“Marcus. Age 34. Unemployed. Divorced. You watch other people suffer because it makes your own quiet apartment feel less like a trap. Tonight, you’re not watching.”
The hallway mirror showed his reflection—except his reflection wasn’t moving. It stared back, head tilted, smiling with a mouth that was just a little too wide. In its hand, it held the DVD remote.
Welcome to the game. No rewind. No main menu. No exit. saw 5 dvd menu
It wasn't the film that haunted Marcus. It was the menu.
His finger froze over the remote. Just a glitch. Piracy copy. Bootleg art project. “Marcus
From the TV, the voice continued:
“To play the movie, first become a scene.” Divorced
The tray didn’t open.
It was a static shot of a rusted, blood-smeared room—the meatpacking plant from the film’s climax, he guessed. But the camera didn’t pan. The iconic, choppy theme didn’t play. Instead, a single, slow drip of water echoed every eleven seconds. In the center of the screen, five options glowed in sickly green: SCENE SELECTION SET UP BEHIND THE SCENES EXTRAS Marcus selected PLAY MOVIE .
He’d bought the Saw V DVD from a discount bin at a gas station—shrink-wrapped, but the plastic felt greasy and old. The cover art was smeared, like it had been printed, left in the sun, and reprinted wrong. But it was two bucks, and he needed something mindless to drown out the silence of his new, too-empty apartment.