Chapter Text
It was dark but cold, there was barely wind that was blowing around or any at all. There were sounds but they weren’t natural ones as there were hisses and growls of creatures that didn’t belong to any animals. It was odd but it felt like the world had changed. At the time, a young man named “Vincent” woke up from his sleep as he felt like his head was going to explode by whatever impact that he was feeling.
As Vincent’s eyes snapped open to a sky the color of old television snow. His skull rang like a cathedral bell struck off-key as there was each pulse of pain that was carrying a high-pitched whine that belonged inside a cathode-ray tube rather than a human head. Vincent sat up too fast and the world tilted as there was asphalt scraping his palms and yet the sting felt distant, as it was wrapped in cotton.
“What in the—” The sentence cracked. His voice was there, but underneath it something else crackled, an audible snap of static, as though every word had to fight through a broken speaker.
He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple and tried to remember. The last thing that he remembered was that he was at The Gala for the anniversary of the Studio and their own success. The Newsfront Theatre on 47th, 1952. Klieg lights were popping flashbulbs and the network’s golden logo spinning on a velvet curtain. He had been out front in white tie, microphone in one gloved hand, and he was grinning the grin they paid him for. Then the rigging groan, the sudden shadow, the television set—one of the giant demonstration consoles—toppling from the catwalk like a drunk angel. After that: a white-blue flash, the smell of ozone and burning hair, and the sensation of every bone turning to antenna.
There was panic that surged through his body as it was making him frantic over what happened. He’d yanked at the box that he believed was still on his head. Vincent was still frantic over what happened at The Gala. His nails were scratching uselessly across glass and veneer while the crowd’s screams funneled away into a single long carrier wave. Now, Vincent was breathing hard on an unfamiliar curb, he realized the weight was still there—no longer on his head, but in it, behind the eyes, humming for him to hear.
In the state of panic, Vincent looked over just to see that there was a clean puddle that was right beside him. Vincent crawled over, on his knees, towards the puddle. Hoping that whatever happened to him wasn’t that bad and if it could be fixed. But, the moment he looked at his reflection in the puddle, he was stunned at what he was looking at. All that Vincent saw was what he believed was him. Vincent still had blood on where the TV landed on him but that wasn’t all he was seeing. Vincent saw that his head was covered by the TV that was stuck on him.
Vincent tried to pull the TV out of his head as he was forcing himself to count: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three— The headache ebbed enough for finer details to arrive as he realized that the TV wasn’t coming off his head. It was like it became a part of him as it fused with his skin that was attaching the TV onto his body. But that wasn’t all that Vincent noticed about his body. Vincent’s fingers…weren’t his own anymore. Where pink skin should have been as there was metal that was plating glinted as they were slender talons of brushed aluminum tapering to television-antenna points. Vincent turned them over; inside the joints, tiny vacuum tubes glowed like ember eyes.
A gasp tore out of him as he was confused about what was happening to his body. Vincent scrambled to the nearest reflection—a rain puddle pooled against the curb—and looked. The face staring back was his, yes: slick black hair, sharp cheekbones, the birthmark at the left temple. But it was trapped inside a screen, boxed by a bezel that grew from his own collarbones. The glass was not glass; it was him. As there was light that rolled across it the way the picture rolls when vertical hold slips. His pupils jittered as he was tearing sideways into brief bars of monochrome.
Vincent screamed, yelling at the top of his lungs. Or maybe, he thought, that he still had lungs. The sound came out in two channels—one human, one an electronic squeal that blew the puddle into concentric rings. “Pull it together, Vincent,” he hissed, though the plea warbled like a mistuned dial. Vincent stood up on his feet and swept the dirt that was on his clothes. Knees of chrome and Bakelite clicked into place. A power cord, thick as a serpent, dragged from the base of his spine, its plug clattering against the pavement. He bundled it against himself like an obscenity and stumbled into the street.
Where the hell was he now?
Vincent wasn’t in Manhattan anymore but he was somewhere that he had never seen before in his life. The buildings were right—art-deco bones, fire escapes zig-zagging like black lightning—but every billboard advertised products in languages that hurt to read as there were letters that were twisted into test patterns, slogans that scrolled vertical blinds. The air smelled of overheated transformers. There were even many eyes that seemed to stare in different directions and they were freaking Vincent out inside his core just by looking at them. Even one eye was staring directly into Vincent’s eyes, he had to turn around just to avoid eye contact with the giant red eye.
Desperate to get help from somebody, Vincent limped forward as he clawed feet scraping sparks. “Help! Somebody! I don’t know where I’m at. I don’t even know what happened to me.” Vincent was holding his arms closely to his chest as he kept walking to anywhere that had people that could help him.
A figure rounded the corner—hat brim low, coat flapping. Vincent lurched toward him.
“Please, I—I had an accident. I need a hospital, or—” Vincent bumped into somebody that was in front of him.
Vincent tripped onto the floor and landed on his side. Vincent rubbed his head as he lifted up his head and was rubbing his side temples. That was when the stranger lifted his face as they were staring down at Vincent. Where eyes should be, twin CRTs bulged as there were screens that were full of snow. His mouth was a speaker grille; when it opened, a voiceover baritone spilled out, devoid of warmth. “Late-night programming is over, friend. Go home.”
Vincent recoiled at the man’s words. Seeing the man’s hands were rabbit-ear antennas gesturing lazily. “Wait—just tell me where—”
But the stranger’s screens blinked to color bars, and he walked on, static fizzing with each step. Vincent turned to see his new surroundings that he was shockily looking at. Others filled the street now: a woman whose head was a rotary dial spinning endlessly; a child with a film-reel torso with his frames clacking as he breathed. Every one of them carried some piece of machinery the way ordinary people carried wallets—sewn in, bolted on, humming.
Monsters.
No—viewers.
And he was the broadcast that was playing. His chest tightened until the power cord thrashed like a tail. Breath came shallow as it was syncing to a flicker rate he couldn’t control. While there were spots that danced in the corners of his vision—test dots while they were counting down to nothing. All that Vincent could do at that moment was run, nothing else. As there were alley mouths that yawned and vomiting neon; he plunged into the darkest, collapsing behind garbage cans that looked suspiciously like old cathedral radios. There he hugged his knees and there were claws that were scraping porcelain flecks from the brick.
Think. Think.
That was when Vincent got a reminder that popped in his head. After the Gala, Vincent was supposed to leave to go to an All Night Diner—he remembered checking his watch “9:17 p.m." that he was supposed to be there or at least leave the Gala. Remembering where he was going, Vincent was due at Mel’s Diner on 53rd by ten. A corner booth, mustard bottles lined like soldiers. Someone would be waiting: freckles, shy smile, the kind of eyes that made Vincent forget the studio lights. They had planned it for weeks before the date of the Gala was given to Vincent and that first public hour together outside the smoke of after-parties and hush-hush phone calls.
“After the show,” Vincent whispered to the alley, voice glitching. “I promised.”
But the screen that was now his face showed only rolling thunder—memory as interference.
He pictured the contract back in his dressing room: twenty pages of morality clauses, the clause that said *performer shall not conduct himself in any manner which may bring the Network into disrepute.* A single line underlined in red. He’d signed because the money meant escape from tenement drafts, from a father who called him a fairy loud enough for the neighbors to hear. He’d signed when he remembered how harshly the father always spoke to him and he postponed everything else—postponed “him.”
Now the postponement was a lifetime. Vincent tilted his head until the alley wall scraped the edge of his bezel. “Which matters more?” he asked the dark. “The future they let me have, or the one I was too scared to take?”
The alley did not answer for Vincent to listen too. Only the low sixty-cycle hum inside his chassis, the heartbeat of a television left on overnight. Somewhere beyond brick and static, a clock tower tolled ten times. Mel’s booth was empty tonight; he felt the vacancy like an unspooled ribbon. Yet the thought of that boy—Oliver—waiting, maybe worrying, maybe walking home alone as it stung worse than the electricity still coursing beneath his plating.
Realizing some details on what Vincent unfolded for himself. Seeing the cord dragging that was attached to his body, Vincent stepped toward the mouth of the alley. The city’s neon bled across his screen-face in horizontal bars—red, green, sickly cyan—painting the face of a man who had become the very medium that once sold him. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he said aloud, the words scrolling like a news ticker at the bottom of his vision. “But I know where I should have been.”
Vincent turned in the direction the clock tower had chimed and the palm of his hands were clicking on wet pavement. Monsters or no, audience or none, he would find that diner, that corner booth. If Oliver was still there, Vincent would sit across from him—screen, claws, cord and all—and finally let the picture settle into focus. Behind him, the alley’s shadows rearranged themselves into a test pattern.
He did not look back.
Vincent didn’t know what to think. Vincent did not mean to sleep but to go back to where he knows best. Back home, in his apartment where he and Oliver have been living together since they became a couple. Vincent remembered the day that they first meant. It was the day that Oliver changed his life. Oliver was the reason why Vincent never grew jealous or resentful towards anybody that was Higher Rank than him when Vincent was a Weather Man. Seeing the tattoo on Oliver’s back where there was a little mark of Angel Wings and a Halo that had a little TV mark in the middle always made Vincent smile.
‘Oh how I wish I was there more just like how you were always there for me when I needed you.’ Vincent thought to himself.
As time went by, there was one moment he was counting the flicker-rate of a sputtering neon sign—thirty cycles, thirty-one—trying to match it to the throb behind his glass-eyes; the next, the alley tilted and the world went to snow. Vincent dreamed of test patterns that folded into Oliver’s smile, of diner mustard bottles pouring static instead of mustard, of a contract page that kept growing longer the more he signed.
Then—tap, tap, tap.
A gentle rhythm against the metal casing of his arm. “Ollie?” he mumbled, half-dreaming, because the face swimming above him had freckles and eyes that caught streetlights like quarters dropped in a jukebox. Vincent’s claws reached automatically as he was wanting the warmth of a hand that had never once flinched from him.
The face sharpened the more they got closer to Vincent. The freckles became spots of rust; the eyes were twin dial knobs that were showing chrome catching dawn’s first sodium glow. The smile stayed, but it was stapled on as there was a ventriloquist’s curve cut into plastic. “Sleepin’ rough, friend?” the creature asked. Its voice hissed through a grille set where a mouth should be—an old car radio searching for a station. “You’re broadcasting on public property. Not allowed.”
Vincent recoiled so hard his cord tail rattled trash lids. “I—I thought—” The dream-ashes of Oliver’s name still burned on his tongue.
“Hey buddy, it’s okay. I’m here to help you. Name’s Wurl,” the thing said, tipping a hat that was literally a waffle-iron. “And by the looks of it, you’re new here. So, you're technically late. New meat’s supposed to report to the Golden City before first fade-out.”
Vincent blinked snow from his screen. “Golden City?”
Wurl was already hauling him upright as his claws were surprisingly gentle under the elbow. “Where the Contract Demons clock in. They all have to report there in order to get a spot to live in. You got the look—fresh kill, still got your antennae up.” He tapped Vincent’s forehead; the glass rang like a bulb. “The door's right here. Can’t miss it.”
They had walked only three paces when Wurl stopped beside a dumpster Vincent could have sworn hadn’t been there moments ago. He pressed one waffle-iron finger to the brick wall—and the bricks melted to gilt. A doorway unfolded as there were edges that showed a blazing white-blue like a picture tube overdriven with voltage. Revealing the hieroglyphs of channel numbers and fine-print clauses crawled across the lintel.
“Through you go,” Wurl said. “Answers, benefits, orientation film—whole shebang. Try not to linger in the reception; Hell hates that.”
“Wait, I don’t—” Vincent’s voice glitched. “Did you say Hell?”
Wurl’s smile knobs spun. “You think you get a dressing room like that—” he flicked the TV frame fused to Vincent’s shoulders, “—upstairs?” And with a courteous bow that would have been at home in any midtown doorman, he shoved.
There was no drop, no lurch—just a snap of static so loud it folded into silence. Then light, revealing a champagne-gold, retina-white, and the blue of sky you only see on calibrated sets. Vincent stumbled onto a boulevard paved with film-stripes. As there were spools that were unwound beneath his feet and there was each frame a moment Vincent didn’t remember living like this or didn’t want to be in the spot that he got himself stuck in. Vincent wanted to go back home to where he belongs but knowing that he needed to keep going. What choice did he have so he kept walking to where he was told to go.
Around him, beings queued in perfect lines like they were waiting for something to call them. They weren’t human—antennae, dials, projector reels for ribcages—but they wore pressed suits or neat skirts and there were name-tags that clipped like press badges. Overhead, loudspeakers murmured easy-listening big-band as there was every trumpet note rounded off in treble-dial warmth.
A clock tower—its face a gigantic watch-dial—read 8:00 a.m. sharp. The air smelled of ozone and fresh mimeograph ink. “Excuse me.” A voice like an intercom. A guard in a brass-button coat stood beside Vincent; his head was a cathode-ray tube wearing a cap. Badge: RECEPTION SECURITY – LEVEL 1. “Identification?”
Vincent lifted his claws. “I—I don’t have any. I just got here. I was… pushed through a door and ended up here.”
The guard’s screen-face flickered to a quick horizontal roll—annoyance. “New arrival. Line Four-B. Follow me. Don’t get lost.”
Vincent sighed. “I’m already lost…”
They passed queues that snaked around velvet stanchions. Seeing ahead of him was a woman with a ribbon of magnetic tape for hair that argued with a clerk about a missing comma in her severance clause. As there was also a man whose mouth was a film gate pleaded for extra footage. No one stared at Vincent; in a place where faces were literally screens and a shattered television head that rated barely a shrug.
At Line 4-B the guard stopped. “Wait here. When your number flashes, enter. Someone inside will brief you on departmental placement, housing, energy rations, and residual rights.” He paused, taking in the dried blood crusted on Vincent’s white tuxedo collar where the TV had bitten bone. “The first day’s always rough. Try not to glitch on the carpet.”
Then the guard marched off in his heels, hearing the clicking sprocket holes into the film-strip boulevard. Vincent stood, tail-coat torn, bowtie skewed, and his screen cracked at the corner like someone had tried to change the channel with a hatchet. The blood—his blood—had oxidized to a rust color that matched the rust of his false memory of Oliver’s freckles. People—if they still counted as people—shuffled forward every few minutes, numbers lighting above the bronze doors.
A127, A128…
Vincent was now at A140 as it was flashing in front of him. Vincent’s digit glowed red in the corner of his vision, an embedded channel bug. Ahead, the Department of Contracts rose in Art-Deco splendor, all gold leaf and marble. Engraved across the portico: OBLIGATIONS ARE FOREVER—TERMS MAY APPLY. Sunlight (or studio light—he couldn’t tell) ricocheted off the façade and into his screen, filling it with blooming white that nearly wiped his reflection.
The more he moved closer in the line, the more Vincent saw himself anyway: a man turned appliance, gala finery soaked in trauma, and waiting in line to be told what Hell intended to do with the leftovers of Vincent Whiteman. The line moved closer to where Vincent needed to be at. Passing by A129 as the air was getting thicker for Vincent to breath. Vincent doesn’t know how he could be breathing but he was. Vincent shuffled forward as his newfound claws were tucked close so no one would notice them trembling. Every step crunched the film-strip as there were frames of strangers’ final moments popping like bubble-wrap beneath his shoes.
A130.
Vincent wondered if Oliver was still waiting for Vincent to come to the diner or maybe Oliver was somewhere else. Wondering where Vincent is at. Vincent wondered if Oliver was scanning the morning papers for a small item: “Local TV Host Killed By A Freak Accident.” Vincent wondered if anyone would mourn longer than a news cycle. Knowing his family, his dad won’t care and his mother never showed concern so he knows they won’t even show up to his funeral. If there was going to be a funeral for Vincent.
A131.
Vincent wondered if there could be a chance to go back to Earth and be with Oliver again. To be with the only person that ever cared for him. The one person that came at the right time when Vincent was feeling down about himself as a Weather Host and Man in general. Since men aren’t supposed to like the same gender as them. It was like Oliver was dropped down from Heaven to show Vincent the light. But, that was when Vincent’s number flashed, he would be offered a pen, a contract, and maybe there was another chance to sign his name in exchange for forgetting. Vincent even wondered if he’d be weak enough to take it.
A132.
As the doors yawned open for Vincent to look inside. There was an exhalation of refrigerated air that was blowing at Vincent and he could feel the chill going through his body. Vincent wasn’t sure how he could feel cold especially when his head was basically a TV now. Inside, chandeliers of bare bulbs flickered in perfect synchronization—one dark frame, two bright, and there was a secret message in the refresh rate.
It was time for Vincent to go and see what’s going to happen next. So, Vincent straightened his bowtie that he was still wearing around his neck as best he could with talons and he lifted his chin, if he could still have a chin to recall by, so the cracks in the glass caught the light. The guard had said someone in there would answer everything. Vincent had to try and act that he was fine. Vincent had some questions to ask that he hopes that there are answers for him to know about.
But, Vincent also had one answer already as he was beating inside the cage of vacuum tubes that were all around him. Making Vincent spin in questions that were messing with his mind. But all that Vincent could think about is Oliver and if Hell wanted another bargain from him that Vincent would have to face when he gets to the location that he's supposed to go for. It would have to tune in to a different channel. Vincent was done selling pixels of himself and he had to face whatever he was going to be looking at.
A133.
That was when the line moved, and Vincent Vox moved with it. Vincent’s newfound screen cracked a little the more he felt powerful emotions occurring. There was the cord that was dragging from his new form body. Lastly, showing the blood that was still drying on his Gala clothes, but Vincent’s eyes forward as he was waiting for the door to call his number and the next reel to roll.