Page 16 of Stream & Scream
No fake crying. No alliances. No sob stories for the viewers.
And that’s what makes this art.
She’s the final act. The reason I’m hard beneath this gear and half-wild with restraint.
This one’smine.
Keep breathing, Liv.
Keep waiting, and wondering how close I really am.
Because I’m still watching.
And we’re just getting started.
CHAPTER FIVE
Olivia
Night one.
"Did you hear that?"
The voices come from the direction Lexie and Tara disappeared earlier, and I realize they couldn't have gone very far. They're probably close enough to have heard the same scream that's currently making my skin crawl.
They emerge from the tree line again, but this time they're not parading their matching mean-girl routine. Tara's pixie cut is messed up, twigs caught in the dark strands, and Lexie's perfectly applied makeup is smeared with sweat and dirt. They both look shaken, but not in the way I feel shaken.
"Oh my God, did you guys hear that?" Tara says to her wrist camera, but there's something wrong with her tone. She's not scared—she's excited. Thrilled, even.
Lexie positions her wrist camera to capture both of them in frame, her influencer instincts kicking in even in the middle of whatever this is. "That was so crazy! Like, whoever's doing the sound effects for this show really knows what they're doing."
Sound effects.
"Right?" Tara giggles, actually fucking giggles. "I mean, it sounded so real. Like, genuinely terrifying. The production value on this show is insane."
They think it's fake. It’s gotta be fake.
Because if it wasn’t…
But that scream made every primitive survival instinct in my body scream. How could someone fake that? They didn’t exactly give us acting classes going into filming.
"That brings us one step closer to winning," Lexie says, checking her reflection in her camera screen and adjusting her hair. "I mean, if someone's already out, that's one less person we have to worry about, right? More money for the rest of us."
She's talking about money while someone might be bleeding out in the forest fifty yards away.
"You're both fucking insane," I say, and the words come out harsher than I intended. "That wasn't a sound effect. That didn’t sound scripted. Someone had to have just?—"
"Someone just what?" Tara interrupts, rolling her eyes at her camera. "Got scared and dramatic for their followers? Please. This is reality TV, Olivia. Everything is faked."
"The scream went on for like thirty seconds," Lexie adds, laughing like it's the funniest thing she's ever heard. "No one screams for thirty seconds unless they're getting paid to scream for thirty seconds. It's all about the views, honey."
I stare at them, these two perfectly coiffed sociopaths treating potential murder like a marketing opportunity, and something cold and hard settles in my chest. They're not just naive or sheltered—they're genuinely broken inside, so disconnected from reality that they can't distinguish between entertainment and actual human suffering.
"Besides," Tara continues, "even if it was real, which it totally wasn't, that just means we're better at this game than whoevercouldn't handle the pressure. Natural selection or whatever they call it, right?"
Natural selection. She's talking about natural selection like we're discussing a nature documentary.
"You know what?" I stand up, shouldering my backpack. "You're right. This is natural selection. And you two are about to find out what happens to the species that can't tell the difference between a TV show and reality."
