Channel 5 (Merlin fanfiction): Chapter 2

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Arthur only really watched television when he was ill. He would make himself a big cup of tea with lemon, pull the rubbish bin up by the side of his bed for used tissues, and flip through channels until something decent caught his attention. If he wasn’t feeling too bad, he would start up his laptop, but mostly he was too paranoid of sudden sneezing or coughing, and didn’t want to risk germing up the keyboard. So boring telly it is.
But that night, for some inexplicable reason, Arthur decided, to hell with it, and reached for the remote resting on the opposite pillow to turn the television back on.

The medicine he took messed up his sleeping habits, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to wake up in the middle of the night, throat sore, breathing through one nostril, and terribly miserable. He always turned the telly off before going to sleep, to save electricity, and kept it off even if he knew there was no hope of falling back into sweet, painless slumber. He would simply lay there with his eyes determinedly shut, willing himself to sleep, sleep dammit, if only for the hope that his symptoms would be less when he woke up the next time.

The light hurt his eyes at first, and he browsed channels looking practically through just his eyelashes. But they eventually adjusted, and he was able to make out what programmes he was passing.

He only gave them about a two second appraisal; cooking, advert, rerun, old film, advert, advert—

Hmm. What was this? Arthur sat up. The screen was white, completely blank except for a dark figure sitting cross-legged in the centre. The length of their hair suggested it was a male, but the clothes were a bit baggy, so it could have just as easily been a female. Arthur couldn’t tell for certain, because their head was hanging down and he couldn’t see their face due to the distance of the camera. But it was odd. What kind of programme was this? It was just some person sitting in an empty white space, doing nothing.

Arthur’s nose started to drip, so he put down the remote and grabbed a tissue to blow it, tossing it in the bin beside him afterwards. When he looked up at the screen again, the person had moved, uncrossed their legs so they stuck straight out, toes to the side, and was staring straight ahead.

Straight at Arthur.

Arthur shook the idea from his mind. The man—because it was a man, Arthur could determine now—was only looking in the camera. This was probably some weird indie film experimenting with angles and a lack of a soundtrack. Arthur pressed the info button on the remote.

???

That was strange. No description? Not even a channel number or name? Not even the duration length? Surely Arthur would have come across this channel before. There were only so many out there.

The man on the screen stood up and walked forward, straight towards the camera. Then, he changed his mind and began to pace the room. The man clearly looked frustrated about something. Finally, he looked at Arthur- no, at the camera- again, and his face lit up. "Finally, a viewer!"