Feral Youth

That’s basically it. Seventeen minutes of a teenage girl having mind-blowing orgasms, or faking them, depending on how you want to look at it. Shouldn’t be anything unusual about that; should be an everyday occurrence if there’s a kind and loving god out there, unless he’s the kind of god that frowns on orgasms outside of marriage. And I want no part of that religion, thank you very much. So here’s the really strange thing, why everyone’s talking about it: it isn’t clear why she’s coming. She isn’t moving her hands, which stay out of her shorts the whole time, and she’s alone. That’s why people have been talking about “the invisible hand.” But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than that.

Yes, I do know a lot about that video. I’ve studied it obsessively. Unhealthily. But so has everyone else, right? What I’m saying is there’s a reason for everything if you look for it, and before I go on with this story, there are three things you need to know.

Number one: the girl’s name is Allison Kim. Allie. It wasn’t listed on the video, but there’ve been a ton of articles, and it wasn’t long before she was outed in the video’s comments.

But don’t read the comments. Never read the comments.

I knew her name before everyone else did because that’s number two: I recorded the video.

I don’t blame you for not believing me, but why would I lie about something you can confirm easily when we get back to civilization? My username is dayofthetentacle. My channel has over two million subscribers since everything happened. But it may have fallen some since I haven’t been able to update it while under this rock.

Oh yeah, number three: Allie’s my sister.

If that makes you think I’m a bad person, that’s fine. Everything’s fine. I’ve seen that look before, from people I care about a lot more than you lot. I’m not interested in winning friends and influencing people. I’m just going to tell you my story, Allie’s story, because I have to. I have to. Because no one else will listen.

I promise you, everything I’m saying is the absolute truth, and it’s not what you think. But hold on, there’s one more thing. I wasn’t completely honest before when I described Allie as a “pretty average teenage girl.” She is—was—astonishing. Top of her class, world-class swimmer, future doctor, overachiever. There was nothing average about her. That was all before the video, naturally, but I don’t deserve all the blame for what happened to her.

I’m still trying to understand what happened to her. Maybe you can help me figure it out. But first, let me ask you something: Do you believe in ghosts and aliens and things that go bump in the night?

*

So how did my sister, a popular A student and a model Christian daughter, end up as a viral video? End up the sexual fantasy of millions of strangers, the soundtrack for thousands of lonely, horny losers getting off every day? Worse: How did she end up mocked, bullied, bitter, and ultimately missing?

As with most tragedies, as for most of us here right now on this survival trip, it was all an accident. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

See, I didn’t build my YouTube following with spy cameras and voyeurism and good intentions. I made short films, videos that no one watched, that ironically were planned to have the best chance at being the next viral sensation. But that’s not how these things work. The next Internet meme is the video that no one saw coming.

Sorry, didn’t mean that pun. Really.

It’s the video that should never have existed, that some people later wished hadn’t been recorded. It’s the video that was never meant to be seen by anyone, let alone two-and-a-half billion someones. Certainly not by your parents. Especially not your sister, the unsuspecting subject of said video.

It began in the middle of the night. I was up late editing a short film starring my friends Ryan and Tony. Ryan’s a girl, and Tony’s a guy. Kind of confusing, I know, but gender can be complicated, and speaking of complicated: I’ve slept with both of them. No, not at the same time. Technically, it was just blow jobs with Tony, once when we were drunk. And while you might call Ryan and me “fuck buddies,” no strings attached, the truth is . . . There are a lot of strings. Tangled, messy strings. I’m in love with that girl.

The film is a little comedy piece about the last slice of cake in the cafeteria. In the story it turns out it’s all happening after the apocalypse, and the cake is really a brick, and Ryan’s character is dead, and Tony’s character has been trying to survive in the high school eating the remains of his friends and hallucinating the whole thing. Dark comedy, okay? It needs work.

It was taking longer to edit than usual because I was distracted watching Ryan and Tony interact, especially during outtakes when they thought the camera was off—when I told them the camera was off. I was trying to decide if there was something going on between the two of them because they had been acting chummier than before, and awkward around me.

The three of us have starred in all my videos, sometimes with Allie. That was kind of my thing, my signature, the way Tim Burton always works with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and Joss Whedon is always going to find something for Amy Acker, and Christopher Guest films are all basically the same movie with the same people. It makes it a lot easier to work with your best friends. Less drama. Or so I thought.

I’m editing and watching Ryan and Tony, and for some reason I start getting really turned on and wondering if they’re fucking now and if there’s a chance at a threesome and if they’d let me film it. Soon I’m jerking off, thinking about Ryan’s perfect little breasts and Tony’s warm mouth on my dick, and Allie—

Whoa. Allie? And I pause the video and realize that I’m thinking about sex because I hear moaning. Not on the recording; it’s coming from the other side of my bedroom wall.

Did I finish? What do you think?

Another thing you need to know about my sister: she’s fifteen. She was thirteen then. And I’m not saying that’s too young to be fooling around and having a good time. I’m the last person to suggest that, believe me. But she’s my little sister, and I know her better than I know myself. Specifically, I know three important facts:

She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. She barely has any friends, to be honest.

She’s a virgin. She doesn’t have time to think about that kind of stuff. Sex stuff. Relationships. People.

She doesn’t masturbate.

Forget what I said before about how everyone masturbates. There are exceptions to every rule, at least there are when it’s a thirteen-year-old girl and she really really really believes in God the way that I believe in Sasquatch, and our parents would be murderous if they could hear the way she’s carrying on. Fortunately, they’re on the other end of the hall—Dad’s a loud snorer and Mom’s a heavy sleeper. I think that’s the only reason they’re still together because it’s the only way they perfectly complement each other.

But my sister. My sister! She’s doing the heavy panting thing and the whimpering and the grunting and holy shit what the fuck, it’s my sister. I think maybe she’s watching porn—that would be a first too, and almost as shocking—but no, I’m pretty sure it’s all her.

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