My friend

About two years ago my friend started streaming. He would just sit around and play whatever video game he was trying to complete at the time. It wasn't uncommon that he wouldn't have any viewers and knowing how rough his home life was, I started feeling bad. So I subscribed to his channel and would chill with him whenever he was on.

I thought if I was there he would have someone to talk to and keep his mind off the things that were bothering him. Not to mention if someone happened to check the stream out they would see he was talking and engaging with a viewer which always helps convince people to stick around. It went like this for a while and now and then he would get new subscribers and even some fans of his content.

People would always ask why he was muting his mic all the time. I can't say for certain but I think it was because his parents would start fighting and he was embarrassed. Over time people began to notice that his room was getting messier and eventually that it was pretty common for him to wear the same clothing for days in a row.

I tried my best to encourage him and be a good friend, telling him that he should just focus on streaming because he was starting to get an audience. It wasn't too long after that topic that his streams suddenly stopped. Waiting there for his scheduled streaming session to start, watching the chat complain that it hadn't yet. Felt lonely in a weird way, I wondered if maybe I was using his stream as a means to escape too. Or something I could pat myself on the back about. "You're doing a nice thing." I know that sounds selfish.

The stream hadn't come back up, I check every day he would typically stream for a month and he never showed up. We weren't super close, like, the hang out at each other's houses type of friends but it still stung that he never said goodbye or let me help him any further. He never really said anything to me after that last stream. Which sucked but, I had to move on with life. I couldn't sit there staring at a blank screen all day waiting for something to happen.

You know how it is to lose track of days. How friends can come and go sometimes and before you know it, it's years later and things feel completely different. I still check in on people streaming now and then. Mostly as background noise while I work on projects or whatever. I have a few people I subscribed to, content creators that I knew wouldn't distract me.

So imagine my surprise last week. I sat down to work on my term paper, the silence made it hard to concentrate so I went on the old go-to. Then as I load up the people I subscribed to, I feel a nostalgic shiver wrestle with my spine when I read "AndrewinVain: Now live." I'll be honest I had kind of forgotten about him. Maybe not forgotten but he hadn't been at the forefront of my thought for quite some time.

Seeing his channel live gave me a somber ping in my throat, a lump of repressed memory that was hard to swallow. I could see the view counter was zero and a low-res image of someone sitting in front of a camera. I stared at the red dot indicating the stream was live wondering if it was some fluke or some sick joke. Thought about just ignoring it for a while, but then I remembered all those nights I hung out in the stream with him. It couldn't hurt just to click it I thought.

Listening to the soft click of plastic my mouse gave off I watched the screen load up into Andrews stream. I couldn't believe it, there he was just sitting in his room, I think it was his room anyways. I could only make out his face illuminated by the computer screen and a vague collection of shapes in the background. I sat there stunned for a good while. Too anxious and afraid to engage, but the way he looked into the camera felt like he already knew I was there.

The look in his eye was almost a physical representation of that ping I felt in my throat upon seeing him online. His camera was pretty low quality but not so bad that I couldn't make him out, it was almost like someone was trying to sensor him but didn't put the filter up high enough. I kept sitting there waiting for him to say something. His mouth would sometime move like he was going to speak but then he would close it. Still, I saw him moving his hand to the cord of the headset and his finger clicking a small button to mute his mic. I don't know if that was a comforting familiarity and a painful realization. He had never got away.

Just as I was working up the courage to type something I could see a sliver of light appearing in the background to his right as if someone had opened his bedroom door. He reached forward and the stream went off-line. My computer screen was sent into darkness as I leaned back in my chair letting out the breath I had been holding in. The situation was surreal enough to completely take me out of my element.

I looked at the screen of my phone, also black from inactivity. I didn't even know if I still had Andrew's number saved. The desire to call his house was a fleeting one anyways. Instead, I decided to call it a night, I had been working too late and likely just needed sleep. The next day would be a better one.

Then the next day came, the sun went down, and once again I found myself sitting at the desk readying myself to get my project done. I looked at my paper for a good while without anything coming to mind. For whatever reason, I found the thought of using my crutch of background noise to be foreboding. I decided to just face it head-on and loaded up the site. Going directly to Andrew's channel this time I was relieved to see that he wasn't live.

Laughing at myself I moved the mouse to click off the page when I noticed. In the thumbnail of his stream from two years ago, his very last stream. The door to his room was over his left shoulder, not his right. Then I remembered he was always a little late to start streaming one Wednesday because he had to take some trash out and sure enough, his stream went active before I could leave the page.

Of course, I clicked it. I was already in it how could I just avoid it. I had to know. Where was he now? It wasn't his room from two years ago. So I found myself staring him in the eyes again as his gaunt features peered into the camera. Right away I bit the bullet and type a simple "Hey" into the chat and sat back, almost like I expected him to jump through the screen at me.

His head moved slowly to the portion of the screen where the chat would come up, his lips curled as he read the message. A tiresome grin, half-hearted. "You here." He replied in the chat. I thought it was odd that he type it instead of speaking but thought maybe his mic was just muted. "Check this out." He typed before I could get a response in.

A hand lifted into the frame and brought thin fingers to his cheek. His pointer finger and his ring finger both looked ragged and dark. Like they were made of completely different skin that was being rejected by his body. The craggy fingernail of his pointer finger pressed into his cheek and as he dragged his hand down, in abject horror, I watched his skin part. It was like he was pulling down a zipper destroying his skin, yet there was no blood.

His finger should have been painted red but instead, I only saw darkness where his skin had been peeled away. I didn't know if the low quality of the stream made it hard to make out details or if there were no details to make out. He lowered his hand and offered the same half-hearted smile, but I wasn't looking at his lips. I was too focussed on how the smiled contorted the gash he had just given himself. How the skin rippled around the dark pit manipulated by his smile.

I couldn't stop being pulled in, watching the hole he had made in his face slowly closing up until the darkness was gone. His head swayed left and right as if he was listening to some slow classical music yet I head nothing. In fact the whole time there wasn't the faintest hint of noise, his mic was muted the whole time.

The same crack of light started to appear. I expected him to end the stream but he just turned his head to look at it. Light from the computer illuminated the back of his head, how his hair had been missing in patches. Where there was no hair I could see deep yellow bumps with faint purple dotting around the affected area.

And the light. The light that appeared behind him wasn't some hallway light slipping in. It was yellow but a darker hue, closer to mustard than anything else. The light got wider, there was no door opening but the light got wider still. Allowing for a fraction of the room to become visible. The mustard light landed on what looked like black plastic but more, organic. Something that was writhing around and reacting to the light.

Andrew turned back towards the camera, his eyes almost portraying a sense of content or, I don't know, pride? He smiled, also a prideful expression. Then the stream turned off. The room was dark and my body retched back, standing to my feet and throwing my chair to the floor. I listened to my chair smacking against hardwood.

Getting up like that was something I was trying to do the whole stream. Practically begging my neurons to fire off and let me react. I think it's easy to say what you would do in certain situations but when you are faced with something so unusual it's like your brain shuts you out. Like a turtle pulling into its shell for self-defense or animals who lie still to pretend they're already dead. I didn't think I was in danger but something in my head begged to differ.

I paced around the room for a while, just listening to my footsteps, half expecting to hear something else make noise in the house. Several times I convinced myself to ring Andrew's house, each time it would ring once and I would end the call. I worked myself into a panic and at some point, I think I just fell asleep.

Like I said I hadn't been getting much sleep so when I woke up the next day to find it was already getting dark, it felt sensible. Still, with the approaching darkness, I could feel a chorus of ambiguity washing over me. Despite the tizzy I had worked myself into, I had never thought to close the page. "AndrewinVain" was still running on my computer screen and he was live.

Just sitting there while I slept, I could swear as I rose up from my bed his eyes were following my movements. Slowly I stepped across the bedroom. I swear I could feel his pupils dilating as he stared into the camera. Dark pupils reflecting the contents of his body that hid underneath bloated and scared skin. Pupils that could swallow me whole.

"Sit down." I saw had been written in chat. Next to that, I could see the length of the stream, he had been sitting there for 5 hours. His head was swaying like it was last time and as I sat down I could see the line of light ignite to life behind him.

"Why is this happening?" I typed into the chat. I could see his body jumble around like he was laughing but his face didn't change to match. Instead, he lifted his hand again, and within his hand was the cord to his microphone. Specifically, the section of wire that contained the button that would mute him.

"Would you like to hear me?" He typed into the chat. I felt my insides churning as I read the question. Despite my rational protest, I knew I was going to say yes. I knew before they did that my fingers were going to dance over the keyboard affirming my desire. As each fingertip made contact with the cold plastic keys I watched the light grow brighter than ever before.

"Yes, I want to hear." The message I typed read, though I hadn't put any thought into how to word the response. It almost felt like my fingers moved, tugged by strings. He smiled, a dubious smile as his finger pressed down. There was a soft click and then, I could feel my body slump over and my sensibilities become completely hopeless.

From AndrewinVain's stream, I hear a chorus, an overwhelming and all-encompassing cacophony of wails. A torrid and perpetual berating of screams emitted from my computer speaks. It sounded like I was playing every grisly murder scene in every horror movie I had ever seen. I watched unable to physically respond as that yellow light flared up like a wildfire illuminating the entirety of the room.

The entire floor of that room, the walls of that room were all the same black and leathery texture, every inch of it squirming desperately. I could make out vague shapes of fingers reaching up and faces pressed against the fabric. The membrane of the room Andrew sat in. Unable to move I just had to accept the bile filling my mouth and dripping out from my slightly agape lips.

Andrew just smiled at the camera, lifting his fingers to his mouth he spread them out to cover grasp the corner of his mouth and eyes. Fingers dug in like before and he pulled his arms to the side stretching the skin more and more. I had to watch, listening to the soundtrack of shrill and unrelenting cries for help and Andrew impossibly pulled his skin away from his face.

It would have been almost cartoonish, watching A portion of his face remaining in front of the camera as darkness undulated around it. His eyes drifting into the darkness like it was a black whole stealing his features. His hands returned placing the rest of his head back where it belonged so he could give me one last look. "Guess where I am." He said. I heard his voice, deep and gruff stuttering of words that barely registered to me. Words that felt like I shouldn't have been able to decipher. And then, the stream ended.

I don't know. I don't remember what I did after that. I don't remember even knowing what to do and so a day went by and then another. He didn't come back online again, I remember that. I sat for a while watching his final stream before vanishing for two years. I played it over and over letting those memories wash over me.

Remembering what it felt like when my Mother called me downstairs and explained to me Andrew's mother had called in solace to let me know that Andrew had passed away. Remembered watching the news and hearing that they weren't ruling out foul play but suicide was the most likely answer.

I watched that stream so many times now. Watching him looking at the camera for the last time when he was alive. His last words I think were directed towards me, they were always his last words as a sort of sign off. But in that particular stream, the way he looks at the camera, even now on rewatch feels like he's looking right at me.

And as he says those words I can see, on the wall to his right, a small sliver of light reflected on the wall. I used to think it was from a passing car or the sun just bouncing off of something. But when you know something exists, when you know something CAN exist. You start to see it everywhere. You can't forget you've seen it.

I don't think I'll see AndrewinVain's channel active anymore. But I have no doubt I will be seeing him again. As he always said before he turned his stream off.

"Thanks for joining me today and see you later