Page 36 of Girl, Entangled

‘You’re not exactly Elvis, no, but people recognize you. I told you this day would come and you didn’t believe me.’

Ella asked, ‘Has it never happened to you?’

‘I’ve never been recognized by the general public, but I’ve always looked like a witch.’

‘You have your own Wikipedia page. I don’t. And you were on that stupid TV show too.’

Ripley tapped her cheekbone. ‘Nobody remembers the witch. Anyway, I’ve been going through some things. Have you seen this?’

‘What?’

Ripley showed some of her printouts. ‘These are the comments from Brennan’s livestream. They weren’t embedded into the video itself and his channel was blocked pretty quickly. The tech guys have isolated them, though.’

Ella counted the pages. Twelve printouts, all with about 50 comments on each page. Ella quickly scanned them all, then focused on the last batch:

JimmyTwoFingers: Curtis going to investigate, RIP Curtis.

Redshoes: He heard the killer.

MaryB_87: Where did you go??

tommyg: Rock Creek Park and the dead man.

RonaldR: MPD is not underfunded, they’re mismanaged.

Redshoes: Killer is probably watching this stream!

JimmyTwoFingers: Curt, you look terrified.

PigCake: The headphones are off. Business is about to pick up.

The chat had been roughly one comment every ten or fifteen seconds for the past hour of the show, but then the timestamps started to run in single seconds.

JimmyTwoFingers: wtf? who is that?

Redshoes: Is this a bit? This is kinda weird bro.

Silver_Knight: Is this real? What am I looking at?

MaryB_87: This is a prank, 100%.

Deborah_K: WTF

JimmyTwoFingers: is that an ax??

JimmyTwoFingers: WHAT!!

PigCake: calling 911 this is messed up.

Redshoes: PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS FAKE.

RonaldR: Someone get to his house, seriously.

Silver_Knight: I’m gonna be sick.

Ella stopped there. She didn’t need the rest, and the rest was what she’d expected, four hundred people arriving at the same understanding at slightly different speeds and then losing the ability to type anything but the same five words in capitals over and over.

‘God damn. His regulars had to watch him get decapitated.’