squeezing until the life was gone from his body.
When the urge got too great—consuming every spare breath and thought that came into my mind—I tried to satisfy it in other ways. Ways that I hate to think about, ways that fill me with embarrassment and dread. Nothing worked. And when I started making serious plans, started picking out victims and sharpening knives, that was when I knew I had to do something. That was when I decided to lock myself up.
I finished the fall semester at the community college, packed up my dorm, quit my I-spray-crap-perfume-on-you-at-Abercrombie job, and moved into the shithole that I now call home. Settled in, turned on utilities, and locked the door.
I haven’t seen a live person since.
CHAPTER 19
HE DISCOVERED HER on a Wednesday night. Late, at a time when normal society was asleep. He entered and left half a dozen chat rooms, each girl wrong for different reasons. Too fat. Too sexual. Too slutty. Too aggressive. And then he found her, her username familiar, one of the ones heavily promoted on the website, the girl regularly present, her commitment to working impressive in its continuity. These girls typically came and went. Pulled from one world to the next, most likely by a man. But she had stayed. And on that Wednesday night, he decided to give her a chance, despite the $6.99-per-minute price tag, a hefty chunk of change compared with what most of the other girls charged.
But she was different. He saw that the moment her smile lit up his screen. She had the same shine as Annie, a pure goodness beaming from her happy face. She blushed into the camera, reaching up with one hand to tuck her hair behind her ear, and he could see the innocence. His hand moved without thinking and he clicked the mouse, starting the timer and the quick, fast drain on his credit card.
In 2009, Southern Methodist University did a study on homicidal ideation, which is the thought or fantasy of killing someone. They found that of people surveyed on American university campuses, 50–91 percent admit to having a homicidal fantasy. What kind of fucked-up statistic is 50–91 percent? Did one campus have only half of their students planning death and mayhem, while another campus was crawling with psychotic coeds? The range makes me think that it was a bullshit study, performed by some doctoral candidate who invented a bunch of data and plopped it down on paper. Regardless of its validity, the alarming statistic makes me feel better. It makes me feel normal, as normal as envisioning a brain splattered open can be. On second thought, maybe I don’t want to be normal—not if that’s what normal is. We’re all fucked if that is the case.
It’s ten forty-five p.m., which means I am still camming, but my mind is starting to wander, thoughts of death intruding on my sexual role-plays. It’s going to be an awkward day when my mouth moves without thought and I scream out, “I’m going to kill you!” to the poor middle-aged schmuck sitting before me in his tightey-whiteys.
Ten forty-six p.m.
I think about logging out early, brushing my teeth, and crawling into bed.
It’s been a long day, full of seven- and eight-minute private sessions—the guys who have fifty bucks to spend and want to make sure to get off during that time. So they jack off until they are close and then take me to a private chat where I do nothing but rip off my clothes, spread my legs, touch myself, and moan for the next five minutes. They don’t want to chat. They don’t want anything special. They just want a standard result from an unorthodox source. But that’s what I get on Wednesdays. Fridays are the big-spender days, when clients just got paid and are ready for some lengthy, one-on-one personalized attention. Fridays pass quickly.
I don’t log out early; my OCD won’t allow for the slightest variation from my schedule. I log back into free chat and wait. Barely a minute of flirting passes, then I am taken private, this time
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