Nobody watched Leanne because they liked her. She was just a mess. I guess it was cruel of us, but we were all laughing. She’d call us “her darlings” but a more accurate description would have been “hate watchers”.
We knew everything about her, because her entire life was shared online for the world to see. She, like many other gormless and giftless people online had figured out that oversharing was a business opportunity. She shared every moment with us, and it shot her to stardom.
Leanne was all over Sharestars. It was a silly little app full of people with dreams of fame and fortune. All that you had to do was keep eyes upon you, and soon, you would be rich.
She was a joke. Utterly pathetic. Desperate and delusional, but so entertaining. She’d take out her phone and start filming herself wherever she went. Screaming in her silly little voice about how famous she was, and how she had hundreds of “her darlings” watching. We’d snicker behind the screen as she caused a scene.
She’d get into fights with bemused members of the public who had no idea about her so called celebrity status, or have breakdowns during brief moments of clarity when she seemed to realise that there was no real reason for her fame, beyond people mocking her.
Those moments were far and few between, at first. She loved the attention, and she could convince herself that we were all glued to the screen because we adored her and her antics, but as time went on, and younger, prettier, messier people came on the scene and began offering entertainment, her unearned confidence dwindled, along with her audience, and she began to freak out more often.
She had plenty of money to spend from her online infamy, but it slipped through her fingers like water, and with every day, the light left her eyes a little bit more.
I think that she got addicted to the camera, and all the gifts that it gave her. She couldn’t give it up, and that made her ripe for punishment.
We’d play both sides as we watched. We’d send her money and praise, then switch accounts to send her hate or report her to the police for her outbursts.
Was it wrong? Probably, but your silly mortal morality doesn’t matter to me. We made her feel like a star, and it made her happy, so it wasn’t all bad. We fed her well, letting her swallow her silly dreams, until she was juicy and ripe.
There were new people coming through all the time, signing up to the Sharestars and shooting up the weekly leaderboards, buzzing past Leanne. The cycle of new creators got faster every day, and Leanne spiralled.
She began starting fights more often for attention, spouting slurs as she walked down the street, crying for hours on live streams, all alone in her flat, late into the night.
It didn’t work.
With every passing day, her numbers tanked further and further, and the desperation drowned Leanne. She clung to her viewers, begging for us to stay, helpless as she watched more and more users leave her to find another form of entertainment.
She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t a star. She was just a lonely woman in her cramped flat, with nothing to her life but her phone’s camera.
She broke down yesterday afternoon, and that’s when we knew that it was time.
As usual, she was sobbing, her nose streaming with strings of mucus as she repeatedly asked the empty room what she should do.
It was a sad sight, but not nearly sad enough to draw in a crowd. There were plenty of pitiful crybabies, weeping on a live stream at that very moment. Those kinds of people were ten a penny on the internet. It didn’t matter how much she cried, nobody cared.
There were just the three of us in the chat room.
She should have accepted that it was over. Her digital footprint would be a problem, but she could have tried to start again and rebuild her life.
Instead, she just cried as we watched, occasionally dropping a sympathetic comment or gift into the chat room, and then switching accounts to send her an insult or two.
She cried long into the early hours, until finally, her last viewer had left the live stream, and she was all alone.
We covered our mouths with our hands to stop the laughter as her howls of hollow solitude filled the hallways. Her bawling drew us closer, and helped us to find her front door. We’d always had an idea of where she lived, because she was so free with her personal details, but the sad, sorrowful sobbing drew us, like moths to a flame.
Me, and my sinful sisters knocked upon the door, once each, with wide smiles and wicked ideas. Listening to her whine and whisper to her phone as she approached us, unable to imagine what lay just outside her front door.
The door flew open, but we were not there. Leanne looked around, bemused, her pathetic sobbing quietened for a moment before she turned back to her seemingly empty flat, and the waiting camera, and began weeping for her nonexistent audience once again.
We watched the so called star pad across the living room and back to her phone’s watchful eye, mumbling about trolls coming to her home again. This was something that she often liked to pretend happened, for the attention, but now, someone really had come round for a visit.
We were not trolls, though. We were something better, or in Leanne’s case, worse. We three sisters are noble by blood. Hell’s huntresses. The pets of our Princess. Raised from the embers of hellfire and given form and voices by the one that we serve.
Leanne was nothing special. Inconsequential. Just a lonely woman in her cramped flat, as the three of us descended from the shadows. Her flesh tore so easily, as her screams swallowed up the whole room. We ripped her to pieces, but, as always, we were loyal to our Princess and did not consume her, saving her sweet, seasoned meat for our sweet one.
Her torment would taste delicious when we presented her to our Princess, and then, the game would begin again. There were so many like Leanne. The cycle never ended, and so, our game went on.
It was quite the show. I suppose, had anyone been watching, they would have been very entertained, but unfortunately for Leanne, there was nobody there to see her at her most engaging.
We left a little piece of her behind, when the hunt was done. Symbolic, I suppose. Sentimental, in a sense.
Her phone was still filming, as usual, and the room was almost bare, with just a single blue eye staring out into the empty air, forever, and ever.
Sincerely, Jennifer x 