AllFreeNovel
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I start the video, and Vicki comes onto the screen to introduce the pepper challenge. She has a knife and cuts up two hot peppers, though she fails to say what they are. I watch Travis’s reaction to what she does next. She takes the peppers and lays them on her eyes.
It takes about three seconds before the screaming starts. His eyes widen, and then he turns to me. “I don’t know if I should laugh or not. That really sounds like she’s being tortured.”
“It’s ridiculous. I was here the day she filmed that. It scared me to death. After a while, she just laid down on the ground. It was completely traumatizing. She did a different hot pepper challenge the next week and rubbed it on her lips.”
“No way, were her eyes red?”
“They were blistered. Not just her eyes, her eyelids, her cheeks, and her forehead. She had to go to the doctor and explain what she did to them. I wasn’t even her, and I was embarrassed.”
“Okay, get some drinks, we’re watching all of these,” he announces, grinning.
“Really?” I get a bit excited that someone else wants to make fun of my roommate with me. It’s usually Grady and me, but he gets bored after the first couple goes. No one can really appreciate what it was like to live with her, mainly because they didn’t live with her.
“Yes, really.”
“Uh, why not. I’ll put it on my laptop,” I tell him, and run to grab two bottles of beer. I’m oddly excited about this. It’s going to be fun. I almost forget that I’m supposed to be avoiding him, almost.
“Okay, so on this next one, she thought the cinnamon challenge was to snort it,” I tell him, already laughing at how ridiculous Vicki was.
“Okay, she has to be messing these up on purpose.” His gaze widens as she yells once she snorts the first bit of cinnamon up her nose.
“Maybe, but she was always doing them wrong. This particular case, she yelled at me for not telling her how to do it right. I yelled back that she should’ve looked the challenge up ahead of time. It was one of the biggest fights we ever had.”
After the first three videos, I become aware that Travis is sitting really close to me on the carpet. There’s a whole floor available, but his knee is almost touching mine. It gives me flashbacks to the night we were together, and I don’t want to remember any of that. I don’t want to relive my feelings for him or how he broke my heart by disappearing.
I pull my leg away, making sure we aren’t touching anymore. “Oh, this is the orgy painting,” I tell him, pointing at the screen as she holds up a sheet.
Travis brings his drink to his lips, and my eyes linger there for a moment as he asks, “Wait, she filmed that?”
“Not the unfortunate sex I walked into,” my cheeks heat, “but she goes into great detail about how this piece of art was created.”
The deeper we get into her videos, the weirder they get. I see some she’s made since she left, and I’m angry to find my purple couch is in the background of one. I reported her when she left, but the police couldn’t find her. I wonder now if they can track her through her YouTube account. Probably, then again, I’m not sure I would even want my couch back now. Who knows how many more orgies it has been through.
I find myself drinking more than I normally would as Travis and I laugh and eat together. Drinking and watching Vicki try to copy a Cat’s makeup tutorial is amazing. She signs off every video with, “This has been Vicks, not the Vapor Rub.”
Every time she says that both Travis and I lose our minds laughing. My stomach hurts so bad, but laughter is the best cure. I know it’s terrible to make fun of someone, and I’m probably going to hell for it, but she took all of my furniture. I think she deserves a little bit of ridicule.
“Does she have a lot of followers?” Travis asks, leaning back against the wall, putting an arm behind his head. I try not to look at the rippling bicep near my head. I could take a damn bite out of that thing.
Averting my gaze, I reply, “Like a thousand, but I kind of think they make fun of her too. I’ve read some of the comments on her videos.”
“Okay, we’re making a fake account and commenting,” he puts his cup down and reaches for the laptop, “it’s too good not to.”
“What are you even going to say?” I ask, half laughing, and lean back a little too far. I fall down on the carpet and realize I’m drunker than I thought.
“You’ll see,” he snickers, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back up.
Travis starts signing up for a new account to troll Vicki, but then my moral compass starts spinning. “You know what,” I say, “It’s okay to make fun of her, but let’s not take it any further. This borders on online bullying, and I’m not into that.”
“That’s really sweet of you, Nina,” he pins me with a hard stare, “she’s nuts, steals your furniture, and now you’re protecting her.” He stands up and leans on the wall beside me.
“Shut up, I hate her, and I’m really sad we don’t have furniture,” I say, laughing and shoving him away from me. He puts his arm around my shoulder, and I sober up suddenly. This cannot happen right now.
“I gotta go,” I yell in an embarrassingly strange way and walk, well stumble, to the bathroom.
“I’m sorry, Nina, don’t go,” I hear him say, but I’m already gone.
“No, it’s okay,” I yell across the house. “I have work in the morning. Getting up early...” My neighbors can probably hear me yelling through the walls.
