Channel locked, p.1
Channel Locked, page 1
CHANNEL LOCKED
A LONG SHORT STORY
WYNN RAY
IMAGINARIUM KIM
© 2025 Wynn Ray.
All rights reserved.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this story may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Thank you for reading
Also by Wynn Ray
1
It’d been him. He denied it every time she accused him of the crime, but oh, she knew. It’d been him. If he thought that she spent sixty miserable years as his wife and wasn’t even aware of that cowardly nature of his, he must consider her a complete simpleton…
…which he did. Consider her a complete simpleton, that was. Nancy Howard had long since accepted this harsh truth about what her husband thought of her. That, however, didn’t mean that she was going to make it easy for him.
“You hid the remote control somewhere and you’re only pretending you forgot where you put it,” she said, her gaze directed toward the TV.
“For the hundredth time, I don’t know where the damn thing went,” Gary said, his gaze likewise steadfastly fixed on the TV.
“Oh, spare me the innocent act, Gary.”
“Woman, you’ve lost your marbles if you think I’d hide that blasted thing. Why would I torture myself with this racket?”
“Don’t think I don’t remember what you said about my cooking shows.”
“Why would I want to listen to this garbage any more than you do? It’s not garbage like your cooking shows, but it’s not my sports channel either.”
Nancy had to try hard to keep from losing her composure. Showing too much emotion was admitting defeat. So, she decidedly kept her focus on the shopping channel that had transcended mere television to become a force of nature. Presently, a man with unnaturally white teeth was showcasing a revolutionary hand-held vacuum cleaner with a glittering metallic gold casing and chrome accents.
This amazing suction power will make dirt vanish like it was never even there!
“See? You’re doing it again,” was what Nancy said out loud in an extremely calm, cool, and composed tone. “You’re calling my cooking shows garbage, again.”
“As if you haven’t called golf and baseball and basketball games garbage, ever!”
This time, Nancy didn’t react. She pretended not to hear him. That gave her great pleasure. The TV continued to help.
Watch as I sprinkle this pile of sand directly onto our studio carpet. Now see how it disappears completely with just one pass! … This thing might look tiny, but we’re talking industrial-strength cleaning that makes professional services look like child’s play! … Folks, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we’ve had customers call us in tears—tears of joy—because their homes have never been cleaner! This machine doesn’t just clean, it restores your quality of life!
Goodness, the man spoke of vacuum cleaners as if they were the salvation of humanity. Meanwhile, outside, the November darkness was settling over the neighborhood. The living room felt small and suffocating. A couple of standing lamps provided light along with the TV, but they were neither bright nor warm enough to lift the oppressive atmosphere.
Nancy thought, Try sucking this away with your miracle machine, huckster! If that were possible, I’d buy that contraption in an instant, even if it meant that in five years, I’ll be out on the streets instead of in a nursing home!
Her stomach felt uncomfortable. The Howards had already eaten their usual simple dinner—canned soup and crackers—and she’d already washed the two bowls and spoons. But instead of satisfaction, she only felt the hollow accomplishment of a child finishing chores; a child who knew better than to expect praise. Here she was, the one who’d held this household together for sixty years. But tonight, as on so many other nights, Gary hadn’t gotten up once from his recliner before, during, or after the meal. This, despite claiming to hate the shopping channel so much. He so conveniently pretended to forget things that he didn’t want to do. Just last week, he said he’d “forgotten” to turn off the stove burner, leaving her to discover the empty pot smoking.
Ooooh, can’t you see? I’m tooooo forgetful to go anywhere near the kitchen, even if it’s just warming up canned soup and doing the dishes.
That was how he justified his total lack of help in the kitchen, when, unlike half a century ago, they were both living off social security and savings. It wasn’t as if he was out there breaking his back in the factory for twelve hours a day anymore. Also, it wasn’t as if he was the one who had given birth to four children.
As Nancy kept thinking thoughts along these lines, the pleasure from ignoring him completely faded. Quietly angry, she straightened herself in the faded blue recliner that had been her throne for the better part of four decades since the initial purchase of the TV. At eighty, her movements carried the deliberate care of someone whose bones protested every shift. But she knew, her voice still held the steel that had carried her through six decades of marriage to Gary Howard.
As if speaking to herself, she said, “Amazing how a man who could critique every play from his recliner somehow lost the coordination to handle simple kitchen tasks.”
Gary didn’t react. It was his turn to pretend he couldn’t hear, when both of them knew full well that their hearing wasn’t that bad. Or maybe he was just concentrating on the woman who’d shown up in the studio of the shopping channel and now stood next to the white-toothed huckster. Gary wasn’t outright staring, of course not. He was too cowardly for that. He was feigning casual disinterest while he wore that martyred expression that Nancy had come to despise. He sat hunched in his recliner that matched hers. His was a brown one. It had a permanently indented cushion that had molded itself to his shrinking frame. His sparse white hair stuck up at odd angles, and his plaid flannel shirt—the same style he’d worn all his life, just in increasingly larger sizes to accommodate his growing belly—bore the evidence of this morning’s oatmeal.
And Sarah, tell our viewers what happened when you used this on your living room carpet!
Well, Tom, it was like my pet hair problem just vanished into thin air—like it never existed!
The hosts broke into their usual ridiculous giggling fit.
Both Nancy and Gary groaned quietly. Then they fell into stubborn silence. Neither of them wanted to agree with the other. In fact, they didn’t even want to agree that they’d heard the same thing.
Two years. For two years, the remote control had been missing. Of all channels, the television had been stuck on this shopping channel for that long, a channel that was in the process of achieving immortality. Probably, it must have been hawking miracle products since the dawn of civilization and would continue to do so even after the apocalypse.
At any rate, how did Nancy know that it’d been two years since the disappearance of the remote control? Had she been counting the days? Goodness, no. She didn’t keep track of such things; being aware of how long she’d endured Gary was torture enough. It was just that two full cycles of her arthritis flaring up had passed with the changing seasons. The pain was the worst during the cold, damp late autumn days, and the day the remote control disappeared had been just as damp and gray as today—the kind of weather that promised rain but never delivered, leaving everything suspended in uncomfortable humidity. It was like the tension that had been hanging between them for over half a century, thick and unresolved, never quite breaking into the storm that might clear the air.
Not that she was complaining about that. The not clearing part, she meant. She’d stopped expecting storms decades ago. The Gary she’d married at twenty had been quick to anger, yes, but just as quick to apologize—flowers from the corner market, awkward jokes, his hands on her shoulders as he promised to do better. That Gary would have torn the house apart looking for the remote, would’ve driven to three different stores to buy a universal one, would have done something.
The man sitting next to her wasn’t that man. He hadn’t been that man for a long time. Now he was just a remote-control-hiding, lying, cowardly imitation of the husband she’d married.
So, the TV hadn’t been turned off for the past two years. It couldn’t be turned off without the remote control. The power button attached to the TV itself had given up the ghost years ago—another casualty of time’s relentless march.
Nancy hated this observation. She couldn’t stand witnessing the slow decay of everything she’d once relied on.
Not that before the disappearance of the remote control or the death of the power button, the Howard household had been a bastion of domestic harmony. Three-thirty to six had been their daily war zone. Her afternoon cooking programs ran straight into his evening sports coverage.
“You can watch cooking any time.”
“You can read the sports scores in the paper.”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it! I need to see the plays as they happen!”
“There’s no morning-after summary for cooking
Indeed, gone forever. Thinking of all the cooking shows she’d missed in the past two years made her heart ache. Twenty-four months of culinary wisdom, lost.
So were Gary’s playoff games and championship matches, of course, but at least he’d been the one to hide the remote control. He had to have. Remote controls didn’t have legs! They didn’t sprout wings and fly away to remote control heaven. Since Nancy hadn’t been the one to hide the remote and their children barely visited them anymore, who else but Gary could’ve hidden it? Now they were subjected to an endless parade of miracle cleaning products, exercise equipment, and jewelry.
Although, well, at least he had the decency not to leave both of them stuck on the cooking channel, then accuse her of hiding the remote control.
They’d learned to sleep through the constant chatter of the shopping channel hosts. What else could they do? The television was a behemoth from another era, its screen only twenty-five inches but heavy as a tombstone because it was not only wide, but also deep. It’d been built into the entertainment center that Gary had assembled with great pride forty years ago. “Built to last,” he’d proclaimed then, and he’d been right. The TV was practically welded into the wooden unit, surrounded by shelves displaying Nancy’s vintage cookbook collection and Gary’s collection of golf trophies—also objects from another era. Gary’s arthritic hands couldn’t grip a club anymore and Nancy didn’t bother with elaborate meals because everything tasted like cardboard these days anyway.
Still, sometimes, when she looked at the relics, the early years came back to her—the way cinnamon could fill the whole house when she baked, and how the children would hover around her apron strings, drawn by scents that promised bliss. Gary would come home from work and actually pause in the doorway, breathing deeply, his face softening with genuine appreciation.
“What’s that smell?” he would ask, and she had felt proud, felt necessary in keeping him alive. Not just him living on, but being alive.
How pathetic, to need that sort of validation! No wonder the magic hadn’t lasted! Nancy Howard was aware that her grudges were stereotypical of her generation and gender. That was why she was almost ashamed to admit them.
A woman who’d raised her children basically alone, while the man was the breadwinner. The unappreciated caregiver. Thankless domestic labor. Yada yada yada. So cliche! Gary probably had the counterpart cliche resentments: the woes of being the sole breadwinner, now long past retirement age, his “manhood” fragile…
How ordinary their grievances! The whole thing was so predictable, it made her sick. What a pair they made—two walking stereotypes who’d somehow managed to bore even themselves. No wonder their children stayed away. This was what happened when you lived too long even though you were a person who shouldn’t have been blessed with old age.
Good thing that no one but the two of them knew of their pathetic situation with the TV. They lived in a detached house in a row of detached houses opposite another row of detached houses. Everything maintained a respectful distance from everything else. Nobody else besides them had to endure their peculiar situation. The television’s constant noise stayed contained within Nancy and Gary’s own four walls, one of which included the entertainment center.
They were never going to get rid of the TV. If one of the kids were to ever visit them and stay for long enough to realize that the TV was stuck on one channel, then maybe they’d do something about it; they were young and strong and capable of dismantling the entertainment center. But they weren’t visiting frequently enough and staying for long enough, were they? And if Nancy and Gary agreed on one thing, it was that they were absolutely not going to call the kids or the grandkids about needing help because of some stupid TV that they couldn’t turn off because they’d lost (no, hidden) the remote control. The kids or grandkids would probably just laugh at them, and say exactly what Nancy had been thinking.
What happened? Did it sprout wings and fly away to remote control heaven? Hahaha!
You might ask, Why not hire professionals then? Well, because for one thing, there was no money to spare. More importantly, it would require one of them to be the first to crack, to acknowledge that this ridiculous standoff had gone on long enough.
Neither was about to crack. So they endured. They didn’t surrender.
Night had fully settled over their quiet street. Somewhere distant, dogs barked. The occasional car door slammed. All of those sounds blended with the TV’s promise of life-changing vacuum technology, which was a total lie. Real problems required people to actually care. How dare they pretend that the thing was capable of solving all of life’s problems—
Suddenly, the TV went off.
2
The silence hit them like a physical blow, more powerful than the sudden darkness. Along with the TV, the two standing lamps in this living room and all the streetlamps outside had gone off, but that visual shock was nothing compared to the emptiness ringing in their ears.
Humans had eyelids for a reason. Those things allowed you to shut out the world from your eyes. As in, the eyes were meant to rest, at least occasionally. But the ears? You didn’t have earlids. Your ears never got to rest, not normally. There was always something to hear…
…which wasn’t the case right now. The dogs outside had fallen as silent as the TV—
Then some sounds rose back from the dead. The dogs resumed barking. A few front doors were opened to the left and right of the Howard residence.
But frighteningly, terribly, and horrifyingly, the TV didn’t come back to life. Nothing electronic did. There was no low buzzing from all the wired objects in the Howard household. To make matters worse, Nancy’s ears now adjusted to the silence. This silence wasn’t absolute. It wasn’t deafening at all. It wasn’t empty.
She could hear Gary’s breathing. Goosebumps rose on her arms. The room was dark, but she knew exactly how far his recliner was from hers: an arm’s length away, though they hadn’t used their arms to reach for each other in decades. Usually, this distance was far enough for a snake oil salesman’s spiel to push the existence of Gary out of her consciousness unless they were actively bickering with each other. But now?
Oh, great Lord, she could hear how harsh and irregular Gary’s breathing was, how it made her chest tight. Each wheeze carried the weight of eight decades. The broad-shouldered man who used to lift her over puddles on rainy days did not live with her anymore. The man who could split firewood with easy swings? Also gone…
…just like the woman who could sing along to popular songs, back when her lungs were powerful. That woman could run up three flights of stairs without breaking stride, but this woman here? She was breathing in shallow sips as if she was rationing air, painfully aware that, at some point, there’d be no more air left, none for her anyway.
“Power’s out,” Gary said.
Nancy flinched, but not unpleasantly so. She was surprised that he’d spoken, and also grateful.
“I can see that,” she said, instead of saying, I can hear that.
Then she got up. She wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t relying on him to fill the silence. She also wanted to make it clear that she had an unambiguous purpose in getting up; she wasn’t doing it just because she was affected by the revelation of the quieter sounds resulting from the absence of the TV.
Gary was getting up too. They moved through the darkness with practiced avoidance. Each claimed different territories of their home. They knew exactly where to go despite the outage. It wasn’t as if their eyesight was excellent these days, and they’d lived in this house for most of their lives. They knew where things were even without the light.
Nancy headed toward the kitchen junk drawer where she kept the emergency flashlight. Gary shuffled toward the dining room hutch where the candles lived in a dusty box behind the good china they never used anymore. While they did, they each made as much noise as possible without making it too evident that they were trying to make noise. It was a delicate dance they’d perfected long before the remote control disappeared. Both were a bit out of practice from the two years protected by the TV, but in an emergency situation like this, muscle memory kicked in. It was just like riding a bicycle or swimming. Survival instinct. You had to generate enough clatter to drown out the vulnerability of each other’s breathing while preserving the illusion of purposeful activity.
