Sureness in Social Behavior
The grey stranger looked down at her with all the sympathy one could muster for a dying insect and cried out, “No one likes a quitter.”
The waiting queue was a many-limbed centipede writhing with anticipation. Notoriety was the means of entry into Savoir-Faire, and access remained elusive for most. Those unable to gain entry were told by bouncers, with upcurled lips and smug satisfaction, that they could wait in line while their candidacy was considered. The joke was the line never got shorter, and you never got in.
The women came in shades of blonde, dressed in tubular dresses the color of neon creamsicles, shivering in the frigid winter air from exposed skin. The men were naked, save for their mud-colored oversized shaggy coats that draped to the floor and a thatched army helmet ripped from history. They — we — were a homogenous group, pouncing on each fad, hoping to use it as a soapbox to fame or relevance, or whatever it was people sought.
We were creators, though I hated the term as it insinuated a deluded sense of divine equivalence. I knocked it, but the lifestyle had been paying my meager bills for several months and was better than slumming it at a 9–5 job.
“We’re getting close. I think I could burst!” Hanna said from behind me, her breath so close to my ear that its warmth and sweetness caused my cynic’s heart to palpate. Sand-colored hair draped her shoulders, and her eyes were the color of moonlight. She was the radiant beam of humanity, unique and unjaded, that cut through the fog of this inane circus.
“Yeah, I, uh, really feel it,” I said, wanting her to stay close and keep talking. I’d come here on a dare from one of my listeners. As a chronic homebody, I had no plans for the evening, so I trudged over here to witness the spectacle of people casting off what remained of their self-respect.
Hanna had approached me, a complete stranger — a gangly and socially inept one at that — for some unknown but blessed reason that I sure as hell wasn’t about to question. I’d spent the past two hours intoxicated by her company and polite conversation.
“How many?” huffed the bouncer to the woman before me. She was dressed in the same rodlike neon dress as every other woman, but she’d made her hair into a gravity-defying cowlick that reminded me of soft-serve ice cream.
“A hundred thousand,” she smirked at him, glancing over her shoulder at the rest of us. That was a far cry from the heavy hitters, whose audiences and followers numbered millions, but it would at least get her in the doors.
The bouncer raised an eyebrow, prodding his tablet with a finger as thick as a broomstick as he researched her handle.
“Your following’s all bots,” he sighed, refusing to meet her gaze.
She put on a brave face and doubled down, but a fissure of doubt appeared. “There must be some mistake…” she whimpered.
“NEXT!” The bouncer called out. The woman’s face blanched, all the more impressive considering the heavy coating of makeup, and she lumbered toward the mass of people in the waiting line.
I stepped forward and felt dread percolate deep in my bowels. I hadn’t expected to get this far, didn’t want to get this far, but the ecstasy of Hanna’s presence surged me forward.
“How many?” the bouncer asked.
“One fifty.”
“Thousand?”
“No…one hundred and fifty. I write stories and make them into podcasts.” I stiffened and felt the hot wave of embarrassment steam up my shirt collar, the whispers and laughter swarming around me.
After checking my handle, the bouncer glared at me. He smelled like clove cigarettes, and his face looked like the worn spine of a book, all lines, and creases.
“I’ve heard of you. I listen to your stuff, actually,” he croaked before sighing. “Come on, man, you’re better than all this. I like what you do, but it’s not gonna get you in.”
I swooned, head reeling from the comment, and walked toward the main street. Hanna tried to stop me, her voice like plucked harp strings. I turned to her but couldn’t meet her lustrous eyes. She said something like, “You’ll get there someday,” though the words lost meaning in my ears and became a mottling of non-sensical phrases and pig-Latin.
I mumbled, “Thanks,” then pulled away and watched my shoes carry me off. I didn’t have to look up to know that a wall of cell phone cameras recorded my walk of shame. Funny, those videos of awkward moments perform well online. My failure would be someone else’s gain, but there was no helping it.
Someone crept out of the shadows to my left and joined me in lockstep.
“Jesus, that was brutal to watch. I mean, I still did, but I cringed the whole time. Why even come out here, huh?”
Dare or not, maybe I did want to get into Savoir-Faire — if not for the validation, then the serotonin hit. Some people free-dive off buildings. Others come to Savoir-Faire, yearning for renown that will forever elude them.
“Thanks for the play-by-play,” I said to the man beside me, my eyes catching on his grey suit. It was so frayed that it looked like it would unravel into a spool of string at any moment.
“I could’ve saved you the trouble. One fifty. Might as well have said ‘one.’ Paltry. Anemic. It’s like you wanted to die of humiliation. Suicide by social irrelevance,” the grey stranger said, grinning.
“Just leave me alone, jackass,” I pleaded, dropping my head.
“How’d you like to add some zeros to your followers and your bank account, Mr. Matthew Babcock?” the grey stranger shot back. “Depending on your performance, of course.”
I turned to face him. He was tall and reedy, capped by a bald head and dark, unfeeling blemishes for eyes. There was a severity to the angle of his mouth. If the devil took human form, I imagine it’d look like the person opposite me.
“Well, are you game?” he said, his mouth breaking its twisted smile.
“I don’t do sex work,” I grumbled.
At this, the grey stranger upturned his head and erupted in laughter that sounded like two stones struck together. I could feel stares again from the direction of Savoir-Faire.
“Good to know,” he told me, another ripple of stifled laughter escaping him, “but that’s not what I’m referring to. Just a game, an easy one at that. I’ll stream it online. You’ll see your follower counts soar and get some extra scratch — it’s a win-win.” The grey stranger loomed over me, his spine as crooked as a letter written in cursive.
“Ok, sure. When does this –”
“We start now,” the grey stranger interrupted. “Now, no more questions until we reach the play area,” he turned away and started off. I bristled at the term “play area” but followed behind him down a dark alleyway.
The passage wound around several corners with mile-long straightaways. Down another corridor, walls sprouted up, blotting out the sky. I felt disoriented and more than a little concerned that the raucous sounds of Savoir-Faire could no longer be heard. The path beneath us glowed red, though I couldn’t tell its source. The longer we walked, the more points of reference I lost. Direction. Time. Even the air felt like a long-held lie.
A metal door came into view against a crumbling building façade. As if awaiting our approach, it swung open on squeaking hinges. The grey stranger stopped, gesturing me through.
“Here is where I leave you, Mr. Babcock. Best of luck, I have no doubt of your success,” he intoned. He flashed me that misshapen grin and ducked away. I crossed the threshold and was entombed in darkness as the door latched behind me. My breathing shallowed as if the surrounding murk were contagious, and if I inhaled too much, it would settle deep inside me and spread.
I felt a yank at my elbow by something ice-like and bony that could have been a human hand but grew scales and claws in my mind. A disembodied scream warbled out that took me a moment to claim as my own. I was whisked through the space, quieting when I was sure I was still alive. A set of curtains the color of a fresh bruise appeared inches from my face, and my guide released me. Momentum carried me through and onto a lit stage.
I emerged, borne into a plexiglass cage lit with the sterile incandescent light of a surgical suite. A single aluminum chair sat before an expansive table layered with riches — gems, cash, gold film, and silver coins. I marveled at this for a moment before something moved in my periphery. Two more plexiglass cubes bordered mine. In one, a tall man with wavy brown hair and bloodshot eyes, dressed in the generic tan coat of the legion of others from the Savoir-Faire line. In the other, the cow-licked woman from earlier.
Our heads jerked as a voice bellowed in a rasping baritone, “Welcome, you most deserving guests. You are in for a treat, for tonight’s entertainment is another segment of what I like to call ‘Starved for Attention.’”
Applause erupted, and the house lights came on, revealing an auditorium populated with a faceless horde of onlookers. The glint of camera lenses hinted millions more could be watching.
The announcer’s voice, hollow and haunting, was, in fact, the voice of the grey stranger. He stood among the crowd under a spotlight that summoned dancing shadows from his features, looking like ringleader and conductor to whatever was about to occur. Garish signs in tall, neon-gold script told me with no sense of irony that I had somehow made it into Savoir-Faire.
“The rules are simple,” the grey stranger explained. “Eat as much as possible of the offering before you in the next hour. The one who eats the most in value, or the last person able to compete, wins. Whatever you eat, win or lose, is yours to keep, so long as you pick it clean and wash it first, considering where it’s going.” Giggles and a drawn-out “Eww” spread through the crowd.
“The winner gets a sum two hundred times what they ate, plus the following of everyone in attendance tonight. In the event of a tie…well, there won’t be a tie, will there, folks?” The grey stranger turned to the crowd, and his sadistic smile from before curled into a wicked corkscrew. The crowd hooted in laughter.
“Take your positions,” the grey stranger proclaimed into his mic, “Set…Go!”
The man beside me took a handful of silver coins and started dry swallowing them. The woman with the following of bots went for the gold leaf, which clung to her fingers and lips.
Stunned, I continued to observe the crowd, which looked to be clawing at itself in ecstasy, pointing and screeching at us. I combed over them before landing on a pair of eyes flecked in silver moonlight.
Hanna sat at the edge of her seat, screaming until flushed, her mouth the same tortuous upturned scar as the mob around her. She pointed, clapped, and roared with laughter until tears flowed from her once heavenly eyes. The earlier ridicule in the queue had brought despair but nothing akin to what filled me then.
I am a performer, I thought. This is a performance. The audience demands everything, and I will not disappoint.
I faded into the metal chair and regarded a stack of hundred-dollar bills on the table, determining they would go down easiest, like uncooked kale. I shoveled them into my mouth, ripping and tearing with mechanical efficiency.
The man in the monochromatic coat next to me was the first to falter. Clutching at his neck, he wretched, eyes rolling back, and fell to the floor, trying to wrestle from death’s grip. He would not stir again. The glass cage obscured my view, but his throat seemed to bulge like a damaged can of soda.
The room shook with cackling.
“One down…” announced the grey stranger. “Raymond, looks like you owe me some money,” he said, pointing at someone.
The taste of ink filled my mouth. I gagged. These were well-used bills, soiled, scavenged from sewers or some other fetid place, and released grime and filth upon my tongue. I devised a new tactic, rolling them into pills before swallowing. My mouth went so dry that it was hard to envision it had ever known moisture.
The woman beside me became gilded — the foil casing her eyes and nose in thick layers. Thus, cast in gold, her face sparkling with tears, she became the idol the crowd deserved. She, too, used the pill strategy, but she was able to make handfuls of them out of the gold foil, whereas I was limited to one great lump. She worked through massive stacks of gold leaf, her hands ablur. There was no sign of her stopping, whereas I felt a pull deep inside me.
She froze, dropping a palmful of golden pills to the refuse-strewn floor, where she collapsed to meet them. Her wails cut through the blaring crowd, which fell silent as if struck in the mouth. A fresh scream pierced the air.
“My stomach! OH MY GOD IT, HuuuUUURTS!”
The grey stranger looked down at her with all the sympathy one could muster for a dying insect and cried out, “Quite dramatic, isn’t she? There’s still time left, little one. No one likes a quitter.”
My pace slowed, all the fight bleeding out of me. The cow lick reappeared above the table, and the woman flopped down on it like a gut fish. Several in the crowd imitated her in their seats to the delight of others. She shoved gold leaf into her mouth between cries, cramming it down her throat.
The grey stranger started a countdown from ten, which the crowd joined in until it became a deafening cry of “3…2…1!” He looked out at them, scanning the eyes of each person. “I know who’s won, do you? You?” He said, flicking a finger at several people before pointing to a camera. “Shall we draw it out a little longer?” he teased, and the crowd, in unison, made the sound of a sullen toddler.
I felt something tear in my gut with the muted thud of a balloon rupturing underwater and birthed fresh pain. I groaned and lay my head on the table. I saw the woman beside me, eyes like empty windows in a condemned home. The gold leaf stuck to her nostrils was still.
“Mr. Matthew Babcock, take a bow!” shouted the grey stranger.
The room lights dimmed, and a spotlight flooded my vision until all I could see was sepia film mixed with a cone of black that bled out all color and shape.
The rhythmic sound of my heartbeat on the vital machine woke me. I’d been skewered by a plastic tube through my nose that I was instructed by a disgruntled-looking nurse in powder-blue scrubs not to remove. He checked the screen at my side and forced me to sign paperwork for emergency surgery. He told me I was abandoned outside St. Martin’s ambulance bay, and a good Samaritan in a grey suit carried me in for treatment.
I thought about that last detail until my phone startled me with endless alerts. The first one claimed a deposit had cleared my account, all $1,420,000. My phone stuttered at the pace of the notifications from new followers.
I stopped at one from HannaH8sbananas. I tapped block on that user without reading its accompanying message.
Nausea seethed, and another round of contractions hit my insides. I considered deleting my social media accounts for a moment, but it felt like a pyrrhic victory.
Instead, I asked the nurse if they could save the contents of my intestines. He rolled his eyes and nodded, making a note in my chart.
“Do you think…you could live stream the surgery on my phone?” I asked.
