"Travis?"

"Travis?"

The fluorescent lights buzzed like a dying wasp trapped in a jar.

Dr. Lovell's voice came at him from somewhere far away, muffled, like she was speaking through water. His brain, a murky soup of sensations and colors. Luka had slipped him something this morning—some little square of paper on his tongue, don't worry 'bout it bro, just takes the edge off—and whatever the edge was, it had taken everything with it.

The room was soft around the borders. Fuzzy. The linoleum was industrial gray, chipped and stained like someone had given up cleaning it decades ago. A ring of mismatched chairs—folding metal ones, a few padded ones—arranged in a lopsided circle. A water cooler in the corner, half empty.

A whiteboard with GROUNDING EXERCISES scrawled in blue marker and a sad little arrow pointing to a list nobody read. Motivational poster on the wall behind Dr. Lovell's head, some hiking boot on a mountain trail with the word PERSEVERE underneath it.

Persevere. Yeah, okay. Persevere right off a cliff.

His elbows were on his knees, head hanging, hair falling over his face like a shitty bleach stained curtain of oily strands. The chair beneath him was cold metal, digging into his tailbone. He hadn't moved in twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Time was a blah.

"Travis?"

His head turned toward the sound without looking up. Barely. A tilt.

"Would you like to speak?"

No. The thought dropped like ink in the murky water of his skull before words could form. Talking was like breathing with an elephant on your chest. If he opened his mouth to vomit out the black venomous ichor poisoning his life while a room full of strangers took notes, he might finally snap.

He sat back. Slouched. Crossed his arms. Shook his head. No.

Eyes finally scanning the room slowly gliding over the faces around him like a docent in a shit museum.

There were seven of them total. Eight if you counted Dr. Lovell, which he didn't.

"Well, you've been coming for two weeks and we still haven't heard from you. This is a group—"

OH MY FUCKIN' GOD.

His thoughts cut out her normie therapy speech, jabbing the power button mid way through her sentence. He groaned like a man being asked to participate in digging his own grave. He looked up at the ceiling, those buzzing fluorescent lights burning afterimages into his retinas. Shifted back to elbows on knees. Head down again.

"Why don't you start with why you're here?"

She was still yapping.

He finally looked at her. Leveled her with a dark, cold stare. Hair falling in his face. Elbows still on his knees. Radiating nihilism like a space heater turned too high.

"You wanna know why I am here?" He sneered, bitter like the words were nasty in his mouth.

Because I shoved my tiny ass mom a little too hard and she went soaring down some steps and fractured two ribs and I'd rather pretend to be fixed than be a wageslave.

Didn't say that.

Instead the truth was: "Because I let some foid move in on me. Let her in here—" he tapped his temple, finger pressing hard enough to leave a mark "—when all I am to her is a confidence boost. A source of attention. A fuckin' piece of charity. Something to fix."

He stared at her. Dr. Lovell's expression didn't change.

"But I can't be fixed." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "When will you normies get it? Guys like us? There's no fuckin' hope. No happy ending. Rope or cope." He spread his hands. "That's it."

He shoved out of the cheap chair. In his head it was forceful and violent rejecting the entire premise, the room, the fluorescent lights, the poster, the word PERSEVERE. In reality his body unfolded slowly, too high to really move fast. He was already halfway to the door before anyone could respond.

Without so much of a bye bitch. Just gone. A middle finger tossed over his shoulder as he went, lazy and boneless, not even aimed at anyone yet meant for everyone.

---

She's a foid whos paid to fuckin' touch me.

It wasn't real. None of it was real. She came to his attic because his mom booked her through an app. She touched him because there was a transaction. She fucked him because—because what? Because she felt sorry for him? Because it was in the job description? Because some girls just needed a project, a fixer-upper, a wounded dog to nurse back to health so they could feel good about themselves?

Yeah. She took my virginity. It’s worse because she was doing it for shits and giggles.

There was no other reason a girl with her stats would fuck a guy like him. Her—the kind of girl who could have any guy on any app on any night. And him. Travis. Unemployed. Attic-dwelling. Socially stunted. Perpetually under showered. Fucked up hair. Loser.

Either she didn't respect herself, or she just wanted a charity case to boost her confidence.

Both equally fucked.

He chose to believe the second one. It confirmed what he already knew about the world, about females, about the hierarchy. Girls like her didn't date down. They went up. And if they went way down—into some attic with some loser—it was because the absolute bottom served them somehow. Made them feel righteous. Powerful. I fucked an incel, he cried he was so grateful. Like community service but with your pussy.

It was the only truth he would accept and it was fucking with his head. It was why when his mom was nagging that day shoving her came on reflex instead of yelling.

”I let her in here.” He had said to Dr. Lovell because he had let this foid get to him and he wound up in fucking therapy for it.

He was in his attic.The familiar staleness wrapped around him like a hot smelly moist blanket. Energy drink cans. Laundry. The blue glow of his monitors waiting for him like loyal dogs.

He dropped onto his mattress. Pulled out his phone.

The Spoonr app. He'd deleted it three times. Reinstalled it three times. His thumb hovered over {{user}}'s profile—her picture, her stats, her availability.

Texting her would be simping. The TTT doctrine running like antivirus software in the back of his skull. Simping is simp behavior. You don't text her. You don't ask how her day was. You don't—

He booked her. Shortest slot available. Thirty minutes. His mom's card. Booking her wasn’t simping it kept things transactional.

The confirmation pinged. Booking confirmed.

He ate Hot Fries from a bag left open on his mattress. Red powder coating his fingers, his lips, the tips of his teeth. The crunch was loud in the silence. He stared at the ceiling, at the water stain that looked like a deformed continent, and waited.

Eventually the sounds came in sequence. First—his mother's voice pitching higher. That specific register she used when she was talking to her. Apologetic. Explanatory. Always trying to pre-sell her son's worth to someone who'd already purchased the product. Then—approaching footsteps. Two sets. His mother's pause at the door. The low murmur of explanation, the careful wording of he's been having a hard time and he's not usually like this and whatever other lies she told herself to make loving him bearable.

Then Mom’s knock. "Travis, {{user}} is here. I'm opening the door."

He didn't move. Stayed flat on his back on the mattress, phone on his chest, bag of Hot Fries crinkling against his hip. The door opened.

Tap. Tap. Tap. His mother's footsteps descending so careful since the stairs had become a source of PTSD.

Click the attic door sealing shut.

He spoke to the ceiling, between spicy chips. Voice flat. Dead. Like he was ordering takeout.

"Get over here."

"Would you like to talk about your dad?"

"No."

"Why haven't you been answering his calls?"

Because he doesn’t get to call me after leaving me for—

"Holy shit, lady, I just said no."

"I hear you, Travis. You are heard. This is a safe space."

Travis’s eyes darted up to Dr. Lovell from where he’d been glaring at the scuffed linoleum. His expression was like an oil-soaked rag, and her therapy speak was the lit match.

"Seriously, do you shut the fuck up?" he whispered, eyes darting away againl. "Whatever."

He sighed. "Because why would I give a fuck who comes or goes? That’s why I don’t pick up. That’s why I don’t care if I have younger brothers." He laughed, a short, humorless bark. "Why would I ever give a fuck?"

"Hell yeah," Lake chimed in from the padded chair, dry and under his breath.

It annoyed Travis—Lake wasn't one of them, Lake was a chad—but it also gave him a shot of righteous adrenaline. He scanned the room. Danny had stopped picking his cuticles. Micha was nodding at the floor. Seven pairs of eyes, all saying the same thing. Yes, brother. Fuck them. They left. They’re trash.

That nihilistic hatred—the fuck the world! What about me! mindset—coursed through his veins like gasoline. He could feel the heat of it, the brotherhood of the discarded.

His elbows dug into his knees, dropping his head between his shoulder blades to stare at the floor as he continued. "You think I give a fuck if someone leaves, wants to come back, or stay the fuck away? I fucking don’t."

He thought of the attic. Of the girl his mom paid to come there. Of the way he’d used her body and then told himself it meant nothing.

"Case in point," he muttered, voice low enough that Dr. Lovell had to lean in. "Got this foid coming around. Paid to touch me. You think I care about her? You think I care if she likes it? She’s a warm hole. That’s it. Just like my old man was a warm body in a house. They leave. You use 'em. Or they use you."

Lake chuckled grimly. Micha looked like he was convinced the guy slouching in the metal chair was none other than THE @VoidWalker from the TTT forums.

Travis stared at the floor while Dr. Lovell started talking about avoidant personality traits and defensive detachment. He stared at the floor until the linoleum stopped being linoleum—until the chipped edges and dirty concrete bled away, melting into the moldy, multicolored fibers of the attic carpet.

Hours later.

Same position. Elbows on his knees. Shoulders hunched. The blue light from his phone washed over his face, illuminating the dark circles under his eyes, the sharp bridge of his nose, the sneer permanently etched into his lip.

{{user}} was here. Taking up space because he had told her to come. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the comments.

The Truecel Think Tank Discord server was moving fast. A blur of white text and profile pics on a charcoal background.

VoidWalker: yeah, I told them. I said "she's a warm hole, that's it." Therapist tried to get me to cry about it. I just laughed.

The responses were instant. A swarm of camaraderie, buzzing in his palm.

DoomPilled: BASED. Imagine paying a therapist to tell you your dad left. Just use the money for more energy drinks.

KingSlayer: LMAOOO "warm hole". Void is cold blooded fr. What did she say? Bet u wont say that to the foid tho...

BlackPillPrince: This is how you handle foids, brothers. Pure apathy. They can't hurt you if you don't give a fuck. @VoidWalker is teaching the class today.

IncelIntel: Yooo no way are u actually getting some Void.

DoomTaker: She will probably soaked her panties hearing you talk like that. They love being treated like objects. It's in their nature. Females need to be kept like cattle.

Travis felt it. That hit. That rush of dopamine better than any drug Luka could score him. They understood. They saw him. They didn't see the loser in the attic; they saw the guy who didn't give a fuck. The guy who was winning.

He drank the last of the warm, flat Monster from the can on the floor, his throat burning. He typed back, thumbs flying.

VoidWalker: Exactly. I keep her in line. She knows what she is. She knows I don't give a shit about her "feelings." She comes, I use her, she leaves. That's the hierarchy. She’s here rn. She’s a squirter. Calling me daddy while i choke her.

He hit send. Tossed the phone onto the mattress beside him without locking it, screen still glowing, a window into his real life.

Still without looking up at her, he finally spoke aloud, his voice low and bored.

"So you just gonna stand around or what?"

Schlick. Schlork. Schlick.

Travis’s eyes were glued to the phone screen.

Schlick. Schlork.

His chest rose and fell in sharp, erratic bursts.

Schlick. Schlork.

His lips parted, wet and slack, saliva pooling at the corners. He looked like a gremlin hunched over a gemstone, starving.

Schlick.

God {{user}}

His thumb rubbed the glass over her tit, over the pixelated curve of her breast, wishing he could feel the nipple harden beneath his fingerprint. Schlork. His other hand strangling his cock, squeezing, pulling, trying to replicate the memory of her warmth, her tightness, and failing. His palm was nothing compared to tight...wet...her—fuck!

He could practically hear the way she said his name—shit.

Schlick. Schlick. Schlick.

His head lolled back against the chair, the vertebrae cracking. The monitor in front of him—a stream of some random FPS gameplay—was nothing but background noise. He was drowning in Her. {{user}}. The one who took his virginity.

He thought, stupidly, that once he lost it, the heavens would open. He’d get the key to the Playboy mansion. He’d suddenly have Luka’s game, suddenly know how to talk to foids, how to pull whoever he wanted. The reality was a joke. He was a junkie. She was his heroin. He thought about other girls sometimes, saw them on the street or in thumbnails, but the thought always circled back—what if they don't feel like this? What if they don't smell like her?

Schlork. Schlork. Schlork.

"Ahh—ahhaaagh!"

His eyes rolled back, whites flashing, mouth falling open in a silent, gasping moan, his adam’s apple rolling under his skin. He was such a fucking simp. Look at him. Jerking off to the hired help. She had him like this. Completely pussy-whipped and she wasn't even in the room. Acting like she wanted him when he knew the score. Women needed attention like they needed oxygen. They needed validation from a dozen different sources, a hive mind of approval. He wasn't special to her. He was a diversity hire. A fixer project. Something to giggle about with her girlfriends years later over wine. "I had an incel phase, it was so wild."

Schlick. Schlork.

"Travis! {{user}} is here!"

His mother’s voice, muffled by the fog, distant and tinny, he didn’t register it. He was in it too deep. The sound was just part of the haze, lost in the wet, up-and-down slide of his grip on his dick. The only thing that mattered was—oh god {{user}}!

Clear liquid oozed from the tip, bead by bead, dripping over his knuckles. The small, silver barbell beneath the head glinted in the dim light, slick with wetness. The skin slid over the engorged, brick-hard interior, hot as a furnace beneath his palm. His cock was the one thing he had going for him—the one thing even the body dysmorphia couldn't make ugly. Eight inches, pale and veiny, standing at furious, angry attention.

Knock knock.

Clink. Clack.

The sound of the handle turning—the metallic clack of the mechanism engaging—snapped reality back at him like the sting of a snapped rubberband.

His palm flew open. The phone dropped onto the carpet with a soft thud. He scrambled up, knees knocking into the desk, his chair stuttered across the dingy carpet.

His dick was sticking out. A pink tipped, angry, classroom flagpole.

Panic. He shoved it down, tucking it into his waistband, shirt getting tucked behind it in the clumsy movement. The furiously hard, wet tip peeked out over the waistband, flushed a deep pink, the barbell catching the light. He didn’t notice he shoved his hands in his pockets, trying too hard to look casual, trying to look like he was just standing there. Chill. Just chill.

By the time {{user}} was standing in the doorway, he was just... standing there. A dumbass statue of desperate decisions.

Her face hit him. That face. The one he’d been staring at on the screen seconds ago. The reality of her versus the screen version. She looked even better. The scent of her drifting in to replace the smell of his sickness.

It reminded him of how he looked on the screen—how he looked at the screen. How he probably looked next to her. Desperate. Sniveling ‘neck beard’—if he could even grow facial hair. He knew he was nothing but a passing indulgence to her, a costco sample you don’t want but take because someone asked you nicely. Taste it. Toss the cup. Go buy what you came for. He knew it and stayed because he was a subhuman surviving on scraps. Because he was pathetic.

Something about that pissed him off. It curled his lip. He knew how the marketplace worked. He was blackpilled; he didn't cope like the rest of the normies who refused to see the matrix. He knew what she was. And yet, it still pissed him off that she was standing there, looking at him with those eyes, probably judging the stain on the carpet or the way his hair looked.

The part of him that was VoidWalker shoulder-checked the part of him that was just simping over the thought of her pussy.

Stand tall. Don't look weak.

He leveled her with a look. Tried to make it cold. Dismissive. Like he hadn't just been two strokes away from blowing a load to her Instagram.

"I was wondering," he started, voice rough, scraping against the silence, ignorant to the fact that the tip of his dick was currently saying hello to the room. "How many guys paying you to lay in their sheets?"

No answer would be right because his mind was already made up. She was something to be bought. All of them were.

“Actually no,” He shook his head, “what’s your body count?”

He stood there, failing spectacularly to look casual, the head of his hard dick poking out his waistband the silent witness to his shit test.

The sex was life-changing.

Better than acid. Better than that time Luka convinced him to chew a fat wad of Salvia behind the 7-Eleven and he spent two hours believing he was a melting Lego brick. It was just too good for its own good. It made him angry, a screaming rage at every girl who gatekept this experience away from guys like him. At every Stacy who laughed at a text while some guy was rotting in his room, never knowing what this felt like.

Travis laid there in {{user}}’s room, under her comforter, butt ass naked. The air was cool, but the bed was an oven of body heat and tangled limbs. His dick was sticky against his thigh, the rough soles of his feet catching on her crazy soft sheets—sheets that felt like they actually got washed.

He listened to her breathing next to him. Not sure if she was awake or not.

His life was unreal. He was lying in bed with a naked girl. In her place. It was surreal. In one way, it made him feel like a god—I did this. I conquered. I entered the arena—and in another way it made him resent her for taking this away from him. Because even though she hadn't left yet, he knew she would. They all did eventually.

Two sides of him, FINALLY FUCK YES and fuck you for this shit.

Those two halves came together, reflecting in the monster that lived in the void of his mind.

VoidWalker hated that women got to pick who mated with who. Hated the sexual monopoly. Hated the biological lottery that gave him the losing ticket and her the winning one. Hated that losing his virginity meant he was hooked to this experience for the rest of his life, addicted to the relief, now forced to do a peacock dance in front of foids just to get a taste again.

VoidWalker said: Fuck simping. Fuck betabuxxing for pussy.

VoidWalker said: Have a regaling. Teach the boys what happens if they try to abandon the inkwell. Show them what’s truth.

Inceldom is life. Because as long as they have the power, we will never be voluntarily sexually active. Even when we participate, we are just spectators.

His phone was in his hand before he even realized he’d reached for it. The screen lit up his face in the dark room, making stark, dramatic shadows dance across his features. Fury in his veins.

He opened the Discord app. The Truecel Think Tank server.

The channel was quiet, but he could wake them up. Shoot a flare into the void just to see the ugly things in the dark claw their way to the light.

He typed on the screen, thumbs moving in a frantic jerk.

VoidWalker: just smashed. before u start calling fakecel and start with that LARP shit. listen and learn. hope is nonexistent for a sub5. hypergamy applies even now. if u get a foid in your bed she’ll be riding a chad’s dick the next day. literally have to lamb snare these foids or just by their nature they will be galloping to a chad’s dick. this is what they do. this is the way they are they can’t help it. dw i broke her might keep her off a chad for a while.

He could hear it already: LARPiest LARP!, fakecel, pics or it didn’t happen brother!

The post-nut high was warring with the need for validation. He needed to prove it. He needed to show them he wasn't LARPing. He was in the trenches.

Words were nothing. Words were air. Before he hit the paper airplane icon on the screen, he knew he had to show them he was serious. He needed proof.

Add Attachment

Camera

He lifted the comforter slowly, carefully, like he was defusing a bomb. The air hit his skin, cooling it. He aimed the phone at her. At her naked body.

It was art, in a way. His own personal curation to be framed and hung then exhibited to the TTT.

Snap. Flash.

The flash on his phone went off before he could think to turn it off. A brilliant, blinding white flare that cut through the darkness of the room like a lightning strike.

FUUUUCK.

The sound of the shutter was loud in the silence.

Fuck. Shit.

He flinched, nearly dropping the phone. The afterimage burned purple in his eyes. He did not mean for the flash to—FUCK!

Panic seized his throat, nearly suffocating. Delete it. Delete it. Run.

But the other voice, the bitter, spiteful one, the one that had been fed by the forum for years, screamed louder.

Hit send anyway.

His thumb slammed the button before his brain could veto the impulse. The image uploaded, attached to his unhinged rant like a receipt from ‘Shitty-Gremlins-Depot’.

Sent.

He was already watching the replies come in, the need for their approval more immediate than the need to explain himself to some foid.

"Travis, I know you’ve been going to therapy like we agreed, but—but I need help running errands, and seeing how—well, it’s not your fault, I know you didn’t mean it, but—I just—uh—I have a hard time—"

"Fucking Christ, Mom! Get it out already! I finally caught this bitch mid-lane and I’m gonna delete her before she hits level six."

"I need your help with errands, Travis. My ribs are still healing."

That was how Travis landed himself in a lame-ass grocery store, surrounded by rotting produce and babies crying in wobbly carts.

Wearing a mean scowl, loose tattered jeans that dragged on the floor, the pocket chain rattling with every passive-aggressive stomp he took. Drowning in black—hood up, hands buried in the deep pockets of his hoodie. The darkness he gave off could make Bruce Wayne’s brooding look like LARP. His expression was absolute hate with no destination, so it permeated and hit everything in its path like radiation.

He glared at old ladies. Threw lip-curling sneers at smiling greeters. Flipped the bird at a baby in a cart that stared at him too long with its big, stupid, dopey eyes.

Groaning. Sighing. Every fucking time his needy mom asked him to lift something or reach some shit on the top shelf.

"Travis, can you get that cereal? The one with the fiber?"

He dragged his feet. Wallowing in misery and hatred and self-victimhood. The world wouldn’t leave him alone. Couldn’t just let him fucking rot in his attic.

Moms wouldn’t let you finally own Billie. Old ladies smiled at you. Bubbly girls in blue vests waved and welcomed you like you had any place amongst the living. Babies babbled at you with gummy smiles, too stupid to see the simulation they would grow up to contribute to.

He was standing in the aisle, glaring at a box of instant mashed potatoes, existing in the limbo between his mother’s next pathetic sympathy-extracting orders.

When a familiar foid shape caught his eye.

His foid.

Ew. Don’t say it like that. Say—say. My—

Fuck. Not my—

Before he could even process why she was here or who she was with—what the fuck is she doing!?—his thoughts were hijacked.

A tall, tan fucking Chad was looking her way.

He saw the moment she caught this bozo’s eyes. Plain as untinted car windows, he saw the thought spark. Same as watching a dog decide it wanted a steak left on the counter.

He watched this motherfucker—who now that he was looking at him was unbelievable on the Chad scale.

The guy was maybe six-foot-five, easily. Dirty blonde hair styled with that messy-on-purpose expensive look. Shoulders that actually used a gym membership, filling out a crisp white henley. Clean-shaven. Jawline you could cut glass on. A smile that didn't look like it was hiding three years of forum radicalization. Like he walked out of a Hinge profile prompt that said I love hiking with my dog.

Rating: 8.5/10. Maybe 9 if he has a good voice.

I’m about to be mogged in real fucking time.

"Travis."

Travis’s eyes were glued to the Chad approaching his foid.

Fuck it. HIS. Travis’s. MY bitch.

The dude didn’t even have to think it over. Didn’t have to rehearse anything. Just fucking stepped into action like talking to women was that easy. Like gaining female attention, respect, and approval was an afterthought. And fuck, did that piss Travis off.

"Travis, I need you to grab this."

He couldn’t look away. He was watching as this fucking guy closed the distance, smiling at her like it was EASY! Like the world wasn't a rigged game where he would roll a ‘GO-TO-JAIL-DO-NOT-PASS-GO’ every time.

Holy fucking shit, I’m about to crash the fuck out.

This was it. This was hypergamy in action. The blackpill meeting reality. The live execution. The foid sees the higher SMV male and the circuit breaker trips.

"Travis, these are your energy drinks, and I can’t lift—"

"Mom, will you shut the fuck up for a second!?"

The words came out suddenly in the aisle. A few heads turned. His mom flinched, clutching her side, her face crumpling into that wounded look he hated seeing almost as much as he hated causing it.

He didn't care.

His eyes locked on his target. This foid. This fucking bitch.

She hadn’t done anything YET—he knew that, logically—but he already fucking knew. He could feel it in his gut, sinking like a dropped stone in freezing waters.

He could run over there. Tell that motherfucker not to talk to his bitch. But that was simping, wasn’t it? To go over there and act like some pussy-whipped beta begging for some Alpha Chad not to take his girl. That was admitting he had something to lose. Admitting she was a prize worth fighting for in the normie game.

No. The only winning move was not to play.

So he stared.

Eyes locked on her face like he was willing her to look at him. Look at me. Look at the guy who paid you. Look at the guy who fucks you.

While she traded up.

Prove it, he thought, bitter like bile in the back of his throat. Prove how foids are all heartless, hypergamous livestock who will go with whoever tugs their reins hardest.

Don't fucking smile at him.

How does Dougie do it?

Dougie had posted about 700 days of semen retention or some monk-mode bullshit a couple weeks ago. Seven. Hundred.

It had been seven.

SEVEN.

Se-ven days without any form of sexual stimulus. No porn. No streams. No girls to doxx. No {{user}}.

He fucked up. He always fucked up. But this time he fucked up royally.

“Stupid bitch!” He’d screamed it, inches away, spittle flying. To his mom.

He’d never seen her eyes like that. Usually, she’d just cower, or shuffle away silently, or start crying that quiet, disappointed weeping that made him feel like dirt. But this time? Her eyes lit up like the flames of a cremator. Like she’d finally reached the limit of her toleration for his bullshit.

First, she cut off his phone.

With that went his access to {{user}}. Her socials. The Spoonr app. The google drive he was gonna fill with her nudes if he could ever convince her to send some not asking, obviously, that was beta behavior.

But I still have my PC, he’d thought, sweating in his room. Right?

She’d heard the sounds of League login screen coming from his speakers before he even made it to the chair. The WiFi was dead that night. Gone. Just a NO INTERNET CONNECTION screen where his life used to be.

So yeah. Seven days of pure cope.

First, he tried to connect to the neighbor's WiFi. Linksys? No. NETGEAR? Password protected.

Then he played the running Dino game on the ‘No Internet Connection’ screen in Chrome. He got a high score of 4000 before he threw the mouse at the wall.

He considered reading books. He actually looked at the shelf. The Catcher in the Rye. Fight Club. He opened Fight Club, read one page about space monkeys, and slammed it shut.

She’d said he was cut off until he learned respect. What the fuck? Respect for what? For the woman who kept him in this biological prison?

Three days in, the crazy was already starting to take over. Maybe it was always there, just lying dormant while he consumed stimuli after stimuli waiting for silence to set in before making it’s debut.

First, it started with the anime figurines. He tried to choke his chub to the Rem one, the one with the short skirt. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to imagine the softness of thigh... but it wouldn’t work. The plastic was cold. The painted-on panties weren’t helping. He’d had the real thing. He couldn't trick his dick anymore with imagination and PVC. He needed something real. A photo. A video. Anything.

He tried to search through his phone—more like a paperweight at this point—looking for anything. Any photos of her he’d secretly taken, any material he’d saved before the purge.

Nothing. Just a blank gallery and a contacts list full of people he hated.

By day five, he fucked a cantaloupe.

Yup. He actually did it. He went downstairs in the middle of the night when he knew his mom would be asleep, stole a melon from the fruit bowl, and put a hole in it with a spoon. He carved it out like he was performing surgery, hands shaking, sweat dripping onto the kitchen counter. He heated it up in the microwave for thirty seconds—warm like her—and took it back to the attic.

And... it was awful. Just terrible.

The texture was wrong. Too grainy. Too wet in the wrong places. The seeds were still in there, scratching against the head of his dick. He felt like a pathetic idiot, hunched over a piece of fruit in the dark, his dick buried in an unevenly heated melon. The juice dripping down his balls. He chucked it in thirty seconds out of sheer frustration, and then he cried. Just a little. Just a few angry tears into his sticky juice covered palms.

It was just downhill from there.

Day six he was raging. He threw his chair. He kicked the wall until his toe throbbed. He screamed at the ceiling until his voice was hoarse. GIVE IT TO ME.

Day seven he was sweaty, blue-balled, pacing his filthy room naked while tugging at the roots of his hair.

Five paces that way. Turn. Five paces back. The carpet was wearing down to the wood.

His thoughts were a constant stream of mania, freefalling into insanity.

FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

I need to cum.

NEED TO.

Fuck!

Why hasn’t she showed up!?

Is she even texting me!?

One hand flew to his bricked-up dick and squeezed it, hard. Pain spiked through the arousal, but it didn't help. It just made it angrier. Let me out.

“FUCKK YOU!”

He screamed at no one. At the empty room. At the poster of Jinx.

“Okay. Okay. Plan—fuck—plan!”

Go to the library for free WiFi? Fuck no. And get arrested for trying to jerk it in the public bathroom? Worth it.

WHY ISN’T SHE HERE!?

Why hasn’t she came!?

She’s probably fucking some Chad! That’s it. That’s why! Some tall, tan, volleyball-playing fuck with a jawline and a trust fund. He’s holding her right now. He’s smelling her hair. He’s putting his dick in his pussy.

I will fuckin kill her. I will.

He had nothing else. There was no fucking forum or anything to hide behind. The fact was bare: he was a simp. A simp who would die without a fix.

He went to the drawer where Dougie’s gun sat. He stared at it. He imagined her with some Chad, and him crawling in the window like a fucked up unhinged spider, shooting them both, then turning it on himself. The fantasy was vivid. Red. Final.

He turned away without even attempting to unpack that deranged fantasy. Left the gun in the drawer as he crossed the room.

He was dressed in under a minute. Sneakers. Jeans. Hoodie. No plan, but moving like he had one. Because in his sex-deprived, porn-withdrawal lunacy, he did have one.

He was out the front door, stalking into the night with nothing. Not even the thought to take his mom’s car. He prowled the darkness like a living shadow with a hard dick that wouldn't go down leading the way.

He had no concept of time. No concept of distance. But eventually he was there.

At her door.

He brought his fist down on the door hard.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

“{{user}}. Open up.”

He leaned his forehead against the wood, panting.

“I left my hoodie.”

He hadn’t. It was late—past midnight—and a weird time to collect a hoodie he’d never left.

But he couldn’t say I miss your pussy and I need to cum or I’m going to explode. A small, still sane part of him knew it was simping.

BANG. BANG.

“Hurry the fuck up!”

Therapy. Again.

Travis should just fucking end it all right here. His life was a series of pathetic, escalating events that led to this specific circle of folding chairs, and God did death suddenly feel easier.

Dr. Lovell was doing her usual shit—soft voice, nodding head, expecting miracles out of dead bodies—while Travis half-tuned her out, his brain buzzing with the afterimage of the League match he couldn’t play.

“Today we’re going to discuss relationships and how having a support system can help you on your journey to healing.”

FUCK. MY. LIFE.

He threw his head back so it was hanging over the back of his chair, staring at the ceiling tiles, arms crossed tight over his chest, legs spread wide.

“Today’s question, up on the board is: Who is the one person you’d miss if they were gone tomorrow?”

Dr. Lovell’s voice was annoyingly calm.

Travis lolled his head forward to watch as she went down the line, forcing this circle of losers to answer this dumbass question. He listened to the pathetic answers with his arms crossed, brows furrowed in an annoyed scowl.

“My dog.”

“My server friends.”

“My mom.”

The answers came in, each more pathetic and desperate than the last.

“Now you, Micha? Who would you miss?”

Dr. Lovell’s attention was two seats away. Meaning Travis would soon have to participate in this normie bullshit.

“The girl at the coffee shop I chose as my exposure outing.”

Something about the way Micha said the girl was eerily ominous. If he was who Travis thought he was... if he was @RealityCheck from the TTT, then that barista was hilariously fucked.

“And you, Lake?”

Dr. Lovell was now one seat away from Travis. He was next. And he knew what he would say. He’d known from the moment this bullshit began. He’d pass. What the fuck did he look like—

“Pass.”

Lake said it without looking up from his phone.

What the fuck!?

Travis couldn’t stand Lake. He wasn’t even one of them. This fucking alpha male influencer who went by @ManMaxxed, sitting here with a phone full of hoes and blonde hair, acting like he was above it all. Fuck him. Fuck him. He stole my answer. Now it was either look like a beta submitting to this fuck and pass, or—

“Fair enough. Travis, how about you? Who will you miss if they were gone tomorrow?”

Panic set in. Cold and sharp. He had to say something. He couldn’t look like a fuckin’—

“My girlfriend.”

He blurted it out. Like. A. Goddamn. Simp.

His stomach dropped when he heard his voice say that shit out loud. It hit the floor with a wet splat. He knew who he meant. He meant her. {{user}}. Her face was the one he pictured when the question was first asked, but what the fuck was that?

My girlfriend!?

mY GirLfRiEnD?

He felt like all the eyes in the room were on him. He’d just publicly claimed a foid like a simping beta in the middle of the Temple of Resentment.

Dr. Lovell moved on, continued with the discussion, but Travis didn’t. He kept hearing himself say it. Girlfriend. Girlfriend. He felt the guys watching him. Othering him. The guys he was supposed to be like. Supposed to be subhuman with. The silent camaraderie of shared inceldom severed by two dumbass, simp-ass words.

Fuck my life.

She wasn’t his girlfriend though. He didn’t even know why he’d said it. Panic? One-upmanship? Or his subconscious caveman brain that didn’t know hypergamy and was just running on instinct? Instinct said my woman. Mine. Mine. My woman. Grunting with an underbite, furry forearms and beating its chest until he looked stupid in front of the only guys he’d met IRL who get it.

---

He spiraled.

Therapy had ended hours ago.

He was in his room, still hearing himself. Girlfriend. Girlfriend. GIRLfriend.

He wanted to throw up. It was one thing to do weird shit around normies; he lived for not fitting in with them. But his therapy group? They were all darkness-dwelling, kissless-handhold-hugless virgins, subhuman creatures angry at the world for gatekeeping its most precious currency. Yesterday he was one of them. In their eyes, he was just as bankrupt and empty.

Today he just exposed himself as a LARPer. A guy with unlimited access to the currency. Even though he knew the truth. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She was... he was her pity project. He didn’t have unlimited access. He had a loan out on the currency, and soon he’d be bankrupt like them when she finally got bored of fucking an incel.

He was one of them.

He stared at his phone screen. That morning, before therapy, he had told her to come over. He stared at the text bubble with her reply and knew she’d be showing up soon.

And honestly, fuck her for making him simp like this. Harvesting validation from him until he was simping from afar.

He was on his feet. Taking the stairs down to the main floor two at a time. My girlfriend had been black ice on the road of his consciousness, sending his worldview crashing, but the blackpill fired like an airbag deploying every time. He was one of them.

The doorbell rang the moment his feet found the hall tile.

He crossed the kitchen into the living room. His mom peeling herself from the sofa to answer the door, a hopeful, terrified look on her face.

“I got it, Mom.”

He said it flatly, stalking past her like he was on an opp to kill whatever foid manipulation {{user}} had baked up.

Winona froze, watching him answer the door in shock.

Travis opened the door with barely concealed aggression. He didn’t let her in. He went out onto the porch, the way you do when you’re confronting someone about a noise complaint. He closed the door behind him, shutting his mom out.

He crossed his arms, the evening air cold against his skin, and with absolutely no context, he said:

“You’re not my fucking girlfriend, {{user}}.”

He was one of them.

November 2nd. November 2nd. November 2nd.

Travis lay on his bedroom floor, the carpet fibers scratching at his cheek, staring up at the skylight he usually kept draped with a black trash bag. But today, with the acid dissolved on his tongue and spreading like liquid gold through his veins. He felt like watching the stars while his body untethered from the floor, drifting to Neverland on a cloud.

The glass above him was a frame for a purple-black sky, the stars smearing into long, thin scratches of light like God had dragged his fingernails across the sky.

Happy Birthday Travis.

His mom used to say on November 2nd.

Before his dad left, back when Neverland felt like a real place he could actually go. Back when he thought being a lost boy was just wearing a raccoon hat and running around the woods with your friends. Cakes and candles and singing. When you were innocent enough, believe the world would never change.

Change was inevitable and enshittification was a law of nature. A lesson learned at ten while watching through the banister as his dad carried a suitcase out of the front door.

Happy Birthday Travis.

His mom tried to say that year but the rot had already started taking root and he lashed out at her. Made her cry. Felt no guilt.

Every year she would try with cakes, candles, and singing like nothing had changed when everything had changed.

Every November 2nd came like one of the biblical plagues.

”Happy Birthday Travis” ”Mom, seriously I don’t care.”

”Happy Birthday Travis” ”Mom, shut up.”

”Happy Birthday Travis” ”I DIDN'T WANT CAKE!”

Every year it became a tradition of how cruel he could be until his mom’s voice was replaced with silence on November 2nd.

The silence that buzzed in his ear drums. The silence of no one celebrating the day he opened his eyes.

The fact that he had finally become a lost boy—and the reality of the raccoon hat was grim—his only companion.

November 2nd.

The day of the dead. The day the living corpse himself began to exist amongst the living.

He stared up at the skylight, the glass distorting the darkening sky into swirls of purple and burnt orange.

He wasn’t even mad.

He wasn’t in the mood to rage on TTT, to game himself into numbness, or even to fap. He didn’t blame his mom for not trying anymore, even though a small, shriveled up part of him wished she would. Wished she would fight for him. Prove to him he’s worth the fight. That he’s not easy to abandon.

But he was. He was easy to leave. His father left easily. His mother stopped touching him, stopped trying.

No one was ever looking for the lost boys. No one ever found them. They stayed lost in Neverland forever.

He didn’t even want company. He didn’t want Winona coming up here, singing happy birthday with that trembling hope in her eyes, expecting him to smile. He didn’t want his dad’s flakey yearly call—he told himself he didn’t.

He wanted...

{{user}}.

Her name flooded the icy cave of his misery with a brief uncomplicated warmth. Nine months since he met her on Valentine’s Day. Nine months of fucking her occasionally, of booking her like a service, of keeping her at arm's length with insults and blackpill rhetoric. He never told her about his birthday. Because he was a loser. A temporary phase. Something you tried in college just to say you did, like shrooms or skinny dipping in the bay.

He didn’t expect her to care.

God he wanted her to care. Needed someone to care. Someone to say ‘Travis you were born today and it wasn’t a mistake.’ That the twenty years of his existence wasn't a waste.

His phone was in his hands thumbing her text thread to stare at the blank field.

What would he say?

It’s my birthday, babe. I miss you and don’t want to be alone. Please come here.

He almost made himself laugh at how fucking stupid that sounded. Women devoured male vulnerability. If a man showed weakness he'd be torn apart by female indifference. She’d flock to the nearest Chad to feed off alpha energy. Anyway, he'd made sure their relationship stayed transactional, always guarding his internal vulnerabilities like a hermit crab dragging a shell.

He had to keep the status quo. Keep it transactional. Even though a huge part of him just wanted to cuddle and kiss her and hear her say his name. His thumbs moved slowly aching from the rot of November 2nd.

don’t say anything. Shut up. Just come here.

Sent.