Boyle 35

Video 191

By Andy Boyle

Content warning: Suicidal ideation

You are about to watch a video that will change your life.

You don’t know this when you arrive. They told you to report to this address at 9 a.m. You arrived ten minutes early. It’s a rundown strip mall at the edge of town. One of those forty-year-old developments that was supposed to last only twenty.

All of the storefronts look empty. You open the second door from the left, like you were told, and walk into a cramped vestibule before opening another door leading to a waiting room with beige walls, a gray door and no windows. Your husband hated beige, thought it belonged in the coward’s color palette. An overhead florescent bulb flickers and hums. The space smells of bleach and cooking grease.

Before you can sit, the gray door squeaks open. A pale woman in a t-shirt and jeans and flip-flops looks at you and asks your name. You give it. She nods and gestures for you to follow.

Wall sconces hang every seven or eight feet down a long, dark corridor. They turn on as you walk past, then extinguish a few seconds after.

“Motion sensors,” the woman tells you. “Saves money. You know how they can be.”

You do not know how they can be. You do not know who they even are.

The hallway is too long, you realize, compared to the size of the strip mall from the outside. You feel like you’ve been walking at least a few hundred yards, at a minor downward slope, but that can’t be right. Finally, the woman pulls out a set of keys.

She unlocks another gray door to your right and turns the brass knob, pushing it open.

“After you,” she says. “Do you want anything? Water? Coffee?” You’re about to speak, wondering where drinks could even be kept, when she puts up a hand. “It’s probably better if you don’t. Sorry. I forget sometimes. Have a seat.”

She points to a brown canvas director’s chair in front of a small television propped up on a TV tray. A VCR sits on top, 12:00 flashing. A VHS is in a cartridge on the floor. Its label, on masking tape: VIDEO 192.

The woman picks up the container and pulls out the VHS cassette. The black plastic surface scrapes on the cardboard, a sound you haven’t heard in ages. She holds it in her hand for a second, as if weighing it.

“You can say no,” she says.

“No?” you ask. “No to what?”

“To watching this. You don’t have to. I can take you back. It’s not against the rules.”

You’ve come this far. You’re going to watch the tape. Besides, you didn’t know there were any rules. You look at the woman and tell her to put in the tape.

You notice her t-shirt has a stain on the back. It looks like ketchup. Or hot sauce. You hope it’s ketchup or hot sauce.

“You sure?” she asks, wiggling the tape in her hands. “Last chance.”

You met him at the hotel bar of a marketing conference. You’d only stopped in to order some chicken tenders, go back to your room and eat alone. When you sat down one stool away, he looked up from his Miller High Life and did a double take.

An actual double take.

Then he said, “Wow, you’re beautiful.”

It seemed genuine to you, as if he were actually surprised, as if he’d just seen a fresco painted by some Italian renaissance master up close, his breath taken away. You felt your skin blush and decided to order a beer because, while maybe he wasn’t beautiful, he was cute. And cute would do.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he told you after your beer came and you’d made introductions.

“They happen all the time,” you told him, trying to seem cool while you sipped your Amstel Light. “They don’t really mean anything.”

“This one does.” He clinked his beer with yours and you felt something warm grow inside you. “It has to.”

You talked to him for the next two hours. He asked you questions, wanting to know about your life, your job, your hobbies. He seemed genuinely interested in your answers. He didn’t speak much about himself, preferring to keep the conversation directed to you, almost as if your words were more intoxicating than the beers. But when he dropped little stories, like about how he grew up in a small town where it was considered a civic duty to get drunk in a cornfield, you found yourself laughing. He was a good storyteller. You felt yourself already longing to hear more.

He seemed kind. He seemed caring. You’d later learn he was both. And much more.

By the time you even remembered to order your chicken tenders, after your second Amstel Light, you knew you’d spend the rest of your life with him.

It’s about five years after that meeting at the bar and your husband is late. He’s never late without calling.

The sun is starting to set. It’s movie night. He’d already picked what to watch, a DVD from a movie rental place—he still went to those—sitting on the living room table. A scary one. You hate scary ones. But he loves it when you curl next to him, hiding your face in his broad chest, his thick arms around you, his Old Spice deodorant overpowering all threats.

You were holding your phone in your hand, about to call him, when a knock came at the door. Whoever it was didn’t use the doorbell. You’ll remember that as odd. When you open it, a man and a woman in somber business casual stand on your porch. The woman is taller than the man. They are police detectives. They ask if they can come in.

You drop the phone and it bounces on the ground, as if in slow motion. You know why they are here. The tears don’t come immediately. They come after you invite them inside and they sit on your sofa, the one your husband picked out a year ago even though you didn’t like the color. They come after the woman clears her throat and says that they have some bad news, that your husband is dead, and no, it’s not a mistake, and they are so sorry.

“We found his body washed up by the beach,” the woman says. “Wallet and ID in his pockets. There are no signs of foul play.”

“What’s that mean?” you ask. You imagine this is how a patient might feel after being told the cancer has spread to their liver. You need the facts. Emotions can come later. “Nobody pushed him?”

“There’s footage,” the man says. “He jumped into the lake. Nobody was around.”

“I want to see it,” you tell them. They exchange a look. “The footage, I mean. I want to see the footage.”

The woman leans forward, rests a hand on your arm. Her palm is cool, your skin burning up. “Ma’am, is there someone we can call?” the woman asks. Her dark curly hair is tied back, a streak of gray running along the side. “Someone who can help you?”

Nobody can ever help you again, you realize. You will have to help yourself.

“Show me the video,” you demand. “I have to see it.”

“Ma’am,” the man says, tilting closer. His blue tie is adorned with Red Delicious apples. It’s too long for his small frame, like he borrowed it from someone taller. “Trust me. It’s better if you remember him as he was.”

It’s after they leave, after they say you can come to the station when you’re ready to watch the footage, after they again offer their condolences, after they tell you how to claim the body—not your husband, not the man who once told you about running with the bulls in Pamplona on a dare, not the man who held you tight after you lost your job during a round of layoffs and said it would all be okay, not the man who once looked up at the stars and smiled because he was sure we weren’t alone, and even if we were we had each other, but instead now just the body, because he’s no longer a person, he’s now just a thing that once was—only then do you finally break down and cry.

A month after his funeral you find his other phone.

You were cleaning out his side of the closet, throwing clothes in a box to donate to Goodwill. Your grief counselor told you that sometimes doing an act of service can help those struggling with the pain. At least it was something to do. One of his pairs of pants was heavier than it should be. The phone was in the pocket. A cheap burner, the battery dead.

You study it in your living room, deciding if you want to go this route. You set it aside, not needing to choose now, and instead grab the box of clothes and go to your car. You’re halfway to Goodwill when you pull over, your mind still on the phone.

Your husband didn’t leave a note. He didn’t tell anyone anything. Before everything, he’d started reading the newspaper again, telling you he didn’t want to be left out of the world happening around him. You asked what he meant by that. He said he didn’t entirely know and you left it at that. You read every edition he’d left in the garage recycling bin, looking for clues, maybe a story that could’ve triggered him. You found none.

The only thing you know is he transferred twenty grand into an offshore bank account a few days before it happened.

The therapist had told you that you needed to say the words out loud, not use euphemisms for the act. He killed himself. He died by suicide. But it was still hard. Because you wanted to understand the cause to his effect.

You’re so desperate to understand why, to have some sort of answer. Some kind of meaning. It feels sometimes like an anvil sits in your gut. Weighing you down.

You turn the car around and go get the phone.

You head to the mall and buy a charger from a man at a kiosk with perfectly manicured nails. You plug it into a wall outlet by the food court, unable to wait until you get home, the smell of grease sticking in your nose. You eat a giant, half-cold slice of pepperoni pizza. Your husband’s favorite. Before you finish your last bite, the burner chirps to life.

The phone is rudimentary, but you easily go through it. No texts. No outgoing calls. No web traffic. Just a single incoming call. You don’t recognize the number. You run it through a search engine on your own cell. No results.

The call came the day before your husband did what he did. Did he mean for you to find this? Was this part of some plan?

You wait until you get back to your car to dial the number.

“We can’t help you.”

The voice is male, American. That midwestern lack-of-an-accent accent if you had to guess.

“You’re going to help me,” you tell them. You keep your voice firm. You’re in charge.

A laugh. “We don’t have to do anything.”

Maybe you’re not in charge.

“I’ll go to the cops,” you tell them. Your voice already weaker.

“Go to them.”

You grip the phone, trying not to cry.

“I’ll go to the newspapers.”

“Sure. And tell them what, exactly?”

You are quiet, the air heavy in your car. Technically, your husband’s car. Still leased in his name. Another thing you haven’t gotten around to doing. You want to open a window, to get some fresh air, but stop. You’ve been driving this car instead of your own because it still smelled like him. His Old Spice deodorant. You haven’t told yourself that’s why until just this moment.

“I need to know,” you tell the man on the phone. “I need to know why he did it.”

The phone is silent. When you think he’s hung up, you repeat yourself, almost at a whisper: “I need to know.”

Your heart thuds loudly in your chest for a dozen beats. Then he gives you an address and a time before hanging up.

The woman in the t-shirt and flip-flops pushes the tape into the VCR. She presses pause and tells you to hit play when you’re ready.

“You can still say no,” she says, smiling politely. Then says. “I’ll be in the hall.”

After she leaves you start the tape. After the murmur of the machine coming to life, the cassette begins. The video flickers on-screen. It’s of a security camera, angled down. It looks exactly like this room.

You turn behind you to where the camera would be. Nothing there. Or in the other corners. You look back at the TV when you hear something. The sound of a door opening.

Your husband walks into the room, holding a VHS tape. He’s wearing a blue blazer, white shirt, gray slacks, and his favorite brown Allen Edmonds shoes. One of the few things he would splurge on. What he was wearing when he kissed you deeply on the mouth, told you he loved you for what you didn’t know was the last time, before going out the door. What he was wearing when he washed up on shore. Your stomach twists, your hands grip your legs.

He puts the tape in the machine and sits in the chair. Your husband leans forward, his arms on his knees, his head resting in his hands. You can hear his breathing.

A brightness from the screen reflects off his skin. He jumps back in the chair, puts a hand to his mouth, but he keeps watching.

“No,” he says, his voice thick with fear. “No, you can’t. You bastards.”

He keeps watching. After a few minutes, the tape stops playing. He starts crying to himself, weeping almost uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving up and down. You’d first seen him cry like that when he learned his mother died. And the last time was when you’d had a miscarriage.

Your husband wipes the tears from his face and adjusts his jacket, making himself presentable. He always was vain like that. You loved him for it.

“Okay,” he says to the empty room. Like he was agreeing to something.

He then walks out the door.

In front of you, the tape stops with a loud click and the TV goes to static.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” the woman asks as she walks you down the hallway, back the way you came.

“No,” you say. “Not at all.”

She shrugs. “Life’s mysterious like that.”

“Can you tell me what was on the video tape he watched?”

The woman stops, a pained smile on her face. “No.”

“No because you don’t know, or no because you can’t?”

The woman’s maybe in her mid-20s. No lines on her face. Not yet anyway.

“Would it matter either way?” she asks.

“Yes,” you say. “It matters a great deal.”

She hesitates. “I know what’s on the tape but I won’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because, lady, I’m doing you a kindness. Trust me when I say you don’t want to know.”

You reach into your purse and pull out the gun. It’s a revolver, one you bought two weeks after your husband died—after he killed himself, you hear your grief counselor say—when you thought maybe you’d join him. You even tried a round of Russian roulette, putting a single bullet in a chamber and spinning it. When you put the gun to your temple and pulled the trigger, you heard the click and realized you wanted to live more than anything.

You point the revolver at the woman, now full of six bullets. Her face is blank until you pull back the hammer.

“I bet that isn’t even loaded,” she says.

You point the gun up and fire. The sound is louder than you expect and rings in your ears. She yelps and jumps back a few feet. As you aim the gun at the woman again her eyes go wide, her hands up.

“Trust me,” you tell her. “I very much want to know.”

“He wanted our help,” the man tells you. He sits behind a broad desk in a room at the end of the hall, a bank of nine TVs playing behind him. Security footage from rooms like the one you were just in. You see a few have people sitting and watching their own TVs.

“What kind of help?” you ask. The woman had brought you here, and now she stands a few yards from you, your gun still pointed at her, after she explained to the man what happened.

He’s tan, wears a brown sports coat, patches on the sleeves. White shirt, no tie. Professorial. He puts his dingy loafers up on the desk and picks at his cuticles.

“We have ads in newspapers. There’s one on the desk. Take a look.”

You inch forward, peering down on the desk, hoping this isn’t a trap. The ad is from the local paper. The one your husband had been reading. DO YOU WONDER WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT?? CALL US. And a phone number with a local area code.

“What’s this for?”

The man spreads his hands. “We make people’s lives matter. Just like we made your husband’s.”

Your finger grips the trigger. You read somewhere you’re not supposed to hold the gun like that, instead you should keep it along the side. Trigger discipline. But you don’t care.

“His life already mattered,” you tell him.

“So you say,” the man says. His teeth are recently whitened. His brown hair going gray at the temples. “But he still called us. Wanted to be sure. And he paid a great deal of money for it to happen.”

That explained the twenty grand. “What did you do for him?”

“We made him a tape. Would you like to watch it?”

“Yes.”

The man smiles and reaches for a filing cabinet.

“Slowly,” you tell him, pointing the gun at him. “No funny stuff.”

He looks inside and pulls out a VHS tape marked VIDEO 190. He pushes the cassette into a nearby player. The TV in the middle of the nine starts playing it.

You see yourself standing in your kitchen, talking on the phone. The angle is off, like it’s coming from high up. You’re wearing a hoodie, back from a jog. You haven’t gone for a run since your husband died. Since he killed himself.

You lower the gun for a moment before catching yourself and raising it again.

Words appear on the screen: IF YOU DON’T KILL YOURSELF IN THE NEXT FOUR HOURS, WE KILL HER. IF YOU TELL ANYONE, INCLUDING YOUR WIFE, WE KILL HER. AND THEN WE KILL YOU.

The camera zooms back to reveal it’s on the roof of a nearby building. It pans to the right. A man is holding a giant rifle, staring through the scope. He smiles, gives the camera thumbs up.

The image goes back to you, leaning on the counter, looking at your phone, aimlessly swiping up and down. You stop to drink from your favorite blue mug, the one he made in what you called his midlife crisis pottery class.

Watching the video, your throat fills with bile, you suddenly want to throw up. You won’t give them the satisfaction. You close your eyes for a moment before looking back at the television.

Words on a black background again: YOU HAVE FOUR HOURS OR SHE DIES. MAKE YOUR LIFE MATTER.
The footage stops.

The man behind the desk turns to face you. “It’s pretty simple, really.”

You say what you think he was about to: “He wanted his life to matter.”

The man nods. “Yes, basically. That’s the service we offer. And we do it quite well, I must admit.”

The gun feels heavy as your eyes begin to well up. “But his life already mattered. It mattered to me.”

“He needed it to matter to himself,” the man says. “And it didn’t. At least, not until that final moment.”

The woman speaks next. “He died knowing he was sacrificing himself for you.”

“He could’ve talked to me,” you say, your voice breaking. “Why didn’t he?”

“This isn’t about you,” the man says. “It’s about him. It’s what he wanted.”

You take a step forward, aiming for his chest. “You’re fucking monsters. I’m calling the cops.”

“You can do that,” the man says, his words calm. “But you won’t.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because you know now, without doubt, your husband’s life mattered. He made a choice. But he’s the one who made it. Do you want to take that from him?”

Your finger feels for the trigger. You want to pull it. You want to shoot them both.

You manage to keep the tears from falling as your vision blurs. It had to hurt for your husband, you know, to realize what he’d set in motion. The danger he’d put you in. You’re mad at him for not knowing better. You could have fixed this together.

Instead you’ll have to help yourself.

You lower the gun and wipe your tears with your other hand. The man and the woman become less tense, their bodies relaxing, as your eyes become clear. You need to be able to see for what comes next.

“We just provide a service,” the man says.

“If it’s any consolation, now you know he loved you,” the woman says. “Without any shred of doubt.”

“I never doubted he loved me,” you tell her, your voice sharp. “But sometimes I think he doubted I loved him.”

The man shrugs. “Something you will have to deal with.”

“You’re right,” you say, raising the gun. “I think I know how.”

You pull back the hammer, aim it at the woman and fire. She grabs her throat, as red spurts between her fingers. The woman leans against the wall and begins to crumple while the man slowly stands.

“Sit down,” you tell him, pointing the gun.

“But she’s—”

“Getting what she deserved,” you say. “And you’re going to give me the name of the videographer and the sniper. And their addresses.”

It dawns on the man’s face what your plan is and he shakes his head after taking his seat. “You’ll never get to them.”

“But I should try, right?” you say. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“No, I would not.”

From the ground, the woman tries to breathe, her gasps wet and sticky. She reaches forward, her eyes glazed, as if she’s hoping to grab onto something. Or someone. You hope it’s the devil coming to take her.

You pull back the hammer again, pointing it at the man’s chest. Wouldn’t want to miss. “Give me their names.”

He doesn’t. You aim the gun at the woman and fire. Her head jerks back as her brains splatter on the cinderblock behind her. You resume pointing the gun at the man.

He quickly writes a handful of names and addresses on a yellow legal pad, tears it off, folds it, and slides it across the desk. You pick it up and look at the names. Seems real enough.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“It does.”

“Corporate will never allow it.”

“Corporate?” you ask.

His eyes go wide, a look of terror flashes across his face. He’s said too much. Of course, you realize. This is a small part of something larger. There’s even more work to be done.

He tries to recover. “You know how they are.”

You chuckle at that. You don’t know, but you will soon.

This sure beats donating old clothes to Goodwill, you think.

“Thanks,” you say. You’re being honest. Almost grateful. “For giving my life meaning.”

He’s surprised, raising an eyebrow. “You’re wel—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence before the bullet slams into his chest. He wheezes once, grabs for air that won’t come. The second shot pummels into his face, causing him to careen into his chair, his head leaning back, looking like he’s taking a nap. The room smells like rotten eggs, a tinny hum ringing non-stop in your ears.

You look at the list of names again. Burn them into your memory. You know they’re just the start.

You’re ready for more acts of service.

Andy Boyle is a Chicago-based writer whose work has been in Esquire, NPR, NBC News, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe and more. His short story, “The Lord God Bird,” was included in Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026, edited by Tess Gerritsen. The author of two non-fiction books with Penguin Random House, his fiction has appeared in Uncharted Magazine, MetaStellar, Philadelphia Stories, Cold Caller Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine and more. His journalism has won a Pulitzer Prize and he was the 2023 Mystery Writers of America Midwest's Hugh Holton award winner.