#null horror

Large, dark, one antenna slightly bent, with two semicircles between them. It won't be able to read digital signals, but you want to use it for old video games anyway. You take it in, despite one friend insisting that it's cursed, and to get rid of it instead.

It's fine at first, perfect for your gaming plans. Sure, there's a diagonal scratch marring the screen, and sometimes it briefly loses signal, but you don't mind a bit of temper. An old TV is going to have quirks.

Your worried friend finds a series of stories involving a similar TV, with each person ending up dead in strange and contorted ways. You brush them off as creepypasta, stories for horror.

Then, somehow, the TV starts picking up channels. Randomly, rarely, but you write it off as someone playing with analog signals and its antennae are strong enough to pick them up. Old show fragments. Silly cartoon bites. A black and white spiral. You don't pay attention to the fragments being of someone claiming another. You don't realize the cartoon bits are all incredibly violent. You forget the spiral.

Your mind slowly starts fogging. You tell your friends that you're getting sick, and won't be able to join them. You get condolences, at first. Then concern, especially from the friends who don't like your TV. Finally, worry, as you stop checking your phone entirely.

You don't remember work. You don't remember taking care of yourself. All you remember is watching the old CRT, sometimes playing games, sometimes channel surfing to see what fragments pop up. The spiral appears more often.

Your dreams get strange. A studio, large, dark, imposing. Staff members that take one look at you and fade away. At first, you get scared in your dreams, try to escape. The tall man in a dark suit, with your TV for his head, he flips to the spirals and your desire to leave melts away.

A friend is at your door, worried about you. It's been a long time since you checked in with them. You tell your friend that you're still feeling poorly, but you'll be fine soon. The friend believes you, and leaves.

The next friend barges in and drags you out. You develop shivers, and the friend quickly takes you back home.

The third friend is the paranoid one. They unplug the TV, try and force you out as well. You two get into a fight, you don't remember why. You don't remember plugging the CRT back in.

In your dreams, things become less dreamlike and more real. The large man uses the spirals to keep you docile. You can feel his hands on your arms, puppeting you through a dance. You can smell, faintly, the cigars he smokes.

Your sense of which is reality and which is dream blurs. The studio feels more real by the hour, while home and your friends feel more like a dream. Your resistance becomes rare, and faint. The spiral keeps you calm, your mind a fog.

The spiral fogging your brain releases you when you're curled up in his bed, with him next to you, one hand protectively over you. Or perhaps keeping you in place. You realize then, too late, that your one friend was right. You're trapped now, with no way of getting home.

He claims you as his in as many ways as you willingly let him the first night your mind is clear. Slowly, he claims you as his in more ways, as you give up entirely on being anything but his puppet, his toy, his doll. He no longer needs the spiral to control you, you go to him yourself.

You forget what's willing and what is not. It all becomes the same to you.

Your friends attempt an intervention, only to find you missing. Your home is empty, everything clearly sold off at some point, except for the TV. It sits in the middle of what had been your living space, untouched. You are nowhere to be found. Your name and appearance gets added to the list involving people and the connecting television.