0
by James Harris
[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]
Jake lays in bed, one foot dangling off the mattress, the sheet covering half of his body.
The moon lowers, the clouds turn a dull navy. His box fan spins rapidly, the air rushing in is stale.
His apartment faces Clinton Lake. Earlier that evening a group of teenagers swam and drank beer on the sandy shore. None of them were wearing a mask, not a single one.
Lackadaisically, Jake scrolls through Twitch, exploring new streamers. It’s part of his nightly routine, a constant in this new, lonely world. As he gets tired, he opens the app and taps on one of his favorite games. Once he taps his way to the bottom of the list, sorted by viewership count, Jake chooses a streamer that has less than five audience members. Mostly he picks the ones with zero people watching. Call him sappy, but he likes the newer streamers to know that they can gain followers if they only try hard enough.
He reaches the end of the list and sees there are three people with zero viewers.
Clicking on the first one, he kicks his sheet completely off his bed. Sweat drips freely down his forehead. He considers lighting another bowl up but decides against it. The prospect of flicking a lighter was too much of a hassle. If he didn’t move, he’d get cool.
On his cellphone screen, a young man sits in a gaming chair and stares at his webcam.
“Finally,” the streamer sighs. The room he’s in is hardly visible. Behind him are posters of anime women posed in awkward positions that accentuate their breasts. The game, which fills up the majority of the screen, displays the main menu. A figure with a hatchet stands so that it’s back is facing the player. The streamer’s gamertag is Samsa_019. Genric-ish, nothing too exciting about it.
“What the fuck?” Jake smirks. He goes to tap the back button on his Samsung when the streamer speaks again.
“I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to show up.”
Jake glances at the current viewer number and sees that it reads: 1. He is the entire audience. He looks at the number next to that, the amount of time the gamer has been streaming, and gasps. Ten hours, six minutes, and thirty seconds. Has he been alone this whole time?
The man on the other end of the screen straightens in his chair. “Okay, so you’re still there. That’s good. I-I need someone to be there, you get it?”
Jake finds himself nodding though there is no way this person can see. There is something off about this man’s tone.
Samsa_019 says, “I know this seems strange. But you, the one watching this, you are all I have.”
Jake considers backing out again but cannot.
Tears begin to roll down the streamer’s cheeks. His curly, brown hair drapes over his temples in clumps, like a dirty mop. The clothes he wears are too tight for him, his breasts protruding and his double chin reaching down to his collar. “I’ve tried for so long now. And not just today. I’ve tried my whole life.”
Jake’s heart races. He bites his lip and wonders what he should do.
“I’ve lost my mom. My dad doesn’t want to speak to me. And, well, it’s not like women are lining up to see me. Maybe that’s why you clicked on my stream? Did you feel like you could relate to me?”
“No,” Jake whispers.
“Silly,” Samsa_019 chuckles. “I’ve never had a single viewer until you came along. So you don’t know anything about me, do you? I’ve been on Twitch for a year and a half, and not a single follow, not a single subscription. Not a single God damn fucking follow.” Samsa_019 slams an open palm against his face, a loud snap thrusts his head sideways. He sobs into his hands. “I’m so sorry.”
Jake wants to type into the chat but finds that the streamer has disabled chat functions. He can’t say anything. All he can do is watch.
“I hope this isn’t too much for you. I could have just left a note or something, but, but, I didn’t want to go alone. I didn’t want-” Samsa_019 stops talking. His jaw hangs open, his teeth, crooked and yellow.
The young man stands from his chair and walks off screen. Jake cannot see him and feels his heart pumping hard against his chest. “Please, no,” he prays.
The streamer returns and it is just as Jake has feared. In his hand, the stranger holds a noose.
“My name is Carter Brooks. I am twenty- three years old and my address is 9281 Hardie avenue, Arch City, Kansas. If you could notify the police of my passing so they could let my father know, I’d really appreciate it.”
Carter stands on top of his chair and ties the noose to what Jake supposes is a ceiling fan. Slowly, Carter turns and the only part of him visible to the camera is his bottom half. He screeches. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, no.”
“No,” Jake pleads.
Carter jumps off the chair and there is a snap.
Carter struggles, clutching at his neck, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, his tongue lolling out in a deep red. His whole body is visible now, along with a length of rope strangling him.
Jake wants to look away but can’t. He watches as Carter fades into non-existence. The random jerks turn into sporadic twitches, and then, after what feels like an hour, the young man’s arms fall to his side.
“Shit,” Jake whimpers. “Shit, man. What the fuck?”
He has to call the police now. He has to let them know there is a corpse waiting for them.
He exits the app and starts to dial the non-emergency line. As the phone rings, he thinks of Carter and how at the moment, there is no one to watch his body swing.
James Harris is a Black, Mexican, and White writer who works as an English teacher at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. He is an MFA student at UMKC and writes mostly speculative fiction. He currently resides in Lawrence where he and his wife, Jenny, fend off two demon cats named Todd and Ladybird. Find more at jamesharrisstories.com.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “0”? I wrote “0” on a whim. It was 1 AM and like most people without much to do in the morning thanks to the pandemic, I was in bed, my phone in hand. I’d grown bored of Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites and so I browsed Twitch, a video game streaming app, to see what the hype was all about. A lot of my friends used the website to broadcast their games and I began to wonder how they did it, day in and day out, without an audience. I thought about all of the streamers with 0 viewers and how they were practically televising themselves in the hopes that someone, anyone, would tune in.
Streamers keep the camera on, play their games, and talk to the world, as if someone is listening. The profoundly sad reality is that usually no one is listening and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people, speaking to an empty room.
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