It had been a bad night. No, it had been the worst night. Clayton sank into his chair and watched as the endless monotony of the chat scrolled by. He tried to read a few comments but gave up after seeing the same handful of emojis and gifs again and again. They were nothing but mean-spirited jokes, and he was always the punchline.
From the stygian darkness of his attic room, Clayton, better known to the world wide web as Mr. Reptilicus (aka Repo the Pedo to r/AtticGoblinWatch and Horrorcow of the Century to Kiwi Farms users), began pulling out his unwashed hair. It came out in ragged clumps, smelling of mold and urine. Some of these gory hairballs were shoved into the crying man’s mouth; the rest were left on the unswept floor. Clayton picked at the scabs on his arms and legs until they bled anew. With a white-hot fury that coated his lungs with screams and made his heart beat like a grindcore drummer, he bellowed nonsense to himself until his grandmother’s prosthetic leg smacked his floorboards from underneath.
“Sorry, mom,” the diminutive internet celebrity said through the hardwood. “I’ll go to bed now.” The hard plastic leg knocked twice more to acknowledge Clayton’s promise of cooperation.
It was a lie, of course. Clayton never went to bed until after sunrise, and, after the great humiliation he had just suffered, he had no intention of closing his eyes until he achieved some semblance of revenge.
But what kind of revenge? What does vengeance even look like across the digital ether?
Clayton had eased into the night with such high hopes. Promptly, at 10:30, he’d opened his first livestream. He entertained between seventy-five and one hundred people for the first hour or so with his karaoke screeching (which his grandmother particularly hated) and racing sims. Most interactions with the chat were positive. Sure, Clayton had spent a considerable amount of his grandmother’s money on sock accounts run by robots or the occasional worker in Bangladesh, but he justified the expense on the belief that positive feedback correlated with better content, and better content correlated with more views.
That was his belief anyway. Probably just another lie, all things considered.
As the night slipped into the early morning, Clayton ended his first livestream, which was on his own Mr. Reptilicus channel, and joined the Discord chat for another. This chat turned into a live video, with everything controlled by Ricky Tomlinson, otherwise known to lolcow enthusiasts as Movie Maker Murray. Clayton and Ricky had history, and most of that history involved Ricky torturing Clayton mercilessly with one ruse after another. Ricky had made Clayton dance for him, and he had made Clayton perform a stand-up comedy routine that was designed to bomb. But worst of all had been the long con—the months-long trolling campaign that provided Ricky’s introduction into Clayton’s bizarre universe.
As Movie Maker Murray, Ricky had fooled Clayton into thinking that Cartoon Network was interested in him for voiceover work. Ricky drafted up false contracts and even went so far as to splice together a mock sizzle reel for the aspiring star. Clayton accepted everything without question; he wanted so desperately to make it in show business so that he could show his grandmother, his detractors, and the whole world that his life had value. Clayton wanted to prove all the haters wrong, and that, despite living for over thirty years as an unemployed NEET sequestered in a 125-square-foot room, he had natural, untapped talent. Movie Maker Murray was the man who would pull Clayton out of the Midwestern muck, and to that end, he arranged for Clayton, wearing his only Oxford shirt and tie, to meet with Cartoon Network executives. The moment arrived, and Clayton almost vomited out of anxiety. He took a couple minutes to compose himself. He chugged some Dunkin’ iced coffee, then used the residual wetness on his fingers to slick down his thin hair. He checked his smile in the reflection of his cellphone. It was yellow and crooked, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. Maybe once he was in Hollywood, he’d splurge on a good dentist.
Once satisfied that everything was in place, he clicked on the illuminated hyperlink that Movie Maker Murray had sent him.
A pornographic display featuring three elderly men greeted the wannabe voice actor. Their naked, writhing bodies formed a Lovecraftian shape, both non-Euclidean and unnamable. A bold text above their heads made it clear that Clayton had been fooled and fooled badly.
An angry fist flew through his computer monitor. The pain felt good in the moment, but the injury to his precious desktop cost him months of streaming. Clayton had to suffer the indignity of IRL work, as he and his grandmother’s boyfriend—a hopeless alcoholic named Al—collected scrap metal in order to pay for a new Acer from E&G Pawn.
Despite this painful history, Clayton found it impossible to stay away from his arch nemesis. He always joined Ricky’s panels, and sometimes he had been successful in shutting them down. A few curse words here, a quick flash of his genitalia there, and the algorithm censors would put the kibosh on the whole gathering. But, in the grand scheme of things, these small, pitiful acts of sabotage paled in comparison to Ricky’s treasure trove of “dirt.” Said dirt was blasted to the world on that last Discord call.
“Looks like someone got catfished again.” Ricky’s sing-song cadence was one-part sassy and one-part malevolent. A wicked gleam came into his digital eye, and he chackled as he made a big show out of pressing an oversized gimmick button at his elbow. He lit up a cigar, and the ruby red cherry cut through the gloom like a Luciferian finger.
“Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Cassandra!”
Clayton started raging immediately. He caterwauled and slammed his little fists into the pale flesh of his thighs. His face turned the color of gammon as he quickly ran through all his defenses: he dropped racial slurs, exposed his privates, and even mimicked a self-sex act, all in the hopes of forcing his tormentor to drop the stream. None of it worked, and for forty minutes and some change, Clayton was left to scream impotently while on mute as his detractors dissected the minutia of his private conversations with “Cassandra.” Ricky made it clear that there was no Cassandra at all; she was a fictitious fourteen-year-old who had garnered Clayton’s trust with promises of salacious snaps and a potential meet-up somewhere between Sephora and the food court at the Summit Mall. The text exchanges between the two were read aloud and shared. Clayton couldn’t take it anymore; he logged off, apologized to his angry grandmother, and promised her that he would stop spending so much of his damn time on the internet.
For once, it was not a lie. Clayton quit cold turkey, but only after one last salvo.
With the first rays of the August sun peeking through his blackout curtains, Clayton—the current moment’s most reviled man—logged in on his computer as “Stacy Gwendolyn,” one of his many fake accounts. He navigated to 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch. He wrote the same message on each platform, and he cut, copied, and pasted it multiple times over so that the message couldn’t be any clearer:
On September 11th, Mr. Reptilicus will commit suicide at Summit Lake at 8:00 p.m. All trolls and haters are encouraged to attend.
At 6:25 a.m., Clayton logged out for the last time and even unplugged everything from the scorched wall socket. The constant, low-level hum of electric activity ceased. The silence disturbed him but did not stop him from rolling onto his side and falling asleep.
He did not dream.
The two weeks between his last livestream and his planned suicide were so boring, so torturously long that Clayton learned to lust for annihilation. He was somewhat proud of his ability to stay offline, even despite bellyaches and headaches that were akin to withdrawals or hunger pains. Clayton never once broke his fast, and his battered desktop stayed dead until he joined it.
Abstinence was a minor victory, but it couldn’t fill Clayton’s emptiness. He needed the buzz and dopamine of online victory just to endure the endless days of nothingness. Even video games were poor substitutes and were discarded after three nights. The worst part was falling asleep without ambient noise or soporific YouTube videos. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Reptilicus barely slept, shuffling through the fortnight like a sleepless zombie.
Of course, he wasn’t dead yet, which was deliciously ironic.
When his grandmother tried to rouse him from his somnolent stupor, Clayton mumbled syllables about detoxifying himself from the internet and “beating the trolls one last time.” The elderly crone with one leg smiled and told her grandson that he was a good boy and that he had made the right decision. Clayton nodded along but stewed inside. He wanted to tell the bitch that his pitch-black depression was not because he missed being online so much, but rather because he had learned the hard way that life—real, IRL life—was the worst thing ever devised. The slow grind of boredom, the tedious doldrums of weekend afternoons with nothing to look forward to except watching football next to Al’s filthy armpits. Now that was hell; that was suicide fuel, even for someone like Clayton, whose greatest accomplishment was becoming an unwanted meme.
On the day on which he would die, Clayton made sure to take a long, pleasurable shower. He lathered himself up with sweet-smelling soap three times. He shampooed his hair twice. Once done, he brushed his teeth for over four minutes, turning the white paste into a shuddersome shade of pink. Clayton almost left the bathroom to get dressed but stopped himself after a single appraisal in the dirty mirror.
“I may as well,” he said to himself.
Clayton reached for Al’s electric Wahl clipper and applied its vibrating teeth to his scalp. He mowed his hair like a field of wheat, cutting down every stock until all he was left with was an unsightly patch of skin and hair. He applied shaving cream, which felt so good and cool on his skin, and finished the job with Al’s Schick. As a bald man, he put on his favorite band T-shirt and his favorite pair of Tripp pants. He laced up his Doc Martens and made sure that his fingerless gloves fit perfectly before he headed out the door at 7:30 p.m. Neither his grandmother nor Al said a word to him, even as he left with a thick coil of rope around his shoulder.
The walk to Summit Lake normally took five minutes, but Clayton took the long, circuitous route. He walked through his neighborhood one last time. He stopped occasionally to smell the flowers and admire the many trees that towered proudly. He listened to the birds and other creatures as they sang their last ditties of the summer. Soon it would be autumn, Clayton thought, and after autumn came winter. He hated winter. At least he’ll never have to see another, he thought to himself.
After killing twenty minutes, Clayton marched towards his self-appointed gallows. The large poplar held a special significance for him. In childhood, he and his friends had turned the branches into diving boards. They had carved their initials into its trunk. He knew that the inscriptions would be faded now, just like all his friendships had faded away, either through neglect or righteous anger at the obscene jester Clayton had become. He found the tree standing alone, with several branches reaching across the lake. Clayton’s plan was to fashion a noose and leap from the tallest branch. In his back pocket was a folded piece of paper covered in illegible scribbles. It was his deathbed oratory.
He pulled out the paper, balled it up, and threw it into the lake. Dropping to his knees, he screamed until hoarse. The shift from resignation to anger was simple: he was alone at his suicide. Not one fan, police, or troll. No one.
“Why do I even bother?” he yelled. “Why did I even put myself through it?”
Blind, despondent sadness washed over him. Clayton considered walking back home, giving up, and giving in to the slow death of self-isolation until rotting, and then he made the mental leap to going back online. Maybe he could vent his frustrations once more, he thought.
No. An emphatic “No” reverberated in his brain so strongly that it gave him a mild concussion. This sudden clarity cut through his previous indecision: Clayton had to go through with it. He had to end it all and give the world a final “Fuck You.” Without him, Movie Maker Murray would have no channel and no following. Without him, hundreds of copycat accounts would wither away, as their followers expected daily Mr. Reptilicus updates. You can only abuse the archive for so long, Clayton knew, and that’s why dying would be his ultimate revenge against the mocking horde.
Clayton scrambled up the tree. His forearms and thighs burned, as his body was simply unused to motion of any kind. He made it, but it took him several minutes to control his panting enough to focus on making the necessary noose. He did so in utter solitude—not even a curious straggler emerged from the woods to question why he wanted to end it all. Clayton was left alone with his thoughts and his deeds, and both coalesced into a singular action: he slipped the noose over his head and around his thin neck. He tied the other end to the base of the trunk. He crawled out to the end of the branch and looked down. Water was the only thing underneath him. If it all failed, he could still drown, he thought.
“Ok, chat,” he said to the empty dusk. “This is my last sign off. To all those who were cool with me and supported my videos, thank you. None of this was your fault. To my haters and the trolls, especially Movie Maker Murray, I want to say good luck making any money without me. Once I’m gone, you’ll have nothing and be nothing!”
Anger flared again. Clayton paused, breathing slowly to calm himself. Exhaustion returned, so deep he felt he could collapse and drift off for good.
“See you in Heaven,” he whispered, a tear in his eye. Clayton crouched, then, with a burst, leapt, aiming to snap his neck instantly.
It would have worked had the branch not broken.
Clayton crashed into the water, hitting rocks with a jolt. Blood oozed, but he felt nothing. Panic set in—he was paralyzed from the waist down. Using his weak arms, he paddled to the shore and gripped the muddy bank. His legs didn’t move despite trying to kick like Bruce Lee. He really was paralyzed.
“The little runt can’t even die right,” said a crude baritone voice.
“I was going to make a fortune selling Mr. Reptilicus’s snuff film, but I guess that’s out of the question now,” said another, more feminine voice.
Clayton pulled himself far enough up the bank to see into the bushes near the poplar. Several bodies emerged from the shrubbery. All held cellphones and wore recognizably human clothing. And yet, from their gnarled necks to the top of their piebald heads, the gathered assemblage looked like nothing less than storybook monsters. Their sunken black eyes mimicked their blackened teeth, which sat in wide, gaping mouths that were more shark than mammal. And all four smelled foul, like upturned graves.
My God, did they stink!
All four looked at Clayton but didn’t move to kill him. Instead, they left him alone—a legless man in the muck. Clayton watched them go, dejected and defeated, like men turned away at a brothel. There had been no release; no satiation for their morbid lust.
Clayton screamed for help, calling for the police, his grandmother, Al, Al’s bottle of Coors, and anyone who might care or believe.
My internet trolls are actual trolls, Clayton thought to himself, as his body began the process of dying from hypothermia.
— Arbogast is a neo-pulp writer and the owner of 1325 Publishing. He is a co-editor at the Bizarchives, and his work has appeared in the Bizarchives, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Futurist Letters, and many more publications. He is the author of seven books, with his latest being THE RETURN OF PATRICK MIDNIGHT.
