It was a long day. The boss was annoying, missed the bus, heating was busted. Felt like the day couldn't get any worse. So, I did something I always did when I was feeling rubbish - put my favourite movie on. I've seen it a hundred times but never got tired of it. Something about the actors, the music, the plot, all of it just felt like... childhood. Sitting down with a glass of mead, I hit play.

It was as enjoyable as always. The characters said the familiar jokes, the fight scenes were just as crisp as the first time I saw them. A favourite moment came up; the part where the protagonist walks into a trap and has to fight their way out. Jokingly, I yelled out at the TV.

"Don't go in there!" I chuckled.

And they didn't.

They stopped.

Instead, they looked around a bit, confused, and then peeked through the keyhole, spotting the thugs hired to ambush them. They proceeded to come through the back door and swiftly dispatch them.

But they weren't supposed to! That's not how the movie went! It... changed. Same actors, same score, it was all the same but the movie I was now watching was entirely different from what I've seen so many times before. I felt uneasy.

A prank - surely that was it. With deepfakes and AI-generated content, it seemed like just about anything was possible. Maybe a friend switched the DVD the last time they visited. And- and me yelling out 'Don't go there' was just a coincidence, since I often talked about that part of the movie. Still, it didn't quite put my mind at ease.

Company. I needed company. A friend to come over and watch the movie with me, help me analyze it and make some sense of it. I got up and walked towards my bedroom where I left my phone. It was dark and cold, but I was too anxious to pay attention to that - that is until I heard something. A voice that seemed to envelop me, coming from no particular direction. I stopped just at the edge of my bedroom as it yelled out a single sentence.

"Don't go in there."

The Lion princess was my not favorite movie. As I would deny if anyone ever asked me about it. This one time my sister walked into the room and asked me what I was watching. I quickly closed my eyes and started breathing slowly and deeply as if I was in a deep sleep that could be interrupted. Another time my old friend Boyd caught me watching it in my room, I slung the excuse out that it was for a book report, and how dumb it was.

But I loved this movie. I wish I could tell people "no, no, it's not about a lions. It's about a princess who would become as brave as one." But that line would never materialize outside my own thoughts. I thought it much better than the movies where the hero is already great and couldn't falter. It made me feel like I really could go through hard times.

I had a particularly hard break up. I mean we didn't end things on bad terms, but it really did overwhelm me. I got around to watching the old VHS after a few drinks. Two thirds of the movie, the princess was walking into the secret entrance of a liar, "don't go in there, it's a trap." I yelled. She continued to look into the cavern, but the tape didn't continue. "I don't see how this day could get possible worse," I said. I walked towards the VCR, and pressed play over and over again. And then notice something move in my peripheral, but nothing was there. I then noticed she was staring in my direction from the tv. And then she walked off the scene.

There was black. And then a flash to white. And then there was a crowd of people. They were all dressed in black. As the casket lowered. She told her mentor Broom, "I voice stopped me from saving his life." He just looked down at her without saying anything. "I'm going to find him and make him pay," she said. "Me and my men are at your service," he said.

The VCR fell from my hands and the TV went black. What did I just see? No, I didn't see anything at all. That never happened, I thought. I'm going to bed, there's nothing to worry about.

Sick days have always been difficult for me, as I seem to experience a series of confounding complications that cause frustration for my fiancée. She has even declared me to be the worst person to care for when I am under the weather, dubbing my condition the "man-flu". While I acknowledge my role in the problem, sometimes it seems that things around me start breaking down when I am ill, leading to a streak of bad luck that follows me throughout my illness. My car tires may pop, phone chargers may develop kinks, and things may be misplaced. I say the universe treats me as it's favorite clown when I'm sick, my fiancée claims that because I believe the world is working against me, it's causing me to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To address these issues, my fiancée has implemented a new care policy for when I am sick. I am forced into what we call a "lockdown", and must lie in bed or on the couch without moving, lest I tempt more misfortunes. While this may seem strict, my fiancée enforces these rules from a place of love, albeit with a hint of jest when she complains about my "man-flu." Nonetheless, I maintain that the universe will bend rules to it's evil will and complicate my life when I am sick, adding insult to injury.

On one particular day, my man-flu landed me on the couch, where I watched lame horror movies. I found a sense of community in the cliché of watching dumb teens struggle in a reality that wants them tortured too. I prepared myself to call out the jump scare before it happened. Criticizing the predictability of these movies was fun for me. As expected, the main character was a baby sitter who made a flawed choice. She invited her boyfriend over after the kid went to sleep. Naughty naughty... I sensed a repercussion around the corner, and prepared to call it out. The signs were all there. Sounds in the movie became quiet, with occasional clanking of her own movement, and the scenes became darker. I sat up, ready to call out the scare before it happened. She heard a noise from the basement and prepared to check it out. Frustrated, I yelled, "Don't look in the basement! You know it isn't your boyfriend! This is lame movie jumpscare 101!"

Just as I finished my sentence, the babysitter in the movie turned to the camera and said, "If you don't like it, then turn the TV off. Nobody likes an armchair film critic!"

Disbelief set in, and I sat up, fully attentive. Was this real? The babysitter continued, "How's that for a jump scare, jerk? Your fiancee was right! You totally suck when you're sick!"

My blood ran cold. Screaming, I fumbled for the remote, but it was nowhere to be found. The babysitter continued to mock me, and I could hear her laughing on the TV. My fiancée ran into the room, and I flung out of the chair, trying to turn off the TV manually. My fiancée, perplexed, asked what was happening, but I could not articulate my fear. I turned off the TV.

"What the actual fuck! Are you actually that scared of a movie?"

"No! You don't understand, she was talking to me. Mocking me!"

"Ohhh baby... You are really, really sick, huh? You know movies break the fourth wall as a joke sometimes right? Or were you having a bad dream?"

"This wasn't a dream! The world is being weird! The universe is..."

"Kicking you while you're down. Yeah, yeah, I know. You always say it does. Let me guess, it also moved the remote to mock you. Dingus. The remote is literally on the couch still. You were sitting on it. I think we need to cut scary movies out of man-flu lockdowns."

"I'm serious! Turn the TV on and talk to her yourself!"

"I'm not going to entertain this. It's bad enough that you think the world was out to get you before. I literally can't hear you ranting about how the TV hates you too. Please just go to bed and sleep this off. You're actually starting to have me worried."

As badly as I wanted to make her see my point, I resigned myself. I thought, "this is just a continuation of the universe mocking me, nobody will believe me."

Sickly and defeated, I stumbled back to bed. I'll feel better soon, and then the world can quit playing these games.

One day at work you were chitchatting with a coworker and you idly mentioned your favorite movie. Jim the coworker sprung to life and started misquoting large parts of the movie and even started to get the plot really wrong. You’d seen this movie hundreds of times and knew exactly what was going happen next. You knew it so well that you could quote it line for line and almost perfectly match the intonation and cadence and could even get pretty close to sounding like the characters.

Jim, taken aback said that your imitation was amazing but asked if you were remembering it right. You told him you were sure of it but just to be sure you went home to pop that old Dvd into that trusty old player.

This DVD player was old granted, but even then it always stood out as being really large especially compared to contemporary ones. It was thick like an old ps2 but with a much larger footprint and it had a really big cooling fan on the top. Thankfully the fan was quiet the few times that it kicked on.

You pulled out that favorite Dvd. The box has always seemed well made for a typical dvd box it has the fancy push button in the center so that you could remove the dvd easily and the plastic was much thicker than a standard dvd box. Despite being more than 20 years old it held up surprisingly well and didn’t look faded at all. You pressed the open button on the player it wasn’t like a typical dvd player in that it was a nice tactile button which actuated a spring loaded mechanism popping out a little tray about halfway out of the device while also popping up a little cover at the same time giving you ample space to insert the dvd and upon closing the cover it restarted the tray and always closed with a satisfying click.

You watched, enjoying yourself as usual until you got to the part where the coworker’s rendition of the plot got really strange. The main character and his trusty band of adventures has just come back from an epic adventure believing that they had saved the entire realm from the wicked sorcerer, and they had returned to the temple for relaxation and healing.

You joking tell, “Don’t go in there! It’s a trap!” To your absolute amazement the protagonist and his band stop and draw their weapons. Their acrobat swiftly runs up a wall to one of the pillars of the entry way and at the top jumps backwards off the wall. He turns mid jump and manages to catch the edge of the stained glass window. He pulls himelf up and then swiftly pulls himself up then repositioned gods hands to raise his head high enough to see through a clear panel in the glass.

That evil Wizard had just used his dark magic to put all of the monks into a trance and forced them to heal his wounds.

<To be continued>

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