The man nodded.
“Hey! What’s going on here?” The call came from a man in the audience.
Marty wanted to shout to that man to shut up. But his mouth was so parched that, even if he did have the courage, he wouldn’t have been able to speak, anyway.
There was a long pause before the man said, “A cleansing.”
What does that mean? Marty wondered. And how did they get into the control room?
“Well, what do you want from us?”
Marty heard some of the audience whispering at him to keep quiet.
“That will all become clear soon,” the man answered. “But for now, let’s get this show back on the road. Shall we?”
He turned around and grinned broadly at Marty. “Shall we?”
Marty nodded slowly; he was having trouble breathing and he felt like he might faint.
“Ray! Slide!” the man called.
Two of the man’s cohorts came running up onto the stage. They looked young, perhaps in their late teens, and both were bald and carrying guns. That their faces looked so young and fresh was all the more frightening, considering the evil yet vacant gaze in their eyes.
The man still had his eyes fixed on Marty. “Do you keep your guests in the greenroom?”
Marty nodded.
“Where is that?”
“Ah, down there, through the back doors. Then go down the stairs and all the way to the end of the corridor. It’s the last door on your right.”
The man grinned a thank you.
Marty felt dismal for telling this man the location of the celebrities. But he figured that if he didn’t, they might very well kill him and find it anyway.
“Go,” the man ordered the two young followers.
They nodded and hurried off.
The man turned and faced the audience. “There’s nothing to fear. You are all in the hands of Uncle Sam now. Everything’s going to be all right.”
The man stopped talking. All became quiet. The theatre remained still until the faint popping of gunfire echoed up; four quick shots.
Shouts and cries spewed from the two hundred audience members. Disbelief hung in the air. That some of the most famous icons on this planet were dead, shot in a split moment, wasn’t fully comprehended by most people in the theatre. Included in those was Marty.
How can this be happening? Marty wondered.
But he told himself he had nothing to fear. He was one of the biggest talk show hosts in the world. His program was beamed to more countries than any other. He was so famous it was practically a protective shield.
I’m going to be all right, he thought.
That was why Marty Laffin wasn’t prepared for the sudden lunge by the man. In an instant, the man stabbed the knife into his jugular. Marty screamed from the intense pain. But the scream soon became gurgled as blood filled his throat.
He heard the screams of the audience and felt the blood pouring down his chest.
“Die you fucking pig. Die!”
Before Marty fell to the stage floor dead, he heard the shouts of the man’s posse. They cried out with joy, and Marty thought, amidst the whirl of suffering, that this was some sort of triumph. As if this was all a game to them.
The last passage Marty heard, as blood flowed from his throat, was the man crying out, “Death to television! Live in purity! Welcome to the game of survival!”
Part 2: The Game
It was just an ordinary Friday night for George and Francis Murly. They had cooked up some popcorn, the old fashioned way in a pan with insalubrious amounts of oil, and were sitting on their old, tattered synthetic fiber couch with the tall electric fan blowing much needed air onto their aged faces. The T.V. was locked onto an umpteenth re-run of The Sound of Music.
“I’ll tell ya. This heat’s gonna be the death of me.”
“Oh go on,” Francis laughed. “It’s not that bad. You’re just an old grouch.”
“Am not,” George huffed, stuffing a large mouthful of popcorn into his mouth.
“I’ll tell you what will do you in. Eating too much popcorn all at once. You’ll choke.”
George huffed one more time and snatched up the remote. “I’m sick of this damn movie. Seen it, well, at least fifty times.”
“Oh you have not,” Francis chuckled and scooped a small amount of popcorn into her mouth. “You’ve seen it the same number of times as I have. About four or five.”
“That’s enough. I’m seeing what else is on.”
Francis shrugged and continued munching on the popcorn. She didn’t care, just as long as they had something decent to watch.
George flicked though various programs: movies, sports events, documentaries, before he stopped on channel six.
On screen was a scrawny, unkempt looking man. He was behind a desk and smiling a toothy smile. He nodded to somebody off the screen.
“Who on earth is that?” Francis gasped. “He looks dirty.”
“Be quiet,” George snapped. “I wanna listen.”
The camera panned to the rather haggard looking band leader, Dave Morrison. He cut the band off with a limp wave then leaned into the microphone. “And now. Heeeeeere’s Sammy.”
As the camera panned across the stage, settling on the man behind the desk, there was only the smallest amount of clapping. It was faint and sounded strange, echoing through the theatre. The man behind the desk smiled and joined in on the clapping. “Thank you, Dave.” He pulled the desk microphone closer. “Welcome, viewers, to…‘Who wants to be a Survivor!’” He raised his arms in a flailing manner. The few claps and whistles again filled the air. The camera remained positioned on the man.
“My name is Sam. I’ll be your host for the night. The old host, Marty Laffin, is dead. I punctured his throat with this knife.” He brought up a large, grimy knife. “Like this,” he said. He then mimed the way he stabbed Marty, rolling his eyes and lolling out his tongue as he mimicked the way Marty had looked as he died. Then he placed the knife onto the desk. “Well, I suppose you viewers want to know what this new show is all about. You heathens!” he bellowed.
The microphones around the studio just managed to pick up the response of numerous people, who also shouted the word, heathen.
“Your religion is television! May you be scorned by our Lord and Saviour!”
Again, the mimicking from around the studio.
The man gestured with his hands for quiet. He gazed directly down the camera and said, “I am your only hope of salvation, people. Let us not be ruled by machine and propaganda, let us be free and live the truth of the way.”
He shook his head. “Before we begin tonight’s events, let me share with you, potential converts, videos of recent sacrifices that needed to be performed in order for us, human and fellow man, to be cleansed of the evil we call television.”
He nodded to somebody off camera.
The studio was replaced with a shaky image of a small house. It was night. Whoever was holding the camera was jogging up to a door. The sounds of laughing and whispering could be heard. Somebody, not the cameraperson, rang the doorbell and then somebody whispered for everybody to be quiet. The door soon opened and a young man answered with a look of utter surprise.
“What’s thi…” he managed to start before a horde of people, some looking no older than twenty, rushed past the camera and pushed their way into the house. There was a lot of hooting and laughing while the cameraperson ran down to join the others. The group had the man on the ground, along with a woman, and was tearing the unfortunate couple’s clothes off, yelling, “Heathens! Worshippers of evil!”