Well, the fifth month of 2021 was about to end.
It was probably May 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st.
He wasn't keeping track anymore.
It was even more confusing when it was late at night
and he had no idea whether midnight had flown by yet.
...
Clayton cleared his throat.
It was... late.
Yes, it was late in the basement.
His headphones were already off,
and so was his computer,
with its tiny red light blinking silently.
And now, I go to sleep and do it all again
tomorrow.
Clayton reached for the light switch
and froze.
...
His head felt too light.
Like being in an airplane that just took off.
It was strange. He swallowed. Hoped it would go away.
But instead, something that had been building up in his head for a long time
finally made its way to the front of the line
and said notice me.
Clayton noticed.
There was no sudden reaction, no gasp, no scream, no cry.
None of the elements that glued people to his YouTube videos.
Just the silence of a basement
and the silence of the world around it.
Just a few switches flipping in his brain.
...
Notice.
Remember.
...
Clayton noticed that the A/C made its metallic whirring noise.
He noticed that if he strained his ears hard enough,
he could hear his lungs expanding and collapsing.
And he remembered that he had noticed all this eight months before,
when he had climbed up the stairs and closed the door behind him
and he had breathed in the
dark.
Two hundred and fifty days ago.
He chuckled. It's all a big joke.
He forced a smile and pushed air out of his nose.
It never did make sense.
...
The light switch was flicked off after all.
He lay on the couch and pulled up another fanfiction,
another wrong perfect world.
He wasn't even sure if he had read this one before.
There were too many.
He knew that he'd never know which story was the best.
He still didn't understand why they existed.
...
That night, Clayton couldn't sleep.
He started imagining clocks, guessing the time.
You see, it's not that late yet,
he tried to reassure himself, but all he heard were ticks and tocks.
He shifted under the thin blanket.
...
Thin blanket.
It didn't really warm him up. He just needed it for comfort.
He was lonely.
...
Half an hour passed.
He sat up slowly and flicked the lights back on. Squinted.
Some sort of electricity was slowly pumped into his brain.
Something has to change.
He wasn't sure if he was real. Too many things kept repeating.
Something has to change.
He wasn't sure if he was real. Too many things kept repeating.
Something-
...
He cleared his throat as if he was going to say a few words, a toast,
then paused
because there was nobody to talk to.
Silence.
He didn't know why the dim lights were blinding him.
...
He opened the bathroom door,
the one that looked like a tree trunk.
He stepped onto the white tiles.
Stumbled over to the toilet
and sat down.
In the very corner of the ceiling, aquamarine met white at one perfect point.
He stared at it and laughed.
I know this is fake.
The lights are too bright and everything outside is so dark
like something artificial, something from a dream.
He realized that he wasn't exactly sure whether he was asleep.
...
He realized that he had no proof that there were twenty million people subscribed to his YouTube channel.
He realized that he didn't know anything at all, really.
He realized that people would completely forget about him
if he sat on the toilet for long enough.
So what?
...
He paused... and then shook his head.
He knew what he had to do.
...
A few minutes passed. It was still dark outside.
He was walking in circles, maybe ovals now.
The bathtub was almost done being filled with nice, warm, comfortable water.
He hoped nobody would wake up to the splashes.
...
Now he was sitting in the bath, knees bent, with an awkward forward slouch,
the white porcelain chilling his back.
He gripped his phone unusually tightly
as he typed, typed, typed out an apology for what happened with his speedruns.
"I'm sorry to anyone I let down or disappointed."
"I felt really terrible for the mods because I dragged them through the mud even though they were mostly right."
Yes, mostly, they were mostly right. Not fully.
...
Every once in a while, Clayton would pause
and stare at that same corner of the ceiling
and think fake.
But he knew he had to phrase it like this.
He didn't want to think about what his friends from the Twitter comments would say
if he said it was anything other than... an accident.
Accident. It was an accident, guys. I didn't do it, I swear,
he imagined announcing to the shampoo bottles.
There would be a slight pause. Then the bottles would jump for joy. Cheer.
"We love you, Dream!" he mocked in a high-pitched voice, then smiled.
Yes, he knew that was what would happen.
...
He knew he could explain it.
He knew he could say that he was just using a datapack for his videos
and that he forgot to turn it off before the speedruns
and that he realized later but didn't want to say anything,
didn't want to start any new drama.
Eh, maybe not the best explanation, actually.
But it doesn't matter. He knew why.
...
He remembered what he saw in December.
The way that millions of people pushed aside
spreadsheets and fractions and coin flips
so that they could support their favorite YouTuber.
It horrified him. Nothing less.
He wasn't sure whether to forget it or not.
The water rippled.
...
Clayton may have been horrified, but he grinned anyway.
Grinning because this is believable, because this can fix things.
Because now that annoying, morally conscious part of his brain would no longer pester him before he went to sleep.
The water was lukewarm now, but he grinned anyway.
He re-read what he had written. And then he posted it on Twitter
and thought the cycle is complete.
...
The earth kept spinning. This time, he knew it was.
Far away, a bubble floated around, filled with his true thoughts, tightly sealed.
He didn't want to pop it
because he didn't want the bubble mix to get in anyone's eyes.
...
He stood up. Grabbed a towel. Dried off.
And he turned his head toward the mirror,
and saw a face with a smiling mouth and saggy skin surrounding smiling eyes.
You did it. You fixed everything.
The reasonable part of his brain was about to remind him that
you lied, you lied
but it realized that it would just be ignored anyway.
And so Clayton just kept smiling
as he turned off the light.
Flick.