Kaitlin Witcher sighed and pushed the keyboard away. She was finally finished with her Life is Strange let's play series, and, at this point, was just glad to be done with it. Kaitlin was a mildly popular Youtuber, with almost half a million subscribers. Though, lately, she was finding herself struggling to keep up with views and audience retention. Even with nearly 500,000 subscribers, her latest videos could hardly crack 10,000 views.
Kate frowned, staring again into the familiar main menu screen of Life is Strange. It was the latest game all of the biggest let's players on Youtube were doing. She had thought perhaps getting into let's plays would help her channel become relevant again, but, to her disappointment, Life is Strange hadn't gone well for her at all. Her new foray into let's plays failed to garner the sort of views and relevance she'd hoped for. Even her longtime fans complained in the comments section that they didn't like the series and didn't want to see her play video games.
She scoffed now, thinking of the comment section. Sometimes it seemed like all her fans were just a bunch of pervs who wanted to see her prance around showing cleavage, acting cutesy and ditsy like all the other girls on Youtube. Kaitlin really didn't want to resort to that kind of content, though. And she was also criticized for playing the game in an atypical way.
Life is Strange was a game of choices, where the player would affect the outcome of the game through the decisions she made. The story in the game followed a protagonist named Maxine Caulfield: a young art school student who discovers she has the power to rewind time, along with dealing with the typical stresses of adolescent girlhood. Max rekindles a friendship with her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, who she'd been estranged from for the last five years. But Chloe has changed a lot since the last time they met, Max discovers – now she's a tall, pretty punk girl with tattoos and piercings and a rebellious attitude.
The game mostly revolves around the relationship between Max and Chloe, and, the player can decide whether or not Max and Chloe's friendship blossoms into romance. Or, the player can choose to romance the male character, Warren. Romancing Chloe is the most popular choice, for obvious reasons. But Kate just wasn't comfortable with that sort of thing. She didn't understand why so many people were mad at her for choosing Warren over Chloe. Wasn't the point of this game to make your own decisions? Kaitlin was a good Christian girl and wasn't so comfortable with... lesbian stuff. It's not that she was hateful or intolerant or anything like that. But she was a straight girl, so why should she be pressured into romancing another girl in some dumb game if she wasn't comfortable with it?
Kate shook her head and clicked "exit" on the menu screen to close the application for good and hopefully never think about this stupid game again. So let's plays are a bust. She sighed again. Maybe I should be more click-baity. As she sat in front of her PC screen, she began concocting an elaborate made-up story in her head about a homeless man masturbating in front of her at the gym. Yeah, she thought, That's good. I'll just do fake click-bait stories for views. Click-bait storytime videos weren't exactly dignified either, but it was better than the future she was now so afraid to think of: a place in time where she was totally irrelevant online, pushing thirty with no real skills, education, or job experience, and with it all, the threat of dying alone looming ever closer.
Invasive thoughts like that could eat away at her. So often she would lie awake at night for hours, dreading the future, afraid of getting older, afraid of her own life passing her by... her looks drying up, her prime reproductive years long behind her, barren-wombed and childless, and Skyler long gone with a younger, prettier girl. She was twenty-six now. She certainly wouldn't be young forever. And she had never worked at a real job a day in her life.
It was straight from high school to wannabe social media star. What was she gonna put on a resume anyway if she ever had to get a real job? "I played Life is Strange online, barely got any views, and romanced the wrong person the entire time?" She would be laughed out of even Wal-Mart or McDonalds with those kinds of credentials. The future scared her so much lately. Maybe all this Internet crap had been a colossal waste of time. Maybe she should have taken some time instead to have that family she used to dream about when she was younger.
Sometimes she wondered if her cat-babies were really proper substitutes for love and motherhood, or if she was just a crazy person cradling wild, soulless animals like infants and telling herself over and over again that "everything is normal", all while screaming at the top of her lungs internally, like some kind of schizophrenic Buddhist monk broken beneath the weight and mental strain of a mantra so clearly full of shit. Everything was not normal.
And life really was strange sometimes.
Kaitlin looked again at the icon for Life is Strange on her desktop. You and me both, Max, she thought to herself. And she thought for a moment what Max would be doing now after the game had ended. Since Kate chose to sacrifice Chloe, Max would probably still be mourning the loss of her best friend – friend, and absolutely nothing more! At least now that Chloe was dead, there wouldn't be anymore threat of lesbian stuff happening. Maybe it wasn't such a bad game then. Kaitlin smiled to herself. Yeah, it had been pretty fun overall. Eventually she decided to stop sulking about her views and future and lesbian stuff and headed to the kitchen for a quick late night snack.
The apartment was especially lonely at this time of night. Because of Kate's odd Internet celebrity lifestyle, she wasn't on a normal sleeping schedule. Most people had to get up for work or school early in the morning and slept through the night, like human-beings are supposed to. But since Kate had no real responsibilities or place to be, it was quite common for her to stay up til 4 in the morning playing video games and fooling around online. But it was just her in the apartment now, and the nights were quite lonely. Her two previous roommates had left her recently out of pure fear of being associated with her.
The stalkers scared them all away. As a Youtube storytimer, Kate had an endless parade of "stalkers" who wanted to rape her or something. In reality, Kate really was regularly stalked by overzealous, usually over-weight, "fans" of her Youtube videos. The term "fans" is used loosely here, because her Internet following was mostly made up of middle-aged perverts and potential serial rapists; the prototypical "creepy loner" types who end up on FBI watchlists and are virgins well into their 30s. She understood early on that normal people with social lives, hobbies and families wouldn't spend even one minute of their lives watching an over-grown teenage girl stammer incoherently to a webcam about yoga and cats, and that if she was ever going to attract an audience online, she needed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of society. And, for a while, that worked. She made money. She had a career.
But as a result of her bad decisions, everyone in her life ended up being driven away when they realized she was tantamount to a living masturbatory aid for a legion of out-of-shape weirdos and adult comic book fans. The day Skyler came to her and said "I think we need to take a break for a while" was the day Kaitlin truly knew she would die alone.
So, in short, the apartment was especially lonely at this time of night.
When Kate got to the kitchen, she went into the fridge and took out a can of Dr. Pepper. She had promised herself she would kick the habit and try to lose some weight, but that damn Life is Strange game and all that lesbian stuff had her seriously stressed out right now.
She was 130 now and really wanted to get down to 120, as per her New Years resolution, but just couldn't stop stress drinking six-packs of Dr. Pepper two at a time. So she cracked open the soda can, chugged it all in one gulp, and then laid down on the kitchen floor and began sobbing. It was a stormy night, at least. Rain was falling hard against the window, and there were loud cracks of thunder outside, so she could cry as loud as she wanted without worrying about the neighbors hearing and thinking she was being almost raped or almost kidnapped by one of her stalkers again and calling the police.
What was she going to do, really? It was all hitting her again, and Dr. Pepper wasn't helping at all. No, the doctor she probably needed was in a white coat somewhere in a big building with bars on the windows. She had no idea what she would do now. This Internet thing wasn't working out, and now everybody hated her just because she wouldn't lez out in a video game! I'm a Christian, dammit, she told herself. I can't do stuff like that! It's impure!
For a moment, she wished she could rewind time like Max and go back to her early 20's and start over. Because she had fucked this up royally, she figured, and time was running out. All she could do now was cry and drink Dr. Pepper, and wait for the storm to pass. And what about tomorrow? And the next day? Was she going to be 35, still making clickbait on Youtube for less than minimum wage? What about when she was 40? Maybe being an Internet celebrity wasn't a real career after all. When she was in her early 20's, it was almost like there was no future at all.
Growing up was only something that happened in movies and J.D Salinger novels. But not her, no way. Such a big part of her had believed she would always be 22, and she'd just be a cute little girl Youtuber forever, doing yoga poses showing off her butt, and making up fake storytime videos denigrating the reputation of the homeless. But now, at 26, turning 30 seemed perfectly possible. And turning 40. And 50. And being really old. And dying. Fuck.
She started breathing really hard, and could feel a panic attack coming on. Not now, Kate, not now... her hand was shaking as she tried to take a sip from her 2nd Dr. Pepper of the night, 5th of the overall 24-hour period... not now, come on Kate, no one's here, don't have a panic attack... your cat can't dial 911 for you. Then suddenly there was loud crack from the other room. It was so loud it shook the entire apartment.
"What the heck!?" Kate said out loud and jumped up and ran to her bedroom where the sound came from. Her heart was racing now. But at least the newfound adrenaline was keeping the panic attack at bay.
When she got to her room, it was all filled with smoke, and she could see that the window was shattered and rain was pouring through. Did lightening strike my window!? And all over the room, there were pieces of something... she looked around at the mess on the floor... what...?... circuits, and plastic parts, tempered glass, shattered... part of a motherboard. Her heart dropped.
"My computer!" Kate shouted. Now her heart was really racing. That computer was her whole life! How was she going to play video games and surf the Internet now!? She could feel the panic attack taking over her. But then she saw something else, something even stranger, as the smoke began to clear. In the wreckage of the shattered computer, there was a figure... like a person... no it definitely was a person. Had one of her stalkers broken into her house and finally come to kill her?
No... she squinted at the figure... it was a girl. And now the smoke had fully cleared, and Kate could see the girl plain as day. She was lying on the floor, looking confused, rubbing her head. She had blue hair, tattoos on her arm, a black beanie... Kate's heart dropped. No... it couldn't be.
"Where am I?" the girl asked groggily.
And the voice was exactly the same. Kate's jaw dropped. It was undoubtedly Chloe, from Life is Strange. Or some kind of real life version of her. No, it wasn't video game computerized model at all, but more like the best real life Chloe Price cosplayer in the world: a real human who looked exactly like that video game character!
And that's when Kate couldn't fight off the panic attack anymore. Only this time it fully consumed her. Total darkness took over her vision, and she fell to the floor.