Killcam
By: Nikki Pire • @lightmypire
“Bro!” Matty yelled, slamming the laptop shut. “We’ve seen like forty dicks in five minutes. Fuck this.”
“Patience, boys,” Scott said. He took a long sip of his contraband Natty Light. “I went on with my cousin Tim over spring break, and we chatted with a total smokeshow. Blonde, huge tits. She was from Sweden or something.”
“Bullshit.”
“I added her on Facebook, dickface! I can prove it.”
Kevin pulled at a thread on his Aéropostale T-shirt, choked down a sip of his own beer. “Do you guys just wanna play Halo or something?”
“Come on, Murphy,” Scott said, slapping the bill of Kevin’s baseball cap down over his eyes. “You know you need to practice talking to girls.”
“Fuck you, no I don’t!”
“Please, you basically barfed when Jess Lopez asked how you did on the calc midterm in the dining hall tonight.”
Kevin’s cheeks burned.
“Besides, did either of you clowns hear about any parties happening tonight?” Kevin and Matty said nothing.
“That’s what I thought.”
Scott opened the laptop on his desk, and the three boys huddled back around it. Scott refreshed the Chatroulette window. The screen cast their faces in a pallid glow.
*Play. *Guy with a naked torso. *Next*. Guy jacking off. *Next*. Frumpy girl with a ukelele. *Next*. Naked guy sitting in the dark. *Next. *Dick in a pumping fist. *Next. *Guy wearing a Jigsaw mask. *Next. *Shirtless torso. *Next. *Guy jacking off. *Next*. Guy jacking off. *Next*. Guy jacking off. *Next*.
*Connected to somebody. *
*Location: United States *
Their chat partner’s video screen was fully black, the text *webcam is disabled *in the corner of it.
Scott’s orange enV vibrated violently across the desk. He flipped it open to read a text. “Yo, Pete just got a pack of Four Lokos from his brother! Shotgun contest behind the library.”
“Oh, it’s lit,” Matty said.
Matty and Scott rose from their plastic desk chairs. Scott drained his Natty Light and tossed the crushed can into the mesh garbage bin next to the door, shouting “Kobe!” The can bounced off the rim and onto the carpet. He belched and didn’t pick it up.
“You coming, Murphy?” Scott said, hand on the doorknob.
Kevin’s eyes flicked back to the screen. He stroked the trackpad with his index finger, swirling the cursor in circles. “I’ll catch up with you guys in a few,” Kevin said.
“Kay. Don’t start jerking off until you hear the elevator ding.”
“Fuck you!” Kevin flipped Scott and Matty off as the door closed on their laughter.
Kevin’s eyes fell back onto the Chatroulette site. His current chat partner’s video still showed a black rectangle. He turned toward the television and Xbox on top of his dresser, wondering if he should just snipe some aliens and call it a night.
“Ignoring me? Not off to a great start.”
Kevin snapped his focus back to the screen. The previously-disabled video screen contained an impossibly beautiful woman. The glow of her computer screen bathed her creamy skin in ethereal light. She sat in darkness, her perfect face a beacon in the gloom, framed by onyx hair only visible from its sheen.
Kevin snatched the baseball hat off of his head. “Uh, sorry, you weren’t there a minute ago.”
“Well, I’m here now.” Her voice sounded impeccably clear, as if she were actually in the room with him. Her video feed was perfectly clear, too, far from the blurry quality of the other chats he had had earlier that night. Kevin’s eyes drifted down to her cleavage, lingering there before he caught himself. He shifted his gaze back up to her pale blue eyes and prayed that she hadn’t noticed.
The woman smiled at him with straight white teeth. “What’s your name?”
“Uh…”
“Nice to meet you, Uh.”
Kevin’s face flushed. “That’s obviously not my name.”
“I asked what your name is and you said ‘uh.’ Why would I not think that was your name?” “Because that’s not a name.”
“That’s not true.”
“How do you know that?”
“There has to be at least one Uh in the world.”
“Well, it’s not me.”
“So, you’re a liar then?”
“A liar?”
“You lied to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You told me your name was Uh.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I’m not Uh, I’m Kevin.”
The woman laughed. “You’re funny, Kevin.”
“No, I’m just bad at talking to pretty girls.”
“Oh, so you think I’m pretty?”
*Fuck. *“What’s your name, then?”
The woman leaned in close to her webcam, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
Kevin laughed, but the woman’s face turned serious. The laptop fan whirred in the silence that fell between them.
She broke the quiet with a giggle. “So, what’s a cute guy like you doing staying in on a Friday night?”
Heat flooded Kevin’s stomach at the compliment. He leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “There’s a rager I’m gonna hit with my friends soon, but I’m taking my time getting over there.”
“Lucky me.”
Kevin’s penis throbbed. “Yeah, I’m not usually alone on a Friday night.”
The woman cocked her head. “You’re not alone now. You’re here with me.” Her full lips spread slowly into a smile.
The heat spread from Kevin’s stomach up his spine. “So, uh, what are you doing at home on a Friday night?”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked into her lap. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” “You can tell me.”
“I play a lot of Halo. I know it’s kind of nerdy—”
“*You *play Halo?” An image of the woman trash talking strangers via headset and shooting Drones flashed through Kevin’s head. His penis throbbed again.
“Yeah, I’m kind of obsessed. My friend and I were going to play, but he never showed.” “Sounds like an asshole.”
She smirked. “He probably just got tired of not being able to keep up with me.” “So you’re good, then?”
“I bet I’m better than you.”
“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
Her blue eyes glittered. “What if we played right now?”
Kevin’s heartbeat quickened. “You want to play Halo with me?”
The woman flashed her perfect teeth. “Yeah. You have a PlayStation, don’t you?” “PlayStation?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Don’t you mean Xbox?”
The woman froze. Kevin thought her Internet may have cut out, but then she laughed, a forced bark. “Oh, yeah. Duh.”
“What’s your gamertag? I’ll add you.”
“Why don’t you click this instead?” A link appeared in the chat box on the screen. “What’s that?”
“Another way for us to play together.”
The woman locked eyes with Kevin. He felt a phantom force drag his fingertip across the trackpad without his permission. He clicked the link. Instead of opening a new webpage, a file ending in .exe popped up at the bottom of the screen. The progress bar underneath it filled rapidly. *Download complete. *
A barrage of popups exploded across the laptop screen. The screen flashed red, then black, red, then black. A shrill scream poured from the laptop speakers. Kevin yanked his hands from the burning keyboard and suctioned his palms over his ears.
The bulbs in his ceiling light shattered. The room was dark except for the flashes of bright red light that pulsed like a heartbeat from the laptop screen.
Abruptly, the screaming stopped. The laptop screen stayed red, casting the room in a bloody glow.
“Do you have a girlfriend, Kevin?”
Kevin yelped and whipped around. The woman sat on the edge of his bed, swinging her feet and twirling a piece of hair around her finger.
Kevin could only blink at her. Sweat sprang from every pore on his face. “I’ll take that as a no.”
She hopped off the bed and began moving toward him. He backed away until he felt his desk chair cut into his lower back.
“What… How…”
“Does it matter?”
Kevin continued staring at her, unable to speak.
She closed the distance between them and gazed up at him. “Don’t you want to play with me, Kevin?”
Kevin’s fear and shock thawed as he looked into her eyes. A feeling of need ballooned in his chest, and an urgent heat spread throughout his entire body. He looked at her face and felt overcome with lust.
He took a step toward her.
The woman looped her arms around his neck. “I want to play with you.”
She leaned in and kissed Kevin on the lips. He kissed her back, reveling in the hot, wet press of her mouth on his.
The woman took a sudden step backward, eyes trained on him. Kevin tried to speak but discovered that his mouth had started feeling numb. He touched a hand to his lips. When he pulled it away, strands of a gooey secretion trailed from his lips to his fingers. He started to drool.
He attempted to step toward the door before realizing he’d lost feeling in his legs. He swayed and fell hard onto his stomach, grunting as he collided with the floor.
Strong hands flipped his body over. The woman kneeled on the ground next to him. She stroked a finger down his cheek. He didn’t feel it at all.
He watched her pupils dilate until they eclipsed the blue of her irises, then the white of her eyes.
She opened her mouth and unhinged her jaw with a crack. Something slithered out of her throat. He squinted until he registered what it was: a squirming, milky grub. A halo of pointed teeth lined its gaping mouth.
The grub unfurled from her mouth and landed on Kevin’s tongue. It began inching down his throat. A rotten smell filled his nostrils. He watched the creature slowly disappear inside of him.
The body of the grub began heaving. The thin walls of its opaque form bulged around the blood and tissue it gulped from Kevin’s insides. The woman let out a blissful groan as she swallowed the gore that the grub funneled up into her mouth.
Suddenly, Kevin was floating above his body. He saw the woman kneeling next to him, the grub bucking between their throats. He watched the grub pull out of his mouth and retreat behind the woman’s lips.
She wiped her mouth and stood. He saw her step over the husk of his body and sit in his desk chair. She stroked the trackpad once, and the laptop screen went back to normal. The room went hazy as he saw her refresh the Chatroulette site. She clicked the *Play *button as his vision turned to darkness.