1
I lie in bed, editing my Twitch bio on my phone:
half-Japanese, half-elf | she/her | part-time witch | full-time streamer | total screwup somebody kill me plz
I delete that last part even though it’s how I feel all day every day. My bio now ends with “full-time streamer,” which feels like a lie since I don’t stream anymore, but I remind myself that’s still who I am—well, was—before I ruined everyone’s lives three months ago.
My phone vibrates.
Brianna: hey viv!! holding up ok??
I reply: i’m ok :)) you???
Brianna: good!!!
The three dots tell me she’s still typing. I hope she’s just sending a SpongeBob meme or something funny, nothing that engages with the fact that school starts on Monday.
Brianna: sooo just wanted to throw it out there—Mason’s throwing a party tonight to celebrate the last weekend before senior year. you’re totally welcome to come!!!! no pressure, but I MISS YOU GIRL
My stomach sinks. The old me would’ve loved to go. But a party at Mason’s means everyone will be there. And since it’s the Saturday before school, it’ll be a rager.
I start to type: idk I think I’m getting the flu because it’s easier to lie than admit that I just don’t want to go, then I mash the delete button. Why not go?
Because it would mean putting on pants and brushing my hair, and those two things combined would be harder than beating a Dark Souls boss with my real-life bare hands. Plus, everyone will pity me, and I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. That’s the worst part of it all: No one—not my parents, not even Bri—knows I’m the one to blame for what happened in June. I was never super popular, but before all this happened, I at least had my thing: I was the Horror Gamer Girl. Now I’m just the girl who suffered a horrible loss. If I go to Mason’s, I’ll be the embodiment of a party pooper. #tragedy.
I reply: idk. i’ll think about it
Instantly, I feel bad for letting Bri down. She’s been so supportive during this time—coming to feed me, sending me funny memes, checking in constantly—and I have no idea what’s going on in her life anymore. The Friday before that terrible day in June, we played Magic: The Gathering Arena, and she gave me all the spicy details about how she and Eric finally went to bonetown. For the past three months, I’ve been a miserable slug she checks up on, and I’m sure it’s getting annoying. I’m even annoyed with me. I send a few smiley emojis just to show that maybe there is some hope.
Brianna: ok!!!
Brianna: have you thought about streaming at all?
Brianna: or we could just hang out and play magic again!!
Brianna: but maybe streaming something would be good for you?? you
know, jump back on that virtual horse
I send a “love” reaction to all of her texts. Of course I’ve thought about my return to streaming. It’s the only thing on my mind other than my guilt. But I don’t know if I have it in me to put on the performance, and even if I could prop myself in front of the camera and laugh and act like everything’s fine—what would I play? It would need to be a new game. Something fresh. Something that screams Hello, I’m Back and Worth Your Time. Instead of a party, maybe that’s what I need the weekend before school: a new horror game. If I can bring my channel back to life, maybe I can start getting out of bed before noon and live with myself.
I sit up and scroll through my email. I used to get messages all the time from viewers asking me to play the obscure indie they’d programmed in their basement. The creator always appreciates the free marketing, and the niche indie games make my channel different from the million League of Legends streamers. Maybe there’s a gem lingering in all my unread emails, something scary and perfect for my return to Twitch.
There’s a link to a hentai game. Some 2D fruit-collecting game. Another sex game. A game that’s basically the poor man’s Baldur’s Gate 3. A subject line that says PLAY THIS GAME NOW!!! IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!!! It’s been sent dozens—no, fifty-four—times from the same spam email: [email protected]. My thumb hovers over the message. There’s something appealing about the shameless desperation of the subject line. I figure it’s fifty-fifty chance that it’s actually an intriguing game instead of a virus. Before I can overthink it, I open the email. Over a black background, it reads:
Introducing LOCKED IN: An Escape Room Horror Game! Play only if you dare to face your darkest fears!!!
The game’s cover
art shows a cartoon girl crouched in a hallway corner, her eyelids and mouth sewn shut. Totally my vibe. I click the link to the website, chewing my thumbnail as the page loads. A few comments on the site call the game “edgy and scary” and “claustrophobic,” possibly left by the programmer themself. True or not, edgy and claustrophobic are my jam. And even if the game sucks, I can just rip on it with my fans, like I’m the gamer version of Tom Servo in an MST3K episode.
I glance at the lighting, webcam, and mic setup at my desk, all of which have grown dusty. I’ve been gaming during my grieving period, but offline and on my laptop in bed. The Sims. Skyrim. New Vegas. The comfort foods of gaming. I walk to my desk and wiggle the mouse. Once the screen comes to life, I load the LOCKED IN website. The Download for Free button stares back at me. The home page’s piano number plays through my speakers, a soft melodic tune. A little girl hums in the background.
Could this be it? My return to the screen? My return to what makes me me?
Excitement tingles down my limbs to my fingers, a feeling I haven’t experienced in months. I slide into the hot pink ergonomic gaming chair I bought with my own Twitch paycheck after I broke 30,000 followers and 100 paid subscribers. I stretch my neck side to side, then click the download button. I’ll do a practice run now, then maybe—if I can really go through with it—I’ll start streaming once I have all the functions figured out.
The opening menu loads. The game options are written in the same cheesy red font as the email, and the soft piano number with the humming girl plays once more. It’s so cliché, but hey, creepy little girls are scary. I click New Game. My avatar spawns in a narrow hallway, the windows boarded up, the yellow floral wallpaper peeling off the walls. The graphics are surprisingly high-quality and realistic. Something jagged is protruding out of the wallpaper. I zoom in closer. Fingernails—broken and bloody. Love it.
The hallway continues into darkness, too dark for me to see what’s ahead. I hit Tab to increase the gamma, but a
flashlight flickers to life in my avatar’s hand, illuminating the long stretch of hallway that ends in a stairwell. I turn to my left. Another long stretch of hallway. Creeaak. I whip the camera toward the noise. A figure dressed in dark robes steps out of a room and ascends the stairs so quickly I don’t get a good look at them. I move in that direction, but the journal log opens, stopping me in place.
I read the message aloud, practicing my delivery for an imaginary Twitch audience.
You are a reporter investigating rumors of malevolent spirits in an abandoned apartment complex. The way you entered has been sealed shut. Your presence has awoken something in the building that does not want you to leave alive.
Hide. Run. Escape.
“You hear that, guys?” I say to my pretend viewers. “Trapped in a haunted building. Nothing we haven’t handled before.” I used to feel awkward talking to myself like this, but now I can’t game at all without imagining a streamer script, which is good. It’s kept me from getting too rusty.
A message appears in the right corner: Find Batteries.
The flashlight flickers, its beam of light narrowing. I enter the nearest room. A torn rug covers the wooden floor. A cracked TV hangs from the wall. Nothing’s glowing or blinking to tell me it’s an important object, and that’s how I like my games: no hand-holding. I open the kitchen drawers.
You find nothing.
I search the pile of junk on the table.
You find nothing.
The flashlight flickers more aggressively, going out for three seconds before coming back to life with a shake. I head for the bedroom and open the dresser.
You find nothing.
Oh, come on. But I have to admit, I respect a game that doesn’t give everything to me too easily. I search the nightstand.
Batteries added to inventory.
Finally. I drag the batteries over to the flashlight and the beam shines brighter. I turn around and jolt—a girl in a white nightie crouches in the upper right corner of the room in full crab pose: back arched, crawling upside down. She scutters up the wall and across the ceiling, disappearing into the closet, giggling. Hardly original, but effective. I shake the spookies off and head back out to the hallway.
The nice thing about streaming is that it’s not like I’m playing alone. These kinds of games are always waaay scarier offline. But I’m into it. Being on edge like this makes me feel more alive than I have in months. Besides, when I get really creeped out by a game, I take Bakugo out of his tank to keep me company.
I slide my gaming chair over to the dresser, where Bakugo lounges on
the heated rock in his glass tank. He’s a ghost boa, his scales a light milky gray. Mom pitched a fit when I told her I was getting him, but I bought him with my own money, and since he stays in my room all the time, she never even has to acknowledge his existence.
I place Bakugo on my shoulder, and he slithers beneath my hair into a loop around my neck, his scales cool and comforting. Now I’m ready to dig deep into this game. There are three other doors on this floor. Two are cobwebbed and the other is riddled with claw marks, like a bear tried to slash its way through. Obviously, that’s the winner. I enter the room. The door clicks shut on its own behind me. I turn around to open it again, but the knob only rattles. Locked. Cool, something important is definitely here. A puzzle I have to solve.
I pan my camera across the room. A grandfather clock ticks in the corner. The flashlight illuminates an old, sagging couch marred with blotchy rust-colored stains. A painting of an older woman hangs on the wall, her hands folded, a feathery hat on her head. Of course her eyes follow me as I turn to the right.
The metronomic beats of the grandfather clock start going faster, filling my speakers with a rapid tick, tick, tick. I try clicking on the clock, but nothing happens. I step back and look around the room again. Bakugo’s coil tightens around my neck. Someone is sitting on the couch now. They’re dressed in black robes. Beady orange eyes stare back at me from beneath the dark cloak. Hello, creepy.
I don’t have any weapons, so combat wouldn’t be ideal. I imagine I’m streaming and ask my viewers what I should do next. The chat would suggest I “go into sneak mode,” “turn the flashlight off,” “just fight the NPC you noob!!!”
Direct confrontation it is. I do a quick save. Worst-case scenario: I die and reload. I don’t even pretend to be one of those pretentious anti-save scummers. I click on the NPC. It stands slowly, using the couch to lift itself up like its joints ache. Surprisingly realistic animation for a budget indie game. The NPC takes a couple jarring, quick steps toward me. A text box appears: To escape the room, you must tell me a secret.
A secret? I wonder how that works—like, if the program scans what I type for certain key phrases, or maybe it doesn’t matter at
“Oooh guys, you hear that?” I say to my imagined streamer audience. “It wants a seeecret.”
A dark secret.
“Oooh, hear that, guys?” I follow up with my imagined audience. “A daaaark secret.” But I have to admit, the words “dark secret” spike my pulse. Of course, that day in June is the first thing that comes to mind. But telling this NPC my darkest secret is insane—right? I try to walk to the other side of the room to see if there’s another way out, but my character is frozen in place. I could log out, but I’ve never given up so easily on a game. I start to type out some nonsense about how I once saw my mom making out with the neighbor next door—a total lie but it seems dark-secrety enough. I hit Enter.
Darker.
I roll my eyes.
And true.
Okay, that’s creepy. And nice props to the creator. They must’ve assumed everyone would make up some BS on their first input. I write the one-sentence summary of what happened in June, then reach for the backspace. I hesitate.
Why not hit Send?
I downloaded this game. It’s completely offline. No one’s ever going to see these words other than me. Typing out the truth would almost be like talking about it to someone. This NPC can be my therapy bot, and maybe I do need to talk about what happened, since the only form of therapy I had was with the grief counselor that my parents and I had a handful of sessions with before it got too expensive and who I lied to anyway.
Before I can overthink it, I read the words one more time, then I hit Enter.
I killed my baby sister.
Tell me more.
2
After word-vomiting out eight paragraphs detailing the steps leading up to Riley’s death that day and all the unspeakable things I did, I hit Enter and scoot back from the desk, blowing my nose and wiping my eyes. I toss the tissue onto the overflowing trash can of Kleenex. The NPC still hasn’t responded, which I find extremely anticlimactic for baring my soul and admitting I’m the worst person alive. I unloop Bakugo from my neck and gently place him back in his tank. Finally, the NPC replies.
You may pass.
Wow. So cool. But I guess that’s what I get for confessing my darkest secret to a cheap program. The NPC gestures toward a new door that’s formed in the wall, but I’m too drained to keep playing now. I close the game, collapse onto my bed, and sob into my pillow, but something is different.
For the first time since Riley died, I finally told the truth about what happened. Sure, it might’ve been typed out in a game, but I’ve put the horrible event into words instead of just replaying it over and over and over in my mind. I feel lighter, like a few pounds from the anvil of guilt crushing my chest have been shaved off.
I fall into a deep post-cry nap, and when I wake, I have a new text from Bri.
just got to Mason’s! it would totally make my day if you showed up!!!
I drink a glass of water. You can do this, you can do this, you can do this. I dribble a couple Visine drops into my eyes, then I reply to Bri: on my way!
***
Blue hair requires a dedicated care routine that’s hard enough to upkeep even in the best circumstances—throw in the loss of will to live, and you get a matted greenish-gray-hag-witch look. I sit in my car outside Mason’s house, plucking at my crispy swamp-creature locks in the rearview mirror. There’s no salvaging this. I take a black beanie out of my purse, pull it over my head, and pray my thick dark eyeliner is enough to make me look decent.
I get out of my old Honda Civic and stand on the driveway, looking up at Mason’s three-story lake house. Cool air blows off the water behind the house, the evening sunset glinting off the home’s many windows. Mason’s dad is the big real estate agent in town, so he owns, like, everything from the gas station to the apartments we lived in before Dad’s HVAC business got off the ground. Must be nice.
I text Brianna: here!!!
She’d offered to pick me up when I said I was coming, but I wanted to drive myself in case I need to bail. I step forward, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans, which feel too loose since I lost my appetite after Riley’s death and my subsequent bedridden days. I walk across the lawn, my hips and back aching. These might be the most steps I’ve taken in weeks. Honestly, I’m lucky I don’t have bed sores.
I cross the side of the house, and there are at least fifteen of my classmates hanging out on the dock, shouting and laughing. My pulse increases at the sight of other humans. I’ve only been isolated in my room for eleven weeks, but it feels like an eternity. Will I remember how to make small talk? Or how to act normal? Probably not, because I’m not normal anymore: I’m a baby killer—actually a toddler killer since Riley was almost three—and everyone else is still a nice, plain Midwestern teenager.
The boys whistle and cheer as a girl in a red bikini—it must be Lauren Miller with that platinum bleached hair—swings from a rope on a tree and splashes into the water. A couple more volleyball players leap from the rope into the lake, ...
all. I can just mash the keyboard.
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