Page 94 of White Noise

“Great. Thanks, Dad.”

The second it leaves my mouth, I regret it.

Chat absolutely does not.

D4ddyKev: DADDY SILAS CONFIRMED

“Oh my God. Absolutely fucking not.”

The room loses its mind at the Daddy Silas comment, messages flying so quickly I can barely read them while Kev continues making the situation worse with increasingly stupid follow-ups. Silas doesn’t respond at all, which somehow manages to be more irritating than if he had threatened to murder everyone in the chat.

I finish the stream mostly out of spite.

What should have been another twenty minutes turns into a silent fight inside my moderation panel.

Whenever Silas removes a request, I ask for it again. When he kicks someone, I let them back in. A tip disappears, so I thank the viewer anyway just to make a point.

The audience eats it up because they think this is some elaborate VioletHex bit, and every laughing comment about my “possessive stalker” makes the anger sitting in my chest burn a little hotter.

They have no fucking idea.

By the time I finally lean toward the camera and tell everyone goodnight, my face hurts from smiling through how badly I want to throw the monitor across the room.

The stream ends.

The chat disappears.

And for the first time all night, my screen goes completely black.

10

SAGA

OUT OF RANGE

The silence lasts approximately two seconds.

Then static crawls across the monitor.

I stare at it.

“You are such an asshole.”

The interference thickens.

I point at the screen. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

The glass bends anyway.

Of course it fucking does.

Silas comes through slowly, because apparently terrorizing me isn’t enough anymore. Now he needs an entrance.

His hand pushes through first, followed by his arm and shoulder, then the rest of him steps cleanly out of the screen like this is somehow a normal thing people do.

Static slides off his body in thin white lines until he is standing beside my bed looking disturbingly solid.

More solid than before.