My dad worked as a paramedic for over twenty years. One day he brought home a tape.

It was labeled “trainwreck.” He told me that this was one of the only tapes he had ever found that he couldn’t bring himself to watch. He had been finding these tapes in his locker at the beginning of his shift for about six months, and he always assumed they were a joke left by one of his fellow paramedics. The tapes were always the same, VHS, black with white writing of some sort of descriptive word or two, nothing else. He never found out who was leaving them or how they were getting in his locker. But he never deleted a tape, opting instead to bring it home and watch it, taking careful mental notes of any and all details that he could use to identify the person leaving them. <br><br>My dad was a very kind, gentle man, anddisposing of property not his own just went against everything he believed in. He told me that he would usually watch them all together on his days off, take some notes and then throw them away, but this particular tape he had brought to me because he thought it was a “prank gone too far.” <br><br>The two of us sat on the couch in the living room and put the tape in, nothing showing on the screen as the static filled TV flickered. My dad told me that the camera was usually in the glovebox of the ambulance, giving its viewers a birds eye view of the scene. Sometimes they were on the dash. Sometimes it was just in someone’s hand, taking in the surroundings of the job. <br><br>This tape was taken from the dash. I remember thinking it was odd that I couldn’t see the road. The camera displayed a small convenience store/gas station. The digital clock said 2:06, but there was no AM/PM displayed. I figured it was probably 2:00 in the morning, and that’s why the store was closed. <br><br>The camera jostled around as the doors opened and my dad stepped out. The camera displayed my dad going towards the back of the ambulance, then he popped up on the screen again holding a grey blanket and what I assumed to be a medicine bag of some sort. The camera jiggled again as whoever was holding it got out and followed my dad into the store. <br><br>The store seemed empty. My dad started to yell at somebody in the back room, telling them that everybody needed to come out slowly with their hands up. The camera moved towards the door under the words “Employees only” my dad had just come from. The camera peeked around the corner and I gasped as I tried to step back, my hands flying over my mouth to stifle a scream. <br><br>A woman was sitting on the ground, she had no legs. I figured she was sitting there, holding her head and moaning in pain because of the accident that had taken her legs, but she was actually dead. Her head was missing, just barely hanging on by the remaining strands of skin that hadn’t ripped when her head was twisted off. <br><br>She had no torso, hell she had no body at all. Just two stumps for legs with a woman’s head wobbling around on top of them. My dad was going from behind me and I could hear him gasping and retching, but my eyes were glued to the tv. <br><br>The camera was shaking almost violently now as whoever was holding it started moving around the room, taking in the carnage. That’s when I noticed it. The same woman was scattered all over the room. Her arms were nailed to the walls in various places, her stomach was missing, but a blue vest with the store’s logo lay on the floor. Her head was on the ceiling, looking upside down into the camera.<br><br>“Look at her long enough, and she’ll do it to you too” a deep, monotone voice echoed through the speakers followed by the static ending the recording.