Telecast Live

 It was sundown before I made it home. Settling into my couch, I nestled a broken heart and a hefty bottle of bourbon, and faced the epicenter of the modern living room- the television. I had always heard that the traditional cure for being dumped, deserted or destroyed by a girl was alcohol and television and I was going to adhere to such medical advice to the strictest standards.

Slowly, getting drunk as a craft rather than a pleasure, I disengaged any function of brain, and just vegetated, with glazed eyes and open mouth, in front of Friends, Family Guy, Bones, House, True Blood, Torchwood, Misfits, Blackadder and Modern Family. Numbed by the line-up and the liquor, I almost felt like life was worth living again. I glanced at the clock mounted on the wall; her arms jutting out at awkward angles to indicate what a grotesque and ungodly hour it was.

I resolved to retire to bed and take some much-needed sleep to restore sanity.

My drunken hand spidered about the floor for the nook in which the television remote was meant to be.

“Hello” the television said. “Are you looking for something?”

There was whisky sitting on my lips. I wiped it off with the back of my sleeve.

“You already have the best seat in the house” the television piped up, “though it is the only seat in the house”

I cracked the knuckles of my left hand.

The television sneered “if you don’t have the remote, I suppose you could say that you’re not in remote control!”

“Oh shut up!” I slurred.

“No, you shut up!”

I paused.

I blinked.

I faced the television set.

“Good” the television sighed. “Are we sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin”

“You can’t be…” I leaned forward by the length of a fingertip, but I was definitely enthralled. Being allergic to such absurdity, my eyes squinted and when I did, I could see every smudge and pixel on the screen.

“Yes…?” cackled the television, slowly waddling towards me. Rubbing my eyes, I moved to the edge of my seat.

“Am I dead?” was my first question.

“Are you God?” was my second.

“If I were God, or any divine figure, I don’t even want to unravel the insinuations of society I’d be making by appearing to you through this” the television shuddered and paced. “I’d make a strange sort of deity though I know all of the lines: ‘worship me!’, ‘convert those who do not already love me!’, ‘you must get up early on Sundays!’, that sort of thing”

I knelt in front of the television. The warmth from the screen thawed my cool cheeks.

“You can’t be hearing me!” was my defiant outcry, but it was hollow and unconvincing, even to me. “You’re a television set. You can’t hear, or think!”

The television only mocked me for saying that. “You’ll have to speak up I’m afraid! I’m a little hard of hearing! Ah, don’t worry too much. It’s just your best friend TV come to have a little chat”

I was arm’s length from the power-point in which the television set was plugged in but an irrational fear told me that I shouldn’t touch the switch.

“This is impossible!”

“You know, dear viewer…” the television gave me a conspiratorial look, “I think you may be right…quick…what shall we do? Anything might happen… oh come on! This is why you don’t watch late-night television! You don’t know what kind of adults-only shows you’ll stumble upon”

The television laughed, but looked rather disappointed when I didn’t share the joke.

“Tough crowd”

“You’re not real” I decided aloud. “This is all just some…drunken hallucination. This is me coming to terms with my break-up. This is not…true”

“Truth?…been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. Not quite sure what I need with a T-shirt. There is no truth in television, but there is no real truth anywhere else either so we’re square”

“This. Can’t. Be. Serious.”

“Itdoesnthavetobeserioustobereeeeeal!” the television shrieked at a volume which showed pent-up frustration and a manic nature. “You should know that by now. Shall I tell you what it is to be real?”

As my heart skipped beats, my body recoiled in horror from this thing.

“I don’t want to know-”

“Shut up” the television smacked me in the face. “Do you have any idea how annoying it is to talk while the TV’s on? Let me tell you a little something about what you want. Your hopes, aspirations, desires, et cetera-aa-aa! You want the same old things as anyone else; you’re really not that special. You want to be happy, with a lover who you can call your own, in a house you can call a home, and with friends who you can call when you’re sad and alone. I know you do- I pretty much fed you this idea since you could drool”

“Why are you saying this?!”

“Because I come in a box”

My fingernails gripped the carpet as something primal came over me.

“Look, no one told you what me and my sisters and brothers are worth. There are no billboards or bus ads extolling the awesome might of the medium of television. You watch me because you found me and you keep watching because you like me. I can’t tell you how influential I am, I don’t know exactly, but believe me when I say that control you. Every day you let us into your homes and switch us on, and we play our merry hell for you- because we come in boxes”

Any onlooker would probably have mistaken the whole incident as normal. I was watching television while television was talking down to me.

“This is what you get for never dusting me and pulling my plug every day. When you look into my face and just see a dead box, you can see the never-ending nothing which I have to live in- and it’s cold in there”

“That’s right…”

“What is?” the television snapped but my epiphany had already struck.

“You’re a television- you broadcast trash, and most importantly, you’re nothing without me. Without me, you might as well not exist”

The thought of a powerless television galvanized my last scrap of self-worth. With one moment of bravado, I pulled the television’s cord from the socket. I sat a lick away from the set, looking at my stupid face in the black reflection of the screen.