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Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

VIDEO


kevin sampsell



��How do I begin to tell you the confusion that was in my head just hours ago when I saw this thing that I didn’t want to see and how this thing wiped my brain blank? It all started when I came home and I found it empty. Sure, sure, furniture and stuff, but empty of other people. Not even notes or messages. There’s a thing to record your voice for memos, but nothing. Peace and quiet. I thought of things to do but sat down on the foamy chair instead.
��One thing at a time and right at that time the chair came first.
��Unwind, relax, I told myself. Think of something besides work. Something besides car parts and catalog numbers. Brake fluid. WD40. Spark plugs.
��I thought about a film going around the black market. Someone at work said they’d seen it on TV. I thought about that for about fifteen minutes. How it was interesting. How it was puzzling.
��It was a film of Richard Speck, a famous murderer, in a room somewhere. The person at work told me it was a room in a prison where he was held. A room in a prison? I’ve never thought about rooms in prisons. The bars make it not a room. Am I right?
��So it’s hard to imagine, but there’s a room in a prison and Speck is snorting coke on a table with another man. When they get it all snorted, Speck takes his shirt off and they start doing a porno. This person who saw it on TV said that Speck had large breasts, like he’d been taking hormone pills. “Notice the abnormal size of his chest,” is what the person at work said the TV announcer said. She couldn’t remember what show it was. She said the news, but I don’t think they would show something as sensationalist as that.
��Except at 7:30, which is when they have these investigative shows where they talk about serial killers, super models, and sometimes happy cute stuff (someone having a baby or a wedding or a prize-winning poodle). I wish I could’ve seen the show. I can’t stop wondering what the room looked like. A murderer doing a gay porno film was interesting to me, especially thinking about how it would probably be fuzzy looking. I imagined it being shot from the corner of the ceiling for some reason. Like security cameras at 7-11.
��Maybe it was the guards filming secretly.
��I wonder how much it cost to buy a copy of it. How they obtained cocaine and a video camera perplexes me. The hormones, they might be easy to get, but why? I’m not even going to speculate, even though I wondered what his chest looked like. But only a little. I’d seen someone like that before and so I knew. It was also someone in a porno film, but not in a prison. I looked for a couple of seconds and then flicked past because it wasn’t pretty and barely interesting. Like balloons with not enough air in them; and flat and wrinkled. Maybe Speck’s were better looking. But if you were the other guy would you want to fuck a killer? Even with boobs? Or maybe the killer fucked you. I’d have to see the film.
��Or should we call it video? Okay, to be technically correct, we’ll start calling it video.
��So I sat in the foamy chair and thought about that. The person at work, the video, the person at work watching the video on her television, the announcer talking about “the abnormal size of his chest”.
��It was 7:30 and I turned on the TV and started watching one of these shows I was previously talking about, with movie stars and gossip and normal people doing things so weird or violent that they were just as interesting as movie stars.
��The telephone rang and I got up to answer it. It was someone for my wife but she wasn’t there. I told the person I didn’t know where my wife was. And the boy was gone too. When I hung up, the phone rang again and it was my wife calling. She said she tried putting a memo on the machine but it didn’t work.
��“I’m at Shawn’s, and I was supposed to have a class tonight,” she said. “You have to pick us up now.”
��Our boy was playing with Shawn’s girl, laughing in the background. I wanted to see him. I always wanted to see him. Especially when I worked all day and I couldn’t see him. He says “Dada” when he sees me. I say “Loooove the dada.” I get off the phone and realize I can’t remember how to get to Shawn’s.
��Shawn was married to Gloria but she since died and he had to move into a new house. One just a little smaller. My wife spends a lot of time at Shawn’s watching his two-year old with our two-year old. She usually has her own car to drive though.
��Okay. So this is when it happened. I sat back in the foamy chair. On the 7:30 show I saw a video of a big black guy with his shirt off standing in a swampy-looking water with his back to the camera. He had broad, muscular shoulders. I’d say that the water was up to his chest but I couldn’t see his chest. I couldn’t even see his face.
��He had a boy in his hands and a 911 call was giving viewers a sketchy scenario. Something along the lines of this guy, this big guy with broad shoulders goes to some lady’s house and asks to see some girl. The lady tells him to go away and the man says something like “I know what I have to do then,” and he somehow gets ahold of this boy who looks about a year old. “There’s a bayou out back of our house. He took the baby in there with him. I don’t know if he’s gonna drown him or what,” the lady says on the 911 call. The video shows two men in a small boat in the bayou where the man and the baby are. He seems to be holding the baby so its head is just above water. The baby looks around him and starts screaming.
��I can’t figure out what’s going on and there is no sound except the screaming. I expect an announcer’s voice to narrate the scene, but it is strangely absent. Only the sound of swamp and crying.
��The men in the boat are talking to the big man but you can’t hear what they say. You see the men in the boat and their faces. They have big clubs or oars in their hands but they stay in the boat, maybe afraid to drown in the muddy water. The man with the baby is very large. I don’t see the baby’s head anymore. But there is his hand waving by the man’s shoulder. The men in the boat start pounding the man’s back and head. The baby boy is not screaming. I can’t see exactly what’s happening but I think the man is holding the baby underwater.
��I see the boy’s arm moving, waving slowly.
��Blood is all over the man’s back. There is no announcer to explain. The men keep beating the man but seem wobbly in the boat. I stand up. I try to remember how to get to Shawn’s. They are waiting for me there. The baby’s head is nowhere, only his hand, still in the air. It seems like a long time. I become infuriated. I can’t believe they would show this on TV with no announcer to comfort us. I take a step toward the TV. The blood is really dark. Time goes by slow when there are no voices heard. I stomp my foot. I’m not sure what’s going on inside me. I yell “Fuck!” I stomp my foot again. This is all I can do for the baby. I am helpless.
��These are real people on a real video.
��The TV is on a big table with heavy candles and picture frames. They rattle against each other when I stomp. I know the sound and I’m used to it. My boy jumps around this very room all the time, making things rattle. On some parts of the floor he can make our CD player skip. I am not alarmed or concerned that things will fall and break. They never do.
��This is a video. It is not live footage. In real time, this scene is over and everyone involved is hopefully peaceful and calm; with TVs off. I just watch. They would never show a man killing a boy on TV I am thinking. There must be a happy ending. I am just watching.
��They are leaning out of the boat. The baby’s arm reaches for help.
��They keep hammering on the man’s body. Babies are supposed to be good swimmers. Natural instinct or something.
��The baby’s head is in the swampy bayou.
��My eyes almost want to close. No announcer. A small boat. Water like thin mud. Is this what a snuff film is like? The only places I’ve heard of where you can see a real snuff film are these dingy theaters in New Orleans.
��There are bayous in Louisiana.
��The man is beaten down, groggy. The boat is rowed away from the man. The baby is dazed and coughing in the boat, held tightly by one of the men. I sit back down. The one man rowing the boat breaks down and starts crying heavily.
��The video jumps ahead minutes later to show policemen in rubber suits taking the man out of the bayou. His hands are cuff and he seems undisturbed. The show switches to clips of people talking about how normal and unassuming the man was in his everyday life. Teachers, priests, relatives, all with looks of horror on their face.
��I turn the television off and think for a second that I should have recorded it on the VCR. Knowing that the boy survived makes me want to show it to other people; a kind of testament.
��As I grab the car keys and put on my coat I see that one of the picture frames on the table by the TV has fallen over and broke.
��I haven’t seen my boy all day. I’ll figure out where Shawn lives if it takes me all night, but deep down I know, that when I start driving I’ll remember everything I need to.





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