Viral

Eight

We stop looking for monsters under our beds when we realized that they were inside of us

-Charles Darwin

Darkness.

I blinked heavily looking around my room trying to make out images in the darkness. I sat up slowly trying to fight the fit of dizziness I felt. When my eyes fully adjusted I noticed Finn with his arms crossed sleeping on the floor next to my bedroom door. His hair was spilling down his left shoulder. Instinctively I reached up and touched my hair feeling his scrunchie securing my hair into a bun.

It was all real.

My heart started to race, and I felt like I could hear water moving in my ears. My hands swatted through my bedsheets looking for my phone. When my fingers felt the cold surface I questioned if I was making the right decision in picking it up.

I flipped my phone over, and the screen lit up. There were 67 missed calls, surprisingly, a lot of them were from Marcus but mostly from numbers I didn't know. There were also 189 text messages and they were still coming in.

I took a few deep breaths trying to slow my heart rate, at this point my heart was going to explode from my chest if I didn't calm down. But I had to look. This is rock bottom things can only go up from here.

Right?

I scrolled through the texts to see if there were any from anyone I knew. The most recent one was from August. My finger hovered over his name. My pulse was jumping in my neck by the time I worked up the courage to finally click on the thread. I read the messages backwards.

Beckett?

Are you ok?

...i deleted it.

He didn't really say anything of significance or reassurance. Oddly I was kind of disappointed, after his speech at Finn's house I would almost expect him to come in guns blazing vowing to avenge my virtue. Instead I got a plain message just checking to see if I hadn't offed myself in embarrassment.

I took a deep breath then glanced at Finn as he stirred on the floor. His neck looked uncomfortable. I backed out of August's text and began scrolling through the rest of the messages from unknown numbers.

I gasped at some of the vulgar messages and comments about my body. Some were compliments while others were faceless creeps describing what they wanted to do to me. The taste of bile was creeping its way up my throat. I couldn't shake the dirty feeling creeping up around me as certain unwanted body parts were popping up as picture messages.

There were a ton messages calling me a variety of sluts. The words were dancing across the screen as water began to gather on my bottom lids. I bit down on my bottom lip and clasped my hand over my mouth in attempt to hold my feelings inside of me, but once the first tear broke through a river of regret found its way down my face.

"Ryland?" I cursed myself for letting my emotions take over me. I was crying so loud I woke Finn. "Shit." He cursed under his breath seeing my phone in my hand and began climbing into my bed next to me.

I couldn't find words to give him. In fact, all I could do was breath out I was struggling to suck air back into my lungs. My phone vibrated in my hand but before Finn could snatch it from me I noticed it was another picture message. I caught a glimpse of grey hair in the photo.

Had this video circulated beyond my high school? Grown men were seeing this? Where were people getting my number?

Taking a clump of Finn's shirt into my hand I felt like I was fighting to get air in my lungs. "Ryland you've got to calm down. You're going to pass out again." Finn wrapped his arms around me and began tracing circles at the nape of my neck. I focused my attention on his fingernails tickling my skin and a tiny bit of air was able to enter my lungs. "Just breathe."