“It’s an old TV but it still works.” Said his boss. “The guy who owned it died in his living room. His daughter brought it in. A few lines on the top here but its barely noticeable.”

Thomas stared at a blotch on the lower right. It was slightly more noticeable and he questioned whether it was worth the sale price. “What about that?”

His boss rubbed the screen where Thomas pointed and said, “Are you sure it’s not the glare? I don’t see anything.”

Great, thought Thomas, that would mean that it would be his job to fix it and his job alone. Working at a used appliance shop had its privileges, like getting to keep the junk that never sold but it was the crap like this, the junk with weird issues that gave him the most headache. Because it was usually up to him, as the technical expert, to fix it.

He lugged the 40-inch, three-year old TV to the work bench and set up the connections, powering it on and checking the quality. The lines at the top weren’t as noticeable but the blotchy mark near the right was still visible. He stared at it for several minutes. Usually, a burned in image would indicate that the TV was left on a static, paused image for too long. The pixels in the screen would become damaged over time. The only way to fix such a defect was to use a video clip that was designed to remove burn-in with colorful flashes. He touched the rounded blotch and could feel an indentation with his fingers. That was odd. He shouldn’t have been able to feel it…

Thomas turned his cap around and rubbed his nose on his shirt. Over the next several hours he searched for videos online and finally found several that might be sufficient enough to repair the damage. If it wasn’t for the boss, he would practically run this place by now. Spending hours on end, stuck in the back workshop was mind numbing but he was wanted. He was needed. He wasn’t much use to anyone else in his life.

He sat in his chair and grabbed a half-opened bag of chips and let the flashing video play on the TV. It was disorientating to the human eye, with colors flickering and lines flashing. The burned-in image was just barely visible. He watched it and it started to become mute. But with the contrast he started to make out a shape and dropped a chip out of his open mouth. It was a face…

He didn’t move at first, struck with how strange the face looked. It had eyes and a stretched-out mouth, mirroring his own. Strange. As the screen flashed, he lost sight of it, becoming lost in the constant flashing. Suddenly, as his eyes narrowed, he saw another image in the mix…He barely made it out but it appeared to be of a living room with a couch on the lower part of the screen. Must’ve been an accidental webcam shot of the person who posted the video.

After another hour he changed the input to “Cable” and found a local channel, leaving it on while he browsed his phone, slightly shaken by the dark living room image. After only a few minutes the display started to sputter with screen tearing. He looked up and squinted at the distortions. Within the images he could see lines over the actors’ faces and bizarre deformations. It was like all the actors were wearing pale masks of what a human face should look like, with burning holes for eyes and low-hanging mouths, pixelated and stretched. He had never seen anything like it. What an awful TV. The display was so bad he swore he saw weird skeletal shapes where the bodies should be, almost like an x-ray. He scoffed. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks.

Several commercials played as he slumped back into his chair. It was odd seeing actors trying to sell him things through gaping mouths and stretched out flesh. He adjusted the color settings through the remote and let the TV play while he took a nap.

A strange dream came to him as he slept. Visions as sporadic as the display. Commercials played in his mind, of people laughing and smiling, telling him to buy a new car or kitchen appliance. “Free. With no extra charge.” They would say. “Join today for three months, no interest.” And “You could be chosen to be the next big winner.” And “Start your new life today.” All these offerings made him sick. The commercials became faded. He saw through the fake facades they were wearing, their fake smiles and grinning teeth. So fake, he thought, so fake and yet all-consuming. He couldn’t turn away. They made him feel stupid and childish, talking to him with condescending tones. “Don’t you want to be free from stress?” There were older commercials, from the 80s, then 70s, then 60s. Time went backwards. Back further he saw ads in newspapers from the 40s and 30s about tonic waters and special equipment that would make him feel better. He started to shake. But he couldn’t escape. It was a numbing feeling, like the abandonment of reason. An abandonment of logic and common sense.

“No…No!” He shouted, as he saw cave men smashing rocks together, of ancient humans pushing and grabbing at each other, hairy hands pulling at hairy arms in confusion. Primitive urges of aggression. Murder. Violence. Compulsion. Possession. So stupid yet so desirable. A happiness to let go and become a swirling consciousness of pointless consumerism. And consume him it did. With sudden impact he only wanted to press, push, choke, slap, and pop anything he could get his hands on.

He screamed, high and shrill like a girl and awoke to the burning light of the TV. He was blinded by it, until the shapes formed and he was looking into the display, into the living room he saw before. More static, more random lines and symbols. The distortions were glowing now. The room on the TV was dark. In the background was a dirty and gloomy kitchen, filled with pots, poverty, over-consumption, and rot. Thomas could almost smell the dusty couch with its century old leather and cracks that signified…

Thomas jumped out of his chair. There was a man there, to the right of the screen, staring open mouthed and eyes wide and teary, sitting on the same couch, right across from him. The man had a portly resemblance to himself, but twice as useless. The man must’ve been much older, in his sixties and probably didn’t leave the house much. This couldn’t have been a channel. Who would watch this? And then he realized. This was the same living room from before. A burned-in image…? How could an entire room be burned in? But no, the image was moving. The overweight man with stubble was breathing, although slowly.

The weight of what he was seeing struck him like a knife to the chest. All the pain in that dull face, drooling and numb, coalesced into a laser beam that burned Thomas’ eyes and soul. He saw for the first time a man who was worthless and dead inside, stuck on the couch, forever forced to watch his life away, watch the mind-sucking channels like a substance abuse junky or a hypnotized mental patient. How worthless…

The blotch was over the face and become darker, more pronounced. The man’s face grew darker, rotting there on the screen. Thomas couldn’t take anymore and pushed the power button the remote. It didn’t work. He smacked it on his leg. It didn’t turn off. The eyes grew darker, wider and bigger –black holes burning into his soul. He froze. He couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure if the eyes were drawing him in or if he even wanted to move. Numbness took over his body. They bore into him. Those black, hollow eyes…Tears streamed down his face as he questioned his own pointless existence. He couldn’t escape, trapped in this moment of focused attention, not sure if he was staring at the TV or if he was trapped inside the TV. But he didn’t care. Not anymore. Nothing mattered. He continued to stare at the man’s face. Nothing was left. Staring, staring, and staring, for eternity.