The tape’s old-- looked more like it belonged in someone’s collection of family movies from like the 80′s-- film sticking just a bit as it was rewound to be watchable again. It started out boring. Truly, a group of people who’s faces were fuzzy from the film’s age and lack of care setting up a campsite in the woods.
How cliché. What next? Axe murder chasing teens through the woods? Yawn.
It cuts from the trip to the forest to a little later, the joyous sounds people drinking and carrying on as the night grew longer- what he found odd was honestly seeing people signing to one of the group, who looked weirdly familiar. Like, really familiar.
“Isn’t that Izzy’s new roommate?” Said aloud to no one really, but it was something to note. Couldn’t be the same person-- the person on the tape would be like what, in their 60′s? Izzy’s roommate looked about the same age as Izzy, give or take a year. Ahh, didn’t matter, still was interesting to see sign language used in a movie this old. Might have to show it to Izzy out of curiosity.
Seemed weird that the camera always seemed to settle on one person in particular-- that roommate doppelgänger-- as if trying to track where they went, making a point to set them out from everyone else, especially when they were signing and laughing with the others. A voice barely able to be heard counting off how many drinks they’d had.
The night went on, what was clearly a group of friends still talking and bullshitting the night away, empty beer cans and bottles scattered around a roaring campfire. Was frankly a slow ass movie, but still, onwards he watched-- finding it a little odd that the person holding the camera, while involved with everything going on, didn’t seem to join in the drinking. At least, not as much as everyone else was.
Another skip-- the grainy film paired with the darkness in the view, best guess was it was midnight in the movie-- the video shaking, someone carrying it with only a little regard with how it’d look on film. Points off right there for shitty cinematography. There’s a glimpse here and there of something being in the camera holder’s other hand, hard to see what exactly with the shit lighting. Man, who ever filmed this was terrible at shooting movies.
A shape among the trees came into view, the back of what he assumed as the doppelgänger to Izzy’s roommate, if the same tshirt color and shock of dark hair was anything to go by. Not many of the other people in the movie so far looked like that person. The camera paused, getting set down, the person filming at least taking care to make sure everything was in view before... Before getting to something exciting out of the last sixty minutes of film. God, watching a bunch of people drink and shoot the shit about their lives got boring quick.
Quick fingers manage to pause at the right moment-- huh, going classic with a woodcutter’s axe, but cliché as fuck, even if it looked like they were using the blunt back of the axe head-- catching the moment before impact. At least the first strike seemed hard enough to drop the person, well, enough to stun them if the fact it looked like they were tying to crawl away. Huh, weird they didn’t make any real noise-- not even in pain.
Well, at least they seem to be keeping continuity of the person who everyone was signing with not making a lot of noise. Maybe. Who knows.
Clicking it on again, letting the movie continue, it seemed the person took another few swings, until the person on the ground stopped moving. Their face blurred with blood and motion as they dropped the axe, heading back to the camera and scooping it up, a flash of an almost manic grin caught on film before the camera was jostled about and carried over to inspect their ‘handiwork’. A foot came into frame, nudging the body-- shit, that was half decent gore for what was clearly a shit-tier movie-- a breathless noise coming from off screen, “Hated that dumb fucker.”
The film cut to black for a minute, and he was about to reach over to rewind it when it flicked back to daylight, no one in view, just trees and bushes-- voices clear over the fuzz of old footage;
“He got drunk and slipped, what else could it have been?”
“Our friend is dead, John, and you want to what? Act like he hadn’t come with us?”
“You want his death to fuck our lives over? Because he couldn’t handle his liquor?”
“We can’t just--”
“We were all drunk, you think the cops are gonna take kindly to a dead person in the woods and everyone’s alibi is ‘whoops, we’d all tied one off, so no one knows what happens’? No, we’d all go to jail.”
“What about his family? They’re gonna ask questions--”
“You want to face jail time for him? Come on, Chuck, I know you better then that.”
“But--”
“I say we just bury the body.”
“--Chuck! This is our friend we’re talking about, not some dead deer found in a clearing. We can’t just pretend this never happened.”
“I don’t like this either, but John’s right, we don’t know what happened last night. We’d all be sitting in a jail cell by tonight if we say anything. I can’t go to jail.”
“This is disgusting. I can’t--”
“We have too, Rob--”
“Fuck you, John.”
“I’ll take that as you’re in.”
“We have to do right by him.”
“We will.”
The footage ends there abruptly, film clicking as it rattled in the vcr, whirling before he pressed the rewind button. Wow, that got weird at the end, almost real. Who ever the actors were, they were good. There was honest emotion in that ending. At least, from most of them-- John sounded like a douchebag, but that might have been the point. Instead he leaned back, pulling out his phone, thumbing through contacts until finding who he was looking for.
“Hey Izzy, remember when I told you I found a bunch of old home movies from some garage sales-- yeah, I know you said there was a high chance of being shitty homemade porn, and some of them were, but-- hey, listen. I called for a reason. Yeah, shocking, I know. I found some shitty home horror movie. And someone dude in it looks a lot like your roommate-- yeah, almost identical. It’s weird-- whoa, hold on-- Yeah, I still have it, I just rewound it again. Since when did you get an interest in this shit-- Shit dude, calm down. Yeah, you can borrow it. What, you gonna show ‘em to, what was the name again? Sonny? Sure dude, I’ll set it aside for you, and a vcr for you borrow.”
Clicking the end call button, he shook his head, gathering everything like he’d offered. Tape getting put back gently in it’s box, set neatly on a vcr and all the wires to connect it to pretty much any tv screen. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard Izzy that frantic. Weird.”