And I hear things. Not sounds, but thick slabs of silence being dragged through the dark. KRZSHAAAL KKRZSHAAAAAL KKKKRMMMS. Those are the initial indications. First, the aching. Then, a slight distortion of my vision. Tides of confusion wash through, premonitions tugging at memories, memories tugging at premonitions. A finely honed razor moon floats white in the sky, roots of doubt burrow into the earth. People walk extra loud down the hall just to get me. KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB KRRSPUMK DUWB.

All the more reason for the TV People to single out Sunday evening as the time to come around. Like melancholy moods, or the secretive, quiet fall of rain, they steal into the gloom of that appointed time.

LET ME EXPLAIN how the TV People look.

The TV People are slightly smaller than you or me. Not obviously smaller—slightly smaller. About, say, 20 or 30%. Every part of their bodies is uniformly smaller. So rather than “small,” the more terminologically correct expression might be “reduced.”

In fact, if you see TV People somewhere, you might not notice at first that they’re small. But even if you don’t, they’ll probably strike you as somehow strange. Unsettling, maybe. You’re sure to think something’s odd, and then you’ll take another look. There’s nothing unnatural about them at first glance, but that’s what’s so unnatural. Their smallness is completely different from that of children and dwarfs. When we see children, we feel they’re small, but this sense of recognition comes mostly from the misproportioned awkwardness of their bodies. They are small, granted, but not uniformly so. The hands are small, but the head is big. Typically, that is. No, the smallness of TV People is something else entirely. TV People look as if they were reduced by photocopy, everything mechanically calibrated. Say their height has been reduced by a factor of 0.7, then their shoulder width is also in 0.7 reduction; ditto (0.7 reduction) for the feet, head, ears, and fingers. Like plastic models, only a little smaller than the real thing.

Or like perspective demos. Figures that look far away even close up. Something out of a trompe-l’oeil painting where the surface warps and buckles. An illusion where the hand fails to touch objects close by, yet brushes what is out of reach.

That’s TV People.

That’s TV People.

That’s TV People.

THERE WERE THREE of them altogether.

They don’t knock or ring the doorbell. Don’t say hello. They just sneak right in. I don’t even hear a footstep. One opens the door, the other two carry in a TV. Not a very big TV. Your ordinary Sony color TV. The door was locked, I think, but I can’t be certain. Maybe I forgot to lock it. It really wasn’t foremost in my thoughts at the time, so who knows? Still, I think the door was locked.