It was late August when his content flow slowed to a drip.

Lucas had abandoned his weekly streaming schedule. He broadcasted sporadically, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the late evening. This lack of a regular timetable caused me to miss some of the livestreams. I was forced to watch an archived recording, whenever he got around to posting one. His interest in Luminous City also began to wane. It was now a lesser fantasy-sim within a larger rotation of mostly online shooters. When locked in a death-match, Lucas had no time for his subs. He just focused on killing his opponent. And staying alive. I tried to provide commentary on the action under my username Magus, already knowing I’d be ignored. 

Magus: it feels like Battle Royale games are the defining construct of our time, incorporating all of modernity’s fatalistic impulses: 100 players fight to the death on a gradually shrinking map, the sole survivor is the only winner. And the arena is full of an unseen audience, all watching on their screens at home…

My chat floated on screen. No response. “Sorry guys, can’t read right now. I’m getting sniped from behind.” The text faded away, revealing his low health bar.

The private stream perks I’d been promised as a paid subscriber never came to pass. I emailed Lucas a few times, trying to set something up. But I heard nothing back. And it wasn’t just me. He ghosted everyone on Patreon, avoiding all of his top tier obligations. Long-time fans labeled him a scammer in the user reviews. His viewer count started to decline.

As for myself, I was unsure what to do. The entire summer had been strung along by my online interactions with Lucas. With this reliable fix of faux-intimacy now in jeopardy, I feared for my well-being. Lucas needed to be rebooted to his factory settings. He needed to return to streaming full-time, on a regular schedule, so that the user-creator dynamic between us could be reinstated.

A week after Labor Day he stopped streaming completely. There was no sign of him, not on any of his socials. I checked my phone every few minutes, my waking hours left on constant refresh. Personal screen usage went up to twelve, thirteen hours a day. I did nothing but stare at the proverbial loading screen, waiting for Lucas’s face to buffer back in. It was over a month before he came back into focus.

A morning Instagram ping let me know he’d recently added a post to his story. I sat up in bed and watched it immediately. He’d posted a video of himself in a car, with his friend Madison. “Where are we going?” he asked and turned the camera over to her, in the driver’s seat. “Brea Mall y’all.” She blew a kiss. End of story. I typed brea mall into Google Maps. Thirty-five minutes away by car, twenty-eight minutes without traffic. I hurried to get dressed.

My mom asked me what I needed to borrow the car for. I told her I was going to see a movie in Irvine.

“By yourself?” she asked.

“It’s an arthouse thing. Nobody wants to see it with me.”

She frowned and handed me her keys.

On the toll road towards La Brea I sketched out a plan of attack. I would walk around the mall and search for Lucas. Once found, I would follow him into a store. I practiced my lines in the car. “Lucas, is that you? It’s me, Magus. From your Patreon.” What happened next? I wasn’t sure. The interaction went off book after that, the scene still unrendered.

I parked and entered through the Macy's. The smell of Clinique reminded me of my mother. As a toddler I slipped away from her while she was getting her makeup done at the cosmetic counter. Once she realized I wasn’t there they shut down the store, in fear that I’d been abducted. An hour later a security guard found me sleeping inside a coat rack. The search party was called off. As I cut through the men’s department, I felt like something similar was about to happen. A sudden event that would put the whole mall on lockdown. I saw another version of myself entering Macy's. It was me, recast as a mass shooter, on the verge of brandishing my rifle. The assigned role of active shooter had a strange resonance, one that I couldn’t shake off. I speed-walked the rest of the way, my Nikes squeaking against the ultra varnished walkway.

I went straight to the GameStop, thinking Lucas might’ve dragged Madison there. But I saw no sign of them in the store. I walked down an aisle and pretended to read the back of a game’s case.

“Can I help you with anything?” A haggard employee loomed over my shoulder. 

“Oh yeah. Do you have any physical copies of Luminous City?” It was a legitimate question on my part. I wanted to pin the game’s box art on the wall above my bed. 

“No, unfortunately we don’t. Only redeem codes for the digital download.”

“I figured that might be the case.” There’d only been a limited factory run of Luminous City. A retail unit was hard to come by. I gave the employee a glum smile and left the store.

I refreshed his Instagram. No updates. Lucas hadn’t posted since the car ride. I feared that I’d missed him. I took a seat in front of Build-A-Bear Workshop and watched a young girl place a cloth heart into the chest of a black bear. White stuffing protruded from its gaping abdomen. The attendant then took the bear and sewed together its seams. I thought about going in and asking to make my own bear. I pictured the uneasy look of the attendant, searching for her manager at the cashier desk. The parents eyeing me as I stood next to their children, all of us waiting in line to pick out our hearts. It’s not like they could turn me away, a paying customer. And was this imagined teddy a gift for Lucas? I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was for me. My own little Lucas plushie, to snuggle up with at night. A pathetic consolation prize.

I looked at my phone again. Still nothing. I returned to scanning the flow of shoppers. My eyes must have been crazed. A hundred shards of paranoia stabbed me simultaneously. This felt all too familiar. I was coming unglued. “You should leave,” I whispered to myself. All signs pointed toward giving up. For my own good.

A teenage girl posed for a picture in front of the Build-A-Bear toy blocks. An idea hit me, clear as day. Madison. Check Madison’s story. I pulled my phone out. And sure enough, there they were in her insta, posting at the mall. Pictures of Lucas trying on wigs at Spencer’s. A selfie of her in a changing room. The most recent was a looped boomerang of Lucas throwing fries at the camera, uploaded four minutes ago. They were at the food court. 

I made my way towards the mall’s center. My pace quickened, though only slightly. I didn’t want to come across like a tweaker.  I zigzagged through the crowd, toward the Chick-fil-A in the distance. Once at the food court entrance I slowed down to a casual stroll, accepting a sample from the Mongolian Barbeque stand. I sucked the sauce from the toothpick and surveyed the far tables. Finally I found them. Underneath the fake palm tree, in front of a Jamba Juice.

They read as a couple from the jump, practically intertwined. Madison’s legs stretched out underneath the table and rested on Lucas’s lap. He caressed her socked feet with absent-minded tenderness, as if it were an action of habit. They began to laugh loudly, though not obnoxiously so, their teenage carelessness tempered by an underlying refinement. Even in a moment of abandon, the two projected a sense of control about them. What struck me most was Madison’s beauty. Or rather, her beauty processed through Lucas’s gaze. The way he looked at her with such overwhelming want. I imagined her as the final hydra-like boss from Luminous City. She removed Lucas’s heart with her French tips and brought it still beating to her lips. She pierced the left ventricle with an old-fashioned plastic straw and sipped on it like a fountain Sprite, careful not to waste a drop.

My cheeks grew hot. I was close to crying.

 A middle-aged woman with a tray asked me to move out of her way. I apologized and sank into a nearby swivel chair. How had I miscalculated things so severely? Lucas and Madison’s social media presence had portrayed an obviously platonic friendship. No hints of romance to be found. Maybe I was just out of sync with the rituals of teenage coupling. The more likely answer: I was a creep, lusting after a barely-legal youth.

Lucas lowered Madison’s feet to the floor and got up from the table. He looked around. Madison remained seated. She pointed him toward the bathrooms, perpendicular from my current location. Lucas got up and walked toward them. I wasted no time mulling over my next course of action. I knew right away what had to be done. I stood from my chair and followed Lucas into the restroom. I could not leave the mall empty handed. 

I pushed open the door and he was the only guy inside, about to unzip at the far urinal. I made my way slowly towards the spot next to him. To approach the urinal closest to another man was an admittedly bold move, an act that would communicate my intentions almost immediately. I ignored my moral qualms and entered into the bracketed piss zone. My hands trembled as I played with my pants, searching for the button. I looked down at the tiled ground, at Lucas’s dirtied Converse. His face was a blurred flame at my side, a burning bush I dared not to behold. My concentration returned to the task at hand. For a few panicked seconds I feared I’d be unable to pee. But then, thankfully, it came. The urine hit the porcelain basin below and the whole bathroom came alive with the heavy sound of my piss, and I thought of Lucas, just one urinal over, connected to me by the plumbing, through his stream, like a yellow cord. For a moment, we were in union. Brothers in arms, taking a leak side-by-side. This is enough, I told myself. Let this be enough. I wished for it to be true. But it was not.

So I looked. And the dick was beautiful. With a sizeable girth readily apparent, even while flaccid. He was uncircumcised, the foreskin he held back significantly darker than his facial complexion. The pubes were trimmed, not fully shaven. It was then a great swelling of desire rose within me. I raised my head. He was looking straight at me.

 We stood there, staring at each other, completely still. His face was inscrutable. I couldn’t tell whether he wanted to beat me up or fuck. Probably both. Curiosity and rage swirled behind his eyes, in equal measure. I longed to stay within this prelapsarian state for all eternity. When he finally broke rank and moved his eyeline towards my crotch, I lit up like a float in an electrical parade. The moment I’d edged toward for months was finally here.

“I’m Magus,” I said, the words blurted out as a reflex, in defiance of my own will. I hadn’t meant to say anything at all. 

“You’re who?” asked Lucas. He was back to looking me in the eye, his previous hunger fading fast.

“Magus. From your stream. And the Patreon.” I tried to laugh this confession off as I said it. But my words came out more like a whine. The room began to turn cold. 

Lucas guffawed. “Man, this is too much.” He pushed out the last bit of pee from his dick and zipped up his pants. “I mean…” He froze. The door opened behind us. An old man walked into the bathroom. Lucas spun around and made a beeline for the exit, not stopping to wash his hands. 

At the sink, I scrubbed my fingers until they were raw. I tried not to think about what had just taken place, fearful of having a mental break in a public setting. Yet I found my mind to be surprisingly empty. It was as though my head had been severed from my body. When I arrived back at the food court, Lucas and Madison were gone, their table was already occupied by a young family. I nodded and made my way to the parking lot.

I tried logging on to Lucas’s streaming page when I got home. This user no longer exists. He’d deleted his entire account, paid subscribers and all. I wasn’t surprised. It was the only way to fully block me. His Instagram went private. As did Madison’s. 

Days passed. Somehow I avoided the fallout. The other shoe never dropped and I couldn't figure out why. From a rational standpoint, being released from Lucas was a clear net positive. He was no longer the all-consuming hole at the center of my life. But the lack of grief in his absence made me wary. I exhibited no pangs of sadness from this sudden loss, no yearnings for a second-go at my fumbled encounter. The events of the mall didn’t play on loop in my mind. There was no shame, no anguish—I wasn’t tortured by any of it. All that remained was a glacial stillness. One that unnerved me to no end.

Weeks later I realized I’d been beheaded, my desire fully decapitated. I stumbled through the next phase of my life like a eunuch, lost and without a compass.