Chapter 20: 19

 

While the popular entertainment and fashion worlds are not paying attention, the video site, Oil Tube, is flying high with videos that are made and uploaded by young people themselves. Most of these videos feature beauty and fashion instruction, or funny prank clips of their own making.

Once there are tens of thousands of tube owners following the channel, the editor in charge of the tube will send a backstage message inviting them to join the tube and sign up with the tube company. After signing up, the channel owner will get a share of the views of the videos they upload. Many channel owners who have millions of followers have even made video filming for the tube their official job.

Channel owners are also divided into different types of channels depending on the subject of their videos. There are female channel owners in the beauty and fashion category, male channel owners in the game commentary category, pure travel video diaries and original music or cover artists.

The easiest and most popular of these channels are those run by good-looking young men.

The videos they upload are usually either a record of the day's events, edited into a ten-minute or less video, or they create their own video theme that is popular in the tube and shoot it.

These themes are usually the type that show their sense of humour, such as extracting questions from fans in the comments to give funny and personal answers, some amusing little challenges, marshmallow challenges, one truth and two lies and the like. It's very simple and anyone can do it, but naturally people are more interested in following some eye catching and humorous young channel owners.

On top of that, there are meet and greet events organised by the Oil Tube and some of its partner companies or groups, and these events can easily be attended by over a few thousand people. Fans just want to take pictures and sign autographs with famous channel owners on the tube. It's not much more than a small book signing.

So, I'm going to create my own channel and make a photo diary of my daily life and upload it once a week. It won't take much of my time, but it will keep me in the public eye more often. And the contract will not be as binding as that of a modeling agency.

It satisfies the interest of young people who have nothing better to do than surf the internet and pry into the daily lives of celebrities, while keeping my face and name in the eyes of my fans.

The upfront investment is a bit high for me, with expenses like digital cameras and reflectors, and the time it takes to edit the video. But if I could take advantage of America's Next Top Model and get my YouTube page tens of thousands of followers, it would be an easy and free time job if I could get signed to YouTube.

I bought a not-so-expensive digital camera to do my daily shooting.

On my way to the plane to San Francisco, I took the camera and made my first selfie video. I took the camera here and there and recorded. The journey was as leisurely as if I were travelling, making me almost hypnotise myself into forgetting about Mike.

The card that the agent had left for me, saying 'call me when you get a lead', was left in the empty tenement. I don't think I would have wanted to be associated with the FBI if I didn't have to.

In the FBI, where there are a lot of capable people, I'd be considered a potential criminal after more than ten years in a mental health facility and still be locked up for that kind of reason. I'd even like to be able to completely insulate my private life from the FBI's attention when I go to Stanford if I can.

It was 10pm when I left the airport, but luckily the car rental company had already brought the car I had rented in advance to the airport. Driving myself through Pala Alto, where Stanford is located, saved me a lot of hassle with transfers.

I loaded my luggage into the car, turned on my GPS and chose my destination directly from the flat I had rented near the university. Within an hour, I was parked under the rented flat. It was a small but fully equipped studio with a kitchen, toilet, bathroom and balcony.

I opened the door with the key I had received in the mail from my landlord, and as I moved my luggage into the flat one by one, ready to close the door, I suddenly held my breath and froze.

A thin piece of fishing line had somehow wrapped itself around my neck, and by the time I noticed it had tightened to the point where my skin felt painful.

"Hi Brian sweetie! Are you happy to see me?" A familiar voice rang out from behind me. It was accompanied by a not-so-loud slamming sound, "ping."

I never thought I'd fall through the cracks this easily. He'd simply been hiding in the dead space behind the door, and I'd been so on edge from all those damned FBI guys, that I'd arrived in a new city and suddenly slacked off, forgetting I should have checked the house first!

"Mai...or should I call you David Vincent?" I held up my hands on either side of my head to show I wasn't rebelling and slowly straightened up and spoke.

"Or how about calling me Mike? Didn't Brian dear just talk on the phone a while ago, why the rusty tone?" David's tone seemed to be the same as the man who used to run to my house for afternoon tea every afternoon, but the tightening of the neck of my neck to the point where I could feel the fish line sinking into my flesh was telling me otherwise.

"Mike, listen. I'm not being followed or bugged by any FBI right now, and I haven't told them anything about your whereabouts..." the pain in my neck cleared my head more and more, and the moment of panic I felt at realising I was caught in the fishing line and the murderous intent inside Brian was forced down.

"Shhh...of course I know...of course I know, Brian..." the line pulled back hard pulling a deeper line of blood around my neck, and it was all I could do to keep my body from falling backwards with David's force in order to not have my throat slit just like that I fell backwards.

I slammed into the arms of this man who was nearly a head taller than me, and David was able to smoothly wrap another loop of fishing line around my neck to make it easier for him to apply pressure over a short distance.

His breath came against my ear, the sound of his vigorous breathing from the arousal of my senses sending a chill running up my spine and I shivered involuntarily.

"You're not one of those pussies, you're still my best friend, not to mention you have a soul as cold as mine! How could I kill you just like that?" David rubbed his nose against the hair behind my ear and even took my earlobe in his mouth.

It was disgusting...Mike like that really made me feel so sick...

This feeling of helplessness brought me back to the night I died. That fucking perverted murderer had done something so similar... Maybe everyone else was a peach in their fate and I was a pervert in mine?

I can't believe I've put myself back in this situation again! The feeling of self-loathing made my heart clench, and the bloodthirsty murderous intent of Brian that I had forced down came rushing back into my mind.

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My hand tightened on David's arm as he tugged at the line, my hand trembling a little uncontrollably as I knew that my little life was now literally being yanked so easily into the other man's hands that I couldn't do anything rash.

"So...what do you want, Mike?" I asked in a strong, patient whisper, only trying to show him that I was obedient.

"I'm hungry, Brian. How about making me a late night snack?" An unexpected question came out of his mouth and I froze for a moment, rushing to say yes as the fishing line around my neck tried to tighten again.

 

At the moment, I still had two loops of line around my neck that could have killed me by suffocation, the end of the line being tugged in one of David's hands while I was making a snack for this adder.

"You're not planning on just staying here after you eat, are you Mike." I asked, pretending to be offhanded as I tossed the vegetables in the pan.

David, who was standing beside me with one hand tugging on his fishing line and the other in his shirt pocket watching me cook, gave me a meaningful look and said back, unexpectedly and reasonably, "Sure. Would I leave a live Brian to sneak off to the police with me unchecked?"

I choked and the room was silent for half a day, the only sound being the zipping of vegetables in a stir fry.

"You think I'd commit harboring for you?" I poured the sautéed vegetables from the pan onto the plate David had brought.

David shrugged and said with an innocent look on his face, "Of course, is there any way you could call the police now that your little life is in my hands? And I sometimes think it might be a good plan to have an extra assistant. If you want to learn how to hunt too, I won't hesitate to teach you, Brian." And he smiled and winked at me.

What an assistant, what a hunter...just a serial killer who can't control his innermost desires...how could I let myself follow my innermost desires and end up in that position...

I'm not that kind of person.

As I ate the snack, the fishing line around my neck was untied by David and I began to think of a way to escape. I was regretting it now, regretting my avoidance of the FBI the day before. God knew David would come running to me, despite the risk of being caught.

A million ideas swept through my mind, but the success rate of any of them was still less than thirty percent.

"How did you know I'd be staying here and come here beforehand to keep watch?" I asked the well-fed murderer sitting at the table behind me as I finished eating and washed my plate.

"I went to your house to help you clean out your mailbox before that fucking asshole kid got caught dealing drugs. Found the key and address details your landlord had mailed you. I didn't hesitate to match a spare, of course!" David sounded very happy.

Damn...no wonder I felt that envelope was so wrinkled and worn, it had fallen into his hands. But what could I do now but blame myself for being careless.

Seeing that David seemed to have given up trying to kill me for the moment, I began to take the opportunity to try to return the two of them to the old pattern of getting along, with him pretending to be Mike in front of me. "Mike since you're going to board my house, I'll have you know that I'm here for school and you can't stop me from going to school. Otherwise you might as well just kill me here and dump my body."

I said the last sentence in a seemingly unconcerned tone, but in fact my throat was a little dry and itchy. I touched my throat, the fish line hadn't cut deep enough earlier to stop the bleeding, except that the oozing blood from earlier was still running down my neck.

David looked unconcerned and nodded, "I'll get you to school of course, up and coming Brian. Only until then, you'll have to be an accomplice with me. Stanford isn't supposed to start until next week is it?"

What he meant was that when my hands were as dirty as his, he naturally wouldn't worry about me turning myself in to the police. Well, of course I knew that David wasn't stupid enough to just let me go to school.

"Your tastes are nothing like mine, Mike! How would I get pleasure from killing those women that way?" I tried to convince him with the ideas that were taken for granted in his head.

"Oh, looks like that condescends to my little Brian." David had a my fault my fault look on his face, "Then you can watch beside me and clean up the body together when it's over. By the way, how about slipping this on as a nightgown at home?"

He just pulled out a white chiffon woman's nightgown from the backpack he was carrying and dropped it on the table, the chest part of the dressing gown was stained with some blood and had darkened by now.

"Is this your last victim's clothing?!" The words of disgust came out of my mouth subconsciously before the feeling of being insulted could even hit my head.

I hadn't really known that he now had a fetish for collecting victims' clothing in addition to their ring finger bones.

"Heh..." said David, looking at my reaction with amusement, "Sure. I saw the video you took at that game, it worked out well. How's that for a quid pro quo for not letting you do it yourself? Just be honest and do as I say at home."

You...pervert...the words went around my mouth so many times that I almost cursed them out. In the end, I didn't say it.

Because I didn't want him to think that the other victims who had fallen into his hands were the same and deepen his unrealistic desires. I suppose the women who died under him didn't say that too often.

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