“Eat it”

The expression “Eat it” is the Trawler’s repeated command in the recording of Matt Kellner’s final night, a phrase that transforms an initially indistinct voice into the audible instrument of Matt’s torture. Its force lies in how it returns: as a taunt, an order to consume a living fish, and a refrain that continues while Matt pleads for the mask to be removed. Heard by Bret Ellis on a Maxell cassette, the command makes the recording’s shifting sounds—notably the wind, waves, fire, and Matt’s crying—part of a gradual, increasingly unmistakable revelation.

From indistinct sound to command

The tape begins without a song. Bret hears a buzz, then recorded wind, distant waves, and the muted crackle of a fire. A voice emerges so faintly that he first thinks it says “See it … see it …”; listening more carefully on a Walkman, he recognizes the words as “Eat it … eat it …” The change is small in sound but decisive in meaning: what could have been an obscure fragment of a recording becomes an instruction directed at someone in distress.

The command is delivered in a deliberately false, monstrous voice: a man mimics an exaggerated crone, making the words sound grotesque and theatrical. The performance does not make the scene feel safely staged. The other voice resists through weeping and strained speech, saying that he does not want to eat, while the commanding voice repeats the order and praises him after he complies. The difference between the voices—one performed as a Halloween monster, the other frightened and weakened—turns the phrase into an assertion of control.

What the recording reveals

At first Bret wonders whether the sounds belong to actors following a script. As the frightened voice asks what the lights are and begs for the mask to be taken off, that explanation becomes harder to maintain. The boy says he is cold and scared; the voice answers by repeating the command. After a retching sound and coughing, the boy apologizes and pleads again. Bret concludes that the fear is genuine, not a joke or an acted performance, and recognizes that the recording documents an actual ordeal.

The command also identifies what Matt is being forced to eat. During a long silence, Bret hears the crackling fire, surf, and wind around Matt’s crying, and realizes that the food is fish from Matt Kellner’s aquarium. The phrase thus connects a concrete missing object to the sounds of captivity: the fish are not merely an unexplained detail of the aquarium’s disappearance but part of the recorded abuse. Matt says that the fish is still alive, yet the voice insists, “EAT IT!” and the microphone captures him chewing.

Repetition, humiliation, and helplessness

“Eat it” recurs for twenty minutes as Matt becomes increasingly disoriented under a massive amount of lysergic acid diethylamide. The repeated order does not advance through negotiation; it traps the recording in a cycle of command and submission. Matt’s speech grows childlike, and he continues asking for the mask to be removed while the unseen speaker keeps telling him to eat. The command’s repetition makes the scene’s power imbalance audible: the person giving orders controls the sequence, while Matt’s fear and confusion do not change what happens next.

The recording’s soundscape gives the phrase an unstable setting. Wind dominates the speakers; the waves and fire establish a beachside scene without identifying it. Later, “Year of the Cat” begins, and the same voice turns from ordering Matt to eat to questioning him about sexual acts. Matt cries rather than answering. When the recording shifts to music and slapping sounds, Bret understands that the tape has not presented a staged horror but a record of Matt being subjected to escalating abuse. The command belongs to that larger pattern of degradation, even as it remains the sound Bret first recognizes and cannot evade.

The phrase as evidence and narrative turn

The scene unfolds through delayed recognition. Bret initially mistakes the words, then questions whether the exchange is scripted, and only gradually identifies Matt and the aquarium fish. Each correction narrows the distance between an eerie soundscape and a specific crime. “Eat it” is therefore more than a line in the tape: it is the point at which the recording’s atmosphere becomes legible as violence and its obscured victim becomes Matt.

The phrase also marks a reversal in Bret’s way of hearing. Earlier, at a video space, he had responded to an incident by imagining how to make it darker and more frightening for a novel. Here, confronted with Matt’s recorded crying and the command to eat, he recognizes that the horror is real and becomes more afraid than he has ever been. The words he hears are not an invitation to fictionalize an event but evidence he must endure without looking away. Their plainness makes them chilling: the command is repeated, Matt keeps pleading, and the recording offers no sign that anyone will answer him.