New House, New Start

We’re in! The move was a nightmare—I’m pretty sure the last owner, Mr. Abernathy, was a secret hoarder of bricks and lead weights—but we’re finally in. Sycamore Lane is everything we wanted. Quiet, tree-lined, a real neighborhood. The perfect place to forget the stress of the city and the… well, everything else. Sarah seems happier than I’ve seen her in months. Even Leo stopped complaining about losing his VR headset for five minutes to help unpack.

The house itself is a bit of a time capsule. All dark wood paneling, shag carpet in the bedrooms, and a faint smell of mothballs and nostalgia. The previous owner left in a hurry, the realtor said. Left almost everything behind. We found a whole cupboard full of old china and a basement that looks like a museum dedicated to 1970s rec rooms.

And then there was the tape.

I found it tucked inside a musty-smelling cabinet that housed a gigantic, wood-paneled television and a top-loading VCR. A single VHS cassette, unlabeled, in a plain black plastic case. Leo, of course, was fascinated. He’d never seen one.

“It’s like a YouTube video, but physical,” he said, turning it over in his hands.

“It’s ancient history,” Sarah laughed, wiping dust from a counter. “Probably just some old home movie. Toss it.”

But something made me keep it. A curiosity. That night, after we’d collapsed onto the new couch amidst a sea of boxes, I slid it into the VCR. The machine whirred and clunked with a mechanical sincerity you just don’t get anymore.

The screen fizzed with black-and-white static, then resolved into a grainy, colour-drained image.

It was our living room. Empty. Exactly as it was before we moved in. The camera was positioned where we now had the TV, pointing back at the empty space where our couch now sat. The footage was utterly still, silent save for the faint hiss of the tape. It lasted about thirty seconds before dissolving back into static.

“Creepy,” Sarah said, snuggling closer. “Like a real estate video from a parallel universe.”

We laughed it off. A weird quirk. We went to bed.

### [LOG ENTRY: OCTOBER 23RD]

**Title: A Strange Coincidence**

Leo begged to watch the tape again tonight. “It’s like a time machine!” he insisted.

I humoured him. The VCR whirred. The static cleared.

And my blood ran cold.

It was our living room again. But this time, it wasn’t empty. There we were. Me, Sarah, and Leo, from last night, sitting on the couch in our unpacking clothes, surrounded by boxes. We were looking at the TV, our faces lit by the blue glow. We looked exhausted, happy. I was saying something to Sarah, my mouth moving silently on the tape.

The camera angle was identical. As if someone had been standing right where the television was now, filming us.

“Whoa,” Leo whispered. “How did they do that?”

“It’s a prank,” I said, my voice tighter than I intended. “Someone must have… I don’t know, set up a camera. Before we moved in.”

“But it’s from last night,” Sarah said, her voice quiet. “Look at the pizza box on the floor. We ordered that last night after we found the tape.”

The tape ended. The room was silent except for the VCR ejecting the cassette with a definitive *thunk*.

### [LOG ENTRY: OCTOBER 24TH]

**Title: The Wrong Details**

It’s become a macabre ritual. We watch the tape every night. And every night, it shows us ourselves from exactly 24 hours prior.

We’ve become students of our own lives, watching for details. It’s always the same angle, the same grainy quality, the same silent film of our existence.

But tonight, we saw it.

Leo pointed, his finger trembling. “Dad. The vase.”

On the mantelpiece behind the couch on the tape, sitting between two unpacked boxes, was a small, blue ceramic vase with a single fake flower in it.

We don’t own a blue vase.

Sarah and I looked at each other, then at our actual mantelpiece. It was bare, just as it had been all day.

“It must be a trick of the light,” Sarah said, but her voice lacked conviction.

Then I saw it. In the doorway that leads to the kitchen on the tape, just for a second, a shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness of the hall. It was tall, man-shaped, but wavering, like heat haze. It stood there, watching the us-on-the-tape who were utterly unaware. Then it was gone.

The us-on-the-tape didn’t react. They just kept watching their television, oblivious to the audience behind them.

The real us in the real living room sat in frozen silence. The air grew cold.

### [LOG ENTRY: OCTOBER 27TH]

**Title: The Tape is Writing the Script**

It’s been three days. The wrong details are getting more frequent, more pronounced. The horror is no longer in the tape; it’s in the space between the tape and our reality.

Yesterday on the tape, Sarah was wearing a red sweater she doesn’t own. This morning, she found it in her drawer, tucked between her own clothes. She swore she’d never seen it before.

This afternoon, Leo mentioned a dream about a black dog. On the tape we watched tonight, a black dog walked through the shot behind the couch. We have never owned a pet.

The tape isn’t just recording the past anymore. It’s editing it. It’s adding props, costume changes, and supporting cast. And then, within 24 hours, our reality is bending, twisting itself to match the edited footage. We are living inside a recording, and the director is making changes .

We tried to break the cycle. I took the tape out to the garage and smashed it with a hammer. The plastic shattered. The brown tape inside unspooled like metallic intestines.

We felt a moment of pure, unadulterated relief. We laughed, almost hysterically. It was over.

That night, as we sat trying to watch a normal movie on my laptop, the VCR across the room whirred to life on its own. The television screen flickered from the movie to static, then to a clear image.

It was the tape. Unbroken. Whole. Playing from inside the supposedly destroyed cassette.

The footage was from yesterday. It showed me in the garage, raising the hammer. But as I brought it down, the shadowy figure was standing behind me, its hand resting on my shoulder. Its head was turned, looking not at me, but directly out of the screen, at us, the viewers.

We don’t try to destroy it anymore.

### [LOG ENTRY: OCTOBER 29TH]

**Title: The Director’s Cut**

Reality is becoming… soft. The walls sometimes breathe. The hallway seems longer some days than others. We found the blue vase on the mantel this morning. Sarah swears she bought it yesterday at a thrift store, but she has no memory of the trip, and there’s no receipt.

The shadow is on the tape every night now. It’s closer, clearer. Its features are still indistinct, but it’s no longer just a shape. It has intention. It is a participant.

Tonight’s tape was the worst yet. It showed us sitting here, watching the tape. A perfect, terrible recursion. We were watching us watch us watch us .

And in the tape-within-the-tape on the television screen, I could just make it out: the shadow was standing right behind the couch, leaning over us, its hands almost touching our heads.

Leo hasn’t spoken in two days. He just stares. Sarah jumps at every sound. We are prisoners in a story that is being written one day at a time, and we’re terrified to see the next plot point.

### [LOG ENTRY: OCTOBER 31ST – 2:17 AM]

**Title: Final Cut**

It’s almost time for the next screening. The VCR is humming, though it’s not plugged in. It’s ready.

I know what’s on tonight’s tape. I saw a preview.

This afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and for a single, heart-stopping second, everything was wrong. The counters were a different colour. The calendar on the wall was flipped to November. And sitting at the table was the shadow. It was solid. Real. It turned its head toward me. It didn’t have eyes, just smooth, blank skin where they should be. It raised a single, long finger to where its lips would be.

Then it was gone. The kitchen was back to normal.

But it wasn’t a hallucination. It was a buffer. A glimpse of the next frame, loading into reality.

The tape tonight will show that moment. It will show me seeing it. It will make it real. It will cement it into our past, present, and future.

This is the final edit. The tape doesn’t just show the past anymore. It *is* the past. And the present. And it’s writing the future .

I can hear the television in the other room click on. The static is so loud.

Sarah and Leo are already on the couch. They’re waiting. Their faces are slack, placid. They’ve already accepted the script. The shadow is standing behind them. It’s as real as I am. It’s more real. It’s part of the family now.

It’s my turn to take my seat. The director is calling.

The show must go on.