The livestreaming accident
I have the luxury of working from home. It's nice. I don't have to commute. Almost all my meetings are on zoom, so I don't really need to pay attention to where my hands are when talking to others. I don't think I even own a pair of work slacks anymore.
Still, sometimes my mind starts to wander after hours in front of the monitor, so I make it a point to go for a walk on my lunch break every day. I own a huge amount of forest in the middle of nowhere and find it calming to amble around the trees. Originally, the walks were meant to be simple. No technology, just me and my thoughts.
But after a few months of the same track over and over again, I found myself a little bored and lonely, so I decided to livestream it and chat during that time. Surprisingly, the streams started to do really well. People would chime in almost every day. Chat was super active. Just a bunch of lonely people being lonely together.
A few weeks in, I found myself more and more curious about the world around me and tried to identify all sorts of different flora and fauna. When I couldn't remember the name of something, I made a mental note of it and tried to learn about it online that evening so I could talk about it in more detail on the next stream. Soon, I found myself trying to identify something new about the woods every single day. Maybe it was a mushroom. Or a bird. Or just a weird pattern in one of the leaves that had fallen the day before.
But sometimes I would come across things I couldn't explain. A branch that looked like it had been ripped off of a tree by force. A print in the earth from an unidentifiable animal. A strange sound that I couldn't quite place.
I would sometimes be thinking about these occurrences weeks or even months after they happened, but had lost the V ODs by then, so I started to re-upload them to YouTube as well, which might have been a mistake. Most of the comments were positive:
Yo! I'm so happy you are doing this! I've actually started doing "lunch walks" as well and it's really helped my mood and general well-being! Keep up the great work!
Some were negative:
How could you fail at identifying a blue-beaked hornbill! They are the only known duck with BLUE BEAKS! I don't know how you even found one in your backyard, but you are clearly a failure of a bird watcher and should just give up now.
To be honest, those didn't bother me. I just figure it was passionate, people frustrated that they couldn't share that passion with others. Still, there were some comments that kept me up at night:
3:05. Bottom left.
16:45 top right
32:06 middle of the screen.
When I looked at these timestamps, I found more anomalies. Black smudges in the video feed that would only last maybe a frame or two before disappearing completely. I chalked it up to some weird video encoding issues, but I was definitely spooked and bought some motion-activated cameras soon thereafter.
Still, I had a community to care for. No matter how unsettled I was, I felt it was best to keep walking as normal, but to keep an eye out for anything unusual.
One day, I found a stick. Not just any stick. A really good one. It's about shoulder-height, decent heft, gnarls in all the right places. One of those sticks that is practically begging to be your companion while out and about. So I took it with me.
I couldn't help but wave it around and start chanting stupid spells. Hocus Pocus. Alakazam! Shoo-A Shoo-A! My chat loved it and started suggesting different spells to cast.
Somehow, I lost track of time. Well, I also lost track of myself. I was just lost. We were overlooking a cliff's edge and could see the canopy of trees beneath us.
To be honest, it was absolutely beautiful. Clouds covered patches of rolling hills, which were all covered with trees of different kinds. It was one of those times where you can't help but sit down and admire the world around you.
So, seeing as how I had no idea where I was, I sat on the edge and dangled my feet from the cliff before announcing to chat, "Well guys. I'm legitimately lost. Do you all remember the way back?"
While the mods were going through the stream giving me directions, I was taking suggestions for more spells from chat. Then a superchat came in, saying:
Please. Say the following: Uluroo mem catoo. Speriezoo Kim Galoo! Please.
Not thinking anything of it, I stood up and cast the spell, waving my wand in the air. I laughed and said, "There. Are you happy now?"
In that moment, I heard a rustling in the woods, followed by a distinct thud. I would like to say I handled the situation with dignity, but I didn't. I screamed like the little girl I was.
I then heard some more rustling, and another thud. Then another. Birds now cawed from every inch of the forest and began flying away en mass. Squirrels and boar fled away, towards the cliff where I was. Something had happened in the forest and every fibre of my being was telling me to stay away.
Still, I knew I would have to go through it to get back home and I was already late for work in the afternoon, so I'd have to make a move eventually. Plus these were my woods. If anyone knew them, it would be me. I psyched myself up and said, "Wish me luck" to my chat before walking towards the tree-line.
It was then that I saw what looked like a big black bear in the distance. It was just lying with it's back facing towards me without moving at all. I made my way around it as quietly as I could before seeing another in the distance. Then another to my right. And again another to my left. I was completely surrounded and lost all sense of composure.
In that moment, I just ran. I didn't know where to, but I knew I needed to get out of the forest as quickly as possible.
A few moments later, I was on the freeway almost 3 miles from my house. Ordinarily, there would be car after car whizzing by, but on that day. Nothing. Not a single soul.
My legs were so wobbly from the running and adrenaline that I decided to sit down for a second and read chat before walking along the road. Secretly, I was hoping to see someone. Anyone. Just proof that I wasn't somehow dreaming everything up.
While slowly walking back home, a police cruiser slowed down next to me and opened it's door to me. The middle-aged officer turned to me and said, "Are You Esmerelda007?"
Shocked that this random officer knew my stream name, I simply nodded and said, "Yeah. That's me." I then came to my senses and all the words jumbled together at once. "Wait. Officer. Something just happened. I was walking my property when... bears started falling from trees. I didn't even know I had a bear problem, but there were so many. All over the place..."
The officer cut me off. "They ain't bears." He then motioned to my phone. "I'm gonna need to you turn off that stream and come with me. It's a matter of national security."
Another two cruisers then showed up to the scene while he spoke into his walkie talkie, "I've got her. All units stand down. I repeat. She is detained. Stand down."
I turned off my phone and entered the car. On the way to the station, the officer tried to make smalltalk with me, but to be honest I couldn't speak. My lunch had turned into a ball in my stomach and was slowly trying to force itself back up.
When I got there, I was held up in a mirrored room for hours. Alone. They didn't take my phone or anything. I had it on silent and was getting notification after notification, but in the state I was in, the text was blurry and I couldn't read any of them.
Eventually, the sherif came in and told me, "It's time."
I was lead to a a set of doors and told to wait for a minute. When the doors opened, I was immediately bombarded with a series of camera flashes and a loud, cacophony of questions:
What, exactly, did you do with the stick?
Which agencies do you work for?
Where is the staff now? Can it be used to cause harm to humans?
To be honest, I had no idea what was going on. It wasn't until later that I learned the truth. For some reason, the moment I "cast the spell" provided by the superchat, a large group of previously unknown monsters all died due to a quick-spreading virus that only affected them. Apparently, these creatures had been silently preying off of humanity from the shadows for centuries and were behind numerous kidnappings and killings throughout the years. The FBI had been constantly trying to get rid of them from the shadows for an incredibly long time, but somehow my livestream was the first time humanity at-large had seen them on camera.
More than that, it appeared that I was the one that killed them all and saved humanity from such a threat.
Yeah, kinda rushed this one at the end...