Videodrome

by Jack Martin

  She must have been one repressed lady once, a long time ago, before she got into this. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to such extremes. But look at her now. It’s certainly worked for her. She’s a woman who doesn’t know what an inhibition is anymore, except in the clinical sense. She’s broken through.

  That must be what turns me on.

  “Get professional help,” she was crooning into the microphone with a full complement of body language. “I urge you, I beg you . . .”

  “But it’s not me!” came the overwrought voice on the line. “It’s my sister!”

  “It’s not your sister, it’s you, lover, can’t you tell?”

  She flashed her eyes at Max through the glass.

  “Isn’t that why you called me? You want help, you need help. You’re going insane—I can hear you disintegrating while you talk to me, and I think you might end up hurting somebody. I think it might be your sister you’re going to hurt, and then it’s going to be you. You’re going to hurt you.”

  Nicki Brand pulled out her neckline for ventilation and lowered her voice an octave.

  “I’ve got your number, haven’t I?”

  The speaker was overloaded with sobs. “I hate my sister. I don’t want to, it’s ripping me up inside . . . but I do. I do!”

  Nicki selected another switch out of the rows of blinking lights. She hesitated before cutting the caller off. Her voice was almost kind; her tone was seductive, almost cruel.

  “Will you call our Distress Center? Will you call the C-RAM Distress Center? They’ll tell you where to get help, lover. And you need it. You need it now.”

  Her engineer held up a note.

  She shot a glance at Max, motioning toward the clock. It was almost over. He understood. He nodded.

  “I will. I will. I will. Thank you, Nicki. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you . . .”

  Nicki did the sign-off for the segment, signaled to her engineer to shut down the board, and swept out of the tiny studio, a long-distance runner on the last leg of a cross-country marathon. Max caught up with her at her dressing room, drawn along for the ride like a wasp to honey.

  “You’re more serious than you are on TV!” he shouted over the hissing of her shower.

  She shut down the faucet, and Max heard her small feet slapping the tiles. He did not know whether she had heard him.

  She poked her wet head out.

  “I think it’s because I don’t have to worry about how I look on radio,” she said intensely, as if it really mattered. She swaddled herself in a large Turkish towel embroidered with her call letters and emerged from behind the room divider. He was relieved; for some reason the sound of her feet splashing through the water worried him. “But I’d like to be serious on TV.”

  “Have you been auditioning for me?” he said, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “I’ll do my show in the nude.”

  She said it without guile, reaching again for the clothes she had scattered on the way to the shower.

  It was not that she was afraid of his eyes. She was as self-possessed as anyone he had ever seen. There was no need to return Max’s gaze; they were talking about her, weren’t they? It was clear that this was secretly her favorite topic, and perhaps the key to her success. Most importantly, she had taken the next step, transcending conceit; she simply saw everyone else’s problems as an extension of her own. Which was the manifestation either of an extraordinary level of compassion or of a breathtaking megalomania.

  She was also a bit of a closet exhibitionist.

  “I know ‘the nude’ when I see it,” he said. “That’s not ‘the nude’.”

  She smiled, satisfied. Her towel enclosed her like a self-addressed envelope. Without looking up, as if still on the air, she said, “I sense that you’re deeply troubled. C’mon, lover, what is it? What’s troubling you?”

  Max moved toward her through the mist that now filled the room.

  “The nude, Dr. Brand. I’m troubled by the nude.”

  Nicki dropped the towel. Her skin was pink and tender. Steam rose from her body; it snaked upward from her glistening limbs as though from the pores of her skin, coiling in his hair and eyelashes. His vision blurred in the moist, grainy air, then sharpened dramatically.

  “Well,” said Nicki Brand, looking at him at last, “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to confront your problem . . .”

  She opened her arms.

  “Join me?”

  “What I’d really like to ask Mr. Renn is . . . considering the kinds of things he likes to pollute the airways with . . . I’d like to know . . . were you a weird kid?”

  “I was a pretty ordinary kid, actually,” said Max, adjusting his headphones. “At least that’s what my mother says.”

  “Really? Completely ordinary?”

  Max covered his microphone and said to Nicki, “He sounds disappointed.”

  Nicki pressed the cough button, taking them off the air temporarily. “Remember,” she said, “this is show biz.”

  She released the button.

  Max rubbed his face. “Well, let’s see. I, uh, I used to dream in video. That was after we got our first TV set, of course.” He shrugged, a gesture lost to the anonymous male caller. “I don’t know how weird that is.”

  He pressed the cough button himself. “I’m afraid the show’s going down the toilet,” he said to Nicki.

  “Let me be the judge of that. Trust me. You’re getting warm—you’re on to something. Don’t oppose the strangeness in yourself. It’s the only part that’s awake.”

  He released the button.

  “How do you dream in video?” the caller was saying.

  “Oh, it’s like a normal dream. Except that it feels like you’re watching TV. You see the lines, you feel the cathode ray tube, there’s some static . . . It still happens, only now it’s in color.”

  The caller pounced.

  “I’d like to ask Dr. Brand how she would interpret that. I personally think it’s pretty strange.”

  Who’s doing the analyzing here? wondered Max. I thought—but I guess it doesn’t matter what I thought. Nicki’s running things; this isn’t my time. Maybe she had it planned this way all along; maybe it’s all part of the big show.

  Nicki addressed the caller, not entirely off the top of her head, though it was supposed to seem that way. She’s good, he thought wryly. She sure is.

  Now her eyes never left Max’s face.

  “It’s possible that Mr. Renn is a little distanced from the workings of his own subconscious mind. Perhaps he can only allow this dream material to rise to the surface if it comes as light entertainment—nothing to be taken seriously. The id as sitcom.”

  “Very elegant, Doctor,” said Max. He squeezed the back of her leg under the table. “My compliments to the chef.”

  “Well, I watch Channel 83 a lot, Nicki, and after listening to Mr. Renn, I have to say I think he needs professional help. Real soon.”

  Max was edgy despite the façade of goodwill. It was such a tiny, oppressive studio. He was getting claustrophobic. He needed—something.

  “We all need help, lover,” said Nicki, turning on the charm again, “and that’s what I’m here for. I’m Dr. Nicki Brand, and my lines are open for any more calls to Max Renn of Channel 83, Civic TV. Don’t let him get away with it, whatever it is. He’s here to talk to you right now.”

  Part Two:

  The Electrified Bunker

  Chapter Four

  A black man in an orange hospital gown was dragged across a room by two men in black hoods.

  The room was familiar.

  So was the red clay wall.

  The soft wall.

  The man was screaming.

  “When does the plot start to unravel? Who’s the black guy? Political prisoner?”

  “There is no plot. It goes on like that for an hour.”

  “Goes on like what?”

  “Like that,” said Harlan. He remained uninterested, studying a schematic inste
ad.

  Behind him, on the monitor, the black man’s arms were practically torn out of their sockets as his wrists were yanked up to the wall and locked into manacles.

  “Torture,” said Harlan flatly, describing what he must have seen enough of the first time; more than enough. “Murder. Mutilation.” He might have been describing a sporting event. “Here. Take the other tape home, if you like it that much. We’ve picked up three now.” He tapped a cassette.

  Onscreen, one of the hooded figures produced a crude lash fashioned from several strands of barbed wire.

  “We never leave that room?” asked Max.

  “No. It’s a real sicko.”

  “It’s brilliant.”

  “Is it?” The victim’s hospital gown fell open at the back, revealing crawling, sweating skin. At the first fall of the lash the gown shredded. “For perverts only.”

  Max remained riveted to the screen. “Absolutely brilliant.” He heard Harlan snort. “Look, I mean there’s almost no production cost—and you can’t take your eyes off it. It—it’s incredibly realistic. Where do they get actors who can do that?”

  “Actors?”

  “Yeah, actors. What else? I mean, this has got to be some bizarro commercial transmission . . .”

  “Think so?” said Harlan. “Think it’s the new NBC Movie-of-the-Week?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “You know better than that, Max. You don’t stage anything like that for a network. Not even for cable. Too rough. And that’s the understatement of all time.”

  “It could be a movie off pay TV, one of those R-rated . . .”

  “Guess again, patrón.”

  “Come on, Harlan, I’ve never seen photography that was so realistic, so—”

  “Photography? What photography?”

  Max bristled. “What are you trying to tell me? That you’ve got real, live little people trapped inside this glass picture tube—homunculi in a bottle, right, like in DR. CYCLOPS? And when you turn on the juice they start-to dance, to beat each other to death?”

  “Where’s the camerawork, patrón? There is no camerawork. No movement. No editing. It’s one reel after another without a break.”

  “All right, so it’s vérité footage. I don’t care how it was made. I only know—”

  “Vérité footage, eh? Listen to yourself. If it’s real atrocity footage, you don’t want to know where it comes from? Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t believe it’s real, Harlan. It can’t be real, Harlan. We both know that.”

  “It’s a hoax, then?”

  “It’s a hoax. Okay? It’s a hoax.” Max cocked a suspicious eye. “Is someone paying you to play devil’s advocate with me?”

  “Sure,” said Harlan, unfazed. He tinkered with a pair of wire strippers. “It’s called reverse psychology.”

  “Just don’t forget who you really work for.”

  “I won’t.”

  “What is it you get out of all this? What is it you really want, my job?” You could almost handle it, thought Max. You watch even more TV than I do.

  “Why would I want your job?”

  “Power.”

  Harlan whistled. “You don’t have any power, Max. Not real power. You can’t even program what you want without clearing it with the Board.” The technician felt behind him for the controls to the tape machine. “Not that I blame you,” he said in a more sympathetic voice. “Or them. It would probably do more harm than good in the long run. Besides, we’re not even sure what we’re dealing with here.”

  Max stopped him from turning off the tape. “Which leaves us with the same unanswered questions. Where do they get people, actors, whatever they are, to do something like this? It’s worth checking out whether we use it or not. Did you have trouble locking onto it this time?”

  “Not after I realized the Malaysia delay was a plant.”

  “It’s not coming from Malaysia?”

  “Can’t fool the Prince of Pirates for long.”

  “Harlan. Harlan! Where’s it coming from?”

  “Pittsburgh. That’s in the USA.”

  “Pittsburgh?”

  “Pittsburgh.”

  Max reconsidered the screen. Now it was even more difficult to believe. Presently he had to turn away. He stood to leave. “I’m going to take the day off,” he announced.

  “I thought you just got here.”

  “The rest of the day, then.” He tore his eyes from the monitor. “A hoax,” he said. “It’s got to be. Let’s keep telling ourselves that.”

  “Whatever you say, patrón.”

  Max picked up the third tape. “But keep on it, at least for the time being. Maybe we can find out something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I wish I knew.” Max highstepped over a snaking cable and found his way out.

  “It has a title now, by the way,” called Harlan.

  Max stopped in his tracks.

  “It’s supered for a few seconds at the end of this transmission. No credits. Just one word. VIDEODROME.”

  “Video-what?”

  “You know, like hippodrome. Only video.”

  “VIDEODROME,” said Max. “From Pittsburgh.”

  He closed the door behind him. But the screaming wouldn’t stop.

  Max rode the service elevator and let himself out the back way. From the alley he could barely make out Harlan’s pirate receiving dish on the roof of the building, behind the air-conditioning ventilators. From the front the overhanging Civic TV signboard blocked it from street view. But if anyone from the Broadcasting Commission came nosing around . . .

  He’d have to get Harlan to string up some more advertising banners, maybe some mock antennas, for camouflage. Either that or wait for the pigeons to do the job for him.

  He telephoned Bridey from the apartment. He told her to run interference for him the rest of the afternoon. He wasn’t feeling well. His head.

  Did he need anything? She’d be glad to stop by on her way home from . . .

  No. Thanks anyway. Nothing wrong with him that a little remedial sleep couldn’t cure.

  He drew the curtains, hit the sheets and tried to rest.

  But his mind would not slow down.

  It was very late by the time Nicki arrived.

  He mixed drinks while she puttered around the apartment. This visit she did not miss a thing. Probably looking to rearrange the room, he thought. And my life. And uncover a skeleton or two while she’s at it. Snooping and organizing. It was always an irresistible challenge. Especially since the clutter in his place wasn’t a come-on. It was authentic. The women he’d known had undoubtedly seen it as a cry for help.

  He came back into the living room.

  “Got any porno?” she said, poking through an old cardboard carton. She said it as casually as another woman might ask for two aspirins or an extra bathrobe.

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah. Gets me in the mood.” She held Harlan’s latest tape under the lamp. “What’s this? ‘VIDEODROME.’ ”

  Max tried to distract her with the drink. It didn’t work. “Torture and murder.”

  “Sounds great!” said Nicki, dropping the cassette into the player.

  Max sank to the couch, amazed.

  She is, he thought, that rarest of individuals: someone utterly unencumbered by moral qualms of any kind. At least none that I’ve seen so far. She’s completely separated her intellect from her animal nature and is able, apparently, to live comfortably with the dichotomy. Professionally she may be one thing, but privately . . .

  Or perhaps she has not divided herself at all. Perhaps both sides have become one. Totally, so that there is no seam. I wonder. I should listen more closely to the things she says.

  One thing is certain. Her behavior is so far to the left that she makes me defensive. Or is it the right? He couldn’t make up his mind. Probably neither, he thought. She’s above anything as mundane as politics. Or so she thinks.

 
; “It ain’t exactly sex,” he warned, half-teasing, as she set up the tape.

  “Says who? Sex covers a lot of ground.”

  “I guess that’s true,” he said. “Depending on how you go about it.”

  She started the tape, then came slinking melodramatically over to the couch and draped herself across him.

  He waited for the tape to begin.

  She stretched restlessly, sinuating herself over his lap, then sat up, alert.

  The vortex of snow on the screen dissipated to reveal the same angle as before, the same room. And the same wall.

  A South American boy and a Chinese woman were dragged forward in chains. The hooded torturers’ boots splashed.

  “God,” said Nicki, “I don’t believe it!”

  Max disengaged from her, relieved. “I’ll turn it off.”

  “No! No, it’s okay. I can take it.”

  They watched, silenced by the screams, as the woman was strung up. She was naked. Then, very slowly and deliberately—

  “Can you get it any clearer?”

  Max sighed. “It’s a pirate tape. They scramble it.”

  “Mmm. I like it.” The way she said it, it sounded like a compliment.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, it turns me on.” She spoke rapidly, her breath shallow. “Take out your Swiss army knife and cut me. Here. Just a little.”

  She bared one shoulder, lifting her hair from the nape of her neck.

  He wasn’t sure how to take it. She kept him wondering. Maybe that was the essence of the attraction. He never knew how serious she was. She seemed to be constantly on the move, circling in an emotional holding pattern, unsure herself where she would next set down.

  He was even more surprised by what he saw now.

  There, on the pale skin of her shoulder, just below her black-and-white necklace were several parallel lines, like scratches, freshly cut.

  By now the Chinese woman had been flogged until her body was covered with long, bleeding weals. She was near unconsciousness. But still she screamed on.

  “Looks like somebody beat me to it,” said Max.

  “Mmm. Yes. Beat me to it. Please.”

  “No, really. What are these? I didn’t see them yesterday.”