enacted on a man simply for the sin of existing. Beau knew the scene well. When it ended, there didn’t seem to be anything after it to fill the space. A shame and a waste. Magnetic tape didn’t grow on trees.

“That’s that,” said Beau. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened while the video had played. Circumstances remained normal as he rewound and ejected it. At least he had proof that the archives’ Betamax machine was functional. “The picture quality’s aged pretty gracefully, but otherwise this isn’t anything I couldn’t find on the shelves of certain rental shops back in the day, if I knew where to look. Some of them are even still around.” He forced his features to soften with kindness he didn’t feel. “First time getting spooked by an unlabeled find?”

Victor had watched him like a hawk the entire time the video was playing. “You didn’t see it?”

Beau traded his mask of kindness for one of stern curiosity. “I saw the entirety of The Pitcher from Warmack’s Beneath All Closed Doors, and the other three segments were conspicuously missing.”

“Right, but if you know that, you know it’s not Doshu in the chair this time. It’s somebody else.”

Doshu (currently enjoying a supporting role in a long-running historical drama on a channel Beau didn’t watch) hadn’t gone by his usual performing name in the credits, nor the one he’d been born under. It was an open secret. Most actors who did this kind of horror tried to keep it separate from their more respectable—their word, not Beau’s—pieces. Women getting cut up into nasty little pieces for sexual gratification was one thing. A man who’d do it more than a time or two got a reputation. Make up a fake name for your trashiest gigs, though, and everyone would pretend you were simply a convincing lookalike. Doshu wasn’t the first guy to do it nor would he be the last.

And the star of the sordid show hadn’t looked like him at all.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. Beau was good at pretending not to, himself, since it would’ve ruined the surprise to show he recognized anything on screen. But Victor sure had seen it, and he hadn’t forgotten. Usually situations like these fell apart at one or both of those stages, but here was Victor, in clear distress over fresh memories. It was so rare you saw his kind when you actually wanted one. How fortuitous for one to appear right on Beau’s doorstep! Any more convenient and it would’ve required ringing a bell for table service.

No sense in getting excited this early. Strange things could have many explanations, and Beau was going to handle this reasonably. “So somebody edited someone else’s face onto an old piece of outsider art, and put it on an outdated storage format,” he said. “People have brought me weirder things from more boring sources. Why should I care?”

Victor produced a DVD in a flimsy third-party clamshell with the name of a rental store Beau recognized emblazoned on the front via a sticker. It claimed to contain a copy of Jaw Collector III, notorious for being the black sheep of its series. “Because I rented this two days ago and it has the same guy in it,” he said, brandishing the case like it was damning evidence in a court case.

Beau said nothing.

“I’ve seen this movie a dozen times,” continued Victor. “I’ve watched this copy a dozen times, same Sharpie doodle on the disc and all. Figured I’d get my mind off of things with something familiar so I could concentrate on midterm prep over the weekend. And this time, instead of the lead actress, the Doshu replacement from The Pitcher was the one getting taken apart. You get me? That’s not a movie that’s shy about showing you its actors’ bodies.” He kept talking through a downpour of frenetic energy. “I download a copy from my usual torrents, same thing. I look at reuploads that haven’t gotten nuked off the internet yet, same guy there. But if you read books mentioning this one, they all talk about the actress like nothing is wrong!”

“So somebody’s fucking with you,” said Beau. “That’s strange, but it’s nothing supernatural.” University-adjacent work meant experiencing a lot of weird art. People made it, people remixed it, people archived it or destroyed it or left it on shelves between semesters. He made a point of trying to see every single student exhibition he heard about. Some of it he had even helped set up. It was all made the old-fashioned way, with human vision and human hands. He suspected it was the wrong part of the country to hope for a ghost infestation.

Victor glanced back at the video tape, still safe and snug in its top-loading home. “It’s not just this movie. It’s more and more of them, spreading. It’s getting all through my collection. Not just my collection, either. He’s in Martyr’s Shadow part 2, he’s in the ’88 version of Electrocution, he’s in Knife Eyes. He’s everywhere. He’s always the same age, too, even in stuff I know was filmed decades apart. I’m seeing projects I made years ago have him in there. And I only started seeing him after I watched this fucking tape.”

His hand clutching the DVD case was shaking and the tendons in his neck stuck out like ship’s cable. Beau had an idea about how the basement tape player might’ve gotten broken.

It was Beau’s job, as a representative of the faculty, to consider the student body’s best interests in mind. Even if he’d been cool and collected, the spark of dread in Victor’s eye was all the proof Beau needed to know he wasn’t bullshitting. That is, at least he was convinced he wasn’t bullshitting. University students could get all kinds of ideas in their blessed little heads.

Someone was going to have to handle things before there was too much of a mess.

“You said someone else mentioned me?” asked Beau. He hoped he sounded patient.

“Just in passing. It was mostly in the context of the archives, and I was asking about something else, anyway. Didn’t get the feeling you two were friends or anything.” That was something. At least some people could keep their mouths closed some of the time. “But I remembered your name, and how they say you’ve watched everything they keep back here, so I figured if anyone would know what was up, it’d be you.”

Beau nodded. “Pretty much,” he said. He waved at one of the room’s wheeled office chairs, all of them pushed up against different desks. Most days he didn’t have company; as a result, the archives were light on spare seating. “Sit down. Tell me your story again. Don’t leave anything out this time, either, because it might be important.”

There was a slight hesitation in how Victor moved. “Even if it’s personal?” he asked. When he sat down it was like he was afraid there was a bomb under his seat cushion.

“Maybe especially so. There’s nothing you can say I haven’t heard somewhere before, nothing you might’ve done I haven’t come across from fellow fans of Warmack’s work at least once or twice. I’m here to diagnose a problem, not giggle and throw insults because you jerked it to gorehound fodder. You’ve got a cuckoo’s egg in the nest instead of the rooster you expected, so we need to find out if there’s a deeper reason it’s there. Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours.”

People might watch The Pitcher for any number of reasons. Most of them were even platonic. Students, artists especially, were always getting into weird shit to learn from it, analyze it, or simply bask in the novelty value. The way bits of sweat started beading on Victor’s brow, however, told Beau that he’d hit closer than he’d missed.

“I don’t see what birds have to do with it…,” muttered Victor. His eyes had a hard time staying still all of a sudden.

Some people had no taste for the metaphorical. Usually that was more a problem with computer science majors than art students, though. “Then don’t worry about my analogy and start talking,” said Beau with a scoff.

The story was mostly the same the second time around, but mostly did not mean exactly.

“It was with a bunch of old books and magazines,” said Victor once he’d walked his way through how he ended up in that fateful basement. “I collect old shit. Sometimes I resell it, but sometimes I like to have something for myself. Feels like I can be more in touch with history that way, I guess. I was hoping I’d find something worthwhile among the junk, and I found what I found right when I’d written everything off as cockroach bait. I’d never seen a player like it before. Why not plug it in to see if it worked?” He fidgeted with his hands. “You take care of tapes and players and that kind of thing, right? It’s your job? Put yourself in my shoes and you’d probably do the same. I couldn’t check it out there, all the screens were wrong.”

Whether Beau would or would not was beside the point. “And you happened to have the right kind of monitor at home.”

“Yeah.”

“Was there anything else down there?”

Victor shrugged. “Like I said, books and magazines. Vinyl records. Some little figurines like from an antique store. Clothes. It all looked like one person’s collection, since there was only one style of clothing, and nothing you’d expect from a house that’d had a kid in it. I found some skirts, so maybe it was a lady’s stuff, but sometimes you see those little old men who have the same aura as your maiden aunt, so maybe it was one of them. Whoever they were they just felt old. They didn’t keep any photos.”

Everything sounded familiar thus far. Beau nodded. “What about the rest of the house? Any idea what it was like before your relative won that auction?”

“I tried doing some sleuthing about who’d owned the house before,” said Victor, “but supposedly the last in-person owner moved away decades ago. Couldn’t find any crimes there in the library or online. Nobody who lives nearby knew anything about past tenants. The bank just said ownership of the property had defaulted to them after a time and they were not at liberty to share further details, which is their way of saying to fuck off, so I took the hint. It’s just this weird void of nothing in that part of town.”

Houses like that were more common than people thought. That was the point. Beau kept prodding. “So what happened to the rest of the hoard?”

Victor shrugged again. “Same thing you’d do with any house you’re cleaning out. The bits that had been chewed up or shit on by vermin I tossed out, everything else I helped sort for taking to thrift stores, or cleaning up to use again, or whatever.”

“Except for the VCR?”

“Obviously.”

Next came an account of the trip back home that Beau could not have cared less about; he paid attention anyway. It had been a mostly uneventful bus ride. There was a deficit of weird portents. It was, in fact, the same as any other time Beau had brought something in from a flea market or swap meet, complete with cleaning out the grime and making sure there weren’t any spiders in the works, except when Victor first got the tape working he’d recognized the movie.

“At first it was fine,” he said. “It’s Beneath All Closed Doors, cut down on a different format, so I assumed it was a pirate tape or something. Maybe done up in a fancy wrapper just to mess with some archaeologist in the future or something. Like if you pulled out only the video parts from Ring and left a copy in a time capsule to scare the Jetsons.” Who on God’s green earth still thought about the Jetsons? Victor did, apparently. “I’ve got history with that movie, and The Pitcher is my favorite part, so I watched it.”

Beau gave the tape another look-over. No brand name, no serial number, no hints of what might’ve been on the label before someone took a marker to it. No spiders, either. It might as well have been a movie prop. “And that was when you noticed Doshu was replaced with somebody else?” he asked.

The slightest glance askance, a hint of self-consciousness. “Not the first time,” said Victor.

“Oh?”

“First I watched it to see if there was anything glaringly different. Like if it was a production copy, or a different edit. Maybe something dubbed for a different region, I don’t know. But it looked normal. It was just The Pitcher on…what’d you call that format?”

“Betamax.”

“The Pitcher on Betamax. Conversation piece but nothing unusual. I needed the TV it was hooked up to for something so I unhooked everything, put the tape in a cardboard sleeve I’d made to protect it, and forgot about it for a while.”

It was, Beau supposed, his fault for asking for the full story. Victor had gone to a party, where nothing had happened, then brought the CRT back home, where nothing had happened, then spent the rest of the week busy with classes and helping his homeowner relative, which was all as straightforward as you could get for an art student. Beau might’ve said he learned too many things about the methods of antique malls if they weren’t all details he knew already.

Being forced to spend so much time remembering every dull little detail had at least managed to calm Victor down a little. He was still upset—the tremor in his hands and the tightness in his neck were still there if one knew what to look for—but no longer at risk of lashing out and smashing something. Visitors to the archives hadn’t always been so courteous.

After what felt like endless meandering cul-de-sacs about the basement’s less important contents, the tape and player finally fell back into Victor’s recollection. It had been a late night, he was stressed out over half a dozen different things, and his rental store of choice had been closed due to a leak in the ceiling. A young man of certain inclinations could work up certain needs. He’d hooked up the player again and sat down with a well-loved video.

That was when the actor had changed.

“Was it sudden?” asked Beau. “Just a blip from Doshu to the cuckoo?” He didn’t like how much that rhymed. At least Victor had other things on his mind than accidental wordplay.

“I don’t know.”

Only now did he not have a list of details as long as his arm? That had to mean Beau was getting close. He pressed the subject: “What do you mean, you don’t know? Don’t try to keep things from me. I told you, I’ve seen and heard it all.”

Victor cringed. He was sweating again. “I mean I’ve seen it enough times I know how it goes, right? So I was worried more about prepping myself.”

“Which means?”

There were corpses on the gallows that did less twisting in the wind. “The Pitcher does it for me when nothing else will,” said Victor. “I needed some relief. I was too busy jerking it to really notice faces at first. It only really sank in once I was done and cleaning up. I rewound the tape. If the new face hadn’t been there at the start before, it was now. I felt like it was watching me. Like it had been watching me.” He swallowed. “Like it knew.”

Beau nodded. “There, was that so difficult?”

It was difficult, probably, to admit to someone who was more or less a stranger and also some flavor of employee of one’s current institution that one had a penchant for masturbating to video footage of an actor getting convincingly and grotesquely waterboarded. Beau was not going to extend that grace to him, not while they still had detective work to do.

He must’ve been a sight. Victor was ratty and weedy in a particular college-student way, namely the sort that didn’t get enough sleep, or stand in enough direct sunlight, or eat things halfway resembling green vegetables, and there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of those on campus any given day. There were good bones under that indoor-kid sallowness, though, and he’d been in good enough shape to help a relative with a lengthy physical task. With the right attention he could turn a few heads. What would he have looked like, cock out and bathed in the light of an old screen?

Beau had a good imagination. He’d keep that under wraps for now.

The flush of humiliation lingered on Victor’s face. “I don’t like talking about personal shit with strangers,” he said. “It’s gross.”

Gross was one way to describe deriving sexual gratification from what was meant to be a gory, visceral torture scene, though maybe there were other words that would work, too.

“Thank you for doing something uncomfortable,” said Beau.

“You aren’t going to report me for this, are you?”

Beau snorted. “Why would I? It’s an act of fantasy. Maybe not one shared by the average Joe off the street, but hardly unknown. Art exists to inspire emotion.” He gestured in the direction of the archives’ shelves. “There’s so much artistic exploration of sex and violence back here, I’m sure somebody’s made something similar somewhere in there. Maybe not as extreme, but using the same ideas. I’m not bothered by the grotesque finding an added purpose as porn.”

Some of the tension drained from Victor’s face. Good. If he was more relaxed he’d be able to recount what he was saying better, and the more he could tell Beau, the more useful his words would be.

“I take it people have trouble appreciating your own work? Not had much in the way of receptive audiences?” asked Beau.

Victor scowled. “Fuck the Dean,” he said. “And fuck everybody who complained to her, too. I’m not going to censor my vision for the sake of some shitty little business-prep normie’s feelings. Art is art.”

“So it is.”

“I told them, you know?” said Victor, who clearly wasn’t over the indignities visited upon him by the Dean of Students. “When I was first talking to everyone about the project. I said it was going to involve chances to do some really intense acting, like pushing their range to the limit. We wouldn’t be shy with the camera work. We wouldn’t be shy with the makeup effects, either, which meant the camera guy would have to be on top of everything.”

Beau nodded and said, “Because you can’t hide shoddy with with clever angles if you want it to feel real.”

The affirmation made Victor light up. “Right! Right, right, right, right! You get it. If you want to explore the limits of reality you can’t turn away from the hardest parts of it. But apparently some people can’t handle a little method acting. One day everything was fine, the next I found myself summoned to the head bitch’s office and asked to explain myself. I did what I could to explain my vision, but she…”

It took a little time to let things get out of Victor’s system, and then a little goading to get his confidence back up, but after enough time spent airing every grievance he could think of, he was eventually willing to return to his account.

With a clearer head and a sinking stomach he’d attempted to go about things rationally. Was there a simple explanation for it all? He’d tried rewatching the tape to see if there was something he could spot in the video quality, like if there was something wrong with the tape heads. Maybe it was a prank video that rewrote itself over time, and the scribbled-over label was a way of knowing the cassette was the proper key for the lock. There could’ve been interference from someone else’s television. The tape itself was old, so it could have easily degraded from being watched after so long in storage. Once the initial shock wore off he was more curious than upset.

The next day was when other copies of Beneath All Closed Doors started changing on Victor, which had changed his mind on how much curiosity he wanted to tolerate.

“I was doing okay up until it felt like it was mocking me,” he said. The tremor was back in his hands. “Like it thought it was funny that I was getting off to it. Like it thought I was a pussy because I’d only ever be caught dead in that kind of situation if it was film. You get those, in my circles, the real hard ones who talk about all the depraved things they do if there weren’t laws in the way, and if you aren’t the same kind of too-cool-for-it shithead they are then they laugh at you, too.”

Victor was flushed again, and sweating. “I don’t want to hurt real people, okay? I don’t want to ruin anybody’s life! I just want to, fucking, be in an exaggerated moment. Someplace I can float between the ideas of sex and violence. Someplace I can explore what it means to be real. But no, I’m less of a man because I don’t actually want to take a claw hammer to somebody’s skull. And that’s the kind of shit I could see on his face! If that face gets into my own work it’s going to ruin everything! Fuckin’ asshole bird guy…what was the word you used for it? A cuckoo?”

Beau was very pleased with himself for not smiling at how naturally Victor said that. “That’s right.”

“So I got a little fed up. I might’ve been too rough with the player. I knew it was a mistake but I was so fucking angry.”

“Did it help?”

Victor paused. “Did breaking it make me feel better?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m asking, yes.”

“I don’t know. I’m not a violent person. I don’t make a habit of destroying things that are expensive!” How interesting that he had to specify the monetary value of something he’d gotten for no more than a few hours of labor. He made a fist and then released it. The tremor was gone again. “But I guess it did help. A little bit. Like I was smashing that stupid face in to get it to stop laughing at me.”

“And did it stop?”

Breath hissed through Victor’s teeth. “Not long enough. And it didn’t fix any of the other copies. I thought about smashing the tape, too, but around then I remembered some of the shit I’d heard about the archives here. Bolt from the blue, but it calmed me down just enough to stop myself. Figured I should bring the tape here before I did anything I couldn’t undo.”

For all of Victor’s hysterics, Beau could respect this much. A broken Betamax player Beau could potentially piece back together if he had enough time to source the parts he’d need. Tapes were harder to un-fuck once you tore into them enough. Someone Victor’s age was probably a pre-schooler at best back when tapes like those had been new. It was nice to know he could still muster a little respect for out-of-production artifacts every now and then.

“And this was yesterday? When you broke the player, that is.” Had Victor ever given him a clear timeline? Beau wasn’t sure.

Victor ran his fingers through his hair, which flopped back down over his face as soon as he took his hand away. “The day before,” he said. “Weekends always fuck up people’s schedules. I figured you’d have other shit going on and wouldn’t be available any sooner than that.

“You figured correctly,” said Beau, doing some math in his head. 

Movies about cursed tapes and their ilk tended to be time-sensitive. Three days, seven days, twenty-four hours: so long as there was some sort of limitation placed on how long a subject had before things got bad, the creeping dread was the point. False hope, one might say. It depended on the story as to whether there was ever a chance for escape once that countdown started. Beau had read a very interesting term paper last semester about the significance of that borrowed time and the increasing speed of modern life. He doubted Victor was in the mood to hear about it now.

How would one describe a tape whose only curse was to make its victim see different faces on the screen? What was the purpose of a curse that simply laid an egg in another movie’s nest and then fucked off? Was that even a curse at all? Neither of them would know without further investigation. The door needed to stay locked, just in case.

Beau rewound the tape again. It made all the sounds one would expect from an aging but functional Betamax. There was nothing mysterious hiding in the static. Would there have been something different if he’d used one of those televisions that reflected dead channels as a solid, serene blue? Probably not. He pressed play and let the scene play out as it would.

A second watch of the video shared nothing Beau hadn’t taken from the first. That wasn’t the point, of course. He let The Pitcher play out in silence until the action had gotten started.

“It felt good, didn’t it?”

Victor flinched. He’d been lost in the act of watching an actor—or someone who’d replaced an actor—suffer splendidly for the camera. “What do you mean, it?” he asked. Parts of his face shone bright in the room’s dim lighting. Stress or something else?

Beau laughed quietly. “You know what I mean,” he said, though he’d been vague on purpose to see what would happen. “The way the weight of the hammer felt in your hand. The way it pushed back against your palm when you brought it down. How the metal and plastic went flying as you destroyed something that might’ve been priceless. You weren’t breaking a person, after all. It’s just a thing.“

Another bead of sweat coursed down the side of Victor’s face. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said. “If I’d broken the tape, too, it’d be so much worse.”

“But you didn’t,” said Beau. “You killed the messenger but left the message. I want to know how it felt.” He could practically scent the refusal coming and cut Victor off before it could leave his lips. “This is a safe place to speak about opinions other people might not understand. Close-mindedness has no place here. I told you, didn’t I? Art exists to inspire emotion.”

Victor turned away. “Promise you’re not going to report me?”

“I’m going to try to solve your problem responsibly,” said Beau. “That means not saddling you with a brain cop who makes you take pills and talk about your feelings for hours just because your tastes run a little outside the norm.” He leaned in closer. “We don’t lock people up because they like getting up to a little consensual fun with whips and chains these days. We know better than that. Being afraid of honest self-expression is so much worse than putting on a leather mask on the weekends. Don’t you agree?” He waited for an answer.

Five seconds passed, then ten. It took a whole half-minute for Victor to respond. “It felt incredible,” he said, his words so quiet they were barely more than breath.

Beau nodded. He put on a smile and asked, “Feels good to say it out loud, doesn’t it?”

Dragging both hands down the sides of his face, Victor looked like he’d suddenly shed a great weight and couldn’t yet figure out what to do with his newfound lightness. “Oh my God, it was better than sex. So much better. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“See if you can try.”

“Like…like I was taking charge of my life. It’s a fucking video tape, right? I shouldn’t have to be afraid of it. I shouldn’t let it make me feel afraid. It felt like I was bashing in the face of that stranger with my own fist. If I closed my eyes I could pretend those were bits of blood and bone getting smashed out of there instead of just VCR shrapnel.” He gulped for air. “And when I stopped, I didn’t stop because I realized what I was doing. I mean, that was part of it, but it wasn’t the main reason.”

Beau’s smile broadened. “So what was?”

“I was so hard I could barely see straight.” He gave a little nervous laugh, his face now flushed. “I couldn’t just leave things like that, right? When I jerked off it was the best it had ever been. And it wasn’t until after that that I got scared. I was doing good, and then doing not so good, and then I caught that motherfucker’s face yet another place it wasn’t supposed to be and it all came spilling out at once.”

Lesser men would have made a joke in poor taste, given such an opening. Beau let it happen in his thoughts and then banished it to the wind. He needed to keep Victor focused.

“When you broke the player, did you wait until it finished, or was the tape still going?” asked Beau as the man on screen thrashed and gagged.

Victor kept his eyes on the stranger in the video. “It was still playing. Stupid, I know.” He swallowed hard, like his mouth was watering at the sound of a dinner bell. “I could’ve broken it way too easily. But you’ve got to understand, it was the way he was looking at me, okay? It was like there was all this anger bubbling up and I felt like if I didn’t punish him for making me feel that way I was going to die.” Another gulp. “That was part of what made it so fucking good when I busted up the VCR. I felt like I’d just cheated death.”

Every word out of his mouth made perfect sense. Beau would’ve been a hypocrite to say otherwise.

The clip ended. Beau rewound it again, and once again pressed play. He was prepared to do this as many times as they needed to. It was like digging down in therapy, or iterating on the same design over and over again until desperation forced the creative hand to dig in different soil.

“So tell me about your other projects in the realm of the extreme,” said Beau after a beat.

Victor startled. “How do you know about those?”

He really was in a state if he could barely remember what he’d said a few minutes ago. “You said the mystery man started infesting personal work. Surely the work you were censured for wasn’t your first time playing in that space? Even if it’s not up to your current standards, I’d like to know more about it.” Beau kept his tone light and casual, nothing that’d be out of place in any other well-meaning appreciator of the arts. He needed Victor to open up if they were going to make any progress.

“Oh,” said Victor. He didn’t turn away from the screen. “I wanted to recapture some of Warmack’s energy. He’s got a way with directing that the usual Hollywood shit could never dream of, not in a million years. There’s this, this feeling you get with his work that feels visceral despite the cinematic artifice.” The way he said visceral despite the cinematic artifice sounded rehearsed, like he’d worn grooves in it from whipping it out to defend his interests to others, and Beau chose not to point out how the quote was blatantly ripped from a Fangoria article from five years back.

“How did it go for you?”

“Only ever got two all the way finished before my actors pussied out,” said Victor with a sneer. “So when that cuckoo-bird fucker got into them, it was like…like he was saying how easy it’d be to remove me from film history. Or maybe if I’d had an actor like him instead of my chickenshit cast, I could’ve really made something.” He growled to himself. “He was mocking me, I know it.”

Beau nodded. “That sounds reasonable enough to me,” he said, because at the end of the day he knew how these things really worked. Victor didn’t say anything to that.

Another ending, another rewind, another press of the play button. The man who’d replaced Doshu struggled. His assailant went through the motions of cruelty. It was graceful, in its own way, like a dance with dubiously consenting steps. Beau waited until the point where he felt someone would be most likely to smash a video player out of frustration before asking, “Do you ever think about what it’d be like to do it for real?”

He didn’t need to explain more than that given the way Victor leapt to defend himself. “I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

Beau waved a hand. “Oh, I didn’t mean anybody. You were very clear about that. I meant what it’d be like to hurt him. Let him know how you feel about invading a place that’s sacred to you.”

“I don’t know?” said Victor, too quickly, too eager to sidestep his own hinted darkness.

“I think you do,” said Beau.

“This is making me uncomfortable.”

Beau remained seated, his body language as open and non-threatening as he was able. “That’s okay,” he said. He hoped he sounded avuncular enough. “Can you push through it for now? If you need a break, we can take one, but I’d rather not call it for the day without figuring out a little more. I think we’re getting close to a real breakthrough.”

The casters on Victor’s chair growled as he stood up out of it to pace. “A rational person wouldn’t feel that way, and I’m a rational person,” he said. This, too, felt rehearsed, rehashed. “And, and…and if I feel that way, and I’m still rational, it means I can recognize it as an urge I don’t have to act on. The human brain is always running little checks like that. It’s why you can find yourself wondering what would happen if you jumped out of a window you’re looking through. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

People didn’t talk like that without having spent some time in an office with a head as static-filled as the TV screen between plays. Anger issues, maybe. It would explain a thing or two. Beau let Victor talk.

“So I can, I can remember that this is art we’re talking about,” continued Victor, “and I’m having an emotional response. That’s what’s supposed to happen. There’s nothing worse than art that makes you feel nothing.”

“Right.”

Victor couldn’t stop moving. He was a moth bouncing from place to place in the screen-lit dark. “So I’m fine if I acknowledge it’s something I want that’s impossible, right? Like the fact that it isn’t real, and can’t be real, that might be part of the appeal?”

What a busy mind he had. “Keep going.”

“I’m just into some weird shit, something I wouldn’t ever do to a real partner, swear to God, and he, that guy who’s showing up everywhere, he…” He swallowed hard. “He’s getting into my shit, and it feels like he wants to erase the mark I’m trying to make on the world with my art, and…”

“You still need to answer my question,” said Beau.

The growl Victor made sounded halfway between anguish and anger: “I need to be the one making him drown.“

If he kept going at his current rate he risked breaking something Beau had sunk hours into maintaining, which wouldn’t do. The tape reached its end and Beau ejected it without rewinding. “This sounds like the right time for that break we talked about,” he said as he tucked it into its handmade sleeve. He stayed seated. “I’d offer you a cigarette, but administration gave me a real chewing out about upholding the school’s health and safety regulations. Do you drink coffee?”

The archives had a private break room specifically for whoever held Beau’s job. He appreciated not having to unlock the door during more challenging days. Keeping Victor most of the way together seemed like a worthy challenge if there ever was one.

Maybe Victor wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, since he grimaced with every sip despite the loads of sugar and creamer he’d dumped into his cup, but it did give him something else to focus on. He kept his eyes fixed on its swirling surface. The auxiliary air conditioner made him shiver when it clanked to life. Beau, who drank his coffee black, didn’t offer to turn it down. Someone running so hot needed a chance to cool off.

Where would Victor fit into all the myriad art projects lurking in the archives? The typical protagonist of a horror movie reacted badly upon having a brush with the unreal. Often they’d be changed for the worse over the course of the plot. That was assuming they survived at all! Sometimes they’d become nigh unto radioactive to everyone around them, their mere presence leaving stains and scars on their world before the credits finally rolled. It was up to the whims of the creatives at the helm to decide how bad a taste that left in the viewer’s mouth.

Victor had gotten a taste, all right, and it was having a different effect.

The fluorescent bulbs overhead gave the break room a starker, less mysterious feel than the dim lights around the archives front desk. The tape in its sleeve sat on the table between them, looking mysterious as dirt. Maybe the questions Beau asked would get different results here. Maybe that was a good thing.

He figured not asking Victor about himself was the best place to start. “When you arrived you said you heard about me from Hoshi. Anyone else bring me up?”

“Not you directly,” said Victor. “Mostly just that the media archives have a lot of shit in them, like some wild stuff from past grads and whatever. I heard more about the collection than you. It’s fucked up that a building this big is so hard to find in the directory, and your name was buried even deeper.”

Beau’s generally solitary nature grudgingly accepted that. Some people knowing some things about him was acceptable, he supposed, since that familiarity kept him from looking too interesting. “So what do you hope you’ll get from me?”

Coffee swirled in Victor’s cup. “That you know about this kind of shit. That you’ll help me get things in order and not, I don’t know. Fucked over by a ghost or a demon or whatever keeps infecting the shit I’m trying to watch.”

Infecting. What a good word for it. “You aren’t wrong. You could consider me a collector of this sort of thing.”

Victor nodded. “I kinda suspected you’d believe me,” he said.

“Did you, now.”

“Not…by default. I’d have to make a case. I’ve got family that do A/V shit so I figured you’d share some traits with them.”

“Those being?”

“You don’t have time for bullshit and you’re not interested in people who just want to, I don’t know, take pictures or film you for TV or something.”

Beau preferred to keep his private life private, that was so. He knew how powerful a camera lens could be in the wrong hands. There was too much work to do to tolerate grown adults playing Scooby-Doo during his office hours.

“Hey, so…this isn’t some kind of entrapment thing, is it?” asked Victor. Whatever answers he sought in those cream-brown depths didn’t seem to be what he wanted. “Like there’s not two guys in white uniforms on their way to drag me off because of what I’ve said.”

The last of Beau’s cup vanished down his throat. “I’m not trying to stall for time, if that’s what you’re asking. You said as much yourself: it’s a dark urge, explored through art, and the only reason you’re giving it the time of day is because it’s all fiction. If they’re going to get bent out of shape about that, there’s a list of action thrillers a mile long they’ll need to work through first.” He grabbed the coffee pot from the machine and gestured with it. “Refill?”

“No thanks, I have plenty,” said Victor. He’d found a napkin and was tearing it into small pieces, one little strip at a time. The nervous energy clearly hadn’t all worked itself out of his system.

Beau shrugged. “Suit yourself. There’ll be more if you change your mind.” He poured the remainder of the pot into his own well-loved mug, then rose to set up a fresh brew. He waited until he had his back to Victor before talking again. “Let’s go back to the topic of your unreal scenario. What would you do, if you could act on that fiction?”

The soft tearing-paper sounds stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about a way to play in that imaginary space, with all the emotion you want to, safe knowing none of it is real.” The grounds went in the filter just so, the water sloshed into the unit just so. “Like acting, but without having to worry about stopping the minute an assistant taps your shoulder to bring you back up.”

Was Victor into the kink scene? Would he understand if Beau framed things that way? It was getting so much closer to the mainstream than anyone could have dreamed a mere ten years ago. He’d barely flinched when Beau’d brought up whips and chains nigh-unprompted. One couldn’t assume, of course. Just because he was kinky—and how else would one describe that powerhouse of sexual tension he’d accidentally hinted at—didn’t mean he’d know how to play nice.

Instead of talk of red-lit rooms or underground dungeons, Victor went in a different direction. “Are you suggesting some kind of, uh, text thing? Or VR?” he asked. “I’m not into those. It can get just close enough to make me want something. Never goes far enough to help me get it.”

Perhaps Beau should have assumed a modern college student would care more about computers. These days you could do it all with cables, no spare phone lines or screaming modems required. For a man who kept as big a digital library as he did it was hard not to feel like he’d missed an obvious choice!

But it wasn’t typing away in a chat program that he offered. It wasn’t heavy, blurry goggles and worlds made out of crude building toys. Beau dealt with different dreamscapes. What sights he had to show, if only his wares might be accepted!

He couldn’t get ahead of himself.

“It’s something else,” he said. Satisfied with the state of the coffee pot, he returned to his mug and his seat across the table from Victor. He’d need to change his angle of attack a little. “If I told you that there’s an explanation for what you’ve been seeing and what you’re experiencing is out of the ordinary, perhaps even supernatural, what would you say to that?”

Ri-i-ip. Victor was back at the napkin again. “I’d say I figured as much,” he replied. He tore off another long string of paper and put it in the little nest of scraps he’d accrued. “But it’s nice to hear someone say they don’t think I’m crazy. Even after hearing the. Details.” He muttered the last word. “So what am I supposed to do about it? Is that part of your mystery thing?”

Beau took a deep sip from his mug instead of replying. He’d missed his usual meal break thanks to all the commotion, and he couldn’t let his empty stomach distract him. Some days it felt like he’d never get anything done without a steady, steaming supply of coffee.

He exhaled, slow and long. It was probably bad form, keeping a student in suspense. No one who might scold him for that was present, though, so he could have a little fun. “More that I think I know how to turn that whole ‘infection’ thing on its ear, give what’s bothering you a taste of its own medicine. It’s risky or I’d have suggested it sooner.”

“Why do you know how to do that?”

No calls for names, no demands for the steps, nothing Beau expected from a desperate young man in an impossible situation. He liked that. “You see a lot of things in my line of work,” he said. Another mouthful of coffee chased after its previously-drunk kin. “And when you see a lot of things, you start to learn a lot of patterns. When you learn a lot of patterns it makes it easier to learn other things, too.”

“So how does that makes you able to do…whatever you’re going to do?”

Mugs were so useful as excuses to choose one’s words. “Because I’ve observed enough things to figure out where to start looking. Everything else is practice.” Beau had spent so long practicing. He could keep machines running, even the new ones that kept getting developed overseas. He could fix broken things, given enough time and materials. He could lay a trap for all manner of unexpected guests and reliably hear it spring closed so long as he could be willing to wait.

Another curl of paper joined the nest. Ri-i-ip. “I mean, if you’ve got psychic powers, or whatever, why aren’t you showing up on TV and offering your services like some kind of ghost-hunting Miss Cleo figure?”

 He couldn’t quite hide the sour look that briefly spoiled his air of calm. “Because I’m not about to go telling people about it, so my most specialized skills don’t pay the bills. That’s why I work in academia instead of whatever it is you think I should be doing with my knowledge.”

Victor had the decency to look embarrassed for bringing it up.

“I meant what I said, though,” said Beau. “I think I can help you break out of whatever pattern you’ve found yourself in right now. And to do that, we’re going to let you try something that isn’t real.”

Ri-i-ip. “Might as well. It’s not going to get better on its own. I don’t want to know what it’ll be like if I let it get any worse.”

Beau didn’t have trouble bringing a smile back to his face. “Then let me finish my cup and I’ll show you part of the archives they don’t tell you about during orientation. Be sure to bring the tape. I’ve found things work best if there’s a fresh bond between you when we get started.”

The archives were not part of the library. This was important. It mattered for tedious concepts like funding and paperwork, as did many parts of working for the university. It was also in a separate building from the library. Books were more other people’s thing, even though the library had its share of recordings it could loan out. The archives—the Alan Smithee Memorial Audiovisual Media Archive, some jokesters had named it back in the seventies, but nobody called it that now—were as much about the craft as what was crafted. Each semester of students saw the shelves grow heavier with new works of art. A lot of it was bad. Beau treasured everything.

He felt sorry for the school’s more traditional art departments. Space was forever a premium, so last year’s masterpieces always needed to be cleared out for this year’s sincere attempts. Paintings, prints, costuming, sculpture, all of it took up room that could only share so much if the university was meant to encourage artistic growth. Those professors were in a constant state of blood-letting.

But through proper archival methods? An entire theatrical performance could be condensed down to a tape or two that needed, at most, the same amount of room as a shoebox. Disc-based storage took up even less. Beau collected his share of equipment, but people always needed equipment. A spare monitor or CD player was nothing compared to the bulk of somebody’s sculpture installation final. They wouldn’t be the same as the originals, but every addition to the Special Collection (as people who weren’t him referred to the archives) took up so much less space than the countless works he preserved for the future, and the shelves went on further than anyone might guess at first glance.

Which was to say, Beau always had room to do what he needed.

The aisles between the shelves were not anything like a labyrinth. Archiving things meant making them accessible later, and that meant knowing where they were and being able to access them. One could not get lost in there any more than one could get lost at a farmer’s market. There were placards, there were floor maps. If one went in one direction long enough the exit would make itself known.

Beau took pains to keep the passages clean and clear no matter how deep into the winter doldrums he found himself, handling the archives’ janitorial needs all on his own in the sake of preserving the equipment. More than once a visiting member of the administration had expressed surprise that it wasn’t a maze in there. He never saw himself as much of a Daedalus. He made for an even poorer Minotaur. There were other mythical figures that fit him better, anyway.

It wasn’t just a single giant warehouse in there. Beau didn’t know who’d designed this part of the university, since an institution founded before the invention of most of the technology stored on the shelves was unlikely to have foreseen the need, so it had to have been a later addition or renovation. That ever-so-slightly more modern sensibility meant there were smaller rooms for more private work. Each room had a window in its door, and each door’s window had a rolled-up curtain that could completely cover it. As Victor would no doubt attest, sometimes one didn’t want an audience for one’s more vulnerable experiences.

At other times of the year there might be students watching things or laboring over their own creations in one or more of the side rooms. The man who’d gotten into The Pitcher happened to appear right between two blocks of scheduled visitors. How convenient for him. A curse that could overwrite a fresh digital copy of a specific movie might well be capable of getting into the archives’ online planner.

He led Victor to a door that was neither at the beginning nor the end of the row. Inside it was dark, and the overhead lights took a moment to warm up once he flicked the switch. There was nothing of note inside: a whiteboard, a table with chairs, a wastebasket, a screen that could be pulled down across the far wall, and enough plugs and outlets to serve as a modest computer lab in a pinch. Beau stepped inside and beckoned for Victor to follow.

“This is the part when the victim gets got,” said Victor as he hesitated at the threshold.

Beau leaned against the table. “It’d be pretty difficult to slit your throat with a dry-erase marker.”

Victor didn’t budge. He looked around the study room like he needed to clear it as part of a SWAT raid. “You said we were going to an unmarked part of the archives. This part is right on the map at the front. I think I did half my Intro to Film Theory practicum in a room just like this. It’s normal. What gives?”

“Of course it looks normal. Were you expecting there to be a sign reading Secret Room This Way?” asked Beau. “Come in, close the door, and lock it. I can’t open the other bolt otherwise.”

“That sounds like a fire hazard.”

“This is occult bullshit. Do you think it cares about fire codes?”

For a moment it looked like Victor was going to lose his nerve. All that anger and he’d still turn tail? All that sexual confusion and he’d go back to breaking his property? He’d seemed so confident at first, like he’d be willing to try anything to do something about the stranger that haunted his movie collection. Curses didn’t pick them like they used to.

No, that was unfair. Maybe the coffee wasn’t agreeing with him. He had agreed to a very loaded proposition in the break room, so perhaps he was struggling with the nature of what he wanted. The human heart was such a fussy thing. Sometimes advising students meant putting the correct choice in front of them and staring them down until they finally accepted what was best.

His hand hovered over the door handle. It’d be so easy for him to walk away. Beau needed a second pair of hands to make the mechanisms work—as much as he didn’t see himself as a Daedalus, whoever had put in the other room had other ideas—and the answer to Victor’s problem would only have a chance at going off correctly if he went along willingly, so all Beau could do was wait. And who would care how long that took? He was a salaried employee. If he chose to stay well after building hours, then that was his choice, so long as he locked up afterwards.

Closing time was still hours away. Beau could be patient.

The clock on the wall said it hadn’t even been five minutes when Victor finally stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He threw the latch with a clack.

Beau nodded. “Get the curtain, too?”

Victor did so. The curtains were weighted, to keep the central air from fluttering them during intense fits of weather, and there were two little metal protrusions sticking out just under the window that accepted the cord loops sewn to either corner. Victor fastened these without being asked. It seemed like his nerve was coming back.

“Good,” said Beau. “Now unlock the door and open it again. Leave the curtain.”

While Victor looked annoyed, he still did as he was told. “I don’t see what the point is,” he said. The lock needed to be jimmied; it didn’t open up as smoothly as it had closed. “Is this more occult bullshit?”

“Of course it is. Now, take a look.”

The space outside the study room was no longer filled with shelves and wheeled carts. It was a darkened basement instead. A strip of light fell across what was now a bare concrete floor, and Victor’s shadow fell across the chair bolted to the middle of it. There was a man sitting in it, gagged and bound, and tired like he’d been struggling to escape for hours. He startled at the brightness. When he looked up, the breath caught in Victor’s throat.

It was the same cuckoo’s egg who’d replaced Doshu in Beneath All Closed Doors. Of course it was.

Beau slipped between Victor and the door to start turning on the cunningly-placed studio lights. “Welcome to another take on The Pitcher,” he said.

“Did you do all that shit with the Betamax?” asked Victor, still in the doorway. He looked around the basement with the same worry he’d used for sweeping the study room. With every sweep of his eyes he lingered just a bit longer on what was actually in the room.

Unlike the actual movie segment, he, Beau, and the man in the chair were the only ones there. There were lights but no camera. There was a table covered with tools. There wasn’t any of the expected clutter of even the most independent of movie sets. It was a reflection of the illusion shown on the tape more than what actually went into making that illusion. That was how this kind of thing worked.

“I build snares,” said Beau. “Things that fall in don’t get out unless I want them to. And why would I give up a prize like this?”

Victor shifted his weight. This changed the fall of his shadow just enough so that light now caught the blade of a knife laid out on the tool table. His eyes darted towards it. Did his pupils dilate? Did he shiver at the thought of what that knife could do? Ah, the enthusiasm of youth.

“You really meant it when you said we’d give this, this…fucking…this pattern, or whatever, this is what you were talking about when you said you could show me something that isn’t real,” he said. “This is how we turn it on its own fucking head.”

Beau sat himself down in a white plastic lawn chair that hadn’t yet been fouled by the basement’s filth. He didn’t have to fake his smile this time. “Let no one claim you’re less of a scholar for pursuing the arts,” he said.

“What do I do?”

“Whatever you want,” said Beau with a chuckle. “Anything you’d like to try. Anything your heart desires. I’ll be here if you have any questions. Just close the door behind you. We don’t want anything getting out.”

The door, its window still demurely covered by its curtain, clunked shut.

The Pitcher was not named for baseball terminology. It wasn’t named for homoerotic repurposings of baseball terminology, either. A great many things befell the character usually played by Doshu, as the tools on the table weren’t for show, but the most important part was the glass water pitcher that sparkled with icy water. Victor bypassed the knife to go for that first. Not an unreasonable choice. He’d want to choose something that didn’t leave a mark to get things started.

“Can anyone hear us in here?”

“The only ones who can hear anything are already in this room,” said Beau.

“Then help me unfold his gag,” said Victor. He wasn’t asking this time. It was a demand. A courteous demand, the sort of thing one might make of a co-worker, but still a far cry from the ball of nerves he’d been. Perhaps he was building momentum.

Beau obliged. The man in the chair, his tongue freed, cried out hoarsely to walls that didn’t care. With a flick of his wrist Beau unfurled the spit-sodden gag into its full handkerchief size and pulled it across the bound man’s face. It muffled his screams but didn’t stop them. Smothering him so early would ruin the fun.

“You should probably call him something,” said Beau, casually.

The water pitcher held cradled against his chest, Victor asked, “Why?”

“Don’t you want it to be more personal when you address him? He certainly made it personal for you.”

Victor scowled. “What’d you call him, that one time? A cuckoo?” When Beau nodded, Victor turned back to the struggling man with a scowl. “Then that’s what you are, Cuckoo. Cuckoo! A shitty little bird trying to lay your eggs in my life, going to kill my art in the nest.” His tone was growing less conversational, more like how one had to assume those method-acting sessions of his sounded. He hefted the pitcher in both hands. There was a lot of water in there. “This is what I think of parasites.”

Cold, crisp water poured over the handkerchief as Beau held it firmly over Cuckoo’s face. Cuckoo gargled as he struggled to breathe. He sputtered. He thrashed. He tried to turn his head and found it impossible to pull against Beau’s terrible grip. Soon his clothes were as soaked through as the handkerchief, which kept pulling concave against the hollow of Cuckoo’s mouth as he fought for air amidst the deluge. He’d been reduced to barely more than a fabric-covered hole. From the right angle, he looked orgasmic.

Victor didn’t let up until he’d emptied the whole thing. The glass clanked when he returned it to the table.

“It’s not enough,” he spat.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Beau. “You’re only getting started.”

“I mean there’s not enough water,” said Victor.

Beau chuckled, his hands still keeping the cloth pulled tight across Cuckoo’s mouth and nose. “Look again.”

The pitcher was as full as it had been when they’d first stepped into the basement. Cuckoo was still dripping wet. Victor picked the pitcher back up with delighted awe.

“How…?”

“Let’s call it movie magic,” said Beau. “Go on, pick it back up. Or try out something else. It’s up to you. None of this is really happening. You can express yourself.”

Oh, how Victor did!

Beau’s teaching experience let him know when to step back to let a neophyte spread their wings, so by the time the shine was off the apple that was waterboarding a helpless man, Victor was hungry to try something that didn’t need an assistant.

He sliced with knives, letting ribbons of blood mingle with the water that still dripped from Cuckoo’s sodden clothing. He pierced with tools, distorting flesh and crimping cartilage in ways never intended by the hardware store. He reenacted the incident with the Betamax player, complete with hammer, but striking something much different than shaped polymer. At one point he resorted to using his bare fists. Every bit of anger he’d been bottling up for however many years came foaming out in a grisly christening. It was beautiful.

After a while Cuckoo stopped making noises that weren’t soft sobbing. He slumped in his chair like a bag of red, wet flour. Victor backed away from him, panting.

“Am I going to kill him if I keep this up?” he said between gulps of air. There was no compassion in those words. He sounded more like a child wondering about the limits of a new toy. Those many stalls and false starts were turning out to be worth it.

Beau, observing from his chair, shook his head. “No, and if you do, it won’t be for long. He’s as fake as the water you forced on him.”

Victor reared back and drove one booted heel into Cuckoo’s balls, making him wail like a ghost in pain before falling still again. “Good,” Victor panted. “I’m not done yet. But I gotta take care of something first.”

The twin to Beau’s plastic chair was directly across from Cuckoo and Victor sank into it with weary gratitude. He started fumbling with his fly merely a moment after that. Even in the dim light there was no mistaking how hard he was.

“Eager?” purred Beau. He made no move to stop him.

“This is…I want…” Victor was more invested in getting his cock out than in stringing words together. He rested his free hand against his forehead, elbow propped up on the injection-molded armrest, and kept his eyes on Cuckoo’s miserable form. “Oh God I need this so bad,” he stammered. He then began to jerk himself off right in front of both of them.

It shouldn’t have surprised Beau as much as it did that Victor went at himself relatively dry (one did not engage in water torture without getting at least a little wet) and with a terrible claw-grip. Victor’s cock was short and thick and his palm could cover almost the entire shaft. The way he moved his hand would’ve made more sense on someone twice his length. Was he trying to rip it off? He masturbated like he was angry at his dick for existing. Perhaps he was.

Beau sat back and let it all happen. This wasn’t his scene. His place was to teach. Victor clearly needed no further tutelage for this part.

Victor stroked himself with that same fury for an entire minute. The sounds he made were pained. Just when Beau was starting to wonder if something was wrong, Victor groaned and spasmed. His come spattered across the floor between himself and Cuckoo. He shivered, breathless. He didn’t seem to feel the need to tuck himself away. That was all the opening Beau needed to take advantage of a perfect teaching moment.

“How was it?”

“Good,” said Victor between wheezes. Another shiver flowed through him. “Even better than last time. Oh my God.”

A soft sound came from somewhere in the depths of Cuckoo’s throat. Had he passed out? Had he been awake for it all? It didn’t matter. Beau stood and walked behind him, fingers twining in Cuckoo’s hair to force him to look back at Victor, face to face. While Cuckoo was still soaked and bloodied, he was no longer ruined; his skin was as smooth as it had been before they started.

“It looks like he’ll be ready to go again once you are,” said Beau. He petted Cuckoo’s cheek. “See? He’s just an idea. You can’t hurt him in any way that lasts.” Beau’s smile turned sly. “All the more reason to get creative, isn’t it? Allow me to help.”

Victor frowned. He crossed his hands in front of his cock, though Beau was pleased to see he hadn’t yet made a reach for his zipper. “What do you mean?”

“I am an educator,” said Beau with a little scoff. “I can show you things. Ways to get more out of what you have. Ways to refine your technique. You’ve shown me your passion, raw and unalloyed, and now I can critique it so that you can soar to new heights. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to hold yourself back for a project?”

“What about Cuckoo?”

A little turn of the wrist was enough to turn Cuckoo’s head back towards Victor. Just because his wounds were gone didn’t mean his fight had returned. “He’s a canvas,” said Beau. “He’s blank video, raw material. You can think whatever you want about him, but his opinion doesn’t matter so long as you make some art.”

Enough time had passed for Victor to be able to stand again. He kept himself covered but untucked. “I could make some art.” Something passed across his face, a brief moment of concern and reason. “This still isn’t real, right?” he asked. “I don’t have to worry about anything happening to me once I leave this room?”

Perhaps a demonstration was in order. Beau wrenched Cuckoo’s head backwards and kissed him with one-sided desire. Their mouths were both wet and bright in the standing lights when they parted.

“Don’t worry,” said Beau as he breathed warm air against Cuckoo’s trembling lips. “You and I, we’re both consenting adults. He’s just art supplies. Now, pick your favorite tool and let me show you a better way to take out an eye.”

That was when their work began in earnest.

A clumsy strike could land true with better form and follow-through. An unskilled application of a tool simply needed to know how little pressure it took to get a result. There was a time for harshness—and nigh unending streams of cold water forced through a handkerchief now so stained it was difficult to tell its original color—and a time for something a little defter. Victor was such a quick learner.

What had started as clumsy digging with a screwdriver became a smoother, more purposeful excavation of Cuckoo’s socket, allowing Victor to better time when he wanted to force vitreous humor into Cuckoo’s mouth without having to race the oozing of an eye pierced too soon. Each instance between refreshes was two more chances to practice. In time the optic nerves weren’t even a problem.

The hammer, too, had room for precision. Knowing where to strike mattered nearly as much as how, though Beau took pains to ensure Victor was getting a proper arc with each swing and wasn’t risking injuring his shoulder from the impact. There were so many ways to break a bone! Crushed cartilage made for a bright plume of red all down Cuckoo’s front every time Victor smashed his nose anew. A ruined hand sat differently from an intact one. A shattered jaw gave waterboarding a different, special texture. Every tooth sent skittering across the concrete traced its own unique pattern in the ill-lit privacy of the basement.

So much could be done with a simple pocket knife, a fish scaler, a razor blade! Anyone could stab at a hunk of meat a few dozen times and be done with it. To make something truly special required knowing how much pressure was needed to pierce the skin, how far down to go to breach the subcutaneous fat. It was all a manner of finding an inner purpose.

Every tool Victor chose had room for improvement. Some of them were still connected to his body. What potential there could be now that he had someone willing to take the time to instruct!

“A gentler touch, see?” said Beau as Victor slumped against him. Cuckoo had needed a break and Victor would have ground himself down to a point if left alone. Hand over hand, Beau was keen to show him a better way. He would advise as long as he needed to. He could guide from his own experience. He would also say nothing about what stained his clothes, because soon it wouldn’t matter. In a timeless place like this, one had to keep sight of the bigger picture.

Victor rested his cheek on Beau’s shoulder. “It’s not enough.”

Beau chuckled. “It will be,” he said. “Just follow my lead. Don’t tense up so much. Let yourself relax. Think about what you’re making today. And think about how much more you still get to do.”

The moan of sincere joy Victor made at this sounded like the fruits of some very good art, indeed.

Unlike the study room, there was no clock in the basement, and without any windows, either, it might as well have been bereft of time, as well. Cuckoo was ruined, made whole, and ruined again. Just as promised, Victor refined his technique through practice and experimentation. The concrete became more and more of a biohazard. Beau remained at the helm throughout. A man in his position needed to take responsibility.

No good thing could last forever. Maybe Victor’s flesh grew weaker than his spirit, maybe he’d grown tired of too much of that aforementioned good thing. Either way, he shook the last chunk of gore from his clothes and stepped back from Cuckoo’s newest devastation. “It’s probably late,” he said, though he didn’t sound sure of it. “I should…go.”

“Should you?” asked Beau. He petted Cuckoo’s wet hair. “What do you think, little Cuckoo? Is it time?”

Cuckoo’s slurred answer wasn’t enough for Victor, who fastened his pants up for the first time since he’d loosened them earlier in the session. “The door’s still locked,” he said as he juddered the handle. “The latch is stuck. Oh my God, why is the latch stuck?”

Beau stayed at Cuckoo’s side. “To keep everything where it’s supposed to be,” he said, his tone light.

The back of Victor’s coat pressed into the wood of the door. “I’m done for now.” Ah, what a load-bearing for now that was! They’d made such progress together. “Please open the door, Beau.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” said Beau. “I’m an archivist, after all. It’s my duty to make sure my collection is well-curated. You’re perfect for it.”

“What?” Never had a man who’d engaged in such a lengthy brutalization of his fellow man looked so pathetic. “Who are you?”

Cuckoo stood up and gave himself a little shake. His bonds were gone, though his clothes were still soaked with blood and water, and his body remained a wretched canvas of mangled flesh and splintered bone. With the state of his kneecaps he shouldn’t have been able to stand, period. He probably should have been in some state of shock or another, and yet he endured, ready for the next round of punishment as soon as his jaw knitted itself back together.

“You can call us whatever you want,” he said in a clear, pleasant voice. It was impossible to tell that he was on his second or third tongue of the night. 

“You!” roared Victor. He made to lunge at Cuckoo, but before he could cross more than a few inches’ worth of floor he was wrenched forwards as an invisible force hauled him bodily into the newly-vacated chair. A cloth gag twirled around his head like a snake before ramming itself into his mouth. One couldn’t trust his kind not to interrupt someone else’s speech.

With Victor restrained, Cuckoo made his way to Beau’s side. It was so rarely his turn to be in control of the situation that Beau was willing to indulge Cuckoo’s love of explaining things to people. “We’ve often helped ourselves to the names of men who don’t exist,” said Cuckoo. “John Doe. Zhang San. We might say Etaoin Shrdlu, if we wanted, but that one’s likely before your time.” He giggled to himself. “The point is that we can pass for whoever we want if they’ve fallen through the cracks in society. There’s a lot of places we can hide, a lot of camouflage we can wear. People are numb to it these days, which is convenient.”

The chair rattled and thumped as Victor tried to free himself. He screamed against the gag. Good, that fight was precisely what Beau wanted to see, every second Victor fought back oozing forth more of the amber in which Beau could keep his newest prize preserved forever and always. Parts of the basement had already fallen into stasis. He’d need to work promptly to make sure everything was perfect before it all set for good. Fixing an ill-cured specimen was a hassle like no other.

“It’s a sad fact that you can’t perfectly preserve art outside of its original medium,” said Cuckoo. “Sometimes you really can’t know what something was like without being there. Have you ever heard of the dancers Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt? They made fantastical costumes designed to cause themselves pain while performing, since they felt art had no meaning without exhausting themselves. Fascinating people. Modern society still has their outfits, their dance notation, even accounts of their performances, but that which made their work live is lost to time. Lavinia and her handgun made sure of that.”

“So what we do,” said Beau, taking up the conversation like a relay baton, “is make the impermanent a little more enduring. One half auditions performers, the other ensures each chosen actor is set up for success. You’ll be both the medium and the message both. We’re philanthropists, really.”

Cuckoo leaned over next to Victor and cupped his chin with a no-longer-broken hand. “Don’t worry, you won’t be alone down here,” he said. He pulled and Victor’s face stretched like hot putty, further deforming with every frenzied struggle. With a wrench of his arm he yanked forth a hunk of meat and shadow which fell to the floor before settling into a perfect duplicate Victor. When this Victor rose, he didn’t pay Cuckoo any mind as he strode towards the full and sparkling water pitcher.

Victor, in his purest form, only had eyes for himself.

The doppelganger Victor held enough of his wits about him to talk even as he began to get to work. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing unusual,” said Cuckoo, still grinning from ear to ear. The cuts in his cheeks had filled in so his smile was a normal width. “You’re part of the archives now. But a good curator always leaves a little bit of himself in the way he keeps his collection.”

“As he says,” said Beau. He put his arm across Cuckoo’s shoulders, which were no longer damp from various fluids. This was always the fun part. “We are the two-in-one. We are the infinite predator. We are the eternal victim. We opened up the pitcher plant, but you were the one who greedily climbed down. Thank you for having the decency to make some proper cinema in the process.”

“We’ll just be helping ourselves to the space where you used to be,” said Cuckoo. “In exchange? Your art will live forever, perfectly, with no pesky actors, faculty, or calls to decency to get in the way of your vision. You’ll be irreplaceable. Isn’t that nice of us?”

“Oh my God,” said Victor. Both sets of eyes brimmed with tears of manic joy as his freed half’s hand closed around a very familiar hammer. “Who needs the Criterion Collection?”

There was no need for Beau and Cuckoo to be in there anymore, so they weren’t. The door left with them. Victor did not.

In the old days, back when the two of them had lived ever so differently, theirs had sometimes been the domain of plague villages and empty theme parks, scraping by in the lonely spaces where people had been but no longer were. It was subsistence living at best. Their diet had changed accordingly when they’d started hiding in plain sight.

Life was good once they’d found excuses to slip into this library or that tech school. They’d learned that if they worked lean and hunted smart, there were plenty of old lives to go around, and one didn’t have to worry about loose ends so long as one dutifully cleaned one’s plate. The university archives were all the cleaner without any leftover bones.

What a feast there was! Memories crushed between their teeth. Personal ties unraveled. Victor’s name fell out of class rosters, collected phone numbers, and family albums, his classwork and tuition dissolving back into so much air. Pictures disappeared. Home movies rewrote themselves. Yearbooks became ever so slightly shorter. Victor’s mean little life was seasoned with a particular lack of virtue; Cuckoo always found more pleasure there than Beau, but neither would deny the value of a good, long curing.

They stripped the context from him until all that remained were the bits that fit into the recreated set of The Pitcher, where he was no doubt simultaneously dousing himself with water and tearing himself apart as they spoke. Beau and Cuckoo took their time. Winnowing the seed from the chaff was never a fast process, but many hands made for light work.

When they were done, it was like Victor had never been there at all, and given enough time, it would be true.

Read this piece’s entry on the Shousetsu Bang*Bang wiki.

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