Day and night my cousin would be all swipe left swipe left swipe right no luck left again. We’d sit together sometimes, slouched in his dimly lit room with the loudest breaths being the lazy ones of his screen. Endless scrolls and clicks and swipes and DMs ate his evenings and his face filled with faces and his life filled with dreams of lives. And the familiar ache of disappointment would creep upon him again as the algorithm failed him once more, and the latest catcher of his eye fizzled out into the air.
He felt like a human glitch. Loveless. Maximental. I made that last word up to describe the hollow feeling of having done everything you can for a cause only to be left waiting for it to finally be over. I liked words; they bent to my will.
He wanted things to change, wanted to be more than just a smile and a punchline. I am not a window. I am a door.
But on his screen the parade of single clowns kept auditioning themselves. The game never stopped.
I did not feel dissimilarly. I would often find myself on park benches and the soft hum of the digital city would throw itself at me like a drink and I’d purse my lips upon a bitter sip of it. I’d watch the people pass by, their eyes glued to screens, and wonder if they ever knew the mass of the silence between words, the hollow space where meaning used to breathe. I thought they looked like ghosts haunting their own lives, hunched over, shoulders tight, scared of looking up at that heavy sky. Half of them were only outdoors because their audiences clapped for nature-lovers. We were circus acts, really, casting ourselves in roles we didn’t choose, reciting lines we never planned to say more than once, but because we tried them once and that ten-second video got 10 million likes we must now make it our entire personality till we’re dirt in the ground. At what point, while looking out the window of opportunity, did we suddenly see only the glass?
And now we were telling each other stories to make sense of it all. We edited ourselves to fit the stories we thought others would want for us. And why wouldn’t we want them too? Heroes had to win, love interests can’t walk away, endings can’t be blank pages. Really there’s no story to us at all, I think. Just a series of scenes strung together, most of them insignificant. Character development can be built for years and then thrown away in an instant. Romances blossom just to never go anywhere and soon she’s gone halfway across the world and they’ll never see each other again. Characters die randomly with their arcs unfulfilled. And yet we still think we have stories that deserve to be written, to be held onto as if they mean something.
I liked parks because they slowed the world just enough for me to catch my breath. I could let go of the need to perform, to be seen, to be liked. I could just be, even if only for a moment. I know in the end I’m going to go back to the screen. We all do, and we can’t help it. We spend so much time on combatting addictions and yet we’ve normalised the most common of them all. Addictions are profitable, don’t you know? The spectacle, the applause, the feeling of value—all golden selling points in the market. Hell, they practically are the market now. Imagine if for a week everyone on the planet let the screens go dark, let the messages go unanswered, let the silence speak for itself. What would happen then? Could we even survive the absence of that hum that’s become the theme music of our generation? I could picture it now: the world grinding to a halt, factories desolate, stock markets teetering on the edge of collapse, prices plummeting as tech giants watch their empires crumble in the silence, CEOs and shareholders staring at blank screens, powerless for the first time. It would be a market death unlike any other, not driven by greed or fear but by something even more terrifying—collective indifference. Would the value of a company be so great if no one was there to validate it, to click, to like, to share? If a tweet fell in the woods and no one was around to retweet it, did it even happen?
This is, of course, all just wishful thinking. Even if we somehow managed to get the globe offline for a week (which would wreck much more than just tech) they’d get right back to it at the end. After all, you can’t sell silence half as well as noise. We’d claw back to it in an instant, because deep down, we’re all afraid that in the quiet we might find out just how hollow we really are.
It wasn’t that different for my cousin, really. The one time he broke free from the swipes and the clicks it was only because he found something else to fill the void. He’d met this girl once, during one of those endless nights, and for a moment, he thought she was different. She wasn’t. But she had something unlike the other girls—a way of turning his attention from one addiction to another.
They’d started drinking together, at first just to loosen up, to laugh a little louder, to smooth over the awkward silences that lingered between them once in a while. But it wasn’t long before the drinks became something darker. They started smashing up things and each other, breaking bottles against walls, shouting into the void and hoping for a voice on the other end. Voices never came. They spiralled deeper until they were both husks of the people they’d once been, drained, barren, unrecognisable.
It was ironic, really. He’d spent all that time searching for someone who could make him feel alive, and in the end he found someone who made him even deader. They lost themselves in each other, but not in the way people dream about. I wondered if he ever thought of himself as a husk, the way I did now. If he’d ever stopped to realize that somewhere along the line, he’d lost whatever it was that made him who he was. Or if he just kept going, kept searching, kept smashing things up, hoping that maybe the next bottle, the next squabble, the next night out would finally make him whole again.
‘Husk’ is a word that needs its own little box in the dictionary. It needs attention. It’s not just a word to describe what was left after the life had been sucked out of something; it’s a state of being, a way of existing. My cousin was a husk in one way and I in another. A different kind of emptiness, maybe, but no less real. There are so many ways a person could become a husk. You could lose yourself to love, to addiction, to the pursuit of validation. You could have given so much of yourself away, bit by bit, that there was nothing left to hold onto. Or you could just wake up one day and realise that somewhere along the line you’d stopped feeling anything at all. That the world had become a blur of faces and voices and notifications, none of them meaning anything anymore.
Maybe, I thought, as I sat there on that park bench, it wasn’t the whole world that was spiralling into this digital existence. Maybe it was just the big cities like London. Maybe what I’d come to think of as global culture was really just the culture of the loudest voices, the ones crammed into tiny flats, constantly vying for space, for recognition, for a sliver of meaning in the ceaseless buzz, the voices of guys and girls always on display, always performing, always trying to outdo each other in this strange, silent competition to be seen.
They could never satisfy me. I wanted her, the one to teach me an entire alphabet of yearning, a girl like a heroine from a Victorian novel, soft curls, fleet-footed in the breeze, and we’d meet on a foggy London evening like roses meeting rain, and her parasol would tumble to the ground, and my heart would pound as I stooped to retrieve it, and our fingers would brush as she laughed like sunlight dancing on rippling water, but after years of loving she’d move down south to the rich man she was assigned to but we’d still write to each other, and I would be cold, waiting for her to come home, and I would want her like I wanted to be a story worth telling.
Surely, she was out there somewhere. Surely there were places where people still knew how to look up from their screens and talk to each other without needing to be liked or reposted. Surely life moved slower somewhere else.
I experienced something close to that in Everworth, the small town I grew up in. It’s less than an hour away from London but worlds apart in every other way. It was where I went to secondary school, where the streets were quieter, the air a little fresher, and the people—well, the people were still people. They had their screens and their stereotypes, sure, but they weren’t consumed by them. They still knew how to have a conversation that wasn’t punctuated by a notification. They still knew how to smile at a stranger.
There were some girls I knew back in Everworth, girls who weren’t caught up in the same game that everyone here seemed to be playing. They were diamond-in-the-rough types, raised right, resistant to the churn of city life. Maybe if I went back there, I could find something real.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. London had been eating away at me for too long. I needed a break, a chance to step away from it all and remember what life was like before the screens took over. I could be more than another face in the crowd. So I started to think, maybe I should go back. I should pack up, leave the city behind, and go back to Everworth. It was just a train ride away. Maybe there was still hope in that small town. I could be roommates with my old pal Leon for a while and scope them out, see if permanently moving back would be worth it. This could be it. This could be the answer. I’ll text Leon, he’ll say ‘hell yeah’, and I’ll be off on the train tomorrow.
It was exactly this stupid line of thinking that led me to witness the Master Misfortune and break myself forever.
***
Night was already beginning to swell up like a tragic organ note mid-Eucharist, and the skyscrapers, heaven’s sky-sickening stars, were lighting up one window at a time, ever-changing through the starlit moments as if they were music for the eyes. These dazzling armoires of underpaid office workers pierced the night destructively as they loomed viciously over every breathing shadow on every street.
However, despite the indestructible vortex of darkness that enveloped the land in a callous crucifixion, the train still wore its eye-assassinating spectacles, enchanting the mind to open all the wider and warm the thickest of skins. The seductive beams beckoned me forward, away from this destructive dimness and towards the otherworldly beauty of my hometown.
I watched as one of the men shielded by the train’s spectacles got off and returned to his previous life in shadow, violently charging past a family of gloominess and a shade-smothered teen with his face buried in the intimacy of his phone screen, then sank into the distant dusk and drowned in nothingness.
The lights above the train shone red. Red of luck? Red of romance? Red of hell? I was always enticed by the idea that colours in your life meant something. In the distance, the blues of streetlamps reminded of brain-frying glacier meltwater, pale with an iridescence not easily forgotten. In the background, fading yellows danced around the buildings as reminders of the glimmer in every darkness. Crowds diffused in and out of the light, a hulking mass of shadow that consumed more and more empty souls by the second until there were none left to devour. I became one of their thousand parts as I boarded the next train.
I took one last look at the gloomy embrace of London that day and wished to never see it again. Soon it would be the only embrace I craved.
I settled into a worn leather seat and eventually the train jolted forward. I stared out the window at the fading skyline, its jagged edges dicing the last remnants of daylight. The city was slowly shrinking but still watching. The lights flickered on and off, and I felt a cold draft sweep through the compartment. I pulled my coat tighter around me, burying my chin in the collar, and tried to shut out the world, to lose myself in the rhythm of the train’s steady clatter.
But then there was a cough, a wet, phlegmy sound that pierced through the mechanical heartbeat, and I became painfully aware of the old man sitting beside me. He was a sorry sight, frog-faced and hunched over like a wilted flower, his skin the colour of old parchment, his eyes small and beady, framed by a network of deep wrinkles. He had the air of someone who’d lived through more than his share of disappointments and had come out the other side with nothing to show for it but a sagging frame and a bad cough.
“How are ye, sir?” he croaked, glancing at me sideways. His mouth curled into a toothless grin that gave me a shiver. I gave a noncommittal grunt, hoping he’d take the hint and leave me alone, but he leaned in closer, his breath reeking of stale tobacco and something sour I couldn’t quite place.
“Off to see the missus, are ye?” he asked, his voice gravelly and full of unearned familiarity.
I stared straight ahead, trying to communicate a disinterest in communication. “You could say that,” I replied.
“Yezzir, bet she’s a good one, eh? Got yerself a right proper lady, I reckon.” I turned my head slowly, giving him a look that I hoped would finally get the message across to him, but he only chuckled, a sound that was more rasp than laughter.
“Don’t be shy, lad,” he wheezed, his hand patting my arm in what I assumed was meant to be a comforting gesture but felt more like an invasion. “Yezzir, nothing like a good woman to keep a man steady. Ain’t that the truth?”
“Sure,” I muttered, shrugging off his hand and turning back to the window. I wanted to doze off to the sight of the trees, but I could only see the old man’s face behind mine, distorted by the glass, his eyes shining with unspoken knowledge that made me uneasy. Somehow the distortion found a way to make him look even more freakish. He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort, or if he did, he didn’t care. He just kept talking, his words rolling out slowly like a tide.
“Yezzir, been married to my missus for forty years now,” he said with a voice thick with pride. “Forty years, can ye believe it! Yezzir, that’s a long time, ain’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied. I felt the desire to unlock teleportation.
“Yezzir, it ain’t easy, marriage,” he continued. “Takes work, it does. But it’s worth it, ye know? Having someone to come home to, someone who knows ye inside and out. Yezzir, that’s the best part, ain’t it?” I bit back a sigh and forced myself to nod. “Yezzir, bet ye’ll have yerself a fine family one day. Couple of kids, a dog, the whole shebang. That’s the dream, right? Yezzir?”
“A dog would be cool. But I find that a very shallow dream. One should dream of something unlike the dreams of any other,” I said.
The old man blinked at me, momentarily confused, as if he couldn’t fathom the idea that someone might not share his straightforward view of life. But then he shrugged, as if dismissing my words as the foolishness of youth. “Ah, ye’ll come around,” he said, setting back into his seat. “Yezzir, we all do, eventually. Ye’ll see.”
I clenched my jaw, resisting the urge to tell him exactly what I thought of his worldview, of his “Yezzir”s and his traditionalism, of the suffocating smallness of the life he was so content with. But what was the point? The age of 60 seemed a point for a man at which he became so immovable in his ways that no argument, whether it be designed by Atticus Finch or Groot, could shake his perceptions. I turned away from him again and stared out the window at the passing countryside, the fields stretched out like tattered quilts and morphing with trees into a dark, featureless mass. Where did I belong? Maybe I didn’t belong anywhere. Maybe that was the point. Maybe I was just drifting, like the train itself, moving forward but never really arriving.
When the train finally began to slow, the wheels screeching against the tracks as it approached the station, I felt something neighbouring nostalgia. Veille Station was as I remembered it: modest, unassuming, a small red-brick building with a slightly rusted roof that had seen better days. The platform was deserted save for a few stragglers, each of them enveloped in their own quiet thoughts, their faces bathed in the pale glow of the station lights. I stepped off the train and onto the platform, my boots hitting the ground with a soft thud. A cool breeze swept through the station, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and distant wood smoke. I walked along the platform, passing the faded posters advertising local events—bake sales, village fairs, a community theatre production that had likely been cancelled by now. I reached the end of the platform where the barrier loomed ahead, a dull metal gate that separated it from the rest of the station. The gate creaked as I pushed through, the sound echoing in the quiet night, and for a moment I hesitated, caught between two worlds.
Beyond, the station opened up into a small courtyard. The cobblestones were uneven, worn smooth by the passage of countless feet over the years. I could see the station’s clock tower, its hands frozen in time, the face cracked and weathered. A stray cat darted across the courtyard, its eyes glowing like embers in the dark, and I found myself smiling at the sight of it. Even the cats in Everworth seemed to move at a slower pace, unhurried by the demands of the world.
There it was…there was the bench where I’d sat with my friends after school some days, trading jokes and dreams, back when the world was ours for the taking. There was the old oak tree where we’d carved our initials, believing that those scratches in the bark would give us nine lives. And the little shop on the corner, where I’d spent my pocket money on drinks and DC comics, the shopkeeper always greeting me with a grin and sometimes giving me discounts without telling me. I could still hear the echo of my younger self in the streets —the laughter, the shouts, the whispered confessions shared in the quiet of the evening. But those echoes felt distant now, like they belonged to someone else entirely. Someone who’d been left behind in the rush of growing up, someone who no longer fit into the mould that Everworth had shaped for him.
Crossing the barriers, I found myself in the heart of the town. The streets were mostly empty at this hour, save for the few making their way home from The Gruesome Spoon (a local pub). The buildings huddled together, their windows glowing softly, the faint murmur of conversation and clinking glasses surfing on air.
I wandered aimlessly, letting my feet carry me past the old St. Croft’s Cathedral with its peeling white paint, past our rivals at St. Kline’s Grammar School, past my own St. Mitt’s where I’d spent so many restless hours staring out of windows, past Waterfront Park where the lads played volleyball till the sun was under their shoulders.
I pulled out my phone to check the GPS. Leon’s place wasn’t far, just a few minutes from the station, but the streets of Everworth had a way of twisting into unfamiliar entities in the dark, and I didn’t trust my memory to guide me. As the blue dot on the map pulsed to show me the way, I felt that sudden, inexplicable urge we all feel to check the news. My thumb hesitated over the app before I gave in, the screen filling with headlines that ranged from the mundane to the absurd. And then, one headline caught my eye:
YouTube Star Naomi Pierce Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Fabricating Evidence and Manipulating Sources in High-Profile Scandal
I clicked on it without thinking, the article opening up in an instant. The photo of Naomi accompanying the article was one I recognised, a professionally shot image of her in full makeup. But then, by its side, was her mugshot, where there was a hollowness in her eyes I had never quite seen. The caption underneath read:
“Naomi Pierce, controversial blogger known for exposing online influencers, has been sentenced to five years in prison for her involvement in fabricating evidence against popular streamer Jackson ‘Hexx’ Wilde.”
The article continued:
Naomi Pierce, the once-celebrated Internet personality who gained fame for her “truth-telling” exposés on various internet figures, has been sentenced to five years in federal prison after being found guilty of fabricating evidence and manipulating sources in her most notorious scandal to date. Pierce, whose YouTube channel boasts over fifteen million subscribers, rose to prominence by digging into the lives of controversial influencers, often uncovering hidden scandals and secrets that shocked the internet community.
However, her latest target, Jackson ‘Hexx’ Wilde, a popular streamer known for his wild antics and outspoken nature, has brought her career to an abrupt halt. Wilde, who has a massive following, became the subject of a months-long investigation by Pierce. In a series of videos, Pierce alleged that Wilde had engaged in illegal gambling practices, manipulated his audience into investing in cryptocurrency schemes, and used his platform to solicit inappropriate material from underage fans.
The videos went viral, sparking widespread outrage and leading to Wilde losing several sponsorships and partnerships. But the tide began to turn when Wilde’s legal team uncovered evidence that many of Pierce’s claims were not only exaggerated but entirely fabricated. Key witnesses revealed that Pierce had pressured them into providing false testimony, and digital forensics experts found that documents presented as ‘evidence’ had been doctored.
During the trial, Pierce’s defence team argued that she had acted in the public interest, attempting to hold powerful figures accountable. However, the prosecution successfully painted a picture of a desperate content creator willing to go to any lengths to maintain her relevance and viewership in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Lady Turner, in her sentencing remarks, described Pierce’s actions as a “gross abuse of her platform” and a “calculated attempt to destroy a man’s life for personal gain.” In addition to her prison sentence, Pierce has been ordered to pay substantial damages to Wilde and will be permanently banned from YouTube.
The case has sparked a broader debate about the ethics of online content creation, with many calling for greater regulation of platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Wilde, who has since been vindicated, has publicly stated that he plans to return to streaming but will be ‘taking a break’ to recover from the ordeal.
She finally got what she deserved. You see, Naomi and I went to school together. She had never been particularly popular because nobody could stand her for long. She thrived on drama, constantly backstabbing and foul mouthing anyone who wasn’t useful to her. And she had a talent for finding out people’s secrets and spreading them like wildfire, always with a twist that made her look better and the accused worse. The nail in the coffin came when she wrote an exposé on one of the more popular students. He ran a platform called Mister Man where he offered lessons on, unsurprisingly, how to be more masculine. He catered to the guys who felt lost, unsure of their place in the world, and he promised to teach them the “real” way to be a man, whatever that meant. It was depressingly popular for a while, especially among the younger lads. I have to admit, even Leon and I paid for a few lessons, mostly out of curiosity, but also because, at the time, there was something appealing about the idea of having someone tell you exactly what to do to get your life in order. Of course, it all turned out to be ludicrous. His lessons were just outdated stereotypes, bullying of each other and shallow advice dressed as wisdom, all about projecting toughness, hiding your emotions, and treating life as a constant competition. We quickly realised it wasn’t for us, but plenty of others bought into it wholeheartedly. Naomi, true to form, saw an opportunity. She did her digging and put together a piece that tore Belle’s brother to shreds, highlighting the absurdity of his teachings, his hypocrisy, and even attacked his relationship with his girlfriend Sydney. The thing was, Naomi wasn’t wrong on most of it, but it didn’t matter. Nobody liked her, so nobody cared about the truth. We all rallied around the better-liked one, and collectively painted Naomi as a liar, someone who was just trying to tear down a guy who was “helping” people. And after that she stopped caring about the truth and started learning ways to masterfully make allegations up. Looking back on it, I don’t feel any remorse for siding against her. She brought everything on herself. She had spent her whole life tearing people down, and when she finally went after someone who had a support system, she got burned. To see her finally face the consequences of her actions felt…right. Her career choice always seemed stupid to me —why should we allow people to make millions off talking about the problems of others? And worse, of creating problems where there were none, just to fuel the fire?
I closed the article, the image of Naomi’s face fading from the screen, and turned back to the GPS. Leon’s place was just a few minutes away. I slipped my phone back into my pocket and started walking, the night air cool against my face.
When I finally arrived at Leon Fox’s place, I was in an awe far greater than I could have thought possible. From the outside, it looked like a relatively normal house at first glance —if you ignored the giant statue of Smaug draped over the roof, its massive wings stretching out as if ready to take flight. The dragon’s detailed scales gleamed in the fading light, and its eyes, carefully painted to look alive, seemed to follow you no matter where you stood. It was extravagant, to say the least, but it was also exactly the kind of thing Leon would love.
It had a perceptible charm to it, a kind of over-the-top flair that you wouldn’t find in a city like London, at least not without paying a fortune. Here in Everworth, though, I figured a place like this was probably a lot more affordable, which only made it more impressive. Leon had always been one to go all out when it came to his passions, and it looked like his home was no exception.
I buzzed in at the gate, and before I could even announce myself, the lock clicked open with a sharp sound. Leon must have been watching for me. As I stepped inside, I was immediately struck by the chaos that greeted me. The walls were suffocated with posters of fictional characters, from superheroes to anime figures to obscure cult classics. Every inch of wall space seemed to be covered, and the ones that weren’t were adorned with framed comics and rare artwork.
The floor was a different story, a battlefield of quarter-torn papers, books, comics, and empty cans of Red Bull. Like it had been swallowed by some natural disaster. But there was a method to the madness. This was Leon’s domain, his kingdom of artistic chaos. To anyone else, it was horror, but to me, it was the perfect encapsulation of my friend’s nature—creative, eccentric, and unrestrained by convention.
I waited in the living room and my eyes were drawn to a particular spot near the stairs where a life-sized cardboard cutout of Zayne Rieper, the protagonist of The Prophecy Immortale, stood proudly with a brooding expression. Leon had been obsessed with that franchise for as long as I could remember, and it didn’t surprise me to see Zayne taking up a place of honour here, though I did find it a little sad he was still so fixated on his teenage hero. The sound of footsteps descending the stairs pulled me from my thoughts, and soon Leon appeared, draped in his signature shawl. It was a replica of the one worn by Zayne, complete with the iconic quote etched into the fabric: “Flames don’t have to stay dead.” The shawl flowed around him like a cape, and with his tousled hair and eager grin, Leon looked every bit the part of a character from a beloved story.
“Welcome to my humble abode!” he exclaimed, spreading his arms wide as if presenting his kingdom to a visiting dignitary. “What do you think? Not bad, right?”
“Not bad at all,” I replied. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Leon. This place is…well, it’s you.”
He laughed, clearly pleased with the compliment. “That’s what I was going for! I wanted the house to scream ‘Leon’ from the moment the lasses walked in the door. Glad to see it has the desired effect.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Leon had always been larger than life, and now his home was too. There was something comforting about that, knowing that some things never changed. We settled into the sprawling, mismatched furniture of his living room and started catching up on the past eight years since we’d last been in touch.
“So, where have you been all this time, Callum?” he asked, leaning back in his seat and taking a swig from one of his Red Bull cans. He looked at me expectantly.
I shrugged, feeling a little awkward as I tried to sum it all up in a few sentences. “Here and there, mostly. After uni, tried my hand at a few different things, you know, odd jobs, freelance gigs. Eventually I ended up in London working in a dead-end office job that sucked the life out of me. I guess that’s why I’m back here. Needed a change of pace, you know?”
Leon nodded. “London does that to you. It’s a beast of a city.”
“What about you, Leon?” I asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, you’ve clearly been busy.” I gestured around at the chaotic glory of his home.
“Oh, you know me,” Leon replied. “After uni, I threw myself into my passions. I’ve been working on some indie games, trying to break into that industry. I’ve been doing some writing on the side. Fanfics, mostly, but I’ve got a couple of original ideas I’m toying with. Been a busy few years, yeah, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Sounds like you’re living the dream,” I said, and I meant it. He was an eccentric guy but he had always known what he wanted and went after it without hesitation. It was something I’d always admired about him.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” Leon said. He paused for a moment. “But, Callum, I didn’t just let you stay here because I sympathise with what you’re going through and wanted to catch up. I need your help.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Help with what?”
Leon stood up, his expression going more serious. “Come with me. There’s something I need to show you.”
Curiosity piqued, I followed Leon up the stairs to the attic. He hesitated before opening the door, his hand lingering on the knob for a moment before he finally pushed it open.
The attic was a completely different dimension, a looking-glass into the deepest darkest corners of his mind that nobody ever wanted to see. It was a jumble of treasures and trinkets, a place where he had hoarded all his most precious secrets. A sea of post-its stabbed the walls and ceiling in a gutting mosaic of love. There were, of course, more posters of his favourite franchises too buried amidst the pinks and yellows of the notes. But the most disturbing part, the crown jewel of his twisted amorousness, was the shrines.
Each shrine was dedicated to a different girl, real women from Leon’s past who he’d been infatuated with once. There were photographs, letters, gifts and trinkets, all meticulously arranged. Though they had each moved on with their lives, he seemed to have maintained his intense fixation enough to keep a disturbing homage to their existence. My eyes were drawn to one in particular that was buried by a heavy curtain. Leon moved toward it with an air of hesitation, his hand trembling slightly as he grasped the edge of the fabric. With a deep sigh that spoke of long days and a soul in need of slumber, he pulled it aside, revealing it was dedicated to Ophelia Hull.
Ophelia was another girl from school. Where she looked, Leon loved. I had never thought her anything particularly special; there was little substance to her. It’s funny how subjective beauty can get. One man sees a shining beacon of light, while another sees the first man’s love as nothing more than a passing fancy, a fleeting attraction that would choke in infancy.
“Ophelia,” I muttered. I had assumed he was long done with her by now.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Leon said quietly, not meeting my eyes. “But I’ve found out that she’s back in town. She’s moved in with some female friend, at least for a while. And…I want to give her another shot.”
“Leon,” I started, trying to process what he was saying. “Are you sure that’s a good idea mate? I mean, after everything that happened back then…”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Leon interrupted, his voice pleading. “But I’ve never felt about anyone the way I felt about her. Might even be my true love. Maybe I didn’t handle it well back then, but this is my chance to make things right, to show her how I’ve changed.”
True love? He felt about every girl the way he felt about her. Just look at all the other shrines! I had no interest in openly saying this to him though. “And what do you need me for?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“I need you to help me win her over,” Leon said, finally looking at me, his eyes filled with a desperate intensity. “You know her too, Callum.” Did I now? “You can help me figure out what to say, what to do. I know it’s a lot to ask, but…I don’t think I can do this alone.”
I remembered what she did to him. She had never batted an eyelid at this poor boy. The pain he had felt after his first rejection had been like a razorblade down the middle of his body. It had seeped into every thought and feeling, colouring his everything in darker hues, having come from nowhere and yet would remain, having no proper end in sight. His friends and family couldn’t escape it either, a ripple effect that spread out from the centre and diseased everyone it shook hands with. But we could never have felt stabbed like he did.
And then the blade went blunt and he moved on to the next girl.
“You…remember what she did to you, right? How she made you feel?” I finally asked.
“Belle’s brother isn’t in the picture anymore,” he replied. “Who could be left but me?”
He had always been a dreamer, someone who lived in his own world, but this…this was something else entirely. And yet, as I looked into his eyes, I saw the same old friend, the same Leon who’d been there for me through thick and thin. I couldn’t just walk away, even though my every instinct told me it was a bad idea. That’s what friends are for, right?
“Okay, Leon,” I said slowly, my voice uncertain. “I’ll help. But I accept no responsibility if it turns into a mess.”
“I know, mate,” he said with a relieved nod. “Thank you. I won’t mess this up, I promise.”
“So what do you want me to do?” I said.
“Well, here’s the plan,” he began, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up the preparations for a big dinner. It’ll be just the four of us: me, you, Ophelia, and her roommate. Once everything’s sorted, your job will be to invite them over. Don’t worry about the cooking, I want to cover that. Then they’ll make it the following evening and I’ll use the experience to make Ophelia fall in love with me.”
“You’re really banking on a dinner being enough to win her over?”
“It’s not just about the dinner, it’s the atmosphere!”
“Right. Leon, you guys barely spoke back then. How did you even find out she’s back in town?”
He hesitated. “I…I may have done a bit of digging.”
“Digging?” I repeated dubiously. “What does that mean?”
Leon looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was heading. “Overheard her name at the café a few weeks ago. Then I, uh, did some research online, found her Instagram, turns out she posted a picture of her back in town. It’s not a big deal, really. Just a coincidence.”
“You haven’t been stalking her, have you?”
“Not stalking!” he snapped, though unconvincingly. “Being thorough. I don’t want to muck this up.”
“Well, you’re going to need more substance than a dinner, mate. She could be a totally different person now.”
His face fell and he looked hurt. “I thought you were on my side?”
“I am,” I replied. “But come on, Leon. You can’t expect everything to go perfectly just because you set the stage. Life doesn’t work like that.”
The newest sigh cried out for a moment of peace and spoke of a heart that had been stretched beyond its limit of proportionality. “Are you familiar with the concept of a ‘glitch’ in astronomy, Callum? When a star has exhausted its supply of hydrogen, that is, it has evolved all it can and has been reduced to nothing but a feeble shadow of itself crawling around waiting and praying for its death, it tends to experience what we call a ‘glitch.’ They’re more common than initially thought. Somewhere, at this very moment, there is an entire planet ‘glitching.’ Flickering in and out of existence. This is what your mind is doing, Callum, it is glitching, you are glitching. You have become so absorbed by the past that you fail to see the truth – that she will love me. She just needs to stop glitching and understand what her heart is trying to tell her.”
I leaned back in my chair and marvelled at the massiveness of his delusion. But I couldn’t bring myself to deny him. Maybe he needed this, even if it would only make him realise how misguided he was.
He thought he could be better than Jay Gatsby. He thought he could put on Romeo face-paint and … The image in my head made me smirk despite myself.
In my mind I saw them sitting cross-legged on a bench in a park. His hand rested awkwardly on her knee, her hand idly toying with the edge of her phone, their eyes meeting in sidelong glances that were more uncertain than affectionate. She smiled, that plain yet almost cryptic smile that Ophelia was known for, always as if she might drop a bomb or a kiss or both at once, and you’d never know which until it was too late. But Leon was too lost in his girl to ask or even question whether she was capable of feeling the same.
I knew what they both looked like now but I still pictured them as they were when I first met them, still young enough to run, to jump, to dive headfirst into the digital banquet of the world. And in this imaginary world they might have thought themselves lovers, but not yet, not in that way, not in this episode. They were just two kids, orbiting each other in the vast emptiness of their separate universes, drawn together by the novelty of each other’s presence. They liked the way the other looked, the way the other moved, the way the other’s feed matched their own. It was all about attraction; not something deeper because they weren’t there yet. The real tragedy wasn’t that they were doomed to some epic failure, but that Leon was too blinded by his own illusions to see the truth of it.
There were no grand cosmic connections anymore, no matter how hard we wanted them. It was all about the here and now, the algorithmic present, and you and I, being laughed at by our machines.
Dylan Brennan 
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