It was television time once again in the Valanciunas apartment. Taking up his usual spot on the couch with his cat, Arvydas, purring happily next to him, he enswathed himself in blankets and cracked open the first beer. ESPN was playing on the TV; he hoped to catch some highlights of the NFL playoff games that he had missed. After a few confused weeks of watching American football, he thought he had started to figure things out, though he still didn’t understand why you’d ever punt it.
SportsCenter was on. His teammates had told him not to watch the program, citing the lack of Raptors coverage, but he didn’t really have a choice. What, they wanted him to splurge for the deluxe cable package featuring the NFL Network? He was not made of money, as they said in the old country.
Luckily for him, the talking heads on the screen were just introducing the day’s NFL games. Taking care to chew his Cheetos softly so as to hear more clearly, he watched intently.
“An exciting night for football fans, unless of course you live in Detroit!” The commentator on the screen was laughing. “We’ll get to the highlights in a moment. But first, a highlight from tonight’s Raptors-Suns game!”
Jonas sat up quickly, disturbing Arvydas, who hopped off the coach and skittered away. They never aired Raptors highlights, though he had a feeling he knew what they were going to show.
Sure enough, before his eyes, were the images of himself getting brutally dunked on by Archie Goodwin. The commentator was laughing again.
“Haha, wow, look at him cowering! We gotta see some more angles on that, show them all!”
As the screen displayed a new angle of Valanciunas’ victimization, the real version changed the channel. He would return in a few minutes. However, to his dismay, he found that ESPN2 was also showing the posterization. He went up another channel; MTV was unlikely to have anything he wanted to view, but at least he wouldn’t be featured. But there Archie was again, splayed in full flight as he slammed the ball on Jonas’ head.
His snacks and booze forgotten, he mashed the remote. It was no use. No matter what the channel, all it wanted to show was the dunk, over and over, without pause or reprieve.
In a last, desperate action, he tried to turn the TV off. Attempting this seemed only to freeze the screen in a loop of dunking. None of the buttons on the remote had any effect anymore. Jonas unwrapped himself from his blanket and threw it over the TV. Mercifully, the images were blocked, but the sound continued unabated.
Jonas got up from the coach, went to his bedroom, and closed the door. He could still hear the noise emanating from the living room. Putting his pillow over his head, he tried to fall into an uneasy sleep. But now, even his eyelids displayed the scene.