I don’t know how it began.

Let me rephrase that.

I don’t really understand why it began. The day in my attic when I peeled back the eroding duct tape sealing my VHS tape collection changed me forever. My clumsy nature caused the tapes to spill onto the ground and I jerked to avoid them, dropping the last bite of the peanut butter jelly sandwich that I was eating. A sumptuous drop of jelly soiled one of the VHS, Escape from New York. Instead of wiping it off. I instinctively licked it away. There was a semisweet but addicting flavor under the jelly.

I licked again, again, and again.

And similar to the fate of a tootsie roll pop, I bit into the tape. Mysteriously and to my delight, the hard plastic crumbled in my mouth like tasty peanut brittle and the tape was every bit delicious like a fruit rollup. As I cleaned the mess I had made and pondered on the fact I had eaten a V.H.S tape, a strange synthesized sound purred in my mind.

Then in a flash, every nuance of Escape from New York was in my head, the synth soundtrack, the dialogue, even the tiniest sliver of imagery was magnified in my mind. I mean everything! Fuck, I’m talking about details of things that shouldn’t have been visible; I saw items on the tables, names on paper, and sharp as 4K textures on it all. Then the smells came, distinctive as New York itself, but they burned my nostrils. Instinctively, I scratched at my nose but it didn’t stop the sweet but putrid odor mixed with adrenaline, sweat, and terrible hygiene. I wanted to turn off this sensory overload but I couldn’t find the switch.

I soon lost the attic to what I can only describe as falling down a rabbit hole, plunging into a chaotic loop of the film fast-forwarding and rewinding.

At that moment it hit me, I cleared my mind and thought of only one word, “Pause”.

In an instant, it all stopped. I stood grounded. Now, in New York on the streets, the only animated person stuck in the crosshairs of a street gang war. I was afraid to move. Totally, afraid that I would unpause the war and be another nameless dead body on the pavement. Don’t get me wrong. This shit is fun to watch on TV, but being stuck in the middle of the carnage that’s another fucking story. I had to act or I’d be here forever.

Think stupid, the first act of action is observation. I scanned the scene. What was there that could help me or a path to run to if it all went to shit. WHAT?! The answer was at my feet. A V.H.S tape, I mean what are the odds, right! I squatted, looking for any signs that I would or could accidentally hit the unpause.

In my head, I knew I look like a fucking idiot, making the bare minimum movement, legs squat, arms moving down slowly as my fingers tried to scoop up the tape. That’s when I did something that all protagonists do in the second act, I make a stupid call.

Feeling like a total moron, I thought to myself, “Time has stopped just grab the damn tape.” So I did and time had begun again. Yes, I had picked up the tape but I also had gotten a bullet in the dome.

First, black followed by a flickering, making the black to grey. When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the attic floor, in the midst of V.H.S havoc. The tapes were out of the box again and sprawled all around. After I had come out of my grogginess, I noticed first, blood on the tapes, then the blood on the floor, followed by the blood on my hands, then with a quick reach around the blood on my head. Let me tell you sometimes clarity can be a bitch and come a little slow but when it had come, it erupted in a burst of excitement.

All at once, the haze had left and I shouted, “I am alive.”

Damn, I had to have sat on the floor for a good five minutes laughing at the silliness of what I thought I had perceived. Fuck perceived. I mean experienced. It was all a dream. I must have slipped when the box fell and hit my head. I would never eat a damn V.H.S tape, to begin with. But as quickly as I thought of the idiocracy of my actions, I peered down and saw black plastic crumbs, and then I wasn’t laughing anymore.