Splatterpunk's Not Dead Page 6

  “Nope. Yer not allowed to play outside of your cage, buddy.” She says, not to us but to the small land crab.

  “Well, that’s Pablo. I feed him pellet food I order online, mostly. But occasionally I’ll chop him up some fresh vegetables or give him some peanut butter. But that’s just on special occasions. Right, Pablo?”

  “Si.” she says, in Pablo’s voice. The choice of language and accent, coming from this white girl, is... problematic. Then she drops the little critter back into his cage.

  “If you all want to get your own crabs, I’ve linked some good care instructions down in the description. Be sure to check those out, because there’s a lot more to taking care of hermies than just the wire cage they give you at the beach.”

  Deep breath. Here comes the plea.

  “If you want to see more of me or Pablo, please like this video, then hit the subscribe button. I’ll see you here next week and maybe even play you a song, if we hit our goal. Remember: I’m still not sure what this whole thing is, so any suggestions are appreciated.”

  We hit like.

  Then we prepare our comments.

  Uploaded Two Weeks Ago

  Melody doesn’t say anything to kick off her latest video. There’s ten seconds of silence, her staring at the camera with her mouth closed around something.

  The pose is like she’s holding her breath under water, puffing her cheeks out.

  The bruise is still there. Barely. But still there, some slight discoloration that only serves to make Melody look tired, not battered.

  Then she opens her mouth and Pablo crawls out over her tongue and plops into her waiting hands.

  In Melody’s much-improved lighting, his shell glistens. But other than the sheen of spit, Pablo seems none the worse for wear. He cleans off one antenna with his smaller front claw.

  Then Melody begins laughing, an embarrassed but unrestrained outpouring of “can you believe I just did that?”

  Coming from many other YouTubers, the laughter would read as self-conscious and cloying. But on Melody it’s endearing.

  “I watched a video that explains you have fifteen to twenty seconds to capture your audience’s attention.”

  She holds Pablo up to the camera so we can see that, yes, he is indeed okay. Maybe a little bewildered. But it’s hard to read any emotion in his tiny black eyes.

  “Do I have your attention?”

  Yes she does.

  The video then cuts to a bumper. It’s a simple fading in and out of Melody’s name, but when we cut back to her, there’s also an annotation that pops up on the side of the screen imploring us to subscribe. She has come so far, so fast. Learned so much.

  Without her cheeks puffed out to hold her pet inside her mouth, it’s becoming apparent that Melody has lost some weight since posting her first video, two weeks ago. She doesn’t mention it, but we can see that the line where her neck meets her chin is a little sharper.

  Her cheeks are less full, but it looks good on her, accentuates the dimple on her left side. You could lose a penny in that thing.

  We all sigh when she smiles wide enough to flash the dimple. We like her better this way. We’ll tell her so in the comments.

  “I’m sure many of you know by now, but we did reach our subscriber goal, so I’m going to play you a song at the end of this video, but first I wanted to put a question out there: what are your essential dorm room items? I, like, just this morning found out that I’m going to be in freshman housing, in a double, which means that I’m going to have a roommate. I hope she’s cool. So, on my list I’ve already got Christmas lights, collapsible hamper, and flip flops—for the showers.”

  She exhales, inhales. She’s getting better at talking to the camera, but still needs to work on pacing. “But I’m sure that there’s a ton of stuff I’m not thinking of. Leave me a list! Give me some life-hacks!”

  We can all think of a few suggestions.

  We take our eyes off Melody for a moment and look around the frame at what else we can see in her bedroom. There’s a pile of laundry that she maybe doesn’t realize the camera’s picked up, because on top of that pile is a little pink bra.

  “Moving on,” she says, leaving a slightly awkward pause in instead of editing it out, as she seems to have done in her previous two uploads, which are so tight.

  She’s not getting lazy. She’s just allowing herself to appear more human, less processed. We approve.

  “A few of you had noticed that I have a black eye and wanted to know what happened. I guess I’m not as good with makeup as I thought. Or you’re all very perceptive [dimple smile]. But no, nothing scandalous. That’s just what happens sometimes on the court. The volleyball court. I’m not like, being abused or anything. My videos aren’t a cry for help or something. Just want to reach out.”

  Then there is an edit, no pause, and in the next set-up, more zoomed out, Melody has her violin resting under her chin.

  “I read somewhere that videos over six minutes don’t do well. So this is going to have to be a quick song,” she says and begins to play, beginning with a downstroke, a deep sound. There’s a little bit of echo in her bedroom, but she has the camera far enough from the instrument that there’s no feedback.

  We alternate between watching her hands as she plays and watching that pink bra.

  She’s quite talented. The song isn’t mopey, but it’s not joyous either. It’s neutral, fast without being particularly invigorating.

  “That’s all for this week,” she says, ending mid-song, it would seem. She tells us to like and subscribe and share.

  We are left wanting more.

  Uploaded a Week Ago

  “A knife, garbage bags (the heavy-duty kind), condoms (all sizes), a shovel,” she says, reading off a list.

  “You guys are hilarious, but those aren’t the kind of dorm room supplies I was talking about.”

  God, between this week and last week she must’ve lost fifteen pounds.

  The bumper cuts back in after she’s done talking. She’s got this “starting with a hook” thing down to a science. Who wouldn’t want to keep watching?

  Not us.

  She’s rearranged her bedroom. We can no longer see the pile of clothes. Or the bra. She’s moved a bookshelf to the edge of her desk and put Pablo’s cage on top of the shelf, so we can see him in there, clinging to a knotted length of driftwood.

  “Got a lot of comments on last week’s video. Also got a lot of hate for my trick with Pablo. Some people called it animal cruelty. Some called it just plain gross. But you know what I say?”

  No, what do you say?

  “Eff the haters! Efff them right in the ear!”

  It’s like she can hear our applause from the other side of time and the internet, because she pauses to let her bold stand against “teh haterz” sit for a moment.

  Yeah. Eff them. Eff those fucking fucks.

  “But those people are in the minority. So thanks to all my viewers who left me comments of support. And for those of you looking for me to do something bigger and crazier... all I have to say is stay tuned.”

  She almost, almost, said ‘fans’ instead of viewers. The hesitation was microscopic. But we all felt it.

  We detected that wriggling diva larvae. The diva that we’ve planted deep inside the base of Melody’s skull. The diva seed.

  She longs to call us her fans, wants us to tear at the hem of her garment, wants us to tear each other apart but she won’t get it. Not yet. As of this video, we are a united front.

  There’s been no indication as to what the content of this video will be and there’s less than a minute left to it. Hardly time for another song or stupid pet trick. What are you going to show us Melody? Is this even a full episode? A measly two minutes is supposed to be our weekly fix?

  We are unimpressed.

  “Today I...”

  “Today I...”

  It’s like she’s stuck, but then we notice the drip that streaks down below her left nostril. There�
��s a watery red line drawn above her lip. She’s gotten a nose bleed but she doesn’t cut the camera. Instead she covers it with one bent finger, trying to stopper the nostril with a knuckle, and keeps talking.

  “That’s all the time I’ve got for today, check back soon for something really spectacular, keep those comments coming in and make sure that you like and subscribe, if you haven’t already.”

  Before the video ends she gives us viewers a quick wave, not with her free hand but with the one she’s been using to staunch the blood.

  The flow has trickled down, from the knuckle of her pointer finger down so that it drips off the end of her pinky. It’s like she’s made of marble and in the middle of a Roman Fountain, the water pumping from her a dark red.

  Her wave is such a quick motion that the blood forms a fan. The video cuts off right when the spatter peppers the side of her desk, the bookshelf and Pablo’s tank.

  Getting only a two minute video seemed like a rip-off at first. But we’ve watched it, collectively, 5,000 times by this point, a mere three hours after it was uploaded.

  We pay special attention to that last twenty seconds, trying to map out where all the droplets of Melody Bliss will fall.

  Uploaded Just Now

  We’re beginning to suspect Melody may have an eating disorder.

  Or suspect that she takes comments on the internet way too seriously.

  We feel that she’s done what she swore she would never do. She’s let the haterz get the better of her.

  Ironically, she’s grown an immense audience in a short amount of time. We hope that she knows that this type of success is atypical. We’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s not like she has millions of views. She hasn’t gone viral. But it’s fair to say that she’s got a cult audience.

  No, that’s not a pun.

  At the start of this video—freshly uploaded but we all get to it at the same time because we’ve all set up to be sent email alerts whenever Melody Bliss posts a new video—we’re all praying that she gets help. Maybe once she gets to Rutgers, visits their dining hall, she’ll put on the freshman fifteen and all will be right with the world.

  If she pulls out of this tailspin then we’ll have her to internet adore and internet whisper to for many years to come.

  We’ll be with her when she gets a lucrative sponsorship deal or writes a coffee table book or marries a Hollywood star who’s actually famous.

  But then she speaks for the first time in this video and it seems pretty clear that none of those things will come to pass.

  “Hey guys, Melody here. Just a quick video I made about something I’ve been getting asked about and have wanted to talk about.” Her speech is halting, labored even. She’s not annoyed, just tired and unable to concentrate on the words that she’s so clearly reading off her computer monitor. They aren’t good words.

  We’d be able to tell she was reading from the slight, tennis-match back and forth of her eyes, but then she makes it more obvious by squinting at a few words.

  “First, I want to say that I appreciate those of you who’ve reached out to ask if I’m sick,” she coughs, in bold defiance of what she’s about to say: “No. I am not ill, and I am not sick in the head, either. I do not have an eating disorder, but I have been on a diet.”

  She swallows hard, gets wistful. “Summer used to be such a fun time, but I guess this is what growing up’s about because I’m so...” she searches for the word, she’s either going off-book or she’s lost her place.

  “Stressed. I’ve become stressed. I mean, I used to worry about tests, but when I asked for dorm room tips and got to talking to some of you about your college experiences, it got me caught in a kind of cycle.”

  We don’t notice it until now, but the lid is off Pablo’s cage and he doesn’t appear to be inside.

  “I spend all day worrying about every little detail. The future is terrifying y’all.”

  That last bit isn’t a southern-ism, it’s more of a youthful borrowing of urban slang. And it feels like it’s meant as a joke, but we aren’t laughing.

  Oh, Melody. We really did believe in you.

  Maybe it’s not too late, we all think, nearly at the same time, all across the country, the English-speaking globe, really, because Melody even has a small but fierce following in Germany. Who knew? Not Melody, because she doesn’t seem to know how to check her analytics, at least she hasn’t given any indication that she does.

  It’s not too late if we all go into the comments, right now, even before this video is finished, and we all write one nice thing.

  One thing about Melody that makes us happy. Makes us proud to be a part of her community, her subscribers and, yes, her fans.

  You’re the best Melody.

  OMG. Hair’s so cute today!

  There’s some kind of sound. We’re missing action as we type but we must press submit on our new comments.

  More Pablo! Love him!

  The sound again.

  You need closet organizers! They’re lifesavers in a dorm.

  The sound is a smack.

  Can you shoot a vid showing how you do your make-up?

  Fuck you. Kill yourself, slut.

  Oh, we all recoil at the dingus among us who felt the need to write that last comment. We bristle as a collective organism.

  But a few bad apples...

  By the time we all scroll back up after typing out our positivity, Pablo’s on screen.

  Cute little Pablo! If Melody keeps making videos, one of us is going to have to make Pablo his own Twitter account where “he” can share cute memes and aphorisms. We wouldn’t want any money in exchange for doing something like that. We’d just want Melody to acknowledge what a nice gesture it is.

  Pablo looks troubled, he’s crawling across the desk, searching out a place to hide.

  And he finds it in Melody’s hair. Her chestnut curls are so wide and well-kept that Pablo is able to use one of them as an impromptu cave.

  Melody’s hair has fallen across her desk, pushed her keyboard away, apparently bumping the camera to a lower vantage.

  She’s performed a literal headdesk.

  But it’s only once the blood begins to spread, the salty blackness of it chasing Pablo out of his hiding spot so he slips off the desk—we hope to land unharmed on the carpet—that we realize that those smacks we heard were repeated headdesks.

  Putting her face down onto the desk and into a kitchen knife that Melody has held horizontally (not vertically, like would make more sense). The flat of the blade is flush with the particle board of her Ikea desk. The sharp part is embedded in Melody’s forehead.

  It’s sad. And she’s unresponsive, but the thing we all marvel at is: How did she manage to get this video uploaded? There must be a program or function for it that we’ve never heard of. Maybe a Google Chrome extension?

  Amazing. Melody went from a nobody to a seasoned expert in less than one month.

  Oh well. There’s nothing more for us to see here, the video is over, the pool of blood from the gashes in her skull spread as far as it’s going to go.

  The video ends.

  We unsubscribe.

  Abstinence

  Shane McKenzie

  “What are the rules?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “Don’t know what counts and what doesn’t. I mean…I know you’re not supposed to put it, you know, inside of me. Here.” She pointed to the zipper of her jean shorts, felt her face burn red. “But what about other places?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know. Openings.”

  “Openings?”

  “Holes. I don’t think you’re allowed to put it in any holes at all. Or it counts as…”

  An awkward silence hung in the air long enough that Vanessa thought about just forgetting the whole thing. The vibrations in her groin kept her in the closet with him. Her eyes rose from the floor to Brent’s groin. She didn’t mean to stare. Her eyes were supposed to keep elevating until meeting his gaze, but w
hen she saw the bulge, when she made out the shape of the tip, her eyes refused to budge.

  Brent stepped toward her, reached out, but stopped, let his hand fall back to hanging at his side. “Maybe we shouldn’t touch each other. If we don’t touch each other, it can’t count. No matter what we do, it can’t count. Right?”

  Vanessa scratched behind her ear. “But if we don’t touch each other…what’s the point?”

  “Right. Maybe we can touch each other, but we just don’t touch…you know. Down there.”

  She still didn’t see the point, but nodded anyway.

  He took another step toward her, hugged her, but stuck his butt out so his bulge couldn’t make contact with her. She almost reached out and touched it, but stopped herself. If that was the one rule, she was going to follow it.

  They kissed. Long and hard. Both holding their groins uncomfortably away from each other like two dogs they were trying to keep from fighting. Brent’s hand slid up her stomach, paused, then cupped her left breast. Her heart was beating so fast and strong she thought it would rip her shirt and break the bones in his palm.

  “This okay?” he asked, the whispery words flowing into her mouth.

  She nodded as she swallowed them down. Let him squeeze her breast for a few minutes before becoming impatient and pulling her T-shirt over her head. She hoped he’d get the idea and unclasp her bra, but he didn’t. Just went back to cupping and squeezing and kissing.

  She couldn’t blame him. He had never done anything like this before. When he told her that a few months back, she didn’t believe him. How could a boy like Brent be so…innocent? She knew now that he had been telling the truth. She had no more experience than he did, but had seen plenty of steamy scenes in R-rated movies to know what to do. Did a little research on the internet which taught her more about sex than anything she’d been told in school or church.