Chapter 3 - The Digital Evidence
The drive back to our small apartment was quiet, save for the hum of the heater and Lily’s soft, exhausted sniffles.
When we walked through the door, I didn't turn on the lights right away. I set Lily’s backpack on the kitchen table, unwrapped my heavy wool coat from her shoulders, and knelt in front of her. Her little face was pale, her eyes ringed with pink, but the terror that had gripped her at my parents’ house had begun to fade into the safe, familiar warmth of our home.
“Do you want some warm milk with honey, sweetie?” I asked, brushing a stray curl from her forehead.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight, Mommy?” she asked softly.
“Every single minute of it,” I promised, kissing her forehead.
After getting Lily changed into her softest flannel pajamas and tucking her safely beneath the heavy quilt in my room, I sat at the edge of the mattress until her breathing grew deep and steady. Only then did I tiptoe back out into the living room.
My phone, resting on the kitchen counter, was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Missed calls. Voicemails. Text notifications vibrating the wooden surface in a relentless, angry rhythm.
I picked it up. My thumb swiped across the screen, revealing an avalanche of messages from numbers I didn't recognize, as well as a flood from Brittany and my mother.
“Claire, where are you?! Answer your phone!” (Mother) “Take that video down right now! It was a joke! You’re ruining our lives!” (Brittany) “Call me immediately. This is out of hand.” (Father)
I frowned. What video?
I opened my messaging app, but before I could tap on my family's chat thread, a notification popped up from a local neighborhood group chat: “Isn’t this Frank Morales’s daughter? Look at what’s trending on TikTok right now.”
My heart skipped a beat.
With trembling fingers, I opened the video app. My notification tab was overflowing with millions of views. At the top of the feed was a screen recording uploaded from an anonymous account, but the watermark clearly bore Mason’s gamer tag: Xx_ProGamer_xX.
I tapped the play button.
The screen flickered to life, showing the brightly lit hallway of my parents’ house. There was Lily, backed against the dark wooden paneling of the pantry door. My sister Brittany was looming over her, her face twisted in an ugly, sneering mask of rage.
“You think you can break my mother’s things and get away with it, you little brat?” Brittany’s voice echoed sharply from my phone speaker. “Get in the dark and stay there until you learn how to respect your elders!”
The video showed Brittany shoving seven-year-old Lily into the pitch-black pantry and slamming the heavy door shut, turning the deadbolt with a sharp, echoing click.
In the background, my mother could be heard laughing, saying, “That’ll teach her. Claire spoils her rotten; someone has to break her in.”
The comments beneath the video were moving so fast they blurred into a wall of neon text. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE MONSTERS?!” “Report them to CPS immediately!” “I know this house! That’s in Northfield! Frank Morales is a senior partner at the regional bank!” “Child abuse! Look at the mother laughing! Someone call the police!”
I stared at the screen, my hands shaking so violently I nearly dropped the phone.
They hadn't just tormented my daughter behind closed doors; Mason had accidentally left his livestream recording app running while he uploaded highlights to his channel, capturing the entire horrific sequence and broadcasting it to thousands of live viewers before automatically archiving it to the cloud.
My mother and Brittany hadn't tried to delete it because they felt guilty. They tried to delete it because the entire internet was about to eviscerate them.
Before I could even process the shock, my front door shook under a heavy, frantic pounding.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Claire! Open the door! I know you’re in there!”
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It was Brittany’s voice—shrill, desperate, and unhinged.
I walked slowly across the living room, my phone clutched in my hand like a shield, and unlocked the deadbolt.
