January 26 - seven

If John and Deb had ever thought about it--which they hadn't--they would have thought it was kind of creepy but ultimately ridiculous.
The story was that there was a videotape with a label that said seven and nobody knew where it was from. But if you watched it, immediately afterwards your phone would ring and then there would be this voice on the other end that said, "Seven days," and then the line would go dead. If you tried to call the number back it wouldn't work, and there was no way to trace the origin of the call. Or so the story went.
And so you would forget about it after a while and go about your business, and then exactly seven days later, you and whoever else had watched the video would die.
Obviously this was always something that had happened to your college rommate's brother's ex-girlfriend's co-worker and some guy who blah, blah, blah: urban myths whose already tenuous credibility was diluted by the fact that nobody could produce proof that anyone who'd died had ever watched such a videotape, nor had anyone ever actually seen the videotape itself.
Even still, the story persisted and was trotted out by high school kids on the rare occasion that there was an unexplained death in the area.
John and Deb had certainly heard the story. Everybody had. And so when they were spending the weekend in a cabin in the woods, and John found a videotape labelled seven tucked in among the cabin's collection, it caught his attention.
"Hey Deb, did you see this?"
Deb took the videotape from John. "Ooh, seven." She laughed. "Wow, that's funny. I can't believe you remember that. Good one."
"I found it here in their collection."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, I was just poking around to see what they had and I found it."
"No way, they actually have a video that's called seven?"
"Yeah."
Deb curled up on the couch. "Do you think we should watch it?"
John felt a tingle of excitement. "I am kind of curious. I mean, it's probably just a joke, like, somebody put the label on a porno or something just to mess with people."
"Yeah, you're right, but still. I mean, it couldn't hurt to just put it in and see what happens."
"That's what she said."
"Ha ha. No, I'm serious. I mean it's probably nothing, but aren't you kind of dying to know what's on it?"
"Dying to know?"
"Yeah, I know. That was lame. But come on, let's at least start it. If it's totally creepy we can turn it off."
Every horror movie instinct he had told him it was a bad idea, but he had to admit that Deb was right. He did want to know what was on the mythical seven videotape--if that was even what it was, which he was sure it wasn't.
He turned on the VCR and then the TV. There was no reception in the cabin, so all they got was white noise. He slid the videotape in and his finger went for the play button.
"No, wait."
His finger paused. "What?"
"Maybe it's not such a good idea."
John thought about the story and the phone call and the possibility, however absurdly remote, of dying seven days later. If they did watch the video and his phone rang afterwards he would lose it. Prudence got the better of him, and he did what he and Deb always yelled at the characters in horror movies to do. He played it safe.
"Yeah, you're probably right."
He ejected the videotape and put it back in its place. Then he thought about it again, pulled it back out, and destroyed the tape just to be sure.
There.
They felt better.
While hiking later on that evening, they were both eaten by a grizzly bear.
Holy shit!