∞

 The low buzz of static is palpable. The air feels thick with it, as if in a perpetual humid summer. But instead of difficulty breathing, one can feel the vibrations go through their ears, and if you close your eyes, it can be felt  reverberating within your ribcage.

I take a deep breath, I don't smell but taste it, like a fizzy drink on my tongue but flavorless.

When I open my eyes again I see what I have seen for so long. Darkness above, fading into a blue, then purple hue, with pink undertones beneath.

I can't tell if the pristine carpet is pink or if that’s just the way the lights make it seem.

This half-a-rainbow is cut off by the source of the ever present static, the old CRT television monitors that plague the walls . Limited controls stick out of the panels beneath them. Some buttons and knobs, and the hungry VCR mouth eager to swallow whatever I put forth.

And I have food aplenty for it. Shelves filled to the brim with VHS tapes, all neatly put in place, carefully organized to fill endless rows.

Rows that follow a theme. Horror. Romance. Comedy. Documentaries on a 1984 Mexican revolution I have no memory of. Martin Scorsese’s so-called masterpiece, that never saw the light of day. A Broadway adaptation of The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Kevin Costner and Marilyn Monroe.

A cassette completely blank save for one frame of the sequel to John Carpenter's The Thing directed by a daughter he never had. A full row of them in fact, and none of the frames paint a complete picture, as each of them was filmed with a different camera on a different year, by a different daughter.

A movie directed by the late Prince, famous producer and actor, died of a stroke at 82. It tells the story of a musician with no name, fighting back against the music industry, a story of identity and owning your own work.

I take a step, feeling the carpet beneath my bare feet. It's soft, and strangely clean. You wouldn't expect it to be, a place like this should be dirty, grimy even, with earth brought in by thousands of shoes stepping in and out every day.

Then again, if I found myself here wearing nothing but some jeans and an oversized t-shirt…

The label on the next section isn't legible.

Again, strange. I anticipated some progression. Structured disposition, disquieting disorder, weirdness, then nonsensical alienation, and the eldritch madness that would top it all off.

Perhaps it is on me to expect anything from this place.

It has a copy of the first movie ever made in full color. It's a musical, one of DiCaprio's greatest performances. On the shelf next to it there are nineteen remakes of The Little Mermaid.

The next section is labeled “Adaptations”. But I saw multiple of those already. I'm looking for something…new to…watch? Is that why I'm here?

My eyes fall on a copy of  “The Library of Babel”. I chortle at it.

Appropriate, very appropriate.

I reach for it, wondering what madman managed to adapt the work of Borges, already thinking of giving it a go when I hear a thud that startles me.

I turn around, barely processing the shock, fearing I may not be alone here.

I reach forward, arm outstretched, taking careful steps, seeing my exposed skin take in the hues of the lighting of this place. Purples, blues and pinks, with hints of static flashes in the distance breaking them apart.

The source of this commotion is a scene that reminds me once again the only predictable quality of this place is its unpredictability.

A box fell from an ancient, battered shelf, looking completely different from the rest. Almost torn to pieces, scattered around the floor. It has enough of itself to hold some of the dusty cassettes on it, save for two that had broken through, now laying on the floor.

One before I got here, and one just now.

The air is thick with dust, the residue of…something. No dirt, no open windows, no ceiling from which anything may drop from. No sky either. 

Whatever is over my head is out of my reach, in every sense of the word. It is vast and unknowable, no light reaches that far. I avert my gaze from it, feeling the dust stick to my skin and invade my nostrils.

I take a step back, kicking more dust into the air. Then open up the box to see what's inside. Instead of one vhs there are multiple compact cassettes. Used for audio recordings.

I can't identify them in any way, no marks or writing to read. I wonder where exactly I am supposed to play them. I look around, no radios or tape players, no place for these.

I drop the subject, and them. I hear the cascading sound of plastic hitting the soft carpet, and chipped pieces scatter around my feet. I keep one, if for no other reason than to have something I can call my own.

I would like to take them all with me, find out what’s in them, but I’ve only got two pockets. Or four technically.

That’s when it occurs to me. I haven’t thought of checking what may be in them. Predictably there’s nothing, my hands go deep into the fabric, front and back. There's not even dirt in them.

But then I realize something else.

I haven’t inspected myself at all. Have not even seen my own reflection.

With it come other such epiphanies.

I don’t remember how I got here, how long I’ve been here, when I played all those tapes and how many times, how many corners have I turned around, or looked at the same shelf.

It doesn’t make sense, there’s no rhythm to it, no build up. One second it's exactly what you’d expect, the other it is utter chaos.

Am I dreaming, is that it? And if so, will I ever wake up?

I think of the book again, The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. In that story I was slowly introduced to the concept, the library with every single possible combination of letters, arranged in an infinite amount of books.

This place is like that…it should be…it should be…

But…

The buzz of the CRT monitors fills my head, like an insufferable nest of angry wasps that have no stinger to prick me with. 

So they buzz and buzz and buzz until I feel like my skull will shatter, spreading the pieces around like fragments of a grenade made of viscera, bone and a lot of blood.

This place is… not for me, it's not for any of us.

It is no library that wants to be read, it wants nothing but to…to…

It wants, how can a place want something? And how can I know it?

I need to see myself, to recognize my own figure, see me for who I am.

I look for those tapes that are mostly blank, stick one in and let it play out. I wonder why am I not tired at all, how come I got here without fumbling the cassette, or even opening the box to pull it out. 

I hit play and see the static on the screen fade into a black void.

But I don’t see myself, I see this place, the same way I see it through my own eyes, save for its black monotone.

Even when I move an arm up and down, see the shadow cast over the wall, on the screen there's no one.

I pull a box down just to be sure. Yes, the effects of my actions are there, I see it fall, but I don't see myself at      all.

I am tempted to shatter the glass into pieces. I don’t even consider the possibility that I might have put in the wrong tape. It wouldn’t be that easy.

This is madness. How did I get here? Why can’t I follow any sort of narrative or logic? Make some sense of it all?

Finally I feel something. I feel my body tremble in fear, except I don’t see it on that goddamn monitor.

I turn around and walk away, past the infinite rows of identical shelves, save the one taken by time and decay. I see it there, smack dab in the middle of them, mocking me for wanting to make some damn sense out of this place.

I walk.
I walk.

I walk.

I walk.

I    walk.
    Iwalk.
I wal    k.
And walk and walk and walk andwalk and walk.

I go past a mountain of VHS cassettes without boxes, just piled on each other.

I walk.

I walk.

I        w    al    k.

I keep walking, I feel thirsty, sore, dry and sweaty all over.

I walk.

I crawl.

I drag my body aroundoundoundoundound.

I walk.

I walk and finally I arrive somewhere else, which is to say the same, as there is no difference in the difference. Everything is the same in this pl    ace.

Infinity can only lead to uniformity.

I jump. I leap. I skip. I     walk.

I look into the black monitors of the CRT and see this place but not me. Never me.

I look up again. I stop looking. I don't close my eyes. I see it when I close them.

IwalkwalkIwalkI

I stop walking.

I lay down. I don’t sleep.

Time passes, but it doesn’t. Nothing passes here. No one passes here. Not me, certainly not me.

I don’t blink, there’s no point in doing so.

I play with the small cassette in my pocket. Spin it on my finger. Pull it apart, taking the string out like the bowels of a convict put to de     a th.

I close my eyes, hoping to wake up.

I don’t. And I don’t sleep.

I won’t s    l    e    ep.

I take a deep, deep breath.

The brave thing would be to fight        The brave thing would be to accept it.

I…

I…

I…

..
.
.    .    .

I put another tape into the VCR. I play something that I haven’t seen before.

I feel the buzzing of the monitors all around me, all inside me.

I take a deep breath.

And I watch. Because I realize that there is no end, no defined line that allows me the respite of sense, of defining it by its boundaries.

So I watch, because it w-

Because

B because

I watch.

I

Watch.

I feel the buzz in my ears, in my skin, deep in sid e it.

It fills me, as it fills the air. It is everything. It comes from nothing.

Until eventually all I feel is a buzz, eternal, unending.

But I wouldn’t be granted such mercy. So I stop feeling the buzz.

All I feel is…torture…

Buzz…buzz…buzzing…

Tssssssssssssss…

I hear it in my skull, or is it my t    ongue making the noise?

Tssssssssssss
I…

I…

I…

Tsssssssssssss

• Here it is, the third entry. This one is the trippiest of them all, and the most nonsensical. I wanted to do something like The Library of Babel and play with the format like House of Leaves, but very few words to do it. Still, it was a LOT of fun. I hope you enjoy it! See you all tomorrow for the final post of Moldy Frights :3