TV Party

Written with Laura Orris

This piece was written as an exquisite corpse. It was constructed section by section, passing the notebook back and forth. We don’t know who came up with what so don’t ask us. — The Editors

The bar was filled with horror enthusiasts, who were thrilled to learn that a much-loved television show, Nightmare Hour, was being rebooted. The conversation was nostalgic, remembering times when their lives felt more real, although at first no one could recall any of the plots of the show, just bits and pieces like an ugly patchworked monster made with love by a stoned grandmother.

“The werewolf episode,” said a woman over a glass of warm brandy. “That one terrified me. With the hill people. They had those knife hands.” 

“That one terrified me, too,” a wet, raspy voice coughed from the corner. “The rusty knives. They weren’t hill people though. They came from valleys and crevasses.”

“No, they came from grottos,” interrupted a voice that sounded like a wet, bloated dictionary, or a waterlogged ghost, which explained the slurring of words, like ink running down pages carelessly left out to rot. “And I remember the knives were polished. Their clothes were ragged, but the grotto people took damn good care of their fingers. And they weren’t actually werewolves-”

“But the knives were made of silver, right?” asked a woman whose cup was filled with a questionable liquid that looked congealed and indigestible. Despite her frantic voice, she was calmly making edits to the local newspaper, absent-mindedly chewing on the cap of her pen.  “Weren’t they hunting the werewolves? The hill people were the good guys.” 

Someone in the corner lit a cigarette that smelled like schlocky pulp fiction, or maybe it smelled like forgotten dreams of writing schlocky pulp fiction. His teeth, phonebook yellow, were visible with each word, clenching the cigarette. “The wolves were shapeshifters. They were the knife people. I think they were hunting themselves. Fucking crazy. Didn’t make much sense. Didn’t understand that episode.” 

A woman muttered that smoking wasn’t allowed indoors, taking the high moral ground, even though she made her children stay up late to watch horror films with her, giving them night terrors. He flicked the cherry into his beer, swallowed the filter. 

The TV clicked on, reminding everyone why they were there. 

The harsh sound of snow and the high pitched whine of a warming television. 

The bartender changed to the right channel. 

Then the familiar theme song: shred guitars, drums that sounded like they were recorded in a slaughterhouse basement, inaudible whisper screams, lyrics that can only be understood just before you fall asleep. Dark memories embedded in the song. Everyone tasted hypnosis in the back of their throat, and their nostalgia felt off, like it was too recent. 

The camera panned over from a desert landscape to the mouth of a cave. The host walked out, smoking a cigarette, wearing a three piece suit. He said, “Werewolves have long been thought to represent the duality of humankind.” 

The host looked like the bartender. The set reminded everyone of the bar’s basement, and they couldn’t say why. The room quieted as everyone realized they couldn’t remember anything else about their lives other than the plotlines of Nightmare Hour, which they now remembered with perfect clarity.

“Not again,” someone said, their voice like fingernails methodically removed with pliers. 

“How long have we been here?” asked the schlocky pulp fiction.

By the time the first shapeshifter appeared on screen, someone with the voice of a tarantula that has eaten several dry almond cookies said, “Turn that off! We don’t need to watch it. We know how it goes.”

The bartender shot the TV with a large revolver that was kept behind the bar. The front window of the bar shattered from the outside. Everyone turned to the broken window, feeling the rain coming in, weak pelts from the spittle of a thunderstorm blowing raspberries. Someone from the corner ran out the door, the crunching glass breaking the silence. The person with the voice of a bloated dictionary said, “All this time, that’s all it took?”

Someone else yelled something about finally being free. Outside the window, a distant voice shouted, “Why did you leave an actual gun there? You let them all out the TV!”

Everyone had left though, running out into the night, to whatever future awaited them. After the room cleared out there was one very confused person, shaking water out of his hat, who had just stepped in for a night cap.