My therapist told me that writing down traumatic events can be a way to ease the shock of bad experiences. It sounds like bullshit to me... But I'm desperate for any kind of release.
I guess I'll start by talking about Cal.
Cal is my best friend, I've never felt closer to another human being than I have to him. We met when we were both seven, at my very first Cub Scouts meeting. Dear lord, we both hated that place, but we had family that aspired to see us become perfect people, and figured that the Cub Scouts were the perfect way to start us on the track to success. Gradually, we transitioned from going to the Scouts meetings, to going to play video games in his basement.
Cal's family wasn't exactly rich, and they lived in an incredibly old house that was only a few places down from mine. It was a very big house, but not a nice one. It had no furnace (only wall heaters), outlets which would randomly stop working, and neither cable nor internet. All that Cal had for us to do at his house was play Goldeneye and Smash Brothers on his Nintendo 64. Occasionally we would read comic books, but he only had the old Spiderman series that everyone has read at least twice, so we typically stayed away from it. Essentially, we were a couple of big ol' nerds.
Cal's older sister, Nina, however...She was an even bigger nerd.
Naturally, being two whole years older than us, she thought was far too cool to give us a moment of her time. On rare occasions, she would go out with friends, and permit use to use her coveted Gamecube, complete with Super Smash Brothers Melee. Those nights were the greatest of our childhoods, and we developed a passion for Smash Brothers.
This continued on for some years, until her thirteenth birthday, when her parents somehow scrounged together the money for an Xbox 360. She was absolutely ecstatic, and Cal would frequently rant to me about how jealous he was. When I was fed up with hearing his incessant whining, I proposed a plan for us to spend the summer mowing lawns and pulling weeds to purchase our own Xbox 360 from a local pawn shop.
Naturally, he clung to this idea.
We spent the summer of '09 working our asses off to make $120. Finally, as stupid eleven year-olds, we wandered into Pawn One and picked out a dusty white console together and paid with six crisp twenty dollar bills.
Considering I had made the majority of the money, and Cal already had his Nintendo 64, we agreed that It'd be fair for me to set up the beautiful piece of technology in my home. Thus, he came to my home for the proceeding few years, with us buying and playing the latest Call of Duty titles and enjoying them immensely.
Fast forward to our sophomore year in high school. Cal and I didn't hang out nearly as much as we used to, but we talked frequently at school. I had honestly mostly forgotten about our childhood days, now that I owned a gaming PC and moved into the twenty-first century.
Some night in February, I remember listening to some soundtracks on Youtube, and seeing a click-bait top ten list for "Memorable Video Game Soundtracks." I took the bait, and watched the video. It had some obvious entries, like Hotline Miami and Final Fantasy VII, but one entry on the list hit me with a freight train of nostalgia.
The Super Smash Brothers Melee soundtrack.
I immediately started looking into Melee again, and quickly discovered the prevalent competitive scene. My interest was piqued, and that night consisted of me setting up a Gamecube emulator and dodging sleep by playing Melee. I learned some of the advanced techniques, and started looking into nearby tournaments.
A month later, I was sick of playing Melee with the input lag of an emulator, and started trying to find a Gamecube with a copy of Melee. Soon, I learned just how rare a real copy of Melee had become, and my hopes started to dwindle.
Then, as if sent by the heavens, I got a text from Cal about his sister going to "some dumb party," and his parents being on vacation in Reno, meaning that we'd have his house to ourselves to smoke pot and play video games all night. I thought of Nina's Gamecube, and her lovely copy of Melee.
As fast as my fingers could type, I asked if Nina still had her Gamecube. He replied with the same kind of mischievous nature he always did:
"I have no clue, but we could dig though her shit 'til we find it."
I thought it sounded perfect.
And so we spent an hour rifling through Nina's possessions. We laughed at dumb diary entries from her middle school days, were shocked to find her own personal 'pleasure item' tucked away in her bed frame, and finally in the darkest corners of her closet we found the little purple box which I so desired to find. At this point, we were both baked senseless, and ran off to play Melee without even trying to hide the mess we had made.
A few hours later, we were sitting in Cal's room playing Melee, and we heard somebody enter the front door. Briefly, we panicked at the idea of Cal's parents being home early, and quickly hid our contraband. However, instead, it was only Nina.
She yelled, full volume, Cal's name. Furious thumps came from the staircase as she flew down to his room, and as she stormed down the hallway we could hear her shouting at us.
"What the fuck were you two doing in my room!?" She shouted, before standing with her arms crossed in Cal's doorway. We both looked at her, and something in my chest suddenly jumped.
I hadn't seen Nina in years, and looking on her now made me realize how absolutely beautiful she was. While Cal and Nina shouted at each other, I only admired her flowing blonde hair. When Nina asked what smelled like skunk, I only could see the captivating curves of her hips. And when she called us "fucking creeps!," I only noticed her fascinatingly large breasts.
Nina stormed off, and I returned to reality. She left the house again, and we resumed our session of Melee and recreational smoking. However, for the rest of the night, my mind was fixated on Nina.
She became the subject of many of my late-night fantasies over the proceeding weeks. Picturing her naked in my mind seemed to never cease to be interesting. However, after a while, I realized that I would not be satisfied with pure fantasy.
I began plotting ways to see her naked.
Over the course of March, and into April, I planned out a method of seeing her undressed. It was a rather simple scheme, all in all. Nina liked to bathe in the big claw-foot tub in the basement of Cal's home. However, since it was in a basement, there was no window I could peek inside of. Instead, I had to get more crafty.
I learned how to set up a live feed camera, and placed a small webcam inside of a tissue box in said bathroom. Once I had positioned the tissue box to a satisfactory angle, I returned to Cal and killed time by playing more Melee.
Once I returned home, I checked the camera's live feed, and found it worked perfectly. All I had to do then, was play the waiting game.
Every other night for two weeks, I had the pleasure of watching Nina strip and bathe for me. I would leave the sound on, and any time I heard the sound of running water, I'd find myself suddenly in the mood to rub one out. It was truly a teenage boy's dream... And then it happened.
It started normally, I heard the sound of rushing water and immediately felt an erection brewing. I paused my game of Hearthstone and swapped over to the camera feed, and saw Nina undressing. A smile came to my lips, and my hand began to do its job.
Things went as expected at first. But, as soon as I was about to finish, a loud and harsh beeping started coming through the audio feed. I was confused, worried if it was an issue with the camera. However, by the look on Nina's face, I noticed she could hear it too. After a moment, I made the connection that the beeping was that of a smoke alarm. Nina shouted, "Mom!? What are you making?"
She received no response.
With a groan, she grabbed her phone and started typing away. Later on, in police reports, I'd hear that she was apparently texting her mom and asking the same question she had shouted. However, her mom had already ran outside, and left her phone in her bedroom.
Nina was getting visibly annoyed with the beeping. After three or four minutes of angry texting and shouting, she got out of the bathtub and dried herself off. She wrapped herself in the towel, and walked to the door. The second her hand touched the knob, she flinched and jumped back with a shout.
Somewhere out my bedroom window, I could hear sirens. I stood from my computer desk, and ran out of my home to look down the road. A pillar of smoke was billowing into the air, right where Cal's house was.
I ran back inside to my computer and looked at the camera feed again. Nina was banging on the bathroom door, screaming again and again for help. I was frozen, I couldn't do a god damned thing.
After a few minutes of banging and shouting, I noticed beads of sweat becoming more and more visible on Nina. Not long after, she removed the towel, and climbed back into the bathtub. She turned the cold water on, and curled up in the water.
I could see her crying.
I kept hoping and praying that someone would break the door in and rescue Nina, but with every passing moment I was more and more terrified that it wouldn't happen. I couldn't do anything, and I couldn't stop watching. I don't remember exactly when I started crying, but at some point I did.
Water was overflowing out of the tub, and Nina was still screaming for help. She just kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming...
The floor was covered in water, and steam was steadily filling the air. Nina's screams for help turned to screams of pain. I watched as the water steamed, and slowly begin to churn around Nina. She curled up by the cold water faucet, but it was to no avail. The water kept getting hotter and hotter, and Nina couldn't get away.
Her skin was turning a deep crimson, and Nina screamed the loudest, most blood curdling screams I'd heard in my life. She was flailing and trashing about in the water, which was starting to bubble. I could see skin falling away from her legs, floating in wet chunks in nearly boiling water.
My camera could barely withstand the heat, and the video feed was starting to blur, but it kept coming through. I could still see and hear Nina being boiled alive in her own bathroom.
By the time her screams had died down to weak, hoarse wheezes, the camera feed finally cut. I sat and stared at the blank "no signal" screen for so long the words felt burned into my retinas...
Later on, I'd learn that one of the wall heaters in their home short-circuited and caught fire. It proceeded to make every heater in the house follow suit, and in a matter of moments there was a fire in nearly every room. Every room except that bathroom which Nina was enjoying herself in...
So there. I wrote about it. I’ve realized that I don’t feel better. I may not ever feel better. I was disgusting; I was a creep, a weirdo, a pervert- you name it. I watched my best friend’s sister die through a webcam that I set up to fulfill my sexual desires. At least the camera is gone now; something I’m eternally thankful for.
I still don't know what to say to Cal, I haven't talked to him yet, and I don't know If I ever will.
And every time I pass by that burnt out old house, I feel like i'm going to puke.
