by Ian A. Bain
The Video Store
damned/saved my life.
Aisle after aisle of alluring covers
covered in blood
or slime or beautiful people or
masked killers.
Hours between the aisles, almost
as much time
as I spent watching the films.
“You can’t watch that, it’s rated R,”
the clerk would
say. I’d hand them the note
from my dad
and they’d (reluctantly) take my
money. I
never understood why the clerk
wanted to
protect me from imagined worlds,
but did nothing
about the kids who’d been outside, waiting for me, waiting for me to get on my bike, the videos in a bag on the handlebars, so they could run me off the road, into the ditch, and taunt me, and insult me, and take out their own terrors on me until they were distracted long enough not to be scared.
No Horror movie has ever done
that to me.
IAN A. BAIN (he/him) is a writer of dark fiction living in Muskoka, Ontario. Ian enjoys Horror, coffee, and long walks through the swamp with his wife and undead dog. Ian’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various anthologies, magazines, and podcasts. Ian can be stalked online at @bainwrites on Twitter.