I Am Your Host

​I have worked in the industry for a good fifteen years. My father worked in it before me as a cameraman, but I one-upped him by becoming a director of sorts as well as a cameraman. I run a two man recording studio inside the facility where all the broadcasts are made. I run lights, film and audio as well as provide scripts and give direction. Safe to say there is a lot on my plate already. Last thing I needed in my line of work is mental patients to play the host to my local news show.

​I live outside the city in small town, fantastic for tourists, but mainly locals there don’t cater to tourists, just average people. I run a show that broadcasts to them; friends and family alike watch my news show. Imagine the horror they must have felt watching the host go from reading my script to mutilating himself with a coffee mug that I gave him as a prop. My show got cancelled and I soon became forced to work with a morning show a floor above me.
Despite the higher pay I still felt like I was being downgraded. My responsibilities had gone from many to pointing the camera in the right direction. I found the experience embarrassing and I felt even worse each time I came home to receive looks from my family as if I had been directly involved in the incident and I guess I suppose I was. Still, if they only knew that there more happenings in the building than just that one.
I was working, as I always do, quietly and out of sight. However, I found myself viewing other immoral acts between the host and a secretary behind stage. I am ashamed to say it, but I watched until the end. The two talked to each other and once more, there seemed to be a change. There was silence as the two got changed and the next I knew the host was rushing toward the secretary with a pen. The brutality that followed shocked me, but what is more was his suicide. I left quickly, returning to my office and stayed there for the entire day. Believe me, I was surprised when nobody reported the murder and suicide the entire day, but the next day it was all we heard.
Yes, I should have reported it, but I was looking after my position. The hosts of the shows were behaving violently and the last thing I needed on my plate was blame. So, I decided to stay far away from the controversy. Luckily, the host didn’t belong to the show I was working for, otherwise there would be some fingers pointing my way. I played dumb that whole day till I asked somebody what happened.  I began throwing conspiracies their way, saying it might have been the same thing that happened to my host. I made sure to sound ludicrous enough that they would no longer suspect, not that they should.
I was being careful, but the blood still flowed like a river through the studios. Particularly this one time where a host in entirely separate division had decapitated himself in a bathroom. His head was found in the toilet which was overflowing. Blood covered the floor and spread into the hallway. Even though the stories were horrific, I couldn’t help but feel at ease. That was more than could be said for the hosts of other shows who were growing nervous, some quitting all-together despite their legally binding contracts putting them in poor house. Better poor than dead I suppose.
However, despite all my attempts to get people from looking me I was the director when the first case happened so I was considered more a suspect than a victim. The police didn’t take too long to return and ask me questions behind these mad suicides, but there was nothing I could tell them besides the fact that I was the first witness. I held my tongue about the second death because it really didn’t matter. Still, I couldn’t help but become curious behind why. All these hosts were brutally killing themselves, but it made no sense why the second one killed the secretary.
I then became transfixed with ideas that could be behind it all, but none of them were plausible. In the end the deaths slowed and disappeared. The hosts on news shows and games shows and any kind of show began to rest easy in their positions. It soon became a distant memory for some, but for one I was just glad that it ended. Curiosity still kept me on the edge of my seat. I began wondering if the last one who committed suicide was related to all the others.
Looking deeper into it would only make me seem more suspicious, but I couldn’t help it. My interview with the stumped police only created an emotion inside of me that I need to feed. I asked questions at the host’s studio and if the host had been acting any differently. Sure enough, there was some similarity. The police were investigating into the last host’s death and discovered that the host had murdered his wife that very morning. Perhaps then, murder is the key behind all of this, because it matched up with the second host who killed someone and soon after did himself in.
I left it for a long while after that, letting my curiosity die with the thought that the host of my show was a murderer. I walked through the studios to the large breakroom area to find myself with only one other person, making a coffee that I knew would taste awful. The other guy turned out to be a host himself and I watched as he slyly dipped his dripping red pen into his coffee and stirred it slowly.
I greeted him and he replied with a smile and the same enthusiasm. I asked how he was doing nervously and he simply turned and walked away into supply closest. I didn’t stick around.