Chapter 1: One New Follower

Chapter 1: One New Follower

The green glow of the CRT television painted Liam’s face in sickly hues, casting long, dancing shadows across the sparsely furnished room. On screen, a blocky pixelated hero fought a losing battle against a horde of 8-bit skeletons. On Liam’s monitor, the viewer count stubbornly remained at ‘3’.

“And… he’s dead. Again,” Liam mumbled into his headset microphone, his voice a flat monotone that betrayed his exhaustion. “Classic rookie mistake. You never, ever, try to jump the chasm with a skeleton on your tail.”

The chat box remained silent. Two of the viewers were likely bots. The third was probably his own phone, which he used to monitor the stream quality. A familiar, hollow ache settled in his chest. He was broadcasting into the void, a ghost in his own machine.

He sighed, pushing his unkempt brown hair from his dark-rimmed eyes, and muted the mic. Leaning back in his worn gaming chair, his gaze drifted to the peephole on his front door. It was his other screen, the one that showed a slice of a world he wasn't part of. He’d timed it perfectly. Any minute now…

And there she was.

Chloe. Apartment 4B.

She emerged from her door across the hall, a splash of vibrant life in the dingy, beige corridor. A worn jean jacket over a faded band t-shirt, a messy blonde bun that somehow looked effortlessly perfect. She was humming, a light, cheerful sound that seeped under his door and into the sterile silence of his apartment. As she locked her door and turned, a warm, genuine smile graced her lips, directed at nothing and everything.

Liam’s breath hitched. He was a collector of these moments, tiny, stolen glimpses of the girl next door. He knew her coffee schedule, the days she had art history class, the way she tapped her foot when listening to music on her headphones. He knew all of this from the safety of his digital cage.

His phone buzzed on the desk. A notification from his streaming app lit up the screen.

wallflower_75 has followed you.

Liam blinked. A new follower? It was a rare enough event to be startling. He quickly unmuted his mic.

“Hey, welcome to the stream, wallflower_75,” he said, trying to inject some life into his voice. “Thanks for the follow. We’re just, uh, dying repeatedly in Grave Dangers II.”

A message appeared in the chat almost instantly.

wallflower_75: I’m watching.

Liam felt a strange prickle on his neck. The message was simple, but it felt… intense.

wallflower_75: You watch her all the time.

Ice flooded Liam’s veins. He snapped his head from the monitor to the peephole, as if this new follower could see through his own eyes. The hallway was empty. Chloe was gone. Coincidence. It had to be a coincidence. A lucky guess from a troll.

wallflower_75: You should talk to her.

Liam’s hands began their familiar, subtle tremor. He typed a reply, his fingers fumbling on the keys.

LiamPlaysRetro: lol, who?

wallflower_75: You know who. She likes the old arcade downtown. Murphy’s.

A cold dread mixed with a bizarre thrill. How could they know that? He’d overheard her talking to a friend about it in the hall once, weeks ago. Was someone in the building watching him? Paranoia, his constant companion, began screaming in his mind.

wallflower_75: Just do it. What do you have to lose?

What did he have to lose? Everything. His carefully constructed wall of invisibility. The fragile peace of being overlooked. But the message burrowed into the deepest, most desperate part of him—the part that was so crushingly lonely it would consider taking advice from a faceless, possibly malevolent stranger on the internet.

The opportunity came an hour later. Fueled by a cocktail of anxiety and the lingering echo of that last message, Liam forced himself out of his apartment under the guise of checking his mail. As he fumbled with the key to his mailbox in the lobby, he heard the front door of the building click open.

It was her. Chloe.

Her cheeks were flushed from the autumn chill, and she juggled a bag of groceries in one arm. “Oh, hey,” she said, her voice even warmer than he’d imagined. “You’re 4A, right? Liam?”

He had a name. She knew his name. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. “Uh, yeah. Hi.” His own voice sounded alien, a croak.

“I’m Chloe.” She shifted the grocery bag, offering a small, friendly wave.

“I know—I mean, I think I saw it on your mail,” he stammered, his face heating with a brutal blush. Smooth. So smooth.

The silence that followed was agonizing. His mind was a blank slate of static. Then, the words of his spectral cheerleader echoed in his thoughts. She likes the old arcade downtown.

“So,” he blurted out, the word exploding from his lips. “This is random. Really random. But, uh, do you… do you like old video games?”

Chloe’s expressive eyes widened slightly in surprise, then crinkled in amusement. “Are you kidding? I grew up on Galaga. My dad and I used to go to Murphy’s Arcade all the time.”

It was real. The information was real.

A surge of adrenaline, potent and terrifying, propelled him forward. “I was going to go this weekend. To, you know, try and beat my high score. On… something.” He was rambling, a runaway train of social ineptitude. “You should—I mean, if you wanted to—you could come. With me.”

He braced for the polite refusal, the awkward excuse. Instead, Chloe’s face broke into that radiant smile he’d only ever seen from a distance.

“I’d love that,” she said. “Seriously. It’s been ages since I’ve been.”

They exchanged numbers. Liam’s hands were shaking so badly he could barely type his own name into her phone. The entire exchange lasted less than two minutes, but when he finally retreated back into the sanctity of his apartment, he felt like he’d just run a marathon and slain a dragon.

He leaned against the door, his body buzzing with a euphoric disbelief. He did it. He had a date. With Chloe. The validation was intoxicating. He felt seen.

A thought struck him. He had to tell someone. He opened his streaming app to message the only one who would understand, the strange catalyst for his success. But wallflower_75 was offline.

It didn't matter. Tonight was a victory. It demanded a celebration, and his celebration of choice was a feast of gas station junk food. He grabbed his keys, and with a newfound confidence, double-checked the deadbolt on his way out. The heavy thunk of the lock was a comforting, final sound.

In the fluorescent-lit aisle of the 24/7 convenience store, surrounded by chips and candy bars, his phone vibrated in his pocket. He smiled, thinking it might be Chloe. It wasn't. It was a notification from his home security app.

MOTION DETECTED - LIVING ROOM

His blood ran cold.

Impossible. He lived alone. The windows were locked. The deadbolt was thrown. It had to be a bug. A moth flying past the lens. A glitch in the system. His rational mind offered a dozen explanations, but none of them could quell the icy knot of fear tightening in his gut.

With trembling fingers, he opened the app. The live feed showed his living room, dim and silent, exactly as he’d left it. He tapped on the event clip, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.

The 15-second video started. The first ten seconds were nothing. Just his empty room, the faint glow of the CRT screen illuminating dust motes in the air. He was about to dismiss it as a false alarm when, in the eleventh second, something moved.

It was a flicker, a smear of motion on the far edge of the frame, emerging from the dark corner where the wall met the door to his bedroom. He replayed the clip, his thumb hovering over the pause button. He caught it on the third try, freezing the frame.

The thing that stood in his living room was not human.

It was impossibly tall and gaunt, a skeletal figure draped in what looked like pale, translucent skin stretched taut over a rack of bones. Its limbs were too long, bent at an unnatural angle as it lurched forward. Its face was a sunken mask of shadows, but two features were horribly clear even in the grainy footage: wide, unblinking eyes that seemed to absorb the light, and a fixed, contented smile. A smile of absolute malevolence.

Liam dropped his basket, sending bags of chips skittering across the linoleum floor. He couldn't breathe. His vision tunneled.

His phone buzzed again, the vibration a violent shock against his palm. A new notification appeared at the top of his screen, pulling his focus from the horrifying image. It was a private message on the streaming app.

From wallflower_75.

He tapped it open, his mind screaming, a primal, silent shriek.

The message contained only six words.

I told you I was watching.