I brought the player home and hooked it up to my TV set. I tossed the manual aside and looked at the remote. It seemed to have a lot more buttons than was usual, but all the main DVD functions were ergonomically clustered together within easy reach of a questing thumb.

I flipped up the dust cover over the loading slot and was reaching to peel off a bit of plastic protective tape over the logo, when my fingers slipped through the slot. They shouldn’t have been able to do that, the slot was less than half as thick as my fat fingers, but they went in anyway. And I couldn’t pull them back out.

Then I heard the whir of the DVD player’s loading mechanism, and it started pulling my arm in. There was no pain or pinching; it just felt as if someone very strong had taken hold of my hand and was pulling me through a hole. I tried to brace myself against the TV set, but it was no use—the DVD player was stronger than I was. Before I knew it, it was up to my shoulder, then it pulled the rest of my body in after it.