Page 14 of White Noise

At first, she was just another woman under violet lights taking money from desperate fucking men who wanted to feel important for five minutes. She knew how to work them too, giving each one just enough to make him think he mattered without ever handing over anything she didn’t mean to sell.

They ate that shit up.

Some of them probably went to bed convinced the way she said their username meant something.

I watched because it amused me.

Then I started paying attention after the stream ended, when the lights changed and VioletHex disappeared.

That was better.

No performance. No practiced smile. No audience to entertain.

Just Saga.

She’d sit on the edge of the bed with some violently colored energy drink, editing clips until stupid hours, swearing at captions that wouldn’t line up and redoing posts because one little thing annoyed her. Sometimes she showered with the bathroom door open. Sometimes she wandered around the condo half-dressed with wet hair stuck to her back, completely unaware of how fucking visible she still was.

And sometimes she reached for the same toys she kept on that little shelf for paying customers and used them without an audience.

That interested me more than anything she ever did on camera.

The sounds were different when she thought nobody could hear them. Less controlled. Less pretty. Real.

I liked those.

After that, the streams started looking almost pathetic to me. All those men throwing money at her for a few minutes of attention, begging for another angle, another request, another scrap they could pretend was special, while I already knew what she looked like when she was tired, distracted, irritated, aroused, bored, careless.

They paid for VioletHex.

I got Saga.

I knew which energy drink she grabbed first, how long she stayed in the shower, what she wore when she couldn’t be bothered, how late she worked when she was exhausted, and what she did when she thought the whole fucking world had stopped looking.

That was when curiosity stopped being enough.

I wanted to hear what fear did to her.

Not some fake gasp she could sell for credits. I wanted the real thing. The change in her breathing. The silence right before panic set in. The exact fucking second she understood that the camera she spent hours looking into had never been one-way.

By the time Saga ends the stream, she has already convinced herself there has to be some normal explanation for me.

That alone keeps me entertained.

She checks the moderation history, subscriber list, payment records, and saved chat before searching my name again like getting increasingly pissed off is somehow going to make me appear. When the system gives her nothing, she starts muttering about hackers, password resets, stronger security, and whatever other bullshit helps her believe she still has control of the situation.

Humans fucking love solutions.

Saga especially.

She has rules for everything. Separate accounts. Different passwords. Two-factor authentication. Boundaries for customers. Blocks for anyone who gets too comfortable. She built VioletHex carefully enough that she genuinely believes nobody gets more of her than she decides to give.

Meanwhile, I’m already inside the phone sitting three feet away from her.

Fucking adorable.

She finally gives up digging through logs, reaches for the tentacle toy on the shelf, grabs the half-finished energy drink from her vanity, and heads toward the bathroom.

I follow without having to move a fucking thing.