Chapter 2: The Confession Channel
The validation from the server hummed through Sloane’s veins for a solid day, a warm, secret buzz that made her curated coffee-shop photoshoots feel like acting in a bad play. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the buzz cut out. Silence. A flat, gray quiet that settled in her chest.
She stared at her reflection in the gym’s infinity mirror, mid-burpee. Her form was flawless, her Lululemon set pristine. Her phone, face-up on the floor, showed only a notification from a brand deal. Nothing from the server. Nothing new about him.
It was ridiculous. She’d spent years building an empire of approval, and now her entire emotional state hinged on strangers typing behind cartoon avatars.
“You okay, Sloane?” Her trainer, Mateo, tilted his head. “You’ve been staring at the wall for like, forty seconds.”
“Fine,” she chirped, snapping back into motion. “Just zoning out. Protein shake thoughts.”
She finished the circuit on autopilot, her muscles performing while her mind replayed the same fragment. The specific, burning stretch of her jaw. The choked sounds she’d made that weren’t hers. The way he’d wiped her chin with his thumb, almost gentle, before pushing back in.
Her shower was scalding. She scrubbed her skin until it was pink, but she couldn’t wash away the memory of his smell—like clean sweat and expensive soap and something else, something dark and inherently him.
Wrapped in a towel, she dove back into the server. It was active, but the conversation had shifted.
Kira: (11:23 AM): just hit a new deadlift PR. 285. Felt nothing.
ChloeBeta: (11:24 AM): Nothing? Kira, that’s insane!
Kira: (11:25 AM): yeah. nothing. the bar went up. my heart rate didn’t move. it’s just weight.
Sloane24: (11:26 AM): It’s the drop. After.
Kira: (11:27 AM): …Yeah.
Kira: (11:27 AM): The drop is a cliff.
Sloane exhaled, a shaky release of air. Kira got it. The famed, unshakeable Kira. She typed, her fingers moving before her brain could censor them.
Sloane24: (11:29 AM): I tried to film a GRWM this morning. For a mascara. I had to do it seven times. I kept forgetting what I was saying. My face in the frame just looked… empty. Had to use the first take and just hope the editing saves it.
Ava: (11:30 AM): omg yes. I called my boyfriend “Brad” last night. It just slipped out. He was like, “who’s brad?” and i said it was my new peloton instructor.
A flurry of laughing-crying emojis flooded the chat. Sloane managed a real, thin smile. It wasn’t funny. It was a disaster. But sharing the disaster made it feel lighter, like they were all holding the same piece of wreckage.
A new username appeared, bold and unread. Mia_Unravels.
Mia_Unravels: (11:35 AM): I broke up with my boyfriend. This morning.
The chat froze for a beat. Three typing dots appeared, then disappeared, from several users.
Mia_Unravels: (11:36 AM): I couldn’t look at him. He made me eggs. They were perfect. Sunny-side up. And I just started crying. He thought it was because the eggs were good. I told him it was over. He’s still in the apartment, packing. I’m in the bathroom.
Sloane’s chest tightened. This was different from sharing spicy details. This was the fallout.
Kira: (11:37 AM): Shit.
ChloeBeta: (11:37 AM): Oh Mia. I’m so sorry.
Sloane24: (11:38 AM): Are you okay? Like, right now, physically?
She didn’t know why she asked that. It felt like the only real question.
Mia_Unravels: (11:39 AM): My hands are cold. I can hear him sniffling in the other room. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.
A direct message pinged on Sloane’s screen. It was from Kira.
Kira (DM): This is the part they don’t talk about. The collateral damage.
Sloane24 (DM): Did you… have any? Damage?
Kira (DM): My damage was internal. My routine. My focus. It’s all fucking gauzy. I look at the weights and think about his hands. Not very badass.
Sloane looked back to the main channel. The women were surrounding Mia, a digital embrace. Offering to Venmo her for wine, sharing breakup playlists, telling her she was brave. It was raw, and real, and it stank of guilt and liberation all at once.
Mia_Unravels: (11:52 AM): Why does it feel like I did it for a ghost? He doesn’t even have my number. I was a hotel room to him. One night.
The sentence hung there, brutal and true. Sloane felt it like a slap. She’d been a weekend. Slightly longer. Did that make her more significant, or just a longer playlist?
Her phone vibrated with a calendar alert: “Strategy Call – Sundara Wellness – 12:30 PM.”
The real world, sharp and demanding, snapped back into place. She had a call with a sustainable yoga-wear brand she’d been courting for months. This was her actual life. This was the grind.
She logged out of Discord, the murmur of shared despair cutting off abruptly.
The call was a disaster.
“Sloane, we’re just not feeling the authentic connection to our core values of presence and mindful consumption,” the brand manager said, her voice tinny through the speaker.
Sloane’s own voice, usually so fluid and persuasive, sounded hollow. She kept nodding, saying “absolutely” and “I resonate with that deeply,” but her mind was a feedback loop. Mindful consumption. I consumed him. He consumed me. Presence. I was only ever present with him.
After fifteen minutes, they politely ended the call, promising to keep in touch. She knew what that meant.
She sat in her perfectly styled office, the golden hour light painting her expensive plants in tragic beauty. The silence was a physical weight. She opened her laptop, not the Discord app, but her photo archive. She scrolled back to the weekend after Brad. There was a selfie she’d taken in this same chair. Her eyes were slightly puffy, her smile a fraction too wide. But there was a glow under her skin, a softness in her gaze that no filter could produce. She looked alive.
The next photo, from yesterday, was technically perfect. Crisp. Dead.
A cold understanding dripped into her.
The server wasn’t just about reliving a thrill. It was an ICU for a feeling. They were all trying to resuscitate the only version of themselves that had ever felt truly, horrifically, electrically real. Everything else was the ghost.
Her fingers found the keys, pulling up a blank post box on her public Instagram. Half a million followers waited for light, for inspiration, for a spark of her perfect life.
She typed a caption, then deleted it. Typed again. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a traitorous drum.
She finally posted a simple, beautiful shot of her window, the light cutting across the floor. The caption was a single line.
“Remembering what it feels like to be real.”
Within seconds, the likes began to pour in. The hearts, the fire emojis, the comments saying “THIS!” and “Mood.” They saw a poetic reflection on self-care. They saw a curated moment of depth.
They saw nothing.
She closed the app, the notification count still climbing. In the quiet of her room, she opened the Discord server again. She didn’t type. She just watched the names scroll, the shared pain, the explicit memories, the desperate, humble admissions of ruin.
This was the only place she was honest. This was the only place she existed.
She curled up on her bed, the lavender scent of her candles now cloying and false. Outside, the city glittered, a promise of a life she was supposed to be living. Inside, the blue glow of the server held her, a silent vigil for a self that was only real in the memory of a stranger’s hands.
Inside, the blue glow of the server held her, a silent vigil for a self that was only real in the memory of a stranger’s hands. The emptiness after the brand call was a hollow, angry thing. It demanded to be filled.
She scrolled through her camera roll again, past the yoga shots and sponsored smoothie bowls. Her finger stopped on a picture from a private fitting two months ago. It was a simple black thong, her gymnast’s back taut, the curve of her ass catching the studio light. She’d never posted it. It was too raw, too obviously for a certain kind of look.
“Fuck it,” she whispered to the empty room.
The logic was broken but clear. The poetic caption got brand managers. This would get something else. It would get a feeling. It would prove she still existed in that other, more real world.
She opened Instagram Stories, selected the photo, and used a simple, blurring filter at the edges. No caption. No tag. Just the image, a stark declaration in the middle of her perfectly lit feed. She took a sharp breath and hit send.
Her phone erupted. Not with Discord pings, but with the frantic, familiar chime of Instagram notifications. DMs from guy friends she hadn’t spoken to in years popped up. “Holy shit Sloane.” “Damn.” A fire emoji from her ex. Her chest tightened with a sick, cheap thrill.
Then, a new message appeared at the top of the list.
The username was just an underscore. Her breath stopped.
_: I need ass tonight.
The words were bare. A command, not a request. The syntax was him. She felt the truth of it in her stomach, a cold drop. He hadn’t seen a person in her post. He’d seen an object, a resource, and he was placing an order.
Her thumbs hovered over the screen. She typed “I can’t,” then deleted it. She typed “I’m busy,” and deleted that too. They were lies. The server’s whispers were in her head now, a chorus. He only asks once. He doesn’t beg.
A wave of revulsion washed through her, hot and sudden. She didn’t want to go. The thought of his hands, his possession, now felt like being swallowed whole. She wanted to throw the phone.
But her body moved independently. She stood, walked to the full-length mirror, and turned her back to it. She looked over her shoulder, her face pale in the dim light. She raised the phone, her hand steady. The click of the shutter was absurdly loud.
She didn’t look at the photo. She just opened the DM with the underscore, attached the file, and hit send. It was just her skin, the fabric, the shape. Nothing else. No face. No context.
The read receipt appeared instantly.
Then three dots. They pulsed. Her heart beat against her ribs, a frantic bird.
His response came.
_: 10 pm. The usual place. Don’t wear that. Wear nothing.
The instructions were absolute. The conversation was over. Sloane let the phone fall onto the bedcovers as if it had burned her. A sound escaped her throat, a choked mix of a sob and a laugh. Outside, the world continued, oblivious. Inside, she had just confirmed it. She was a resource. And she had willingly, miserably, replenished the supply.
The phone buzzed on the comforter, skidding a half-inch toward the edge. She stared at it. The glow from the screen was the only light in the room now, painting the walls a sickly blue.
Her thumbs were dry against the glass. She swiped open to his message, the two lines of text feeling like a physical space she was about to enter. A room with no oxygen. Her mind fragmented. One part screamed this was deranged. Another part, the part that lived in the server’s blue haze, was already calculating what to wear under her coat, what to do with her hair.
She typed a single question mark.
The three dots appeared again, instantaneous. He was waiting. Watching.
_: The last one was for me. Send one for the group.
Her stomach turned to liquid. He knew. He understood the ecosystem perfectly—her need for a witness, for an audience to her own consumption. This wasn’t just a command. It was a test of her compliance, her understanding of the new rules. The brand deal was dust. This was the only collaboration that mattered now.
She walked back to the mirror, movements precise and mechanical. She placed the phone on her dresser, set a three-second timer. She didn’t pose. She just turned, looked over her shoulder at the lens, her expression wiped clean. The flash went off.
She sent it. No filter.
Thirty seconds passed. The server icon on her laptop glowed with a furious red notification count. She didn’t look. She kept her eyes on his DM window, a prisoner awaiting sentence.
His response came.
_: Gonna cum all over that tonight. Be ready to be here for 15 hours. I’ll cuddle you after.
The words liquefied her knees. She sat hard on the edge of the bed, the breath leaving her in a rush. Fifteen hours. It was a horizon, an abyss. A promise of obliteration so complete it looped back into a perverse safety. The cuddle after was the hook, the tender barb that made the brutal arithmetic seem like intimacy. It was the part she’d tearfully typed about in her initiation message. He remembered. He was using it.
From her laptop, a discord ping echoed, sharp in the quiet.
Kira (DM): He’s messaging you.
Sloane looked from the phone to the laptop screen, split between two realities.
Sloane24 (DM): How do you know?
Kira (DM): Because you just went radio silent in main chat. And because I know the look. You’re in it.
Sloane24 (DM): He said 15 hours.
There was a long pause on Kira’s end. Sloane watched the typing indicator start and stop.
Kira (DM): Yeah. That’s the deep end. The water gets weird out there. You come back different. If you come back.
Sloane’s heart hammered, a frantic, trapped rhythm. She switched over to the main server channel. It was moving at a dizzying speed.
ChloeBeta: OMFG SLOANE
Ava: ! THE AUDACITY I AM DECEASED
Mia_Unravels: …that’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen.
They’d seen it. The second photo. He’d posted it. A jolt of pure, white-hot shame electrocuted her, followed immediately by a dizzying rush of validation so potent it blurred her vision. This was it. The total exchange. Her dignity for their recognition. Her body for a place in the canon.
She typed, her fingers finding a strange, calm confidence.
Sloane24: It’s not audacity. It’s a receipt.
She logged out, closed the laptop lid. The room went truly dark. She had four hours until ten. The old Sloane would have spent them meticulously preparing—exfoliating, moisturizing, picking a perfume. This Sloane just sat in the dark, feeling the truth settle into her bones.
She was going to be used for fifteen hours. She was going to be cuddled after. It was the most real appointment she’d ever had.
At nine-thirty, she stood. She didn’t shower. She liked the smell of her own day, her own slow anxiety, on her skin. She pulled on loose, dark sweatpants and a hoodie, nothing underneath. The fabric was soft and anonymous. She shoved her feet into sneakers.
Her reflection in the dark window was a ghost. A smudge. Perfect.
She took a car to the address, a modern, silent building downtown. The lobby was cold marble. She gave no name at the desk. The concierge simply nodded, pressed a button for the elevator, and handed her a keycard. Her presence was expected, a logged entry.
The ride up was smooth and soundless. The doors opened directly into a penthouse foyer. The air was cool, smelling of lemongrass and clean linen. And underneath it, him.
He was standing at the wall of windows, his back to her, a silhouette against the city’s grid. He didn’t turn.
“Lock the door,” he said, his voice a low vibration in the open space.
The click of the deadbolt was deafening. She leaned against the door, the metal cool through her hoodie.
He finally turned. His eyes didn’t go to her face. They traveled the length of her body, a slow, appraising scan that felt more invasive than touch. He took a sip from a glass of water on the table.
“The sweatpants are a smart choice,” he said, almost conversational. “Easy access. You’re learning.”
He put the glass down and walked toward her. He didn’t touch her. He stopped a foot away, the heat from his body radiating against hers. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable.
“Show me,” he said. “The thing I own for the next fifteen hours.”
Her hands didn’t shake. They felt detached, someone else’s hands as they went to the tie of her sweatpants. She pushed them down just enough, turning in the narrow space between him and the door, presenting the curve he’d demanded photos of. The air in the room felt cold on her skin.
He was silent for a long moment. Then she felt his thumb, calloused and warm, trace a line from the base of her spine down. A simple, possessive mark.
“Good,” he murmured, his breath stirring the hair at her nape. The word wasn’t praise. It was confirmation, like checking an item off a list. “Now, keep them there. On your knees. Face the wall. Don’t turn around until I tell you.”
He moved away. She heard the soft sound of his footsteps on the rug, the clink of his glass again. She sank to the floor, the plush pile of the carpet pressing into her shins. She faced the smooth, painted wall, her sweatpants pooled around her thighs, the city’s lights a distant, blurry painting far below.
Time stretched. Became elastic. She heard him moving behind her, the rustle of fabric, the tap of a keyboard. He was living his life. She was a piece of furniture, already in use, already waiting. This was the first minute of the fifteen hours.
This was the real price of the cuddle. And in the silent, humble darkness of her posture, she started to pay it.