Stash

Christmas Morning

Josiah crouched in front of the VHS player as he observed the buttons on the device. It had been a while since it was used. It was now a piece of furniture in the sitting room. It was however not dusty as it was cleaned earlier that day, like all the other appliances in the room. He pushed one of the tapes into the slot, stepped back and watched the screen in anticipation.

Lines appeared on the screen. There wasn't much he could see. His wish to watch Die Hard would not come true. The Die Hard VHS tape was dirty. He ejected it and decided to try his mystery tape, the one with no label.

"This would probably be worse," he said to himself as he slotted the cassette into the player. He expected the same result.

Same, dirty. As he was about to press the stop button, the images began to clear. He stepped back in hope as he realised it was getting clearer.

He fast-forwarded the tape for some seconds and hoped the video would have cleared out when he resumed play. He resumed play and the screen was perfectly clear.

"yes!" said Josiah. "Hmm, now have I seen this one before?" He watched for some minutes as he hoped to see a familiar scene that would jog his memory.

****

"Jo, get up, it's almost 8." Jindu yelled at Josiah as Josiah rolled and covered himself with his blanket.

"Urrghhh, I didn't sleep until late," grunted Josiah.

"Well, I'm sorry, and erm, Merry Christmas," said Jindu.

"Yeah, Merry Christmas," Josiah responded. His voice sounded deeper than usual whenever he just woke up, and it was something that still startled him. He rolled to the side of the bed and sat down.

"Dude, wash your face and come to the living room, we are about to open the presents." Jindu walked out of the room.

Josiah stood up and immediately sounded an ouch. He felt a slight pain in his left leg. At this instance, his memory was jogged and he remembered what happened that night—his fall, and the video tape.

He went out to the rest of the family. They waited for him around the Christmas tree. He greeted them and sat on the floor beside his cousin.

There was some Christmas music playing softly in the background. As Josiah tore off the wrapping paper from one of his presents, he sang along.

"Mary did you know, that your baby boy..."

His voice no longer sounded as deep as it did earlier.

As he did this, he was temporarily relieved from the images that had occupied his thoughts. It wasn't long before he wandered back into thinking about the content of the VHS tape. He couldn't focus on anything else. It ravaged his mind. It wasn't excitement, it wasn't... It was more of a festering aggressive curiosity. Though he did not want to remember or think about it, it took over every single fragment of his conscious mental self.