They say life is what you make it. But whoever said that clearly never lived in a town where ambition came to die and dreams went to the same retirement home as Blockbuster.
My days were a blur of beige walls, blinking cursors, and microwaved disappointment. I worked at a tech support center that smelled like coffee, burnt plastic, and crushed hope. You know that moment in a movie where the main character looks out the window with sad music playing? That was me. Every. Damn. Day. Minus the soundtrack. All I had was the hum of ancient office AC units and the occasional cough from Steve in accounting, who may or may not have been decaying in real time.
I lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment that creaked like it hated me. The neighbors upstairs practiced tap-dancing at midnight. My fridge buzzed louder than my social life. Even the local raccoon had more consistent dinner dates than I did.
But the worst part? The unbearable sameness. Wake up. Drag myself to work. Nod at people I didn't like. Fix problems that weren't mine. Come home. Sleep. Repeat. There was no plot twist. No drama. Just a loading screen that never ended.
Then came the tape.
It showed up in my mailbox one Tuesday. No stamp. No label. Just a VHS cassette with one word scrawled across it in red marker: SCRIPT.
I don't even own a VCR. Who does anymore? But curiosity has a weird way of bending logic. I actually borrowed one from a thrift store. Borrowed, as in "forgot to return." Sorry, Linda.
That night, I popped it in.
Static.
Then a black screen.
Then… me.
I kid you not. The tape showed me, sitting on my couch, looking confused. Which, fair. Then the screen flashed white, and just like that… everything changed.
It didn't feel like teleportation or a dream. It felt like stepping through the screen into another reality a movie reality. I landed smack-dab in the middle of a film I vaguely remembered from my childhood. A cheesy, over-the-top action flick with bad one-liners and explosions every five minutes.
Except now I was immune to everything.
Bullets? Bounced off like Nerf darts.
Fire? Tickled.
Physics? Optional.
I could jump higher than logic allowed, punch through walls, and land one-liners that made Schwarzenegger look shy. I was overpowered. Invincible. Untouchable.
At first, it was pure chaos. I hijacked the plot. Took down the villain in the first ten minutes. Then I turned to the hero and asked, "So what now, sunshine?"
He blinked like I'd murdered the scriptwriter. It was glorious.
But I didn't stop there.
No, see, I realized something. I wasn't just watching the movie. I was rewriting it. The tape? It was a door. A literal gateway into any film I chose. And the best part? I could do whatever I wanted in there. Change the ending. Ruin the romance. Beat the villain to death with a baguette if I felt like it.
So I did what any bored, emotionally repressed, dangerously curious loner would do: I jumped again.
And again.
And again.
Sometimes to escape. Sometimes to test limits. And sometimes… just to kill certain characters. Yeah. You heard me. Some people fantasize about meeting their favorite heroes. I fantasized about kicking a few off cliffs. Let's just say not all movie characters aged well in my eyes. And I had a score to settle with more than a few.
But between all the carnage, all the cinematic chaos, there was this weird little question that kept crawling back into my mind:
Who sent me the tape?
Because someone had to. Right?
Right?