Short Weird Story : Shopping Channel
Lately, did you spend at the waiting room of hospital? Bored, barren space for all people, so the TV might be a single mercy to kill the time. But sometime a usual aspect gonna be break by chance. What happens? What would you do?
Title : Shopping Channel
I was waiting in the hospital to be called for an examination. It’s the bacteria test for my stomach. The waiting room is a thing you know well. Stiff bench, linoleum floor, plastic trees, sun burnt curtains...and a huge TV set. Patients around me were modest and calm, sitting here and there, reading magazine or watching TV.
At first, TV was showing a shopping channel. The man in a blue suit and the woman in a pink skirt were talking about their supreme products like a vacuum cleaner or cat’s food. Nothing to say about his blue suit nor cat's food. Then I began to notice that something weird was going on the screen. They put the woody black box on a table and started to explain what it was. It seemed just a old ragged box, certainly not a product what is supposed to be showed on the TV shopping channel. Besides, their language was not what I know of any more. It’s like rather Chinese or Danish or something. What's going on? Despite of my strange feeling, they kept on their strange show. Suddenly, the man tried to open the box, but he couldn't. She was laughing about it. While he tried some times, the TV staff came over and took the box away. So they started to show a pack of sausages, then the show back to normal.
But in my mind, some abnormal sense was wiggling my conscious. Like a man who had suddenly wake up from the dream, I was stunned, sitting on the bench. Sun lit through the curtain, drifting air from the air conditioner. Then, before I noticed, almost an hour has passed since I came to here. So I stood up and asked to the receptionist when my turn would come? Young receptionist made a confused face and asked me back. "Why are you staying? Your examination had been done"
According to her explaining, I already done with my examination, also paid the bill. As the evidence of them, in my wallet, there's a receipt and the paper written of inspection details. Besides, the reservation for the next time to know the test's result had been fixed on the day which I never heard of. I wanted to ask them a lot, but couldn't. Because all I had were such a silly questions like how did I spend on this hour?...So I idle-talked with her instead of silly question.
"Did you notice something weird on that show?" I asked.
"Well" said her "not especially. Why?"
"That black box. It's too strange"
"Black box? I never saw such a thing on that show"
Back to my house now, I'm wondering that I should change the hospital or not.
I like this story, because of its situation. Dull afternoon, dull space, dull waiting time, dull TV show. Everything is so that dully, and a kind of immersion turned to be generated. The border between the real and illusion gonna be blurred, merged, and interaced each others. What's in the black box? Why the TV staff took it away? And the mystery of time lapse.
Helvetch's prose style, unsolving story and unexplained context, might choose the readers. Most of logican thinking people would be irritated by that. But I like to be left in middle of mystery with a puff of idea.