The Beatles; lost episode

Because...

I love the Beatles! Ever since I was 14 I've been an avid collector of Beatles stuff. They're the most talented band in the world! I have their albums, t-shirts and a bunch of other things. I especially like the old cartoon from the 60s! But it wasn't long until I discovered a morbid secret.

I was walking around in a local collector's shop, where there was a small section of Beatles merchandise. Mugs, buttons, all the usual things. But then, something peculiar caught my eye. It was a videotape. Entirely blank except for the the crudely written label, "The Beatles Cartoon, Lost Episode." As curiosity overtook me, I picked up the tape and took it with me to the counter. The store clerk looked at the tape with a face of dread before glancing up at me.
"I know we put this thing up on the shelf, but I don't think you should be buying it," he warned.
"Why not?" I challenged in reply.
"Well, when it first came to us, I watched it just to see what was in it. It was... It was terrifying. I don't scare very easily but that thing gave me nightmares." I was surprised. How could a cartoon about an old rock band be so scary? I insisted he let me buy it. I promised him I could handle it. Reluctantly, he rang it up. Only 3 dollars. It seemed underpriced but I'm not about to complain about saving money.

As I walked through the front door of the shop I glanced back at the clerk. It seemed like he was praying. Was he praying for me?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt uneasy about this weird tape. Once I got back to my apartment I went to the living room and put the tape into my tv. As soon as it started playing, something unsettling happened. The screen was completely black. All there was was the sound of a person screaming in agony. After a few seconds, the title appeared on the screen as if nothing had happened. I was taken aback, but I kept watching.

The episode was called "Because." I assumed it was referring to the Abbey Road song with the same name. Then the cartoon played and I could immediately tell that something was off. It looked... weird. Almost the same as the original, but it was more detailed. More polished. I started to relax a bit as the four band members appeared and started talking in their usual voices. They were talking about a cassette they found outside of the studio. The next scene showed them in their studio, putting the cassette into a player. As John put the headphones on to listen, something else started to happen.

Suddenly, John has a deadpan look in his eyes, like he just blacked out. Paul worriedly asked, "John? Are you all right?" Then the camera focused on John's face and all of a sudden John's eyes went blank and swirled with a mixture of colours. Like what a person would see if they took hallucinogenics. After a few seconds of John's strange trance, he started mumbling.

"Seeing is not believing. Seeing is killing". John said in a dull monotone before quickly snapping out of it as if nothing had happened. The other members acted equally as casual. After this, the screen faded to black before realistic-looking blood began to trickle down from the top of the screen. It looked like if I touched the screen my fingers would be stained red. The screen went black again and then faded into a scene of the boys walking by a lake.

A crowd of swooning girls started chasing them for 10 seconds or so when out of nowhere, a picture of a girl with no eyes appeared on the screen. It was a real black and white picture, her eye sockets dripping with blood. She had no teeth and looked as if she was screaming in pain. I jumped back at the sudden gory image and as the camera focused on the band member's faces, the chatter of the girls went silent. As they stopped in their tracks and turned to look at what happened, their expressions turned into ones of pure terror. All of the fans were on the ground, burning to a crisp.

"What... what happened?" asked Paul with a shaky voice. His question was left unanswered as Ringo doubled over with nausea before violently throwing up. The vomit was red. Blood red. With bits of what looked like decaying meat in it. Paul went to check on him but before he could take even a step, John snapped at him.
"Just forget about it!"
"What about our fans?" George chimed in.
"I don't give a fuck!" John shouted. I was as shocked as the three Beatles. I never expected John to say something like that, especially about his fans. Then he sprinted away from the brutal scene and the others had no choice but to follow.

The next scene showed The Beatles walking down a street. Paul seemed uneasy as he was supervising a still-sick Ringo. The camera panned up to a building that was being demolished. As the wrecking ball hit the building, a piece of rubble went flying in the air. This gave John an idea. He grabbed a random passerby and held him by the arms, directly under where the boulder was meant to land. After a moment, the large, solid piece of stone fell on the man, completely crushing him. His blood and brains flew everywhere and even though the gore was cartoonish, I was still terrified. A crowd of people quickly surrounded John and his victim to see what had happened. John relished in the attention, a sadistic grin plastered onto his face.

As the other Beatles tried to process what they were seeing, Paul came to a realization.
"The cassette! It must've done something to John!"
"I think John did something to me," Ringo muttered before slumping over and falling onto the pavement. His skin was tinted green, his eyes were bloodshot and glazed over as he lay there motionless. He was poisoned. John poisoned him and now he's dead. Paul looked up at the man who used to be his friend and noticed something metallic hidden in his waistband. Without a second thought, he sprinted into the crowd, pushing people aside and pulling out the revolver that John secretly had. The camera focused on Paul as he used the crowd as cover and pointed the gun right at John's head, tears beading up in his eyes. He pulls the trigger and the screen goes black as a gunshot is heard. After a few seconds of silence, a still image faded onto the screen. Paul and George were sitting solemnly beside each other. Paul was hunched over with his face in his hands and George rubbed his back to comfort him, all the while looking quite distraught. Then a line of text faded in.

"Because of John, they are dead."

That's where the episode ended. Frozen on that last image of two grieving men. I couldn't do anything except sit there in silence. Questions buzzed in my head. Who made this thing? What was its purpose? Was it all a hoax? Hoax or not, that tape didn't deserve to live another day. I took it out of the VCR and went back out, with nothing but the tape and that store clerk on my mind. I figured that, since he saw its horrors too, he would want to take part in destroying it. The collector's shop wasn't a very far walk and as soon as I entered, I saw the same young man at the counter. I breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the counter, quietly placing the tape onto the glass countertop. It was then he noticed me and I could see him eyeing the tape nervously.
"Didn't go well?" He asked.
"Nope... Wanna go smash it with me?" At that, he grinned and told his boss that he'd be taking his 15 minutes. He led me behind the store and we took turns smashing the wretched tape until there was nothing left but tiny bits of plastic.

And then he gave me his number. For a while, I thought that all of this was worth it. But my smile soon faded as I spotted a post-it note stuck to my apartment's front door. It read "You shouldn't have done that." A shiver ran down my spine. Maybe there was something more to this tape that I was never supposed to know.