My daughter just took a semester off from university so she could come home and try to start her own “brand”.
Now being a tradesman, I’m all for supporting entrepreneurship, so I decided not to give her any grief about putting off her classes for a while.
But then after a few weeks things begun getting… weird.
It started with little things…
I’d catch her zoning out at the dinner table, thousand yard stare into the abyss. She wouldn’t respond to her name, anything, I had to loudly clap my hands right in front of her face to get a reaction.
I knew she’d stay up late into the night in her room, “streaming” or whatever she called it. So maybe she was just tired? But I guess it was working, people sent her all kinds of money.
But then yesterday, when she was coming down the hall she suddenly made a right turn and walked right into the wall, and kept going.
Like she was glitching. Her forehead pressed against the drywall, her legs pumping like she was going to go right through it.
She wouldn’t respond to my shouting at all. I literally had to grab her shoulders and turn her back in the right direction and she just took off, not saying a word.
I was worried it was drugs… I was even considering staging an intervention… that was until I finally decided to check in on one of her streams.
I said a prayer that it wouldn’t be anything disgusting and searched for her tiktok.
Jennifer Calloway.
1.2 million subscribers Tik-Tok.
Handle: JennyTheNPC
I clicked the latest stream.
“Oh dear God…” It was worse than I could have imagined.
“Yum. Cheesecake. Cheesecake. Ew, spicy. Cheesecake.”
“Pop, pop, pop. Balloons. Balloons. Yum. Cheesecake.”
“Roses smell so good! Cheesecake. Ew, spicy. Cheesecake.”
My intelligent, sweet, baby girl rattled off words derived from emoticons that people paid to send her as she looked at the webcam with dead, dull, black eyes.
No. I wouldn’t let this happen.
I lunged from my desk and sprinted towards her room, nearly bursting the door off its hinges.
I flipped her laptop down and snatched the blonde wig from her head. My hands cradled her face as I begged her to stop.
But I saw no light in her eyes. There was nothing behind them.
She was gone.
“Jenny! Jennifer wake up dammit! Come back to me!”
“JennyTheNPC that’s me!” She smiled and twisted her index finger in the dimple of her cheek cutely.
“Catch me on stream, Monday through Friday, 8pm! Yum. Cheesecake. Pop, Pop, Pop. Balloons. Cheesecake.”
“No, no, no, no… Please God, no…” I cried.
Suddenly the smile faded from her face and her skin grew so cold I yanked back my hands as if they’d been bitten by frostbite.
Her eyes… Christ, her eyes.
They filled with static like a television.
“There is no God… only the sweet suffering of desperate depravity to fill the void of human need.” Her voice thundered throughout the room, shaking the very foundation of the house. So much pressure pounded against my skull I felt blood seep down my ear lobes.
I wanted to look away, I wanted to claw out my eyes to stop seeing the static… the void… but I couldn’t.
Just as I began to feel my mind shatter into a million pieces the warmth returned to the room, and like the flip of a switch her fake smile and dead eyes were back.
This is not my daughter…
“Pop, Pop, Pop. Balloons. Cheesecake.”
Not my Jenny…
“Yum. Cheesecake.”