Chapter Text
Christine rolled over in her bed. She blinked. It was still too early to be awake, judging by the light filtering in. And by light, she meant absolutely no light at all.
It was hard to sleep these days, though, so Christine slipped out of bed and looked for something to wear.
Her old childhood bedroom made her feel like she was back in the circus, sometimes. Of course, they looked nothing alike, but the juvenalian feeling of it sent her right back into Caine’s clutches. Metaphorically.
Christine reached to the bottom of the suitcase, finding a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt she’d found in the men’s section of Goodwill.
She padded into the kitchen, sliding a bag of chicken nuggets out of the freezer and carefully microwaving them.
3 AM was far too early to be making any food at all, much less chicken nuggets, and she did not want her mom to wake and discover her.
Christine took them out just a second before the microwave went off. The fridge creaked, then blinded her. Why the light had a delay, she would never know. Blinking, she looked for the ketchup.
“Fuck,” she mutterted under her breath. “How does Mom have no ketchup?” She shifted bottles of sauerkraut and avocado-based mayonnaise around until she finally resigned to plain chicken nuggets.
She missed her apartment. Long since cleaned and rented out again by her landlord, she wasn’t going to see it again. At least they’d been able to locate the suitcase of her things at the police station.
But still, she couldn’t wait to be on her own again. Her mom was nice, but Christine hated feeling like a burden. She first had to get a job, and then find an apartment.
It was exhausting, starting the whole process over when she was still reeling from the circus. With no one to understand what she’d been through, Christine had been keeping it all bottled in.
She wished she could talk to Kinger again. His voice had always been so soothing, his presence steady.
Christine sighed. She’d take anyone, actually. Even Jax. She hoped he was alright.
She sat under the starlight until her mom came down the hall, placed a kettle on the stove, and kissed the top of her head like she was still a kid.
“You’re up early.”
Christine hummed an acknowledgement.
“Black tea?”
“That’s fine.” Christine preferred coffee, but her mom didn’t have any.
“So,” her mom started, busying herself with mugs. “Hows the job hunt going?”
“Normal, I guess. I was going to apply around some more after breakfast.”
“Oh, that’s good! Anything interesting?”
“Not really.”
Her mom exhaled, finally turning around to rest her elbows on the table.
“Chris, you’re so quiet. Are you sure you don’t want to go see a--”
“No! I’m not going to see anyone. I’m fine.” They’d had this conversation too many times. Her mom wasn’t going to understand; no therapist could help a trauma that didn’t exist. At least according the the government.
The kettle screamed. Her mom didn’t say anything as she handed her a steaming mug.
Christine clicked through her applications. No word from anyone. Why was work so hard to find?
She’d do this later.
Christine opened a new tab on her computer and paused. There was always something she had been curious about. When she’d stepped into that abandoned building and put the headset on, she’d been livestreaming, like always. What did the video show, and when had it stopped?
She clicked on Youtube, letting her browser auto fill her username and password. It was surreal that something had remained the same after all that had happened.
Christine clicked on her profile--and blinked. There was some sort of glitch saying that she had way more subscribers than she actually did.
She refreshed the page. Nothing changed. She clicked on the number. It…it didn’t make sense. To her recollection, she had maybe a little over 20 subscribers. Now the number reads 907k. That couldn’t be right. She hadn’t even posted anything. Christine’s eyes flicked to the latest video.
“What,” she said. “That’s not right. “
39 million views.
The video looked right, the cover image was a shot of that old office building, the title reading the date she’d explored it and the model of her phone.
Christine pulled up her channel on her phone. Everything was the same.
She clicked on her most recent video and scrolled to the comments.
She hadn’t even gotten a comment before.
2:14 this is fucking terryfing, one read.
does anyone else feel like the video gets more and more shaky?
people who think that that was a ghost are idiots. That’s a human scream. 12:01
did they find the body??
Christine nearly dropped her phone at that one. What? Whose body?
Christine finally watched the video. It started like she remembered--her own shitty intro, walking into the building, climbing floors until she found the headset. And then ominously, she’d set the phone face down to put the goddamn head set on.
It was strange to hear her own words again: “Why can’t I get this thing off?!”
And suddenly, at the end of the video, was a scream. It had become increasingly clear that the body the comments were talking about was hers.
Christine started to read the comments again, this time sorting from Top-down.
I used to live near here, there were at least four other missing person cases involving that forest.
People are overreacting. Probably a homeless man was living there and got freaked out.
This would make a great creepypasta. EDIT: Thanks for all the likes!!! I’ve never had a comment get this many
This clip is truly haunting, but not in a ghost way, but in a sad, unexplainable way.
Christine took a deep breath and searched her name on the web. She was immediately barraged with twitter posts, news articles, and even memes.
She frowned, navigated back to her Youtube page, and clicked on her “stats “ tab.
It looked like her channel had suddenly gained traction in one of the winter months, only a couple of months before the present day.
She set her search to those parameters, and tried again.
This time the name of a popular true crime podcast popped up, under an episode titled “youtuber films disappearance…yet no sign of where she went…”
Christine stared at that last, foreboding ellipsis.
It was unbelievable. What were all those subscribers waiting for? A miracle?
It was in Christine’s hands. She could give closure to nearly a million people who clearly didn’t know that her case was closed.
A thought struck her.
If she posted another video, millions of people would see it. And what better way to get her dearest wish? To have countless eyes and ears spreading her message, looking for her friends? It would be so simple.
Her thumb hovered over the read livestream button.
She inhaled. Exhaled. And slammed her thumb down.
Liam scrolled idly through his phone. A video caught his eye--not one he’d normally watch--because its title was intriguing. Hi, I’m not actually dead.
The cover image was shitty; a girl talked into the camera. It was a far cry from the shooter video game playthroughs he normally watched.
He clicked on it anyway.
The girl spoke. Liam didn’t register a word she said.
He knew that voice.