Jack Russell - Channel 666 Isn't television a marvelous invention? It brings good news and bad news into our living rooms. Some say is stimulates our imaginations. Others say it pollutes our minds with images of sex and violence. If you could step through your television screen the way Alice stepped through her magic mirror, would you be entering a land of wonder or a land of horror? Thanks to the strange-looking converter box he got by mugging and robbing a strange-looking old man in an alley behind a video arcade, Spenser Katz's TV was bringing in programs that nobody else could get. The box was wireless; no cables connected it to Spenser's TV. It sat on top, glowing softly, pulling in fabulous shows. Spenser figured the shows must be beamed in by satellite from somewhere. Funny thing, but all these great shows were hosted by the same creepy guy, a guy named Nasta. He opened each show with a chuckle, saying, "Welcome to Doc Nasta's Wacky Far-out Medicine Show!" Nasta certainly looked like a snake-oil salesman. He also bore a weird resemblance to the old man Spenser had mugged to get the converter box. But uglier. Much uglier. His face was bruised and burned, oozing yellowish fluids, the skin stretched tight, exposing teeth that grinned perpetually as if in rictus, under his black, heavily waxed mustache. On one of his shows, Nasta has said he was a serial killer who had died in the electric chair thirty years ago. Which couldn't be true, because there he was on TV, live, not prerecorded. They certainly didn't have these cool, far-out programs thirty years ago - all they had was square, boring pap like AMERICAN BANDSTAND. Last Saturday Spenser had brought his friends, Gary Parsons and Elena Holmes, into his bedroom to show them some of the great stuff he'd been watching lately. But all he could get was static. The converter box perversely decided to go on the blink at exactly the wrong time, just to make him look like a fool or a liar. He blushed and stammered furiously in front of Elena because he had a mad crush on her even though she belonged to Gary: they were engaged. Spenser had trouble getting dates. He was gawky and shy in most situations. But underneath his shyness lurked a nasty, violent temper that he turned loose in dark alleys when he was mugging people like the old man with the converter box. Because of the anger locked inside him, Spenser was addicted to MTV and its weird, angry, erotic imagery. He envied the rock stars, the rap stars, and pictured them in a constant orgiastic swirl with the voluptuous groupies who permeated the music videos with their red, sneering lips and pulsatingly perfect hips, breasts and thighs. Spenser's favorite rock group starred on Doctor Nasta's Medicine Show, a group called Triple Six with a dynamite song called The Devil Made Me Do It to Ya. Spenser tried to tape Triple Six, but got nothing but static. He hunted for their stuff in music stores and video stores. He asked about the group, but nobody seemed to have heard of them. He got mad at Gary and Elena when they told him there wasn't any such group, maybe he dreamed it all up, including Doc Nasta and the Medicine Show. But Spenser knew he wasn't going crazy. This shit was real, goddamn it, even if he couldn't figure out why he could only tune in to the stuff that really turned him on when he was in his room all by himself. One day Nasta read some of his fan mail out loud. Spenser didn't know how people could be writing in, since he had never seen the station's logo or address on-screen. The fan letters asked Nasta to satisfy various whims, urges and desires. Some wanted exotic vacations, some wanted expensive cars, others wanted jewelry or furs or love or sex. Nasta gave out "prescriptions." He told the people exactly what they must do in order to satisfy their wildest whims and urges. He prescribed sins for them to commit. Sometimes the sins were venial: little white lies or tiny acts of malice or spite. Other times they were mortal: rape, robbery, murder or worse. These sins had to be "taken" like doses of medicine. Spenser figured it was all a gag. Nobody really wrote in. Doc Nasta just had a weird and maybe slightly evil sense of humor -because of whatever kind of accident that had caused his disfigurement. It certainly wasn't an electric chair, or he'd be dead. Maybe he got burnt by a hot wire in his own basement. He was so ugly it was easy to see why he couldn't get a job hosting a regular network show. With a chuckle, Nasta announced that one of his fans had sent in a home-made videotape to prove that she had "followed doctor's orders." The tape looked amazingly real, but Spenser figured it for a fake. No way could anybody get away with showing such a thing on TV, even on a cable channel. Some fat guy in loud pajamas was being stabbed over and over by some skinny gray-haired old woman. The fat guy was groaning and screaming, blood flying all over the place, splashing the walls and soaking the mattress. Triple Six started singing The Devil Made Me do it to Ya, as the images got wilder, crazier, sexier. Spenser was riveted to the TV, horrified yet enthralled. Not only the band members but everybody in the music video began copulating with each other - right on the air! Then Elena appeared on the screen, wearing something flimsily transparent. She smiled seductively, undulating to the beat of the music. Spenser cried out her name, "Elena...Elena!" She beckoned to him. He got to his feet. He found himself n the TV screen. Suddenly, unaccountably, he was a part of the music video... the beat wilder, crazier... people copulating all around him. They fell into each other's arms, kissing passionately, their bodies writhing hotly together. She pulled away. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his lips. Then Nasta's voice intruded. "Spenser Katz?" Spenser sat up in bed startled. He still had his clothes on. His forehead was beaded with sweat. He gawked and stared -Nasta had come into his room. Behind him the Triple Six video still blasted on the TV screen, its denizens continuing their orgy. Nasta said, "Spenser Katz, you have just had a brief trip into my world, a special treat reserved for my disciples." "But I'm not one of them," Spenser blurted. "Not quite yet, for you have not fulfilled your initiation. But soon you shall do so. That is why I have allowed you to sample the delights that await you once you join my Medicine Show." "You're kidding! This can't be happening!" "It can be, and it is. And now I have a prescription for you." "What... sort of... prescription?" Nasta emitted a sly chuckle, his waxed mustache twitching, his face wounds oozing. "You want her badly, don't you? Well, take my prescription, and she shall be yours." "Elena?" Spenser murmured incredulously. "None other." "What do I have to do?" "Kill her." "Never!" "Oh, but you see," Doc Nasta said soothingly, "in giving her the gift of death, you both shall become more alive. Both of you will join my show. Eternally you will feel and understand a level of ecstasy that is unknown to mortals." "Who are you?" Spenser cried. "Nevermind," said Nasta, and his oily laugh reverberated as he dematerialized onto the TV screen and the screen rapidly dissolved into static. The very next day, Spenser got Elena to come to his room by telling her he had gotten the box working. It turned out to be true! The box was working! Elena sat on the edge of the bed next to Spenser, her short skirt hiked up, her creamy thighs showing. He didn't say, "See, I told ya, Doc Nasta is real," he just smiled and smiled, watching her take it all in. Nasta said, "A new disciple will join us today, along with his lady love. I have given him a prescription that he is bound to follow." Spenser got goosebumps, partly from fear of what he was about to do, and partly from the thrill of being mentioned on the television. Triple Six blasted into the first chords of The Devil Made Me Do It to Ya. Soon the orgy started. Elena jumped up, covering her eyes, yelling, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" Spenser pounced, seizing her throat and squeezing hard. She barely made a gurgle, but she pounded and scratched at him, her eyes bulging. He choked her harder. Her tongue came out between her perfect white teeth, oozing spittle and turning purple. He kept choking even after she went totally limp and sagged at the ends of his achingly weary arms. Then at last he let her sink onto the bed, half on and half off, till she thudded to the floor. He looked at the screen. Triple Six was blasting. The orgy was in full sway. He looked at Elena's dead body, shuddered, and closed his eyes. Suddenly the music was surrounding them both and they were in the TV. He was more alive than he had ever felt. And Elena was alive, too - gorgeously and nakedly alive in his arms -and he reveled in an orgasm that overcame him, sweeping him to a pinnacle of erotic delight... But something was wrong. Elena's skin was burnt and oozing like Nasta's, peeling away from her face. He felt his own face, which suddenly felt as if it was on fire, and a huge gob of burning, oozing flesh stuck to his hand. He stared at the gob, then frantically tried to paste it back where it belonged and pat it into place. Elena laughed. Her breasts were flat and rotted, her abdomen split wide open, stinking of decay. Nasta chuckled. Standing over Spenser, he said, "Welcome to the Medicine Show!" He wished he would wake up. But he didn't. And now he knew where the show was broadcast from. And he understood who Nasta really was. - - - Jack Russell - Channel 666 m1nion scan #5 - - - m1nion scan #1: Sandman - Death The High Cost Of Living m1nion scan #2: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds m1nion scan #3: Everything But The Girl (Article from Arena Magazine) m1nion scan #4: J Gregory Keyes - The Python King's Treasure