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Crossing Streams
by Ryan D Petersen

My body rejected them. Plus the blue light kept messing with my sleep. I woke up at 2pm and looked like a junkie. The caffeine under-eye serum was a scam.


I found her old email and asked to meet up in real life. When I saw her reply, I froze.

As if the Spirit had finally knocked back.  

I was bored and looking for a reason to reactivate.

Face-to-face in a Marriott Courtyard and the rope went slack between us. She didn’t have the same pull in person.

He remembered my first cosplay: a dog-girl reacting to simulated violence. Back when I used to beg for my wishlist. Now they pay to drink from my bowl. Yet their want never matches my own.


I tried to get into The Girl, as-is. But I missed Her, on-stream. She lacked the screen-within-screen to frame her. The filter to mediate.


The distance to create something absent.
He was better as a superchat. As a witty affirmation on the top of my screen. In person, he gave nothing. His eyes were hard, but also empty. The wrong kind of silent type. Unnerving in his lack of mystery. Too knowable.

His see-throughness made me want to kill myself.

I needed to be back in the chat. Where I knew myself. I made the most sense without a face.

I watched him study me like an Icon. As if I were a portal into Outer Heaven. A beatific warp pipe.

The Local Attractions channel played on loop in 4K. A Red Lobster glow got caught in her hair. She was static, and scratchy to touch. Not smooth at all.

I could smell chlorine on the towel afterward. I thought about spending the night alone. Laying out by an indoor pool. Going to the ice machine in a robe.



After that, she recast me. From bannerman to punished warlock. A central figure in her new lore.

He followed me home from the hotel. He shouldn’t have done that. I’m re-telling this in a way that makes me look better. But he followed me home.
 
That fact is undeniable.
 
She burned my life away. Thank God, honestly. Feel like I’m back on Earth these days. Like I’m tethered to a wooden stake. One that’s been hammered into the dirt.

The girl online played her part. I smiled through the tears. “Ugly people hurt people.”

She was God-tier in ruin. A bedrot virtuoso.

I wish his version of me leaked into the feed and gained traction. If only to see the shape I’d take under such pressure. Would I survive the scrutiny? Or wilt under its weight?

Now her content is clinical. Like a syndicated talk show. But I sense unrest in the rebrand.

There’s no escaping this new skin, I’ve realized. It’s too tight. Too well-made. No softness to poke a hole in.

Do her backers know she talks like this? Like a geisha who’s been bonked on the head too many times? Like a thousand baby snakes, speaking as one to a front-facing camera?

He’s in there. I know it’s him, under a new name. Too eager. Too constant.

I used to dream about being the camera.

To exist as pure seeing.
To flicker with her in tandem, as the framerate dropped.

Sometimes I pretend I’m him.  Sitting at the computer. Watching myself undress. I observe my body like he would. As me, being him, watching me. Is this the logical end point of self-love? Or is it more like porn in reverse, with the bator folding in on themselves?

I'll lurk forever if I have to. Not as a pedo or a stalker. Not even as a man. Just a user without a face. Proof that someone still watches her from a one-point perspective.

I don’t block him. Because I like his implied stare. At times, when I see myself on stream, inside the picture-within-the-picture, it's as if my eyes have become his.

I don’t care what happens to me now. My faith is restored. Astrology is real.

I am seeing myself, from behind my own head. In third person. I am in a house, consisting of an L-shaped corridor with two rooms adjacent to it: a bathroom and a staircase leading to the bedroom. Except the bedroom is just a continuous reiteration of the corridor.  

The only actions you have are walking. And zooming in or out. You notice something crying in the sink. “The only me is me,” says a voice.  “Are you sure the only you is you?”

A hostile light chases me. I turn the camera horizontally and it starts again. It's been an endless hallway since the very beginning. An unbroken feed.

Back in the concrete-lined room, wearing a new, clean dress. But something feels different this go-around. There’s residue from a previous iteration. Like dirt, caught underneath fingernails.

  It’s like I’ve swallowed the seed of the sun.

And now its egg sits in my womb.

Larval nebulae will soon hatch.  

And leave me with a new hole.

Caught in the throes of heat death.



Like an insect falling to the floor.

Twelve hours after mating.

All available energy.

Evenly distributed.

The budget balanced.