He wouldn’t be talking about me after the Illness. When I caught some silly virus going round at school and then didn’t seem to get better while everybody else did. He wouldn’t be speaking about the girl who slowly stopped being able to go to school. Then outside. Then leave her bed. He wouldn’t mention the Illness and how no one knew quite what it was, even after all those years, and all those tests, and all those Google symptom searches. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t blame him for that. Who wants to hear about a girl who’s exhausted after having a wash?

The thing most people don’t understand, though, is that I don’t have to Live inside these four walls. I don’t have to be trapped inside my body. I can be strapped to the chest of brilliant people and I can watch them Live lives that could perhaps be my own, and that’s a thing of wonder.

That is, until one of them dies.

The priest stands aside and a woman I think is Wesley’s wife gets up and I use my last spoons to lean over and slam the laptop closed.

Welcome back to Stream Cast, Alice

Users online:

destroy_roy

Online for:
57 mins

Users offline:

daddycool-007

Last online:
68 days

Connect to a channel to start watching.

Connecting to destroy_roy …

4

destroy_roy

And now I am balanced on the desk of my sixteen-year-old cousin Roy as he hammers at his keyboard like he’s playing some ferocious piano.

There’s no music that I can hear, though. Instead, I watch his screen as he stalks through an apocalyptic landscape, his hands clutching a gun as he runs towards a derelict building.

I don’t recognize this game. Usually Roy streams himself playing games that involve building up whole worlds from nothing. And even though he never takes the camera outside, there’s something brilliant about watching him breathe life into building blocks.

This game is different, though. His fingers are white on the keyboard. He pulls open the door to the building and crouches under an empty window, wrapping bandages round his computerized hands.

And then I hear the popping. Far away at first and then louder and louder. And I want to warn him, but he can’t hear me and he probably doesn’t even know I’m here with him, because that’s not how Stream Cast works. It’s not a two-way conversation. I just watch and shout into silence.

He reacts too late. His fighter stands up at the window as we see the van racing towards him, killers wearing tin helmets hanging out of the windows and speeding his way.

Pop-pop-pop-pop.