Off Stream

Kat 🐈‍⬛ 

The high fantasy book in my hand wasn’t going to stay on this shelf.

Not here, jammed between a true-crime memoir with the word gritty in the blurb and a coffee table photography book no one under eighty was ever going to buy.

It deserved better.

I slipped it into the staff picks display, tucking it between The Unabridged Guide to Foraging Mushrooms and a paperback romance that had been gathering dust since last Valentine’s Day.

Our “staff picks” were supposed to be voted on during meetings, but my manager never actually noticed what was in the display — too busy rearranging “Literature” so the spine colors looked like a Pantone swatch.

Call it an act of rebellion. Call it petty. Call it my Thursday ritual.

The bell over the door jingled.

“Evening, Kitty,” said Mr. Patterson — regular customer, khakis, faint smell of mothballs — shuffling toward the mystery section. I gave him a polite half-smile and went back to straightening the display.

That’s how I liked most of my human contact: brief, harmless, forgettable.

I loved this place — the soft hum of the fluorescent lights, the faint scent of paper and dust, the satisfyingthunkof a hardcover sliding into its slot. Here, I was just... an invisible, forgettable person putting books where they belonged.

Nobody cared if my hoodie was pilled or my hair frizzed into its own weather system. The books didn’t care if I had makeup on.

I’d been here since college, part-time through shifts in mental health and whatever else life had tossed at me. The pay wasn’t amazing, but it was steady, and steady was safe.

By the time I finished shelving returns, the store was empty except for my manager in the back, probably alphabetizing something to death. The clock above the register ticked toward closing.

I ran my fingertips along the spine of my illicit staff pick one more time, then ducked into the stockroom for my bag. My oversized hoodie hung on the peg by the door like a security blanket, its faded cotton smelling faintly of peppermint tea and laundry detergent.

Hood up, bag over shoulder, I stepped out into the evening.

The walk home was short. Only six blocks through a neighborhood that was just starting to swap daylight for streetlamp orange. I passed the coffee shop where Sammy worked, catching a wave from behind the counter as she wiped down an espresso machine. My phone buzzed almost as soon as I passed the corner of the building.

SAMMY:Coffee tomorrow? There’s a new club we can hit after. Very low-key. Could be fun!

Not my scene. But I didn’t type that. Just left it on read and continued home, headphones on, playing the soft sounds of a babbling brook. I learned years ago that the sounds of nature help drown out the overwhelming sounds and energies that carry in concrete jungles.

Unlike traffic and weirdos on the street, birdsong and streams don’t honk or yell at you for existing. Still haven’t found a way to get rid of the strange feeling that eyes are always on me.

Is it rational? No. If I crack the code, you’ll be the first to know.

My apartment was a third-floor walk-up with questionable plumbing and exactly one thing that made the rent worth it: my little streaming corner.

The rule is: never trust a stream that starts with your mic stand falling on your face before you’ve even started.

I’m not saying the universe is out to get me. I’m just saying when gravity’s first love tap of the morning is a cheap metal pole to the nose, you brace for chaos.

Tonight’s forecast? Mild dread with a 70% chance of oversharing. The usual.

The mic stand is now taped—artistically, I might add, with hot pink cheetah print duct tape—to the side of my desk. My webcam is balanced precariously on two coasters and a copy ofCalm The Fuck Down And Color, half-completed, thank you very much. My chair? Leaning slightly to the left, but she’s hanging in there.

Like me.

It’s fine.

It’s always fine.

I glance at the corner of my screen. Six viewers waiting in the chatroom even though I haven’t hit “Go Live” yet. My loyal, chaotic little army.

Three of them are probably lurking while eating dinner. One is definitely my best friend, Rae, under an alt.

Rae’s the kind of person who can’t stand silence. Especially when that silence is me in what she likes to describe as a ‘classic Kitty loop of doom’.

Not really sure what was biting at my nerves today. I just felt off. I told Rae as much earlier this morning.

My phone buzzes. Speak of the devil.

RAE:If you don’t go live in the next five minutes, I’m hacking into your stream and making you react to your old Halo montages. Don’t test me, KittyKat.

I snort, flopping back into my chair. It creaks like it’s protesting my very existence. This is Rae’s way of saying, You’re good at this. People want to hear you.

My way of responding is muttering, “Lies and propaganda,” to the empty room.

I look around my streaming corner.

Lavender LEDs pulse against a backdrop of certified chaos: a half-built LEGO set I swear I’ll finish one day, a one-eyed plush shark that’s seen better years, and a whiteboard that just says “THRIVING (barely)” scrawled in marker.

The camera’s not even on yet, but I can already hear Rae’s voice in my head.You deserve more than this tiny stream, Katia. You just need a tiny break, you know? The right exposure.

But small feels safe.

Six viewers can’t hurt me.

Six is manageable.

Six isn’t watching me with dollar signs and cruel punchlines in their eyes.

I grab my mug—lukewarm peppermint tea because caffeine after 7 p.m. is a one-way ticket to a 3 a.m. existential FRED Talk with myself.

The chat flickers to life.

CHAT: ALIVE?

CHAT: We DEMAND your Chaos

CHAT: Give us content, our great Queen of Carbs!

I smile. Small, but real.

“Alright, alright, calm down,” I mutter, more to myself than to them. “Your regularly scheduled emotional support disaster is booting up.”

Deep breath.

One more glance at my reflection in the blank Obvious Streaming Software preview, trademark pending. Hair’s fine. It’s usual strawberry blond frizz of curls. Hoodie’s oversized. Eyebags? Designer. Freckles? Mint. Skin tan but much paler than it should be.

Perfect.

I hit “Go Live” and start up with the intro before I lock in.

“Alright! Good evening, my six mighty, emotionally unstable warriors,” I purr into the mic, leaning lazily. “Welcome back to the content mill. Tonight, that means me fishing in Moon Mountain while having a mild identity crisis.”

A sigh fell out before I could try to stop it. “Alright. I hate to break it to you, but 2D is what we’re reduced to for now. The rig is fried after that last brownout, so ya girl is operating on my college laptop from three years ago. AKA technological dinosaur. Gaming will be a minimum.”

Chat was bummed. I could tell. I hated disappointing them, but it is what it is. Onwards and upwards.

A few donations trickle in. No large amounts, but massive in meaning to me. These peoplecared, and that was worth more than any dollar sign.

“I hope you’re all prepared for tonight’s riveting content—watching me catch carp for the next two hours. Feeling cute. Might hit up Amy in town later. I don’t know. The girl eats those weird dirt clods from the mines, which is unsettling. But she’s so sweet and, as you say @BoneyTom2, ‘fine as hell’, so we just might give her a pass.”

The chat reacts exactly as expected.

CHAT: Peak content. Emmy-worthy.

CHAT: Therapy and dating via Moon Mountain.

CHAT: WE ARE EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE AND WE ARE MANY.

I smirk, settling into the groove.

This is my rhythm. My safe little rainstorm. Me, my tiny but viciously loyal chat, and a pixelated fishing rod.

I’m narrating with all the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk.

“Another rainbow carp. Thrilling. Truly, you’re welcome for this elite-tier gameplay. ”

Chat loves it.

Chat knows me.

Here, I don’t have to pretend.

My phone buzzes again. A message from Sammy again about grabbing coffee tomorrow: heaven forbid I accidentally leave the girl on read for more than ten minutes.

She put the club in caps this time. This usually meant I was going to have little say in the matter. Not anywhere near my comfort zone, but exposure helps, as my therapist would say. Could be fun to step outta bounds. Who knows? Anxiety-ridden but fun.

I slip an auto “can’t talk right now” and dismiss it. There will be time for that later.

The buzz of my phone distracts me again.

RAE:Tell them about the spider thing.

ME:No.

RAE:Do it.

ME:Absolutely not.

RAE:...coward.

I caved, telling the story of the wolf spider in my laundry and how I had to barter for my socks back. The chat lost it.

This set me into a rant about the extensive existence of eight-legged creatures in the world.

Rae knows what she’s doing. I’m in my element here, rod in hand, reeling in fish, brain spinning in overdrive, rambling about spiders being the original anxiety mascots, yet how, for some reason, jumping spiders are adorable—the golden retrievers of arachnids, in fact.

“Did you know that, unlike other spiders, their eyes function more like humans, generating one singular image? Could you imagine?” My shoulders eased without me realizing, and the bagel I’d been meaning to eat had sat untouched for forty-five minutes. I was gone now, lost in my own musings. “With the two large forward-facing eyes providing a sort of bifocal effect and a two-hundred-some-odd-degree field of view at all times? A paranoid person’s dream come true.”

CHAT: here she goes again

CHAT: do I NEED the info? No. Do I love it? Yes!

CHAT: USELESS FACTS FTW

CHAT: 🕷️ facts with Kitty hour

CHAT: WHY DO I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

CHAT: think I learn more from kitty than school

My voice picks up speed, hands sketching little arcs in the air. “They’re active hunters, fantastic mothers in comparison to their cousins. The young can stay with them until they’re much larger and are more likely to cannibalize each other rather than get eaten by mom. Nature’s messy like that, but it hits different when it’s your own mom for some reason.”

Everything is fine.

Then my stream stuttered. Just once.

I chalked it up to my internet’s occasional mood swings, but chat noticed.

CHAT: Lag spike??

CHAT: L setup strikes again.

CHAT: prehistoric laptop energy.

I laughed it off, but the flicker came again — this time followed by a burst of notifications.

At first, a trickle: one follow, then another, then three in a row. Then it hit like a dam breaking.

Follows. Subs. Donations. A blizzard of pop-ups so fast my overlay started glitching. Confetti animations overlapped, chat scrolled faster than I could read. Usernames I’d never seen before in my life.

CHAT: RAIDDDD OMGGG

CHAT: 25K VIEWERS INBOUND

CHAT: SUB TRAINNNNN

I sat back slowly. “Uh... did I just get hacked by some kind of bot? Who’s messing with me? That you, GearmekTech? Firework spam was fun around the fourth but that ship has sailed bud.”

A highlighted message stuck at the top of chat — Rae pinned it so it wouldn’t disappear in the onslaught of chatters.

VYBEHAWK: Yo yo yo, this girl funny fr 😂

The name landed like a dropped mic.

VybeHawk. Fidgit’s golden boy. Loud, reckless, magnetic — the kind of streamer who could make a sponsorship out of falling off his own gaming chair and did just that. Viral on every platform. His content wasn’t about skill; it was about energy. Reaction compilations. Wild collabs. The hype king with a million-dollar grin.

The internet loved him for the antics. Brands loved him for the numbers.

I’d seen enough to know two things:

One, he could charm the skin off a snake.

And two? I wanted nothing to do with that kind of spotlight.

Now he was in my chat.

The walls of my tiny, safe stream had just cracked wide open.

And the storm was pouring in.