Chapter 1 – Chap 1

The first time I noticed it, it kind of weirded me out. It was late, and my arms were weighed down with grocery bags, but a flash of colored light had caused me to stop. Just a few houses down, a previously abandoned space now bore a new tenant. In the window, a large, neon sign read “GRAND OPENING,” casting pink and green shadows over the empty parking lot. That explained why I’d never seen it before, but it was like it had materialized overnight.

I had a vague recollection of some construction happening there recently. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it until now. Still, the structure didn’t look all that improved for a new business. It was a self-contained little building with chipped, white paint and a few tufts of grass surrounding its exterior. Above the door were the words “Albie’s Video Rentals,” with a little icon of a winking man, grinning coyly at me. That image looked faded too.

Everything about it seemed so out of place, from its bright, flashy advertising in the middle of a quiet residential area, to the hokey, old-school design, reminiscent of early video rental competitors. It was like a rift had opened up in the ‘90s and this store had popped out.

The windows were tinted, but I could see the telltale flash of a screen in the corner. A movie being played, like they always used to do when you’d go to rental places. I could see the outline of a popcorn machine, and what looked to be a person moving around, but everything else was too blurry. The eerie glow of the sign marred the darkness all around it—not a working street lamp or porch light to be seen. It was like a strange, dated beacon.

The evenings lately are warm, but I felt a sudden chill staring at the place. It’s that sensation you get when something seems out of place. It doesn’t belong there, and even its harmless existence seems threatening. Uncomfortable.

At any rate, my arms were getting tired, so I forced myself to keep walking. Soon enough, the odd little shop was out of sight.

Once I was home, I had more time to muse over the fact that someone had opened an obsolete rental place in the middle of a quarantine. I don’t think I’ve even seen a rental place–video or DVD–in years. But I rationalized that this could be a pet project for someone with money and time on their hands. A retired movie-buff, or perhaps a curator of lost films.

The more I thought of it that way, the more I wanted to check the place out. Part of it was for the morbid curiosity factor, like when we willingly seek out things that shouldn’t be scary, but for whatever reason are. There’s a certain entertainment in the discomfort.

But I was also generally interested in what videos they might have. This neighborhood has always been a boring place to live, devoid of nearby things to do–which sucks when you don’t have a car and buses aren’t running. Plus, with both of my roommates gone home to stay with their families, I had very little to help me pass the time.

This rental place had captured a moment in recent but faded history. It’d be like stepping into a museum. I mean, sure I didn’t even have a VCR to play any of the video cassettes, but I was bored as hell, and there was no crime in looking.

When I stopped by the following morning and found the place shut down, I started to wonder if I was making a mistake by investigating. The lights were all off, the windows chained. It was a little after 11:00, and there were no remnants of that supposed “grand opening” now—just a sign hanging from the door that said, “Sorry, we’re closed! Please come back during business hours!”

My mind flooded with potential explanations, each one more dire than the last. Was this a front for some sketchy business? Drugs and money laundering? An organ harvesting place, trying to lure hapless travelers with its promise of stale popcorn and outdated technology?

I leaned in for a better look and noticed that the opening and closing times were listed at the bottom. I wrinkled my brow for a moment, before it suddenly clicked.

Evenings from 8:00 PM to 2:00 AM? This wasn’t a front for some sketchy business. The store itself was the sketchy business. The hours, the tinted windows. The fact that anyone would even try to rent out videos during an economically challenging time. Even the little winking icon.

This place was an adult movie store.

I know it sounds weird, what with the internet and all, but for some reason I’ve still seen the occasional smut shop around, typically in sleazier districts—shops dedicated to various pornographic material, including video and DVD rentals. Suddenly it was all less mysterious, and I kind of laughed at myself for finding it creepy in the first place. Sure, it was odd, but no weirder than the guy across the street who mows his lawn in an American flag speedo at seven in the morning.

I went home and posted about it online, sharing a laugh with some friends. Everyone had a lot of questions about this very novel shop, like I was some sort of expert after seeing the outside of it twice.

Blame it on the cabin fever, but at some point, people got quite invested in the whole matter. We started coming up with our own ideas of what kind of dated porn would be contained within your friendly neighborhood smut peddler’s store. Then one of my friends suggested I check it out and document the trip, which garnered vocal agreement from the rest of the peanut gallery.

I started to think we were all gearing up for some major disappointment, but if nothing else, it was another reason to get out of the house. With only a little more prodding, I agree, and that evening I headed out with my phone in my pocket, ready to get some footage for my incredibly bored friends.

I headed over at nine, not so late that I’d catch the evening creepers, but not early enough to suggest I’d been waiting for the place to open. It was impossible to miss as I turned the corner at the end of my block. That same neon sign beckoned me, proudly announcing that it was in service.

At the door, I hesitated for just a moment. Now that I was here, a funny feeling overcame me, like something nagging in my gut. I guess I was embarrassed now that I was doing it. I was going inside to presumably take photos of porny VHS tapes. How bored does a person have to be to do something like that?

I figured I was over-thinking it, though, so I shook it off and entered the shop.

The first thing I noticed was the place looked a lot bigger on the inside. It smelled like stale popcorn and a musty odor that is exclusively found in old rental stores. There was something playing on a dated TV attached to a corner of the ceiling, though no sound was on. It looked like a man and woman talking over breakfast, nothing too amazing.

I stepped out into the aisles and did a full turn. Without a customer, or even a person at the register, it felt like the video store had been abandoned for some sudden reason. An emergency that made everyone flee. It made the already creepy atmosphere that much more so, and I started to wonder if I should have trusted my initial gut reaction about the place.

My eyes fell to the videos displayed at the front of the store, and I was surprised to find nothing provocative about them. They were titles I wasn’t familiar with, but they appeared to be regular family films, maybe some light dramas. The people on the covers were smiling, or caught mid-laugh around a dinner table. A movie called Simply Susan had a woman in a summer dress and sandals leaning in at a serious-looking man in a suit, grinning at him knowingly. Nothing pornographic about it.

“Good evening,” a warm voice said, and I spun around to find a bespectacled man had materialized behind the counter.

“Oh my god, you scared me,” I said with a laugh. He laughed, too.

“I’m so sorry. I had to step into the back for a moment. I apologize for not greeting you when you entered.”

I gave the man a once over—60s, medium build, dressed like a retired librarian—he was gray up top, but it suited him, giving him a sage sort of appearance that reminded me of a grandparent. Not my own—both of my grandfathers were dicks—but the kind I’d picture in a hallmark movie.

“No problem,” I said, with an awkward smile. “I was just looking around.”

I could feel my cheeks burning as I said it, like I’d come here for lascivious reasons and this guy was sniffing me out. But he just kept smiling, a warm and genuine smile. If he’d noticed my embarrassment, he didn’t show it.

“Well feel free to look around,” the man said. “Let me know if you need any help. You can call me Mr. Greenway.”

I smiled and nodded, unsure of whether or not I should give my own name back. After a pause, it seemed like too much time had passed, so I drifted over to the videos.

I figured that there was a chance the pervy stuff was near the back, if not in its own section. I took my time, though, browsing the many obscure titles on the shelves. In fact, I didn’t recognize a single film.

Most of them looked generic, possibly made-for-TV movies that had managed VHS releases. Lots of heartfelt stories of love and loss. The occasional image of a woman gazing into the distance, a single tear running down her cheek.

As I got deeper, though, the movies got a little stranger. In what looked like a children’s section, mixed among the generic smiling faces was a series of tapes called The Sad Boy. Each of the covers were very stoic for what seemed to be a movie for kids, with the cartoonish, titular character standing distantly from everyone else and staring at the viewer with no expression. Each film in the series described an event in the apparent “Sad Boy’s” life. The Sad Boy: Friends at School, The Sad Boy: The Big Empty Hole, The Sad Boy: Saying Goodbye, etc. The art was dated and unrecognizable, but it was no surprise that there wasn’t a huge audience for an animated series about a depressed, ostracized child.

Several of the films had solid black covers, with the titles in bold, white letters. Courier, I think it is? You know, the type of print that looks like it was done on a typewriter. They were scattered among other odd selections, with names that equally weirded me out and intrigued me. Orchestrating a Life and Death, Blood of the Womb, Where the Children Grow. The stark contrast made it weirder, because it didn’t appear as if the store owner had printed out the covers himself. They apparently had come like that. I grabbed Where the Children Grow and flipped it over to seek out further description. There was only a single sentence on the back, in that same somber font: Though the bodies are gone, they can be reborn.

Weird shit, but I figured I’d reached the art film section. I stopped in front of a selection of videos all depicting women in loose gowns, kneeling or holding their arms up to the sky. It looked like some sort of religious propaganda at first, but the images got increasingly bizarre, such as one titled We Weep, which featured a strange, smiling child in a suit holding up his index finger as if counting. There were three women around him, two of which were hunched down and crying, but their tears were blood that was pouring from their hands. The third woman had her hands to her throat, and at first I thought she was bleeding from the mouth, until I realized she was holding in blood that was pouring out of a massive gash across her neck.

Seriously grossed out now, I moved to the far end of the store to see what else the strange place had. I passed animated films that were of stick figures and scratchy covers that looked like they’d been made by a child. I passed what appeared to be a documentary section, only the subjects depicted didn’t appear to be things people would make a documentary about. At least three of them, no lie, were about the process of canning and freezing lima beans. No one on the covers looked happy about it or even invested in the topic. Like they were there against their wills–but who wouldn’t be in a documentary about lima beans.

Then there were a handful of movies that focused on events I don’t recall ever happening. Like, The Final Days of America: War to Bring Peace, which claimed to be about some sort of nuclear annihilation in the fifties that destroyed the nation. Another was about a devastating earthquake in England that irreparably destroyed their underground transportation system. I moved on after The Last Meal, which contained two cassettes (meaning it was close to, or over, three hours long), and claimed to be about a food born virus that killed a third of the population in 1984. I guess they could have all been weird mockumentaries or even found footage, maybe, but it honestly didn’t look like they were fictional.

I reached the final row along the wall, where most of the videos had gone back to normal and harmless. Now it was a bunch of cheesy comedies and jokes that would make even your average dad cringe. There was Tuna of Love, with an image of two fish in a boat, about to go into one of those love tunnels from decades ago. Another was Gorilla My Dreams, which featured an animated gorilla in a blond wig and bright, red lipstick, while a scrawny man gawked from the side.

Mixed among them, though, were a few more of those odd art films. I was leaning in to check out a zombie comedy called Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun, when We Feast popped out at me. Same people as We Weep, it looked like, but it was a bunch of men, women, and children, staring right at me with manic grins on their faces. Their eyes were wide, crazed. Almost ravenous. It actually made me step back, and I immediately wanted to flip it over so they wouldn’t be looking at me anymore. I know it was just a picture, but I felt oddly threatened, and I couldn’t shake it.

Either way, I was feeling less and less comfortable in the store, and I figured it was time to wrap it up. There was just something a little off about the place, as if everything else about it hadn’t been strange enough. I was ready to end my adventure for today. As I turned to leave, though, something caught my eye at the end of a short hallway.

At the very back, there were three doors. A red door, a yellow door, and a black door. Probably more storage. Or maybe the porn I’d been expecting. But for whatever reason, I felt unnerved looking at them. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, and I was suddenly compelled to open one of them. My fingers twitched with anticipation, my eyes falling to brass handles that I was distantly certain were not locked.

A subtle creak caught my attention, and I looked over to see that the black door had opened just a little. It was only an inch or two, and anything on the other side was hidden in an absolute darkness that seemed impossible.

For just a moment, though, I thought I saw a figure. Someone standing in the darkness, hunched over against the opening. Watching me.

“Can I help you with anything?” Mr. Greenway asked, giving me my second heart attack of the night. He was behind me, smiling like everything was cool, but I immediately wanted to apologize. I hadn’t even opened the doors, but I was certain he knew that was what I’d been planning.

“It seems like perhaps you’re a little overwhelmed by our collection,” Mr. Greenway said with a laugh. “Might I make a recommendation?”

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw that the black door was closed again. I rubbed the back of my neck and laughed, hoarsely.

“Uh, yeah, I’m not familiar with any of these titles. Are they… foreign films or something?”

“Not foreign films, exactly. Certainly not mainstream, I’d say.” He picked up one of the all-black covers. “It takes a special sort of taste to appreciate a lot of these films, but I’ve always stood by the belief that somehow, the right audience will always find its way to the shop.”

Another smile. “And here you are.”

I smiled back, like a drooling idiot, before it registered that he wanted me to rent one of these tapes.

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m kinda curious, but I don’t have a VCR. Honestly, I’m not even sure where you’d get one nowadays.”

“Well you’re in luck!” Mr. Greenway said. “We also rent out the necessary equipment to view our products.”

At this point, it felt awkward to leave without getting something, so I nervously agreed, trying to make it seem like I was more excited than I was. Mr. Greenway seemed thrilled, like he was going to assign me to write a full essay on the film before I brought it back.

“I’ll start you off with one for now,” he said, as we headed to the register. “There are a few I typically recommend for anyone starting out, but I have the feeling you’ll get the most out of this one.”

He pulled a tape out from behind the counter and placed it in front of me. The cover was simple, mostly in shades of gray, though the color red was featured prominently.

“Chéad Eochair,” I read allowed and definitely butchered. “…Uh, is this…”

“No, no. It’s in English,” Mr. Greenway laughed, reading my mind. “The title is misleading in that way.”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Greenway said, sheepishly. “I do believe it’s Welsh, or perhaps Gaelic, though.”

He pulled out a VCR, along with a cloth bag, and set them on the counter beside the tape. “Either way, it isn’t important to the film.”

Mr. Greenway placed the items in the bag and slid them toward me. “That’ll be five dollars even.”

“Don’t I need a membership card or something?” I asked.

He smiled. “Don’t worry. I trust that you’ll bring it back.”

I fumbled around until I found some cash and handed it over, still dazed as to how I’d ended up walking out with a product. That I’d even had cash on me when I don’t usually bring money on my walks.

Mr. Greenway handed me the bag and waved. “I hope you enjoy the film. See you soon!”

Then I was out on the street again, walking home in the darkness. The bag was on the heavy side, but not as bad as it looked when Mr. Greenway had pulled that behemoth out. VHS had still been the only form of video entertainment when I was a kid, but I’d forgotten how bulky they could be.

Once home, I unloaded everything, then looked at the film cover again. The black and white made it a little hard to distinguish the details, but I managed to make out a woman with fiery red hair, playing a violin and tossing her head back like she was laughing. In front of her, seated, was an older man, who was watching with no expression. This was gonna be another one of those weird, artsy movies.

As I sat down to google instructions for setting up the VCR, it hit me. I’d been so flustered, I’d forgotten to even take the photos. I knew my friends would be disappointed, so I pulled out the VHS tape and took a photo of that to tide them over. It was better than nothing.

“What’s this supposed to be?” my friend Sam asked, after I’d sent it out.

“It’s from the store,” I told her. “Turns out they rent weird art films, rather than porn.”

“Uh, okay.”

I waited for Sam to say more, but she didn’t. Given the general interest earlier, it was an underwhelming and kind of odd reaction, but whatever. I get that people are stressed lately, so I’m trying not to take things personally. No one else has responded yet, so I’ve just been messing with the VCR, trying to get it to work. I’ll update once I have it set up to share what the movie was like. Hopefully it’s interesting.