The pile of tapes in the trash can had started to melt, the black plastic bubbling and warping, exposing the spools of film underneath.

BY ANGUS MACPHERSON

IMAGE BY CHESLEY DAVIS

Oliver arrived at Twenty-Four-Hour Video to find them burning VHS tapes behind the building. Stevens, his manager, was standing over a metal trash can pouring kerosene into the bin while the rest of the staff carried stacks of tapes out of the store. A white CCTV camera on a post in the parking lot panned slowly from left to right, recording Oliver as he walked past and into the building.

“Stevens wants these off the shelves,” Gideon said to him when he entered, handing him a piece of lined paper with a list of movie titles on it.

“What is this?” Oliver asked.

“New orders from the Party. We’re to destroy these movies for ‘the sake of public decency.’”

Oliver shook his head, looked over at the list, then got down on his knees and began pulling tapes off the shelf.

“This is weird,” Lewis called up from the basement. “I feel like we’re destroying culture here.”

“I don’t think films like Black Cannibal Christmas should have been made,” Oliver replied, lifting a box with a blood-covered cleaver on the cover off the shelf.

“Okay, but I mean… it’s the principle,” Lewis replied. He climbed up the basement steps with a cardboard box in his arms.

“I voted for the Party and I think they’re doing a decent job,” Gideon said, taking the tapes from Lewis and adding them to the box he was holding.

“And the cameras don’t bother you?” Lewis asked.

A few months ago, the Party had implemented CCTV cameras in every public sector and commercial storefront to ensure the safety of its citizens. There were two outside the store, one facing the bus stop, one behind the building, and one in the corner aimed at the cashier. The CCTV tapes were stored in a locked security box on the wall and were changed on the last workday of the week by a technician. Gideon swore there was no way they could watch all the footage, and that they shouldn’t have to worry about what they said or did. Some protested about always being filmed, but the city did seem safer, and Oliver was used to the buzzing noise they made.

“I don’t notice being filmed anymore,” Oliver said. He took the collected tapes outside and found Stevens feeding the fire. The pile of tapes in the trash can had started to melt, the black plastic bubbling and warping, exposing the spools of film underneath. Gideon added more kerosene. The flames grew as thick, black smoke filled the air.

“We’re getting replacements tomorrow morning at six. Hold onto the list, and if anyone asks to borrow any of these films, you’re to take their names and addresses and submit them to the Party,” Gideon said to Oliver.

“Understood.” Oliver stared at the burning pile of plastic in front of him.

Once the flames died down, Gideon and the rest of the staff left and Oliver prepared himself for the night shift. He would be alone until six in the morning.

Besides managing the store, Oliver also had to restock the returned VHS tapes. They were dropped off in a mail slot on the side of the building, checked for damage, then rewound and put back on the shelves. Oliver spent most of the night shift sitting on a stool in the basement next to a six-tape rewinder tower and the return box listening to the high-pitched whir of the machines spool the film back. On slow nights, he’d rewind the tapes at normal speed in one of the available televisions in the store, watching movies in reverse and trying to figure out what was happening on the screen.

At midnight, the front door swung open and a small bell rang. Oliver pressed pause on the tape player and climbed up the stairs back into the store to find a bald man in a large grey coat bending over to look at a cardboard cutout of an action movie star.

“Can I help you with anything?” Oliver asked. The man stood up and looked up at him.

“Your shelves seem a little… empty.”

“The Party has removed certain titles for public decency,” Oliver said, repeating what Stevens had told him.

“Of course, of course,” the man said. He pulled a tape off the shelf and approached the front desk. “I’d like South Village for two nights, and something… a little special.”

“You want something special?” Oliver asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s Saturday night and I’m having a few of my friends over. Gideon told me to come here for that kind of stuff.”

Oliver looked at the man then reached underneath the desk, all the while conscious of the black lens of the camera in the corner of the room. There was a box of unmarked tapes hidden amongst the junk behind the counter that Gideon rented out to people looking for—as he put it—something different. Oliver didn’t know what was on the tapes and didn’t want to know, but Gideon had told him that if anyone came in asking for anything special, he was to rent them one for ten dollars a day.

“You know this is going to be extra,” Oliver said, setting one of the tapes down on the counter. The man gave him a smile. “Okay, your total comes to four ninety-nine for South Village and ten dollars for the special tape.”

The man slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter and gave him another smile.

“And could I get your membership card?”

The man reached into his wallet and produced a small pink slip of cardboard with a handful of stamps on it. Oliver copied down the rental number into the registry book, stamped the man’s card, then slid the tapes across the desk.

“Enjoy your evening.”

Alongside rewinding the tapes, Stevens usually left Oliver a list of things he’d like done by the morning. But with the shelves now half-empty and the garbage bin filled with melted tapes, there was almost nothing to do. He stared out the window at the neon lights of the drugstore across the street, then started sorting the receipts underneath the front desk before giving up. He took a movie that had a cover he liked off the shelf, carried it down into the basement, and slid it into the television’s VHS player.

At two in the morning the bell above the door rang again. Oliver paused the movie and began climbing up the steps when he heard the sound of metal scraping against wood. He ran up the stairs to find Gideon standing behind the front desk, his hair drenched with sweat and his open coat revealing a red staff shirt underneath.

“Did you rent out any tapes?” Gideon asked, sounding out of breath. He’d forced open the front desk drawer and was holding the rental binder in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” Oliver asked.

“Did you rent out any tapes?” he repeated.

“A handful. It’s been slow for a while. People are watching the news, not movies,” Oliver said. Gideon looked up at the camera in the corner, then bent down and lifted the cardboard box full of unmarked tapes from underneath the desk.

“I mean the special tapes,” he said.

“Yeah, one.” Oliver replied. Gideon said something under his breath that Oliver didn’t catch, then walked the box through the beaded curtain into the back room and out into the alleyway.

“What are you doing?” Oliver asked.

“What does it look like?” he asked, emptying the box into the dumpster where the rest of the burned tapes had ended up. “Get the kerosene.”

Oliver shook his head, went into the back room where Stevens had left the kerosene, and carried it back to the alleyway. Gideon took it from him and emptied it into the dumpster, patting his pockets for his lighter.

“Who did you rent the tape to?” he asked.

“Just some guy,” Oliver replied.

“Do you get an address?”

“He’s a member. It should be on file.”

Gideon pulled his hand back suddenly as the fire caught. A car drove past the parking lot where the two of them were standing, its high-beam lights briefly illuminating them and casting shadows onto the brick wall. Oliver turned to look, making sure it wasn’t a police car, but Gideon kept staring at the burning tapes. The car came around to the front of Twenty-Four-Hour Video and turned its engine off.

“I think it’s a customer,” Oliver said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

A minute later, the bell above the door rang. Gideon looked over at Oliver, who stared back at him. “Are you going to get that?”

Oliver wanted to say something to him but didn’t. He looked over at the white camera angled towards the parking lot with a clear view of the dumpster fire, then went inside. A man with thinning hair dressed in a black suit was standing by the entrance next to a large red sign announcing two-for-one rentals. He wore large, round glasses that reflected the hazy, yellow ceiling lights and hid his eyes. He dabbed his nose with a handkerchief. Oliver watched him stare at the empty shelves for a second before speaking.

“Can I help you?” Oliver asked, stepping behind the counter.

“Party business,” the man said, holding up a black leather bifold with a polished metal badge. He paused to wipe his nose. “I’ve been informed that this location isn’t complying with public decency laws.”

“We destroyed all publicly indecent material per Party instruction.”

“I’m not talking about that.”

The smell of burning plastic wafted through the open back door. The man wrinkled his nose and dabbed it again with the handkerchief.

“So, what can we do for you then?”

The man reached into the dossier case he was carrying and removed a single unmarked VHS tape. “We have reason to believe that you rented this to a gentleman a few hours ago.”

Oliver felt his pulse quicken. He gripped the metal edge of the counter for support. “Is there an identification number on the side of the tape?” he asked.

“It’s not part of your main catalogue.”

“If it doesn’t have a number, I don’t think it’s ours—”

He stopped as Gideon stepped through the beaded curtain. The door to the parking lot swung closed, sealing off the plastic fumes. Gideon looked at the Party member as if he knew him. The Party member simply stared back, his eyebrows rising above the edge of his glasses in surprise.

The front door suddenly swung open and two men wearing Party uniforms entered the store. Gideon tried to run. He managed to make it to the door leading out to the parking lot, but one of the officers grabbed him by the jacket and dragged him out through the glass double doors of the building. The second man began knocking shelves over, scattering the few remaining tapes that hadn’t been burned. Oliver looked out the window onto the street, watching as Gideon was pushed into the backseat of a sedan. The smell of burnt plastic still hung in the air.

“I think you’re going to have to come with us,” the man with the glasses said from behind him.

“Sorry?” Oliver turned to face him.

“Your friend or co-worker there,” he said, pointing at the empty door where they’d dragged Gideon out. “He’s involved in this incident, and that makes you involved as well. There’ll just be a few questions. Nothing to concern you.”

Oliver blinked. He was tired, not thinking, running only on a gas-station coffee he’d purchased before his shift and the muscle memory of past nights.

“If it's work, I need to be paid,” he finally said.

“You… need to be paid?” the man asked, lowering his glasses to look at Oliver with black eyes.

“Yes, if it relates to Twenty-Four-Hour Video. It’s in my contract that I cannot be brought in for unpaid overtime.”

The agent pushed his glasses back up and smiled. Oliver felt fear rush over his body. “You can go, then,” the man said, dismissing him with a wave of a white handkerchief.

His coat was in the basement along with his non-work shirt. Stepping out from behind the front desk, he started towards the basement steps, but thought he might not get a second chance to leave. He walked past the Party member who’d overturned the shelves, feeling plastic crunch underneath his feet. He grabbed the front door handle, swung it open, and stepped back out into the cold. He didn’t look at the car Gideon was in. He just kept walking, his eyes fixed on the bus stop ahead of him.

A white camera on a post sweeping back and forth across the sidewalk watched him sit down on the bench next to the bus stop, staring across the street as the lights on the sign of Twenty-Four-Hour Video flickered then faded to black.

Angus Macpherson is an author and student of Canadian, French, and American descent. An honours graduate of the University of Toronto, he has completed a postgraduate certificate at the Humber School for Writers and is currently pursuing a career in creative writing.

Image: Anti Perspective (Chesley Davis, 2023)

Edited for publication by Dylan Earle as part of the Creative Book Publishing program.

HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation and the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.