Socialcide | KAYT CHRISTENSEN

Socialcide

fiction by Kayt Christensen

Dr. Janice Coolmun strode into the room with an air of confidence only a narcissist could possess. She was the best kind, though. The kind of narcissist that knew she was one, and wore it like a badge of honor. Her assistant, Dee, shuffled behind her and tucked a stray price tag into the collar of her designer blazer so that it could be returned later. Janice threw a sideways smile my way as she slid into the dip in her patent leather sofa. I ironed out the creases in my linen pants with hot and sweaty palms as Dee reminded her of my file. Hearing quantified specifics recited aloud caused my knuckles to crack.

Then Dee left. There was only me, and Janice, and the fading green dot above her head. She snapped her fingers once in my direction and waved her hand slightly to get my attention. “Charlotte, good afternoon,” she said. I reminded myself to breathe as she smoothed fly away hairs in her compact mirror. She sat up a little straighter, ran her tongue over each tooth, and smiled again while snapping the mirror shut. “How are you doing today?” I waited until her eyeline shifted from above my head, down to my eyes. I heard a faint click behind me, steadied my voice, and began. “Well, I got another call from the station to come down and tell them what I could, again. They still don’t understand why Joan would mention—” “Charlotte, let’s start again at the beginning of your and Joan’s friendship before we get into the details of last week, shall we?” I held a breath for ten, nine, eight, to steady my heart-rate and nodded at her. She moved to her left slightly, sat straight, and smiled for me to start again.

“We met in a Sharity group three years ago. We had both been discovered as Rela-Fakes online, so we were grouped together with several women of the same offense. Going around the circle, she mentioned Sean.” “I know this is the highlight reel, but remind me again, who is Sean to you both exactly?” She pretended to write something down on a pad of paper, connecting imaginary dots in my file, but I could see her pen was still capped. My knuckles cracked under sweaty fingers, and I sat my tailbone as far back in the seat as possible to straighten my spine. “Sean was the man that both of us had been in Rela-Fakes with, but we didn’t know that. We were discovered when they searched his tagged posts, and saw both of us with him in separate occasions.” “Ah, yes. And, how did you come to meet Sean?” “He worked with my dad’s construction company and was looking to get into a relationship to gain a higher combined membership.” She took a sip of tea from her marble-colored mug, wiped the lipstick from it, and set it down on the glass coffee table in front of us. I waited for her to settle and ask the next question. A microphone the size of a peanut dangled three feet above the table, and I watched it sway slightly with the air conditioning. “How would you describe your relationship with Sean, Joan aside? Was it ever a real relationship?” “It was at first,” I tucked hair behind my ear and Dr. Coolmun moved to her left. “We were together nine times out of ten, and the one time we weren’t, we were still in constant contact.” She smiled at this, like it warmed her heart. “But I noticed that my photo captions were always longer, and more personalized than his. He stopped sharing his location. I knew something was wrong when he changed his password so that I couldn’t post for him anymore.” Her lips formed a tight line, disapproving, and she nodded for me to speed through the unpleasant parts. “Arguments over where to eat and what to wear out got louder, and longer. He didn’t like that I wouldn’t borrow his jacket in pictures. He didn’t like me being in my own home, and incessantly sent me pictures from his own bed for me to post. One time, I missed color-correcting a yellow splotch on my neck, and he—” The overhead lights

changed from warm to cool tones, and the metallic sound of technology whirred out of the air.

“Charlotte,” Dr. Coolmun got up from her seat on the couch and walked over to squat beside me. Her hand clamped down on top of my own atop my knee. It was both comforting and warning, tethering me to my seat and preventing me from escape. “You’re doing great. Try to relax a little, don’t look like I’m holding you here against your will.” She let out a laugh and cocked her head to the side. “Now, we’re going to be showing Joan’s video in the next few minutes. I know it might be difficult for you to watch, but I’m going to need you to really pay attention to it. Let some tears flow if they come, whatever feels natural. Don’t hold back with the emotion, really.” I widened my eyes to keep them from watering and bit the inside of my cheeks. She smiled, patted my hand one last time, and walked back over to her seat on the couch. The lights turned the walls from blue to yellow again, and I heard frequencies begin to rattle off the walls as they warmed the room. “Dee, roll it!” She yelled slightly behind her, and she began to laugh in such a way that made it feel like her and the rest of the world were cracking inside jokes I wasn’t privy to. “Ah, well, it sounds like you and Sean might not have been the best match, but you did have a few good times.” I sat with my tailbone flush against my chair backing. “Now that your past with him is out in the open, you won’t have to have anymore RelaFake posts! You can find someone truly suited for you.” I smiled, nodding in agreement with her. “I can only imagine that Joan had the same past with Sean, but of course I won’t speak too much on her behalf. Now, tell us a bit about how your relationship with Joan went. We didn’t get to see much of it online, did we?” “No, we weren’t public friends. Sharity didn’t think it was wise for us to announce to everyone where we were and what we were working on within ourselves at the time. It might cause social damage and lower our membership status, but we were close. How can you not be when you’ve lived so many of the same experiences?” She smiled, and I almost thought it was genuine. Maybe in different circumstances we’d be friends, swapping stories over mugs full of wine rather than stale coffee. I made a mental note to look up her profile later and scroll for a few hours.

“We followed each other in private, and shared profiles. I noticed that Sean took her to our Wednesday night restaurant on Tuesday’s, and it made sense then how he already knew what the weekly specials were. It was nice to be able to talk to another me, in a way.” “And when Sean left, she helped you, didn’t she? Tell me more about what kind of person Joan was.” I thought about the scented garbage bags lying under my kitchen sink that were left over from one of the last times she’d helped clean me up, over a year ago. She insisted on scented, she thought that even trash could be “gussied up.” I thought it was an unnecessary extra ten dollars, but I wasn’t going to send her back to the store to exchange them. I still have two left in the roll. I thought of the Lucky Charms I still buy on Thursday’s just to remind myself they existed between the both of us once, that they still had our laughter captured somewhere in the box. “Charlotte?”

Some memories I could afford to keep special. “Oh, Joan was great. She helped take care of me when I was down to posting month old pictures once a week. She cleaned out my house, from front to back, while I sat in front of the television watching cooking shows. I remember she took all of Sean’s clothes, even the shirt of his I was wearing, and threw it out in the neighbor’s garbage so that I wouldn’t be tempted to rifle through it to dig them out. That was the kind of friend —person—she was. Always thinking two steps ahead.” “How long were you two close for? This sounds like a decade-long friendship compressed into such a short amount of time.” “Well, she upgraded to Platinum about fourteen months after we met each other.” Dr. Coolmun’s cool façade waivered slightly at this, and I felt the playing field between us level a bit. She could only afford Gold membership, one tier higher than mine. “That’s when she started to distance herself.”

“Tell me more about all of that.” She took a sip of tea to loosen her joints a bit. “Joan always had nice stuff, her father’s the creator of LookShare, so she could afford to. She was odd though, sometimes when we would be shopping, she’d break a zipper on a shoe, or rub a bit of foundation on a shirt while trying it on, just to get a

discount she didn’t need. Then she’d take things home and have them fixed up, good as new.” I pulled at a few eyelashes when thinking of this, the thrill of those few moments still riddled me with nerves.

“I noticed a few weeks before she upgraded, she stopped bothering with that. She’d grab items off the rack and buy them as they were, no modification. She started posting more, and a week before she went Platinum she took me out to lunch. We would usually eat tuna sandwiches and cheap champagne I could afford at my place while watching crime shows, so it was a nice change of pace. But she showed up in heels and a dress that belonged somewhere on the coast of Italy. There was a man with her, Alfred, in the back of her car. He was her photographer for the day, and he always made sure to keep me out of her shot. I don’t think she touched anything she ordered.” Janice smiled warmly at my self-inflicted internal pain now as she prodded deeper. “How did things go from there?” “She started going to brunch and socials with other Platinum members. She went from posting five times a week to twice daily, then she added in daily vlogs. She just exploded.” My nails were beginning to dig into the fabric of my jeans, and I made a note to get them filed when my session was over. “Then she was offered Diamond membership, free of charge.” Dr. Coolmun’s nose wrinkled. “That’s when she finally blocked me.”

“Diamond’s can only be seen with like members though, you know that.” I nodded. “So, tell me, why does it still hurt?” “I think it hurt me because I had to go through the hassle of seeing her through my friend’s and family’s profiles to keep up with her life, other than my own. I wasn’t just not her friend anymore. It’s like she saw me as an enemy.” Lights shifted, cameras hidden in plants clicked off, and the microphone above the coffee table stilled lifelessly above us. Janice took a metal bottle out from under the couch and took a few swigs while I rolled my neck from side to side. I popped a lemon drop in my mouth to try to get my salivary glands working. Rehashing everything made me feel like I’d been talking for twenty years. “Alright, we’re launching into the video next. Really sell it here.”

My head rolled down to stretch my neck, “Thanks, Dr. Coolmun.” A shudder ran through me as the room sprang back to life, and goosebumps littered my arms. “So, how did you find out about Joan and Alfred last week?” The question came wafting through the air to me as I sat back farther in my chair, sliding my hands beneath me so they wouldn’t be inclined to pick at each other. “I was at Sean’s house, actually.” She looked at me for a moment, causing me to pause while this information could sink in. “I was just looking for the key he had to my apartment, when I noticed his phone was unlocked. A notification from her page popped up, and I clicked on it. It was the video.” “Now, I understand this video was only live for nine minutes before it was taken down, obviously violating Social Media Procedure laws. We’ve gotten the O.K. from the local police to show the video here again, for educational purposes. Would you be alright with viewing it again now?” Her smile twitched in such a way that I knew there was only one answer to this question. “Yes,” I said, and the lights dimmed. The hair on my arms felt as though it were about to jump out of their follicles. There was Joan, telling us she was going away. There was Joan, pulling ChapStick out of Alfred’s pants. There was Joan, lying next to Alfred’s sleeping body. There was Joan, kissing him. There was Joan, pulling open a bedside drawer. There was Joan, putting on a pair of my underwear I thought I’d lost in the laundry. There was Joan, “I should’ve stayed with you, Charlotte.” There was Joan, drinking soda from Alfred’s cup. No.

There was Joan, drinking antifreeze from Alfred’s cup. There was Joan walking toward her dog. There was Joan walking towards me. There was Joan falling. There was Joan, dead.

I wasn’t sure if I had begun to cry or not, but the lights had come back up in the room. The green light was glowing above Dr. Coolmun’s head and I stared into it as the television to our right with Joan’s body hung on it was switched off. She lifted a tissue to her dry eyes in pantomime and added in an airy sniff for good measure. The door chimed one-two-three times. “Charlotte, unfortunately we’ve run out of time for today.” Something told me she wasn’t all that sad about not being able to delve into the emotional duress she’d just caused me to endure. The tissue vanished from her face, and was replaced with the same monotonous smile she’d been flashing my way the past hour. She shifted to look over my right shoulder. “Thanks for listening in. Charlotte will be back in my office next week to talk more about Joan Peerman. Come back then to see what Charlotte’s said to the Police on

this matter, only in Dr. Coolmun’s Room. Call (949)-555-5214 to make your appointment today.” The lights shifted from warm to cool tones as Dr. Coolmun slipped off her shoes and rubbed the balls of her feet. I was her last client for the day, and I gathered myself in a coherent manner before rising to leave. Dee met me on the way out. “Great show today, Charlotte. You really drew me in. We still have a copy of the deleted video and I went ahead and sent it to your email. Watch it again before you come in for your next session so we can really see how it affected you on screen, and try to take notes after the meeting with the investigators so you don’t forget anything. You’re giving us great content. Dr. Coolmun will be at Platinum in no time with this case. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to level up alongside her!” She ticked off each note she had for me on a clipboard, and I stopped her before she could rush into the room to talk to Janice. “Thanks, Dee. How much do I owe this week?” I began to dig my wallet out of my purse when she held a hand up. “Nothing. People are really tuning into this live after Joan’s Socialcide last week. Her death created a total pandemic of them across the world, and people want to know about the girl that started it all. She’s a revolutionary! Wild stuff, isn’t it? Anyways, your next few sessions will probably be free as long as you milk it. See you next time!” She bobbled into the room and left me standing in the hallway.

An email notification popped up on my screen, and I slipped a pair of earbuds in as I pressed play, hitting repeat on the video. I hung onto every word, hoping it would pay the bills.