Chapter 14: Chapter 14 – Panic Attacks

Ryan is antsy on a Thursday afternoon. Tantalizingly close to Friday, the day is never ending. It’s a lot of work to go hours without speaking to anyone, day in and day out, four days a week. He sees a notification for the stream and decides to tune in despite deciding he wasn’t a fan anymore. He’d taken to going for walks to the local boba cafe. It was just ten minutes outside of campus and was a nice change of scenery from the library. People would come in and out and there were plenty of lone patrons who would sit on their laptops so he felt fairly anonymous. It was a bonus that there was a more varied age group that came to the boba cafe. It wasn’t all early 20 something college students who were rubbing their thriving social lives in his face. 

Ryan sips his black milk tea with boba and looks for a song to listen to while he writes his African American Theology essay. Something about the assigned reading on slave religion and the admixture of Christianity with tribal diasporic magic spirituality. He’s tempted to not click on the notification but does it anyway. Watching the past streams had been akin to watching a tv show you love after it gets canceled and brought back on another network, or when it changes show runners; or when a major character gets recast, or even when it goes on for so many seasons that everything becomes flanderized. It’s all familiar but the familiarity just hammers home how different things are, and makes watching it all the more painful. 

He clicks the notification and the stream loads. It looks like it just started. The shooter is rushing through the front entrance of a Target. He kicks over a stack of red hand baskets to get someone’s attention and then hits them with a shotgun blast to the chest. The person flies backward and scatters another stack of red hand baskets. The shooter turns to a counter labeled “returns and customer service” and pops off three tight shots in quick succession, which slam into the red vested, shocked employee. Ryan begrudgingly watches in the corner of his screen as he tries to write his essay. 

He types, “The African diaspora was—” then he sees the shooter push a row of tv sets down onto an unsuspecting customer’s head. He blasts the shotgun into the pile, sending blood spray mixed with sparks and LED lights across the electronics aisle. Ryan can’t help but be riveted. He watches intently as the shooter hurdles a glass display of Apple watches to land in a section with a PS5 demo display. He takes aim and blasts out the kneecaps of some chubby manchild who was testing out a game. The man tries to crawl away, his mangled legs dragging behind him, leaking streaks of dark blood onto the white linoleum floor. “What game were you playing, bud?” The shooter looks at the television screen. It shows some generic racing game. He looks back down at the manchild as he approaches. “That’s stupid. You should be playing Call of Duty: Vanguard.” The shooter points the shotgun at the back of the fat man’s skull. 

Right before he pulls the trigger, a full page video ad for the aforementioned video game splashes on screen. Its volume is mixed such that it’s much louder than the sound of the stream. It startles Ryan as it blasts his ear drums. He rips his headphones for relief. He frantically searches for a skip button but there is none. By the time the excruciatingly long 30 second ad is over, the shooter has long finished off the fat manchild, and is now taking a break to rip open a bag of sour patch kids in the snack aisle. There is a trail of bloody corpses to either side of him, their blood and guts mixed with spilled soda and candy. The shooter smacks on the sour patch kids for a few moments, then casually blasts a security guard who attempts to get the jump on him on the opposite side of the aisle. 

The rest of the stream is fairly uneventful: the shooter escapes out the back shipping entrance and runs for the fence at the edge of the parking lot. Infuriated at being cheated out of a point blank headshot execution, Ryan rewinds the broadcast. The ad is baked in, completely hiding 30 seconds of content. Forgetting his essay completely, Ryan goes on Discord to rail against the shooter and everything the stream has become. He writes an impassioned diatribe against the cancerous scourge of capitalism and its ability to co opt and distort every single good thing that it squeezes out of its servants. He declares the shooter a corporate sell out and claims that the stream has been long dead. Anyone who still watches or promotes this stupid Disney crap is a paid shill or a smooth brained normie. He spends the next hour responding to and arguing with people who disagree with his thesis, angrier with every comment. 

By the time he’s exhausted every synonym for all of the racial epithets in his lexicon, the ice in his milk tea has completely melted and it’s dark outside. He packs up his belongings to go to the library, where he hopes the change of scenery will get him into a better headspace for writing his essay. 

#

Peter is crouched down in the foyer of his massive home, tying his running shoes, when the door opens. He’s startled to see a hooded figure walk in, face obscured by some sort of mask. Peter jumps back and sits hard on the carved Italian granite floor. He stares up at the figure in motion, until he hears his wife’s voice emanate from behind the mask, which is really just a maze of bandages and a pair of oversized designer sunglasses. “Honey, did I scare you? It’s me!” 

“Oh… the … the.. mask. Yeah, kinda startled me honey.” Peter gets up and goes to hug his wife. She’s carrying large shopping bags from designer stores on the crook of each arm, so he opts for a friendly pat on her upper arm. 

“I just had my nose job, remember?” 

“Totally slipped my mind. I thought— didn’t you just get one like a year ago?” 

“Duh… ugh, I told you. The cartilage was growing back in an unbalanced way on my upper nose bridge, so we just had to get it shaved down a little to make things make sense again.” She sets her bags down. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.” 

“Yeah, work’s been insane.” He kisses her on a piece of gauze wrapped around her forehead. 

“I know, I’m very lucky to be married to a big shot. I just hope you can take some time off soon.” 

“Me too. Soon. I’ve gotta run now so I can be back in time for my work call, but I can’t wait to hear about your day later.” 

Today’s exposé in The New York Times had been weighing on him all day. It was a scathing article condemning the brands that were running ads on the shooter’s stream. It listed each one that had purchased air time, and the corresponding formats of ads they’d run, such as a lower third, or video advertisement. The Times still had no idea what corporation was facilitating these ad buys and profiting from their sale, but they encouraged readers to reach out if they had any information. This scared Peter. 

As he jogs up his tree lined street, he mulls over the problems. It was always easier to think while running, and he’d increased his habit to five times per week. Firstly, it was clear nothing could be tied to him. If the publications had even a whiff of his involvement, they would be plastering his name all over the Internet. If they even had a whiff of Disney’s involvement, likewise. Whatever digging they’d done, they hadn’t discovered the shadow LLC that the ad sales were going through. So, Disney’s accounts and finance department had done a good job of compartmentalizing things. For the time being, at least, Peter didn’t need to worry about his reputation or being sued, or getting thrown in prison for that matter. 

Peter rounds the corner at the top of his street and turns onto Marguerite Blvd. He passes by a behemoth of a colonial, complete with a walled garden and a Porsche Cayenne in the driveway. He picks up his pace as the sidewalk angles downhill slightly. He turns over the next item in his mind: how long did he have before someone contacted the NYT with real information? How long until their journalists dug deeper into the numbers or even stumbled on a publicly available transaction made by the shadow corp? It’s not like he could do anything about that. If he tried to snoop around Disney, or raise a flag to the accounts department, that would just get more people involved and worse, make him look weak. No… those old suits in the conference room must be on top of it. They’ve had to have buried things much larger than this in much shallower mud before. 

As he jogs downhill, Peter stares at a blonde woman in jogging shorts that hug her ass tightly. She makes eye contact with him as she runs determinedly up the hill. Peter does a double and then triple take when she passes him, attempting to soak up as much of her spandexed ass into his brain as possible for access during the next time he has sex with his wife. He checks his watch, 1:30 PM— good time to be out jogging, might be able to see her again— maybe even fuck her. They were neighbors after all. The sex thoughts lead to images of Daisy, her dark hair shimmering in the light from a street lamp as her head bobs up and down on his lap. The curve of her back revealed as her shirt rides up over her hips, the feeling of her ass cheek in his hand as he grips it for stability. He takes a detour from his usual path to avoid a car that rolls the stop sign in front of him, and he turns onto a side street with an uphill incline. 

He approaches his next worry: how long will the shooter keep going? He couldn’t possibly keep going forever, right? Peter always expected him to die on every stream, but maybe that was just what made it so exciting for viewers. Same thing with a basketball game, you never knew who was going to win, and that kept your butt glued to the seat for every commercial. But if the shooter were killed, what was next? What if he just up and quit one day? They didn’t exactly have a legally binding contract. They couldn’t sue him for not filming himself shooting up schools anymore. Peter guessed he had made plenty of money already, and if he maxed out his 401k he’d still be able to retire early. Maybe it would be the same feeling as having your show get canceled. You always knew it was going to happen someday, so it’s kind of a relief when it finally does. But what if this was the best show Peter would ever produce? What if this was the peak of his career, right now? And he couldn’t even put his name on it. If the stream was canceled he’d fade into obscurity without ever having been in the limelight. But that was a part of the thrill of the entertainment business. Lots of ups and downs.

As Peter runs up the street, he looks ahead toward the top of the incline. It’s hard to see where the street ends because the great trees on either side form a canopy at the top of their boughs. Coupled with the bright green lawns and wall gardens, this creates the feeling for Peter that he’s running through a green tunnel. He picks up the pace and tries to avoid looking at any windows. Some of the older horses are large and creepy and remind him of haunted mansions. He can’t tell for sure but he feels like he saw a face looking out from one of the third story tower windows of one of the creepier looking houses. 

He turns the next thought over in his mind, the one that has been eating away at him slowly for the past few months: was this alright? On paper, it might seem like an easy enough question, answered with a resounding “no,” but what complicated things was the fact that the shooter had started killing people on his own volition, and had started streaming it for a live audience on his own volition. Someone was going to advertise at some point, and Peter just happened to be the first person to jump on the opportunity, thanks to Karen. Can’t forget Karen. But Peter had to acknowledge that things were more complicated than that. With Disney helping the shooter, and even defending him from government interference, he was probably getting farther in his killing spree than he would’ve otherwise. It was the difference between the Nature channel filming a lion hunting down a bison on the savannah, and some creep in a garage throwing a rat into a fish tank with a snapping turtle and filming it. The moral issue was the interference, Peter told himself. But really, was any money not blood money? After all, he reminded himself, there was no ethical consumption under capitalism, and if he wasn’t a cog in this horror show, he’d be a cog in another, if only slightly farther removed from the actual flesh-reaming. Peter always lost the thread at this point. Satisfied with his ability to bullshit himself to the point of exhaustion and amnesia, he allows the vague gnawing feeling of guilt to retreat to the back of his mind. 

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Peter stops running. He’s at the top of the street and is facing an enormous wall of green. Bushes, flowers, vines, and shrubbery that are either covering a large wall or had been allowed to grow into a large wall-shaped mass. Peter hadn’t noticed it approaching as he’d thought it was an illusion created by the tunnel of tree boughs.

#

Karen is on a third date with a girl she met on Hinge. They’re having brunch at the Overland cafe in Culver City, down the street from the Sony lot. A place known for its bottomless mimosa and Bloody Mary Brunch deal, the restaurant is crowded and boisterous. The waitress comes and takes their order. Karen’s date answers “I think we’re both gonna get the bottomless mimosas…. Right?”

“Yes. And I will get the waffles and a side of bacon with that too, please.” 

Karen taps her New Balances against the black iron base of the table. She feels itchy. When the mimosas come, her date takes a long draught of hers. “So good.” Karen eyes hers and drinks a sip of her water. “Gotta stay hydrated.” 

She thinks she overhears a young guy at another table, well on his way to being drunk, comment “Dude! only pussies drink water.” Karen turns around to investigate but the culprit isn’t looking in her direction. She searches her date’s face to see if she’d registered the ridiculous insult.

“This place is fun, relax.” 

Karen tenses up when she hears this. She grips the bottom of the mimosa flute, her fingers slipping on the condensation. “A little loud, no?”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” 

“No, not at all. Just haven’t been to brunch in a while.” 

“I like that about you. You’re not so basic. Like me.” 

Her date giggles playfully at calling herself basic. Suddenly, Karen’s clothes and skin feel very tight. She can’t see any open pathways to any of the exits, and she feels very trapped in her seat in the corner of the restaurant. She feels saliva fill her mouth and recognizes an oncoming panic attack. “Excuse me for a second. I’m gonna use the restroom.” Karen stands up and walks to the bathroom. The walls look like they’re closing in on her and she feels freezing cold but while simultaneously overheated. She dodges their waitress as she flings open the bathroom door and locks it behind her. 

She dives for the toilet to puke but nothing comes out. Just painful, dry heaves accompanied by sharp pains in her stomach and the feeling that her head is being crushed in a vice. After an exhausting session of spitting globs of hot saliva into the toilet, Karen sits down against the wall, pressing her face into the cool handicap railing in an attempt to center herself. She closes her eyes tightly and thinks she can hear a man’s high pitched laughter outside the door.

#

At work on Monday, Karen meets Pete in his office to catch up on things. Their schedules have both been busy and they haven’t had a chance to sit face to face in a while. “How’s all the new money treating you? I like your jacket. Is that Italian?” Karen examines her blazer. 

“Oh yeah, it is… Hey, listen, Pete… do you ever have panic attacks?” 

“I used to get those. Can’t say I’ve had one in a while though. Why?” Pete looks at her with genuine sympathy. 

“I think it’s probably nothing, but I had one this weekend. And I think it might’ve been because of that, you know, article.” 

Pete begins to close himself up. “Ah, that one.” 

“You don’t think we’re bad people, do you?” Pete smirks. He looks Karen in the eye. 

“There’s no such thing. And if there were, you would never be one. I mean it. Let me worry about that kind of thing, okay? That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” Karen smiles sarcastically. 

“Get some rest, Karen. I think you’re fucking too much. Always get panic attacks when I fuck too much.”

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