Channel Surfing

Channel Surfing

Chapter 1: The Devil Came to Oklahoma, and he brought 666 channels with him:

Tired didn’t even begin to touch on how Andrew felt. Exhausted, deflated, defeated, and sunk barely scratched the surface. He looked at his home. Actually, it had been his parents home, and after they passed he was left with it. Luckily his parents had paid it off, and all he had was the yearly taxes, the utility bills, groceries, clothes, gas for his now antique truck, parts for his now antique truck, and of course the determination and will power to get up each morning and go into a suck ass job in order to pay for it all.

Life wasn’t exactly where he thought it would be ten years ago. Ten years ago he was married to the person he thought he would spend the rest of his life with. Ten years ago they had adopted a preteen girl and did everything they could to give her a good life. Ten years ago he was driving a truck cross country and making about seventy thousand a year with Panner Brothers’ International Freight and Transport. And then it happened. He was used to pulling long hours, hauling for his maximum, getting the loads out and done on, or as close, to the minimum time frame that was posted for the job.

He was Panner Brothers’ six time MVE (Most valuable Employee). On the last haul he would make, the very last one that he would ever make, he was delivering a load of dried and canned groceries to six of the bigger grocery chains in Colorado when he began to see it. Truckers talked about it all of the time, and he’d heard the stories himself more than once. Everyone had heard stories about the black dog. The black dog that warns truckers that they’ve pushed too hard, that they’re at their limit. Most truckers had said that the only thing to do was pull over, get some rest, and start out fresh.

The problem was that Andrew had to finish the load. There was just fifty miles left between him and dropping the load. The moment he did he could pull the truck into the parking lot, crawl into the sleeper, and get a few hours rest before heading out again. It was a sure fire great idea. Fifty miles was nothing, a little less than an hour. It was interstate anyway, and he knew that it would be fine. That was when he saw the dog. It was huge, the single biggest black dog he’d ever seen in his life. It looked up at him, its eyes glowing red, and it ran straight for his cab.

He swerved to miss it, and when he did his truck slammed into a parked Nissan Cube. The smaller car crumbled up like tissue paper, killing the man inside. There wasn’t any defense, anything he could say, instead the judge overseeing the court had tried him, sentenced him, and he got two years for manslaughter. He did his best, his wife came to see him at first, bringing their daughter, but then she stopped coming to visit. She continued to write to him for a while, but toward the end of the two years the letters stopped.

He got out, hoping that she would be there to give him a ride, and found no one waiting. While on the inside he’d managed to get into a work detail, and thanks to some very frugal spending he’d saved up about four hundred dollars. It was enough to get a cheap prepaid phone, a throwaway credit card for two hundred bucks, and for him to download the uber app and get a ride to his house. When he got there he saw his old pickup, his wife’s car, and a completely different car. He walked up to the door, and knocked on it to find someone he didn’t know answering it.

“Tina, some dude’s here!”

She ran toward the front door, dressed in a pair of shorts, a tank top, and she stopped.

“You… You got out today.”

He looked at her, and then at the man, “What’s going on here?”

She looked at the ground, “Andrew, this is Tyler,” she said, “When you… When you went inside I tried to work, I did, but I couldn’t make it. We had a daughter to take care of, and so I did my best.”

He looked at her, “Tina, what’s going on?”

Tyler swallowed, “You’re her old man, aren’t you?”

He looked at him, “What the fuck is going on?”

She sighed, “I met Tyler about six months ago. He works at the paper mill, and he brings home about forty thousand a year. It’s not as good as when you were a trucker, but it’s enough to keep us in the house.”

She handed him an envelope, “I had the papers drawn up. I want a divorce. I know that you’re never going to be able to support me, and our daughter, not like you did, and I want out.”

He looked at her, shook his head, and then he looked at Tyler, “I see,” he said, “The house…”

She shook her head, “I ummm.. I put it into my name, I know you paid for it, but when we were getting it legal I put it into my name. The truck is in yours, I tried, but they wouldn’t let me,” she said as she opened the screen and threw out his key, “We haven’t touched it.”

He grabbed his key, “Where’s my stuff?”

She looked at the floor, “I sold most of it. I was trying to support us, and most of it went for really high. I mean those collectables you had went for around twenty grand,” she said, “I talked to my lawyer about it, and she said that since we were still married, and since I was used to a certain level of income, that it would be considered legal. Not ethical, but legal, and the law has my back on it. I know that it was wrong, and everything, but I was trying to support us. You were inside, and well, it’s your fault.”

He breathed out, opened the envelope, and looked at the papers. He then looked back up at her.

“I’ll have a lawyer look at these,” he said, gritting his teeth, “I want to make sure that you’re being honest, and then I’ll sign the fucking things afterward.”

From there things went downhill even faster. His mom had passed while he was inside, and his dad wasn’t in much better shape. But regardless he let him move back in with him. From there he got a job at a local chicken plant. The money he made was good enough, about the same as Tyler the adulter, but the job sucked. Still, he stuck with it, getting from floor man to floor supervisor. And that was where he stayed. A year later his dad passed in the middle of the night, and he found that the house was simply left to him.

The internet that he could get at the old house sucked. It was DSL, but the speeds and spotty service was closer to old dial-up than it was actually blazing high speed web surfing. It meant that his entertainment came from his dad’s, and his own collection, of movies that was left in the house. His parents had never upgraded to BluRay, and he could just forget about them ever having a DVD player. Instead there were about sixteen VHS players, two Beta Players, and an old Video Disk player. The Video Disk player was what kept his parents from investing in anything more current. Since the Video Disk player didn’t do very well, at least as far as his parents were concerned, then there wasn’t a reason to get a smaller version. So, instead he was stuck watching classics up to the early 2000’s when they finally stopped making VHS tapes.

He looked at the collection, dug through the selections, and finally found Rescue at Midnight Castle. His older brother, who had passed away years ago, had loved anything and everything bright and colorful. My Little Pony had fit the bill perfectly. He put in the VHS, rewound it, and then began to watch it. Memories of watching it with his brother came to his mind, and he settled down, ready to just veg out and watch the evil centaur transform the ponies into dragons and force them to pull his chariot.

He got up, fixed a bag of popcorn, took a seat in his dad’s old recliner, and began watching the intro when someone knocked at the door. He groaned, got up, still dressed in his work clothes that smelled of the killing floor, and walked to the front door. He opened the heavy wooden door to see a man standing outside. Something struck him as this man being a little odd. He was dressed in a brown and yellow plaid suit jacket, a pair of red and brown striped pants, and he was wearing sunglasses when it was starting to get dark.

“Mr. Andrew Norton?” he asked.

Andrew nodded, “Yeah?”

The man shook his hand, “Mr. Norton!” he said as he walked into the room, “How are you doing this evening,” he asked before he smiled, “No need to answer that I already know.”

He walked into the living room, and looked at the small old Cathode-ray tube television. A simple thing, about twenty five inches big, “Ah, a fan of the franchise?” he asked.

Andrew shrugged, “My brother was.”

He nodded, and looked around spotting various pictures, and an M1 Garand hanging on the wall.

“Do you hunt?”

Andrew shook his head, “Naw, that was my Dad’s. He served in Vietnam, and he found a rifle like his when he was at an Army surplus,” he said, “He used to get that thing down and clean it every month.”

The man nodded, “Mr. Norton, We know you. We know what it’s like to have everything snatched out from under you. Why, you were a successful truck driver, but a single bad decision ended that. You married the love of your life, only to find out that she wanted to be taken care of, and was willing to sleep with another man in order to get that. You moved in with your father and he passed away leaving you this old, aging, yet charming little house,” he said, “All around you newer homes are popping up, making your home the eye sore, and while you aren’t part of the homeowners association you know that you’re not welcome here, in the slightest. Instead you work your terrible job, come home, and escape your life here.”

He patted the TV, “And that’s where I come in,” he said, “I have here,” he opened a box showing the most advanced looking remote that Andrew had ever seen, “the latest in Satellite technology. Over six hundred and sixty-six channels of heart pounding, skull crushing, dream weaving entertainment!”

He laughed, “There’s drama, comedy, crime, news, hot oiled aerobics like you’ve never seen brother, and it’s all for you. And of course you’ll get to watch it on your brand new sixty five inch LCD TV, complete with entertainment center. Why, some people would give their very souls for something like this.”

Andrew looked at him, and then at the remote, “Sorry,” he said, “As much as I want to, I don’t know.”

The man nodded, “I understand Mr. Norton,” he said as he started to leave, “Although, did I mention the free trial?”

Andrew looked at him, “No, did you say, free trial?”

The man smiled at him, “That I did!” he said as he smiled brightly, “Absolutely free trial. Nothing down, yours free to try for seven days. If you don’t love it then we come and take it back, and let you go back to watching your VHS collection,” he said, “How does that sound?”

Andrew nodded, “Okay, I’m fine with that.”

He smiled, and the two of them walked outside to a large delivery truck. Andrew noticed a blond woman, wearing what almost looked like a mail carrier’s uniform, strapping on a back brace and opening the back of the panel truck. He walked back to see a large cube with what looked like various lights on the side of it. A pole stuck out of the center, and she seemed to struggle. He crawled up into the truck with her, helping her get it lifted and she gave him a smile.

“Thanks mister,” she said with a happy innocent smile, “I didn’t expect the help but it’s nice to get it.”

He noticed that her eyes were a little wall eyed, but he didn’t say a word. After all, it would be rude to point something like that out. They moved the cube down the ramp, over toward the area of the back yard that he pointed to, and then she stretched what looked like a heavy duty power cord toward an outlet that his father had put outside. He watched as she plugged it in, and then the pole itself began to move.

It stretched taller, the ball in the center of it moved upward, and as it did ten curved metal leafs, which was the best way of explaining them, began to come out. They joined together creating a rather large disk, certainly bigger than the ones he’d seen for Dish Network or Directv. The Dish finished forming, and the girl worked a few moments, pushing a few buttons, and the dish moved into an alignment.

“There we go, now Mr. Norton, it is important to know that if you start to have trouble with your dish you just have to come out here, walk up to the cube, and press the green button. Doing so will cause it to self align.”

He nodded, “Okay, Ummm, thanks Mr…” he said before the man smiled, “Khaos, Khaos Atman,” he said, “and it has been a pleasure. Enjoy your own person tv adventure Andrew.”

With that Andrew waved, watched as they drove down the street, which was a dead end in about half a mile, shrugged, and walked back inside. If he would have stayed outside he would have seen a taloned hand reach out from the truck, scratched the air in front of it, and the truck drove through a portal, but he didn’t stay out. The man that did see it looked at the baggie of medical marijuana, decided that it was some really good shit, and planned on getting the same kind again.

Andrew walked inside, turned on his new TV, sat down in the recliner, and listened as a stirring sounding musical score began playing. As it played he noticed what looked like a radio tube beginning to light up. The scene panned back until he was looking at the interior of a bus that looked as if it had been in the middle of a war. On some of the seats skeletons, oddly shaped equine skeletons, sat. The scene continued to pan back until he could see that the bus had been ripped open. The scene panned around toward the front and he could see that the entire thing had no wheels, and instead it had been hooked to what looked like the skeleton of a pegasus.

He watched with interest as an armored looking head moved into frame. The scene panned showing the armored equine looking at a small collection of other armored equine.

“War, war never changes,” the armored equine said.

“Elder Steelhooves,” one of the others said, “Sir, we’ve got an issue.”

The other one sounded feminine, and although the entire thing seemed insane, and odd, he found himself captivated by it. The feminine one removed her helmet to reveal cyan colored muzzle, pink hair, and hardened pair of green eyes.

“Sir, we’ve got an encampment of slavers just to the right of us. They’ve taken the entire settlement that we helped out a month ago, and it looks like they’ve been killing the elderly.”

It was a show he’d never seen, and obviously there was stuff going on that he’d missed, but so far the story was gripping. He watched with interest until the picture got fuzzy. Then it blinked out. He got up, looked outside, and saw a neighbor’s dog. The dog itself, a large gray pitbull, was territorial as hell. He’d said something about half a dozen times, and now it was messing around near the satellite. He looked at his dad’s M1 Garand, grabbed it, loaded it, and stuck a hand full of shells in his pocket. Being an Excon he wasn’t supposed to have weapons, but before his dad died he could get away with the fact that it was his dad’s rifle.

He walked outside, with the rifle, “Hey get out of here!” he shouted.

The Dog growled, lowered its head, and rushed toward him. He pulled the trigger, aiming just ahead of it, and the sound of the rifle, along with the dirt beside the dog kicking up caused it to yipe and run out of his yard back toward the woman that owned it. He looked at the Dish, walked toward it, and pressed the green button on the side. For a moment it did nothing, and then it started to move down, toward him, and he saw the metal ball open on the front. He felt something pulling him, and he turned to run. Instead whatever was pulling him fought hard, and pulled him backwards.

He closed his eyes as he fell forward into darkness, and then he saw hundreds of screens around him. Suddenly this weird things head appeared opening a mouth with a single fang on its right side.

“Hold on, it’s about to be a bumpy ride!” it said as he passed through it.

He tumbled and landed on the ground. Standing he felt odd, off, somehow. He looked at his arm and didn’t see an arm. It was a foreleg. He looked at the other arm and saw the same. Both were stripped, and he looked around at the world around him. It was the burned out world that he’d seen on the screen before, and he felt something, a set of saddlebags, on his haunches. He looked at his father’s rifle and noticed that it had changed as well. Now it looked as if it could be laid across his forelegs and fired with his mouth.

“What in the hell?” he asked.