Work Text:
Archivist
Statement of Jamie Morris, regarding their exposure to... a children’s television programme.
Statement begins.
Archivist (Statement)
I’m a single parent, unemployed. Before all this started, I was renting out a flat in Bexley to take care of my two-year-old son, Jimothy. I’d always been careful to limit his exposure to the online world, but he developed a love for television anyway. I’d read online that it might be a good idea to designate certain days on which he could watch the telly, and I decided to give that a try. So it was one of those “watching days,” right, and I put little Jimothy in front of the telly, and turned it to one of those children’s programming channels, you know, see if he could learn something that our private schools wouldn’t teach him. I wanted to get him into one of the good public preschools, you know, with the classical liberal education, but he simply didn’t have the aptitude for it.
So anyway, I plonked him down in front of the telly to watch some good Christian programming, and I tuned the telly to the channel that shows the Teletubbies. You see, he loved the Teletubbies. It was at that moment that the landline rang, and I had to go rush to pick it up. I had to leave Jimothy there because heaven knows he loves the Teletubbies, he gets so engaged with it every time it comes on. Anyway, so I went to go answer the phone, and there was this voice of a charming young man who said he was from our network provider. He kept good conversation, an astonishing feat in our time, when young people only communicate through electronic means. He was actually quite amiable. He kept talking on and on about his new internet service providers and how they bundled with our cable subscription and how there were so many new deals to take advantage of... I didn’t understand half of it, and his voice sent my head spinning, but he struck me as an excellent salesman. At the end of the call he asked the strangest question. He wanted to know what Jimothy was watching right then, and it was very unsettling indeed because he mentioned him by name. I don’t think I ever told him about little Jimothy. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever even told him what my name was. But before I could ask him how he knew about Jimothy, the line just cut out in this awful static which made my hearing aids go berserk, and I swear I heard someone laughing before slamming the phone back on its receiver.
After I hung up, I went back to check on Jimothy and his programme. It looked like it had just wrapped up, and Jimothy was winding down for his midday nap. As I carried him up to his room, he said the funniest thing to me. He said, “Zing Zing Zingbah doesn’t want to dance anymore.” I asked him who this ‘Zing Zing Zingbah’ was, but he just kept repeating, “Zing Zing Zingbah doesn’t want to dance anymore,” and then he blew a great puff of air in my face. Now obviously, this was quite inappropriate behaviour for a child his age, and let me tell you that I gave him a good scolding that day.
Of course, I quickly put all of this out of my mind. After all, kids do say the strangest things just to provoke reactions from their parents, and my niece down in Brighton says that we’re getting scam calls all the time, so I brushed both occurrences away until that night. You see, I had just finished getting ready for bed and was about to take my hearing aids out when I heard a strange noise coming from the living room. It sounded like the television had been left on. I figured there was no use wasting electricity all night long, so I got out of bed and made my way into the living room. It was tuned to the queerest programme I’ve ever seen. It looked like a little orb was flying past groups of dancing toddlers, but they looked off-putting. When I looked closer I noticed that each of them had a full set of adult teeth, and they were all smiling these horrible smiles and laughing like the funniest joke in the world had just been told to them. And all this time, there was this song they just kept singing: “Boohbah, Boohbah, Boohbah.” They just kept chanting it over and over again. Now this was already more than enough to unsettle an old-timer like me, but that’s not the half of it. Once the children faded away, the screen switched to these five little cocoons, each a sickeningly vivid colour. And out of these wretched cocoons crawled lumps of bloated, neon flesh. They fell into a disgustingly bright vortex of colours, and then, they started to dance. The music was like nothing I’d ever heard before, with harmonies like steel plates mashing together and a frenzied, almost manic pace. The lumps of flesh kept time, increasing in speed until they were flailing about, their limbs and bellies twisting and distending, and their eyes, my God, their eyes! They always followed the same pattern: look left, look right, look forward. Every single time. And each time, there was the briefest moment where the eyes made contact with mine, and I felt all the blood rushing to my head, like it had during the phone call. My vision glazed over, clouded by dancing patterns of stars and bubbles, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the flickering screen. The last thing I remember seeing before I passed out was a shot of the orange flesh-mound’s eyes, but they were all wrong. Too human. I knew at that moment that those eyes belonged to my Jimothy. And they were weeping.
I woke up the next morning with the worst headache, and my hearing aids still in. They had clearly run out of battery overnight, because my hearing was all whistling and static. But underneath it all, I could hear the faintest of voices coming from the television, singing, “Boohbah, Boohbah,” in that same laboured tone. I’ve since got new batteries for my hearing aids, of course, but every time I take them out I hear that same voice, the voice of my son Jimothy, repeating that unholy chorus, over and over again. I’ve never seen him since. I’ve worked with two private investigators and three doctors since then and they’ve come up with nothing, so I figured I’d come to you as a last-ditch effort. Please, if you know anything about this, I insist. I just want my son back. I just want the chanting to stop.
Statement ends.
Archivist
Well, this is by no means the first encounter with the infamous television programme “Boohbah,” but the disappearance of this ‘Jimothy’ is noteworthy. Also of note is the mention of the man from the cable company, whose mannerisms and… effects bear a striking resemblance to those of Michael. Well. All I can say for sure, is that I’m glad I don’t have children. There are far too many people to take care of in my life as it is.
End recording.