This story is a much darker version of “The Movies that Made Us” or maybe even a deeply unsettling version (and far less pink) of “I Saw The TV Glow.”

Violet is about a trans woman who comes face to face with her movie idol, a porn actress also named Violet. When Violet’s (the movie star) asks for the original version of her movie back, Violet (the now video store worker) cannot bear to part with it–at least, not without acting in it herself. And when that movie becomes bloody, both Violets can’t turn away.

So… in addition to teeth freaking me out, another issue for me in horror movies is the idea of found footage. The image of a VHS tape with the name VIOLET written by hand on it is terrifying to me. What’s on the tape? Where are these people? Why is the tape here? That’s the feeling I wanted to follow for the short story “Violet” and I managed to throw all of my anxieties about found footage, snuff films, and the ever-present fear (and allure) of the TV glow at one story.

I like it. But it’s also a nasty story, so hey, you’ve been warned.

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Violet

When Violet glanced up from her book, all she saw was the woman. In the basement of Back Door Rentals, the light was never that great. You had to walk down a set of concrete stairs before getting to the door, half-obscured by darkness. Even inside, the low florescent bulbs above the sections were only there to provide enough illumination to read the titles while also casting safe shadows for customers to hide in. 

But the woman seemed to brighten the entire shop. She stood in the middle of two aisles, framed by the doorway, as if she was caught in a living art piece; a reinterpretation of the birth of Venus. In this version, though, the sea-shell that gave birth to beauty was two aisles of VHS pornography, most likely of lesbian and fisting variety.

The woman broke the tableau with a step forward. And Violet recognized her right away. 

The woman in the rental shop was the same woman from the first porn movie Violet ever saw. The dark hair, nearly to her waist, appeared as black as it had been on the TV screen. Her pale skin was exactly the same and led up to the same prone throat. Only her smile was different. This time, it was tense and terse as she locked eyes on Violet behind the counter. She held her winter coat around her body tightly, and hunched herself over, in an attempt to keep the men from staring too hard at the living legend who had now graced their store.

“Hello,” the woman said. “You work here, yeah?”

Violet nodded. She didn’t want to speak in case her voice cracked and gave away her deeper testosterone-riddled baritone, and she knew it was far more likely when she was in front of the woman from her fantasies. 

“Good. I was wondering if you could help me find a video.”

Violet nodded. She still held her book in her hands, her thumbs acting as a bookmark. This close to the woman, she could now see small lines around her mouth and eyes. Before, she had seemed ageless, as if nothing had changed since the moment her body was captured on screen. 

The film must have been at least ten years old, though. Violet had seen it when she was fifteen–far too young to be viewing materials of that content–but the VHS already had the worn cover edges and clipped sections that a well-loved movie obtained. Violet was twenty-three now; the same age, she believed, as the woman on the screen eight years earlier. 

Violet’s heart could not stop pounding. Her book shook. And the woman finally seemed to notice her stunned silence.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Violet said. A crack. A deeper pitch. Violet bit the inside of her mouth and tried again. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just… I know you.”

The woman tilted her head. For a second, her eyes betrayed her fear as she discovered what Violet meant. She’d seen the film–which meant that she’d seen her naked, completely open and vulnerable–but also that Violet had seen the ending of the film. It wasn’t just a VHS porn flick that Violet had found in the bottom of a box in her uncle’s basement. It was a porn film that had been taped from something else, the original source Violet wouldn’t even discover until six years later, when she took this job first out of high school, and found the original in the back. 

“I see,” the woman said. “Okay. Well. This actually might be good.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the film I’m looking for. The one where… you know. You saw me.”

“I saw you…” Violet stopped and started several times. “Forgive me for being forward, but… I thought you were dead.”

The woman smiled, just barely. Violet was struck by her green eyes. Violet had always thought they looked brown in the movie. Each thought comparing the filmic version of the woman to her real life counterpart, here in the flesh and very much not dead, made Violet’s palms sweat and her body tense. If not for the estrogen already working its way through her body, and the tucking she’d done that morning, she’d be hard. It was only a look, but she felt like the fifteen year old boy she’d been when she first discovered the film. And then the nineteen year old who realized that the woman he had been keeping in his mind since he was fifteen was actually murdered at the end of the movie. Violet had only watched the snuff film once before sliding the VHS back into a box and hiding it where no one would find it. The woman that he had loved–named Violet according to the film’s label–had made him question everything he thought he knew about himself and the world.

A year later, he was now she and going by Violet.

At the time, Violet thought naming herself after the snuffed out woman was the only way to keep the image of her alive. 

But she was alive. Now faced with her dream woman, Violet wasn’t sure what to do. 

She glanced around the store to be sure no one needed help, but everything and everyone was fine. The back booths were booming with business and the older man in the anal section was completely content. No one noticed the beautiful woman because there were a dozen more just like her in front of them; no one was having an existential crisis because no one else here was trans and had constructed their entire identity around this moment. 

No one here gave a damn. 

“Can we talk somewhere?” the woman asked. “I think this is a better conversation to have over a drink, don’t you think?”

When Violet remained quiet, the woman leaned closer. She placed a hand over Violet’s book, cascading her fingers down the spine. Violet swallowed hard, suppressing her desire and revulsion at the woman’s gory death on screen. She blinked once, saw the static and the glitch-y images, and then opened to see the woman, like Venus reborn, in front of her. She almost glowed.

“Yes. I think that’s a good idea. Let me close up.”

Violet stood from behind the counter. She closed down the booths at the back, angering some of the men in the process. The internet was still a new thing, still something that most of the older generation hadn’t quite realized the potential of, and so the shop was still filled with people who would much rather view in private booths. Violet knew these men were a dying breed. Back Door Rentals had managed to contend with the DVD craze, but it would not survive the internet age. Suddenly, all desire to even work at Back Door Rentals disappeared. Violet now had what she always wanted: the woman that made her a woman.

Once the store was clear, she walked back over to the woman. She stood taller now, her winter jacket unbuttoned. Underneath she wore a black v-neck shirt and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. Violet was sure she had the same ones at home.

“You ready?”

The woman nodded. Violet led her to the concrete stairs and locked the final door.  

“What should I call you?” Violet asked. “I realize now that you may have been using a name all those years ago.”

The woman smiled and shook her head. “I’m Violet. Just like the tape said. And you are?”

Violet smiled, mirroring her namesake. “Exactly the same.”

*

Five minutes into their coffee, Violet from the video insisted on being called “Vi.” It was less confusing for Violet, and it also made her feel like an insider. She was already calling her dream woman by a nickname; already creating the subtle bonds of intimacy between them that she’d craved so long ago. 

“How much do you know?” Vi asked. She held her black coffee close to her body, using both hands around the mug. Her nails were painted red. Violet wondered if she had the same shade.

“I don’t know much beyond what was on screen. You inside a red room. And then you inside a black one. Where you were, you know.”

Vi nodded. On the back of Violet’s eyelids, from ages fifteen to nineteen, the movie had just been the red section. Vi was on an examination table and a man in a doctor’s uniform was removing her clothing. They fucked. There were more positions, more than Violet could dream up as a fifteen year old boy without access to the internet. Back then, she didn’t even have access to nudie magazines because she’d been an only child with no father. Vi’s breasts were the first ones she’d seen.

And she’d fallen in love with them. The red room was the entire movie to Violet and she’d watched it forwards and backwards. When she’d gotten to Back Door Rentals, she’d found the original film that was merely labeled VIOLET in large letters. The red room went to the black room, where Vi’s throat was cut as she laid on a bed, bleeding out into the sheets. 

Violet had stared at the screen in horror. 

Then, with a sick feeling in her stomach, she rewound the tape to the beginning and watched it all the way through. Vi’s death occurred three more times before she took the movie from the store. 

Violet tried to explain her history with the movie in fewer words and with less focus on how arousing it had been–and more talk of how horrified. Vi didn’t seem to care either way. Her gaze fixated and she leaned even closer

“So you watched two movies of me?”

Violet nodded. 

“Were they both on VHS?”

Another nod.

“And were they originals?”

“What do you mean ‘originals’?”

“They weren’t studio movies, obviously. They could be tapped over.”

Violet remembered learning the difference as a kid; the movies you could tape over had a small latch at the front of the tape that wasn’t pushed in, while all of her other films–like the Disney ones–had the latched pushed in. It was a subtle way to signal to the VCR what was okay to use to tape Dynasty or SNL and what was not. Violet struggled to remember the porn movies.

“I think the first one–the red room one–was a studio movie. But I don’t think the second one was.”

“Good, good. I need the second one, then. The one with black room.”

Violet bit her lip. “Do you… do you really want it? I mean, it’s pretty gruesome. Horrible and misogynistic and–.”

“But it’s me. You’re forgetting that. I acted in those scenes.”

Violet made a face and tried to hide it with her coffee. Could it really be acting? She thought for so long that Vi was dead. It was why she had transitioned; why she had taken the name she did. If the woman who embodied femininity was gone, then nothing was sacred. 

And she could step into the role and be just another intimation of the pure greatness that had come before. Vi was a Platonic ideal–always to strive for, but never reach. 

When a cafe worker came by, she nearly bumped into Vi as she set down more coffee for Violet. Violet was about to complain, but the waitress was gone. Vi’s mug was empty–she had gotten no refill–but she didn’t seem to care. She stared into the empty mug, then at Violet, her gaze harsh.

“You’re not protecting me from the film by not letting me have it. It’s quite the opposite, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

Vi sighed. She glanced around the cafe before leaning in close. For a moment, Violet wondered if the table between them was going to disappear, and their bodies would merge entirely together like an ink blot or kaleidoscopic reel. 

“I found it online,” Vi said. “I saw myself being murdered over and over again. I don’t want that anymore.”

“If it’s online, it’s online. Get the host to take it down.”

“It doesn’t work like that. And it’s not the same thing. I could stand having the sex stuff up there. It was annoying, but I made that decision. The murder, though…” She shook her head. “I hate knowing it’s out there.”

“And it looks so real.” Violet remembered the colour of the blood. The way it coagulated. What Vi’s throat looked like as nothing but a wound. It was impossible to not stare at her neck now and wonder where the scar was. Violet gestured to her own throat with a shrug. “I still don’t understand. You know…”

Vi shrugged. “Movie magic.”

“Hmmm.” The explanation didn’t fulfill Violet’s need for knowledge. It became a void inside of her, a chasm that seemed like it would never be filled. “What will having the original film give you? It’s still out there. I hate to break it to you, but the internet’s going to change things. You’re not going to be able to get your image back.”

“But I can.” 

Vi leaned back suddenly. The space between them split in two. Violet felt it like a wound. 

“I met this guy,” Vi went on. “He actually recognized me from the movie. He said I could reclaim what I’ve lost. I just need the original VHS tape. I give that to him and I get a second chance.”

“I think he’s feeding you lies. I don’t think it’s possible to get back what you’ve lost. Not in that way.” 

“But you do believe in second chances, right? I mean, look at you.”

Violet bit the side of her mouth. She wondered what part of hers image gave away her trans status. Was it her chin? Her prone throat? She’d tried to obscure her Adam’s apple with a high collar on her winter jacket, but that jacket that now was on the back of her chair. Was it her thin hair? Her height of 5’9? Her hands? All the obvious answers came to her, but she knew deep down it was her voice. She always passed in the store, at the bank, even at her college night school classes–until she spoke. 

Violet was about to ask what the hell her life had to do with any of this, when she stopped herself. It had absolutely everything. And Vi knew it. More than just her voice, Vi saw the way in which Violet had modelled herself on her older filmic image. Most trans women do have a proxy; Madonna or Lauren Bacall, the Hollywood image that fed their identity into as a child. Violet never had that fracture of self until Vi came along and died in front of her. 

“Do you even have the movie?” Vi asked, her voice hot and accusatory. “Or are you just wasting my time right now and trying to get off in the process?”

“No.” Violet shook her head, her voice steady. “No. I have it. I just never wanted anyone else to see it. So I hid it in my apartment. I hid it away from everyone.”

“I appreciate that. But it’s online now. There’s no hiding it. There’s only destroying it. And this guy will help.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Then come with me,” Vi said. Her green eyes pleaded. For a brief second, Violet thought they turned brown, like they had on the screen. But it was only a flicker of her nostalgia soaked imagination. 

She swallowed back the last of her coffee and nodded. “Okay. I’ll come.”

*

The man’s name was Gerry. He lived across the hall from Vi’s apartment on the East Side of Vancouver. Violet recognized the area from the few times she visited the clinic to find doctors who would prescribe her hormones. She hated the area; the atmosphere always felt so unsafe, especially as women seemed to drop like flies from either heroine or men with knives. She realized now, as she snaked her way up several flights of stairs to Gerry’s place, that she had avoided the area because she always thought this was where Violet had died. She had gotten into the wrong car and the wrong studio and thought she was making a movie for fun. For a couple handfuls of cash she could do what she wanted with, but ended up paying for her life.

“Why was the movie made?” Violet asked. 

Vi was ahead of her, her thick boots echoing as they walked up the stairwell. “Why do you think porn is made?”

“No. I mean… why the fake murder?”

“Again, why do you think people make snuff films?”

“To get people off. Fine. But it was fake. I always thought they were real. It was scary because it was real.”

“Sex is real on the screen. And the death is real. But it’s also not. I fuck someone, and they go inside of me, but I don’t let myself stay there mentally. I go somewhere else. It’s the same for the snuff stuff too.”

Violet wasn’t exactly sure how a knife could go into someone and not have it affect them later. Without a scar on Vi’s body, though, that seemed to be what had happened.

“Exactly how many have you made?” Violent asked. “I thought it was just the one?”

“We’re here.” Vi held open the door to the fifth floor. Violet’s lungs already felt pressed against her chest from all the walking. She followed Vi down a hallway and to an apartment that seemed to radiate the sweet smell of smoke. Her previous question was left unanswered as Vi knocked on the door. A snake-like ornament, going in a circle, hung on the centre of the door.

“It’s an ouroborous,” Vi said before Gerry game to the door. 

Gerry was a large man, taller than both of them, with a thick beard. He wore all black and had a shaved head. His smile split his round face in two as he shook Vi’s hand. He then turned to examine Violet with a tilt to his head. It was a familiar action; the same one Vi had done when she’d assessed her in the store.

“I know you,” he said.

“I work at Back Door Rental.”

“Ah. That’d be it. Do we have the video?”

Vi nodded. She led the way into the dark apartment, Violet coming up at the heels. She held the original video in her winter jacket pocket. They’d stopped at her place before taking a cab out to the East Side. When she’d come back out with the video, Vi had looked at her with a sultry expression. It struck Violet harder than a punch to her gut. For a moment, she’d been convinced that they were going to skip everything and fuck on her bed. 

But the moment had passed. Now, inside Gerry’s apartment, the smell of cigarette smoke mixed with sage. He spoke at a rapid-fire pace, mostly asking Vi how she was doing and how her brothers and sisters were. Vi brushed off his questions and quickly turned to Violet. 

“The tape?”

“Yes. The tape. Let’s get to work.”

Gerry’s stare met hers. Violet paused. She clasped her hand around the edge of the VHS, not wanting to let it go. The storyline was so worn into her brain. “I want to know how it works.”

Gerry sighed. He kicked back a chair at his kitchen table and gestured for everyone to sit down. Though it was hot inside the apartment, Violet kept her coat on as she sat. Gerry lit a cigarette before he talked, ashing it in between statements.

“You that old story of a photograph taking your soul?” When Violet nodded, he went on. “It’s bunk. Humans don’t really have souls. But there is something to be said for digital copies of ourselves. It gets weaker, less potent, as the image proliferates. It’s one of the reason why certain art objects have such a high… oh, I don’t know, radiance to them? It has nothing to do with the artist or even the paint they use. It’s all about how many images of an image there are. Take Van Gogh.” He said the name like Hoff instead of the more popular Go. “We see Starry Night everywhere and it’s boring. Even when we see the original, it’s kind of boring. We see more details, sure, and we see the texture of the paint, and it’s better. But the object has no power anymore. It’s too common.”

“Okay,” Violet said. “I get that. But what about pornography? Snuff films? I don’t understand why you want this tape of Vi.”

“She wants it. She wants her life back.”

“She won’t get it. Once you make a decision like this, it’s permanent.”

Gerry sucked extra-long on the cigarette. He leaned closer. “Are you sure about that?”

“Well, I would assume so. Decisions only go one way.”

“No, they don’t. Let’s take Van Gogh again. We hate Starry Night. We’ve seen it too much. So how about we get rid of it? We can’t just throw away the postcards with the image on it. We have to destroy the original. And once we do, it’s gone.”

Violet was about to open her mouth to disagree, but Gerry spoke again.

“The structure of it remains, I will give you that. We know that something used to be on that wall. A man painted something about stars in the night. We try to remember and replace it. Sure. But that original is gone. And the rest will fade.”

“And you think that will happen to Vi? She will fade?”

“I want to,” Vi said. 

Gerry gave her a sympathetic look before he turned his focus back on Violet. “We need to get rid of the source. The memory will still be there, and something else will come and try to fill the hollow structure of what’s leftover. Pornography will always exist. And whether we like it or not, snuff films will too. Even if the death captured can be reversed in some way.”

“I still don’t understand,” Violet said. The tape now felt hot in her hands. She traced her finger along the line that had the button. If she could press it in, then the tape would never be taped over. She hovered above it. 

“All the things that came from this tape, good and bad, will still be there,” Gerry said. “But weaker. It’ll be like an empty glass. Still a glass, but you’ll have to fill it again yourself.”

Violet felt sadness swell in her throat. She wanted to keep the tape because she was on the tape. Vi was her and she was Violet. She wanted to become the epitome of womanhood when she saw it destroyed. If death wasn’t death and even sex could be undone on screen, then did it leave her as an empty shell? A blank tape?

Violet pushed down the button. The movie would not be taped over. It would remain, static. And she handed it over. 

Gerry’s smile left his face as soon as he saw what she’d done. Vi’s eyes widened. She looked from the tape to Gerry and then back at Violet.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I just want to stay a little while longer.”

*

When Vi came into the video store next, she wore a red dress. Her hair was long and hung down in rivulets towards her waist. Gerry came in behind her. He ushered the people in the store out up the concrete steps as Vi made her way to the counter.

“We should talk,” she said, voice long and smooth. 

They had not seen one another in two weeks, not since the incident in the apartment. Violet had left after she gave back the tape and not uttered another word. Even if they would not be able to tape over the image, Violet figured they could have always unfurled everything from inside. Smashed it with a hammer, or run it over with a car. Destruction was as plentiful as the type of porn to pick from. Always so many options.

Meanwhile, Violet tried to go on with her life. But she felt herself fading. Even if the tape’s image remained protected, the illusion in her mind had been shattered. Vi was a real person with a real life; the tape was a fake. Not even death was real anymore. 

“Where do you want to talk?” Violet asked. 

“Back room, maybe?” 

Violet nodded. She opened the back room where most of the old movies were kept. Jason, the owner who was never around, sometimes had toys back there too. A cot for when they had to do inventory and wanted to sit down. Jason was determined to expand the store beyond films, especially because of the internet, but Violet knew he would fail. The boxes of the merchandise seemed static next to the movies and DVDs that were taking up space. 

Gerry followed them to the back. He pulled a camcorder out of his backpack and kept it rolling. Violet was about to ask what was going on, but Vi kissed her. Her mouth was hard, jagged. Violet’s body reacted through sense-memory and basic response. Vi kissed her like she’d been kissed on screen. She ran her hands up and down Violet’s body like she had seen on screen.

When they fell on the cot, it was exactly like it had been in the red room scenes. Violet leaned back as Vi disrobed her with the precision of a doctor. Not even Violet’s mismatched sex made her feel nervous or uncomfortable. The movie scene played out as if it was always there, always permanent.

Violet felt herself come back to life. She was no longer fading, but existing in bold colours. Not every section of the film was the same–two women now instead of a man and a woman–but the structure was the same. The structure was what mattered; it was the heart of the event. When Violet came, the scene etched itself in her memory. 

Then came time for the last section, the one in the black room.

Gerry handed Vi a knife. Violet remained naked, prone. Fear percolated in the base of her stomach, next to desire. She wanted this. She was this. She’d been made in this image and now she was going to become it. Like a great art object–the original. 

Vi walked over to her, knife ready. Gerry continued to film. Violet extended her neck, waiting to become herself all over again.

END