Partyboy Finally Does Something Useful for Once in His Life

A Christmas ghost story

Created with Bing’s AI image generator

Do you know what it’s like to get everything you want? Way better than you could ever imagine. You were probably expecting me to say something corny like “It’s hollow because it’s unearned,” or “The novelty wears off,” or that old favorite, “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” But none of those are true: it isn’t, it doesn’t, and it is.

Unless, of course, something happens to remind you that, in getting what you want, you’ve added nothing positive to the world. You provide no value, building nothing except your bank account. You suck like a parasite, slurping down other people’s hard-earned dollars, providing them with what, exactly? And then one day the true powers of this world reveal themselves and force you to pick a path, to choose what you truly believe. For me, this is the true lesson of Christmas.

After all, what did the Ass Pepper Challenge add to the plus column of the heavenly ledger? Do you remember the Ass Pepper Challenge? Where participants were encouraged to stick a Carolina Reaper right up their dumper and see how long they could hold on before the fiery touch of one-point-six million Scovilles became too much to clench? No, of course you don’t. Not you. I’ll bet you’re wondering, Why would anybody do such a thing? I’ll tell you: fun and profit. Mine. Those I exhorted to take the challenge hoped that, by putting their humiliation on the Internet, they’d get clicks. And then after that, profit. It’s how the world works, right? That’s how it worked for me.

Did I do it myself? No way. I’m the influencer, or was, at least. Never get high on your own supply, right? Pride before the fall, et cetera. But I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak. Business was in my blood, you know? I was also a spoiled brat who never wanted to get a real job. It was a real circle I spent a lot of time trying to square. I was just lucky to be born when I was. I mean, people are able to earn a living on the Internet playing video games. That stuck in my brain from the moment my parents put a phone in my hands when I was three. I was a precocious child.

Years later, when I was eleven, I made my first YouTube channel after lying about my age and using my mom’s personal information, adopting the moniker Partyboy2213. That there were two-thousand, two-hundred and twelve Partyboys before me was mildly annoying at the time and cosmically horrifying now. At first, it was just me streaming games, offering commentary and tips. I was good at the games, and really good at interacting with the chat. Translated, that means hurling insults, which from me came in two languages. Being half-Mexican has its perks. On a lark, I monetized my page.

Things snowballed, as they do for those who already have much. To everyone who has more will be given means the rich get richer, right? Many people read the Bible that way, I’ve learned. 

Commentary turned to reviews, reviews turned to getting sponsorships, and sponsorships started to plateau, which meant I needed more attention. You can never offer a quality, long-lasting product or service at a decent price; that’s not how it works. You’ve got to keep expanding, keep doing more, keep milking that sucker dry. Our system is not built on knowing when enough is enough. Gluttony is a sin turned virtue. Welcome to the United States.

I made the move to Twitch, then to Kick, then to other platforms created to grow as I did, beyond gaming, into social activism and pranks. But mostly pranks. And I got paid to do it. Who says there are no more miracles?

The comfortable-upper-middle-class-to-social-media-celebrity pipeline is real. Everything was handed to me on a silver platter, and I kept asking for more. Oh, and I’m really, really handsome. Or was. But I’ll get to that.

Money. It can indeed buy happiness. For a time, at least. It also buys some wicked sick animatronics. Imagine that: by the time I was twenty-three I’d made enough to have my own private Hollywood-level special effects studio: Partyboy Productions. All from filming myself playing video games. Truly, this is the land of opportunity. And you wonder why people like my grandfather risk their lives to cross that border.

Some of my best bits involved filming people’s reactions to puppets, Candid Camera for emotionally stunted Zoomers. My goal wasn’t to have a shared laugh, it was to laugh at my victims’ expense. My creative director, Richard “Lips” Berger, a good gamer in his own right, had a knack for taking my semi-inchoate ideas and turning them into physical things. He’d reify them. Like that word? I learned it during my playthrough of Bloodsouls III. And they tell me video games have no redeeming social value.

Lips caught my attention for his work on a few indie horror scripts he put together with his buddies from Emerson. It was his second film, Ground Zero Ghost, that really caught my eye. The movie itself wasn’t all that impressive—bunch of teens in post-apocalyptic San Fran visit the site of a major nuclear battle, get attacked by the ghosts of the generals who ordered the strike, mayhem ensues, the usual. It was the puppets that stuck out, the deformed Chinese army goons who’d survived the intervening years like they were made of Twinkies. They were practical effects, and man, they looked real.

When that snowball started to get bigger, I called Lips up after yet another stoned viewing. He was happy to hear from the Partyboy, the one, the only, the two-thousand, two-hundred, and thirteenth. Or maybe I used my real name. I can’t remember. I was higher than Uranus at the time. Lips was a little older than me, still is in fact, but knew that linking up with some YouTube douche was a safer bet than trying to make it in L.A. So he hopped on a plane and moved back East where he belonged.

Heading out to Cali like a lot of guys in my shoes do when they hit the big time was out of the question. I’m an east-coaster for life. I’d rather live in Portsmouth than the Pacific Palisades. I’ve snowboarded the Rockies but give me Ragged Mountain or Tuckerman’s any day.

Another good thing about staying local are all the great opportunities for pranks. Little out-of-the-way places no one would suspect. We had fun going to this lake in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts called, I kid you not, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. One summer we set up a little animatronic cigar store Indian outside of a convenience store at this mini-mall near the lake (with store owner’s consent; I hope he sold a few extra cigarettes because of me). When people would walk past, Lips made the little guy jump up and wave his arms while I screamed out the name of the lake in my fake-chieftain voice. It really freaked out the locals; one guy actually pissed himself. Good times.

But we didn’t always get the buy-in of the locals. Remember how I said I was a social activist? Well, being on the side of the angels can severely circumscribe your ability to do jokes. Certain things are prohibido, even if they’re hilarious, if you want the rest of the Internet to see you as a Good Person. Case in point: In Providence, we got trouble for having these fake fetuses about the size of small dogs sitting outside of the Planned Parenthood on Broad Street, making them cry out when women walked in the building, stuff like “Mommy, why?” and “Why don’t you love me?”

This was apparently too edgy for most; though we got 55 million live views, the label of “alt-right extremist” was thrown out way, and almost stuck. This is not only a career-killer, but potentially an actual one given the volume of death threats we got. The law of averages said at least one of them would connect. Freedom of speech, right? As long as you agree with everyone else.

It wasn’t true, but nobody cared. Luckily, Lips is a friggin’ genius. We got back in the media’s good graces with a two-pronged assault. First, we aggressively told everyone who would listen that our love of animatronics came from Lupe’s deep interest in Anton LaVey, Cecil Nixon, and their fixation with humanoids. LaVey believed that, one day, every man, woman, and presumably child would have their own sex robot to fill those needs and could therefore devote their energy to more productive things. Maybe the old boy was on to something.

Lips was the one really into LaVeyan Satanism; I was just along for the ride. When you have a certified genius as a partner, you do what it takes to keep them with you. But I guess a bit of that interest rubbed off on me. Must have. I was definitely into the sex aspect of Satanism. The more Lips talked about his occult interests, the more I realized that guys like Crowley and whoever probably just really, really wanted to get laid.

It made sense, though, because there was also this heavy element of humiliation. It wasn’t just enough to have orgies, which were a big part of the magic rituals—what a coincidence, right? You also had to degrade the chicks—sorry, women involved. Make them naked and standing around while everyone else was clothed, make them do really nasty things, things that hurt . . . I liked that, and no I’m not proud of it. I have a bit of a misogynistic streak. I’m working on it.

The weird thing is, looking like I do, or like I used to, there’s no reason I had to solicit tit pics from my underage fans, or set up elaborate hidden camera hoaxes to get girls to take their clothes off for me, but you have to understand none of it was for me. It was for the audience. Everything I did was for the audience. Even when I had sex with one because I thought her boyfriend was a loser. Laughed about it too on a stream. What was he going to do? I’ll tell you what her dad tried to do. I tried to pay him off but neither he or his shotgun was hearing any of it. That was a close one. Celebrity has its perks, but also its dangers.

Second, we came up with a prank the tastemakers were sure to love. I had this idea to make a pigmy Klansman, this twisted little redneck imp like something from a New Yorker’s personal hell. Lips brought to life so good it even freaked me out. I called it Stonky. There was a Trump rally in New Hampshire a few months after the fetus incident, so in Stonky went, heiling the Donald and threatening to lynch all the black attendees in the name of MAGA and Jesus. Stonky got rave reviews and, more importantly, the media off our back.

And then there was the Christmas prank.

You know that Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”? There’s one line that’s always confused me. It’s when Andy Williams croons:

There'll be parties for hosting

Marshmallows for toasting

And caroling out in the snow

There'll be scary ghost stories

And tales of the glories of

Christmases long, long ago

Not the marshmallows or caroling part. It’s the bit about “scary ghost stories.” Always seemed like he had Halloween on the brain. Ghost stories were a Christmas thing? I guess the Holy Ghost? That’s what I figured he meant, even though my family weren’t churchgoers or anything. I later learned that scary Christmas stories was a trend from Victorian England that made its way over here. The more you know, right?

Still, that song stuck with me. Inspired me. I came up with a prank based on that one line: what if we put animatronics in a Nativity scene at some church, but made the baby Jesus look like a crying demon like that Black Sabbath album cover, with glowing red eyes and stuff, and freak out the people walking by? Mary and Joseph could be zombies, maybe the animals could be hellhounds, something really spooky and blasphemous. Another Partyboy classic. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The stuff Lips came up with was unbelievable, total nightmare fuel. He’s such a talented guy. I’m still amazed he never made it in the movie biz. The demon baby Jesus looked mostly normal until Lips made it cry, and then the face got all scrunched up like a wrinkled old man, toothless gums and everything. But the eyes . . . windows to the soul, right? When those peepers popped open, started glowing red, I almost wet myself laughing watching its little clawed hands swipe at the air as it bawled its fake little eyes out. Those burning red eyes . . .

A+ stuff. Another winner for Partyboy Productions. It was so good, we decided to only make the baby an animatronic. Fewer moving parts, fewer things that could go wrong, ha ha, joke’s on us. Ultimately, we determined that the rest of the figures should look normal so we didn’t attract too much attention. I’m trying to give you an idea of our thought process so you can see how much energy we spent doing something so stupid. Just imagine if we used that energy to actually make the world a better place like some YouTubers do. What if, right?

The creative side was the easy part, the benefit of having a talented team. The challenge came from replacing an actual Nativity scene with our version. No church worth anything would agree to this, not even for the sake of divine comedy. We were on our own.

Mostly. When you have more than 100 million followers, you’re never truly “alone.” It’s a blessing if you’re a narcissist, which I am, until it’s not. Too much of a good thing, you know? Hard to see it when you’re in it because it feels so good. The glutton’s dream. You eat and eat and eat until something finally makes you sick. Or you blow up. And only when it’s too late you realize it was bad for you. I swear, dogs have more sense than people: they return to their vomit only because they don’t know any better. What’s our excuse?

My editor, Taylor, wondered why we didn’t just set up our own crèche somewhere. A brilliant idea. I gave him a raise on the spot. But where to put it without a permit that would not seem out of place? Another problem for the crew to solve.

Taylor again to the rescue. He did some research and learned that Orthodox churches typically didn’t have big Nativity displays. Why that was didn’t matter. The important thing was it narrowed down our location hunt: this way, we wouldn’t have a duplicate scene, or have to mess with someone else’s.

I found a big Orthodox cathedral in Worcester, right across the street from a park. A heavy foot-traffic area. The location was perfect because we needed people to think it was associated with the church. The familiarity would lull them into not even noticing it, and then BOO. Hilarity would ensue.

Hilarity. Anything for a dollar.

I liked to use my paying fans, the Partyboy Playaz, that’s Playaz with a z, to help set pranks like this up. I put out the call on our members-only Discord and found five able-bodies students from WPI, which was close to the church. They agreed to help hide the cameras and microphones in the trees and act as lookouts while Lips and I set up the scene a few days before Christmas. Christmas Eve would’ve been preferable, but the Orthodox had a big service then, and the Playaz did some scouting and learned that tons of people actually went to this church. To think, we pick a church in freakin’ Massachusetts of all places, and it’s well-attended. But it was too late to change plans, and the location was ideal. We decided a Wednesday would be the best day for this to go down. A portentous choice. I’ve learned all kinds of new words since I started reading. 

Wednesday evening came, that time of year when it gets dark at like four o’clock. The setup crew was really ace. Totally professional. Tyler, Steve, Jamal, Corey, and Nick were on the school’s robotics team, so they loved this nerdy set-up shit. I mean stuff. The Army Corp of Engineers wishes they had the discipline and zealotry to perform like these five. Every aspect of our will was bent towards making this prank happen. How much money could we bring in for the desecration of this most holy time? God only knew.

The figures weren’t too much of a challenge. We’re talking the demon baby, Mary and Joseph, two shepherds, a sheep, a goat, and an ass. The ass was the best. We called it an ass because that’s a funnier than donkey. The Easter services talking about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an ass still crack me up, almost as much as the dry bones in the valley reading from Ezekiel on Good Friday. Makes me think of the old song “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.” I’m rambling.

Getting the stable assembled was tougher. We couldn’t pre-build the entire thing and carry it to the park. To conspicuous. The boys had to smuggle a few pre-assembled bits and some other building materials and quickly drill them together. When anyone asked, the guys just said “WPI project,” which was enough for people to leave the nerds alone.

Most people.

There was this one guy who almost screwed everything up, the worst kind of guy for a public figure known for staging elaborate pranks to encounter: the “Hey, I know you!” guy. The worst. Almost as bad as “Hey, can I be a part of the prank?” guy. “Officious intermeddler,” to quote the legal doctrine. My parents are both lawyers. They weren’t home much. I guess that explains me, right?

Anyway, this guy, Parker Foley, was both kinds of guys. I’ll never forget that name. In the dark part of my heart, I blame Parker for everything. He was another local kid, a high school student. He was skateboarding on the sidewalk when he saw me. Did a double-take and newrly fell over teeth-first, bashing his brains out. If only he did.

Maybe not. In a way, I wouldn’t have found my way out of the darkness without Parker. He’s my Gollum, my Honest John and Gideon the Cat. Without him, I never would have stared up-close into the darkness. No, that’s not true. I was already deep in it, I just couldn’t see. Parker was my eyes, I guess. My nous, as much as it kills me to admit it.

“Holy shit, it’s Partyboy! Partyboy!”

“Nah man,” I said. 

“You look just like him.” Parker Foley. Red Sox hat askew. Tight jeans, half-zipped hoodie. Skinny as a rail with messed up hair and worse teeth. “Yo, you doing a prank here?”

“Just setting this up.” I remember motioning to the guys with my drill. “Let’s uh, let’s hurry and get back to the, uh . . .”

“Yo, it is you. Don’t lie bro, I’m like your biggest fan.” He cast about like a flasher making sure no one else was looking before showing me the goods. “Where’s Taylor.”

“I don’t want trouble, man” I told him, putting on the Partyboy smile. The last thing I needed was a scene. I did the calculus, thinking I’d fess up and just have him do something small to help out, feel special. “Listen, we gotta keep it on the DL, you know?”

“I got you bro! Don’t cheese it.”

“Don’t cheese it, yeah.” I always hated how stupid my catchphrases sounded said back to me in real life. In meatspace. We’re all meat, ready for the hook to hoist us up and get us ready for consumption. “Listen man—”

“Parker. Parker Foley.” An extended hand. I ignored it. To be fair to me, my hands were full.

“Listen man, just, you know how you can help? Just keep a watch. Make sure nobody from there . . .” I pointed at the church. “. . . comes out. Just let us know if someone does, all right?”

But my math was off. “I got you, bro. Hey, we on camera?” he said, before immediately grabbing my backpack. “What’s in here?”

I pulled away. Parker stumbled, a hurt look on his stupid face before he snarled like a demon, like I’d done something to him. “What the hell, dude? Lemme see what’s in the bag!”

“No. Just keep watch!”

People walking by were noticing, starting to ask questions. “Whaddaya buildin’?” asked someone with a pristine local accent. Nick satisfied the inquiry with a few friendly words, but I didn’t know for how long our luck would hold.

“I’m a top-tier sub, dude! You owe me!” Parker whined. If voices could be punched, his would’ve been bleeding out on the pavement. This parasocial sense of entitlement triggered something I didn’t know I had in me, loathing for the part of my business that had made me rich. Like a leech, I feed off my subscribers, then act surprised when the host turns me. I wasn’t all that mad at Parker, I now realize. Not really.

Another tug at my bag. “Don’t touch!” I yelled.

“I didn’t touch nothin’, bro!”

And he hadn’t. I almost wet myself then. The bag had jumped.

Parker, now smiling: “Yo, what’s in there?”

He managed to unzip the bag while I was still trying to process the leap I felt. The bag contained the centerpiece of our prank, and it was horrifying enough completely inert, but in motion . . .

“Ahh holy shit!” Parker screeched. I heard a hiss that made my heart drop into my nuts. The bag shook again. I turned round and round like a dog trying to catch his tail but only saw Parker running away without his skateboard.

I unslung the bag then, and almost died. Demon baby Jesus stared back, face contorted in an infernal scream, red eyes wide with hatred daring me to pray for help . . .

I grabbed the doll by the arm and flung it to the ground.

It was an expensive bit of machinery and was not alive, though at the time I wasn’t sure.

“You all right?” one of the WPI kids asked me.

“That . . . that guy . . .” As I huffed for breath, I remember feeling strangely calm in my mind even though my nervous system was on high alert. “Spooked me.”

Lips. I called to him. “Hey, you . . . you didn’t . . .”

He emerged, joystick-looking contraption in hand. “Glad the remote works. I saw that guy messing with you . . .”

“Yeah, what . . . whatever you did worked, man.”

“Hey, Jack, are you doing all right?” Lips always used my real name. It was an endearing quirk. “Don’t let that douche get to you.”

“I’m good,” I said. I walked over to the demon baby, infernal mockery of Our Lord and Savior, and picked it up by its big toe. For the first time, I felt bad about such desecration; even a perverse parody of baby Jesus was still baby Jesus, does that make sense? No, of course it doesn’t. Because you’re a decent human being. “Just wasn’t expecting it.”

Lips laughed, relieved. “Hey man, if you didn’t expect it, you know, think about the people who’re gonna see it tonight, right? Just be careful with it.”

“Right.”

“You guys got this. I’m heading to the spot now. Text me when you get the cameras set up and your earpiece in.”

“Who gives the orders around here, anyway?”

Another laugh. “Don’t cheese it, Jack.”

“Will do.”

Lips jogged down the street, around the corner, and out of sight. For a fleeting moment everything felt wrong and I wanted to call the whole thing off. Instead I took Parker’s forgotten skateboard and tried to break it over my knee. All I got was a sore knee and the embarrassment of being too weak to do what needed to be done.

---

Nightfall. The stage was set. Lips successfully tested the animatronic with a few playful kicks of its legs. No more jump scares for me. We had three cameras to do a split-screen thing on our stream: one in a tree pointing down at the crèche, one across the street for a wider view, and one on my GoPro for the real up-close-and-personal shots of our victims. We were sick in the head. In other places too.

Because of our gaming roots, and the fact that, like I said, we’re sick, viewers of the livestream would also see a minimap in the lower-left corner, like the HUD in a first-person shooter, transmitting my location data. Why? We had this thing where fans could try to track me down and win prizes if they found me, but we did it mainly because it looked cool.

I hid behind a big oak, giving me a good look at people stopping to check out the scene. My earpiece was in, and we even had a geodome created using my phone’s hotspot so that any passersby in a thousand-foot radius would receive targeted ads for my channel thirty seconds after passing through. Always be selling. It’s the American way.

“Anyone coming?” I whispered.

“Not yet,” said Nick. Good name, that. Very classic “guy.” Like Mitch or Tom or Vinnie. Gary. Nobody’s named Gary anymore. I wouldn’t mind being a Gary. My parents named me Jaxon, yes, with an X instead of a CKS. As if the name wasn’t bad enough. Maybe the X was a sign though. Listen to me, rambling again.

I remember the nerves, unlike those of any other prank. Not even the Planned Parenthood one, or the one where I went into a high school girl’s locker room wearing a wig and makeup smeared over my lips, identifying as Xir and trying to hit on all the co-eds (live-streamed, of course). I was only seventeen at the time, so it wasn’t technically a crime but it was creepy. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, and that was one my more memorable lowlights.

The adrenaline was through the roof that night. Everything felt off, and it wasn’t residual anger at Parker Foley.

I had recorded my intro sitting in my car parked at a nearby supermarket. “Hey yeah this is Partyboy comin’ at you live once again. Levelin’ up and don’t cheese it. We’re gonna stank some pranks and get the people going with a boo-yah Merry Christmas, gettin’ some Halloween mixed in with the baby Jesus. You ever seen The Exorcist? Yeah, call me the Mexcorcist because I’m gonna scare the chipotle out of these people. Let’s make this a Christmas to remember.”

Then I waited. And waited. Some people walked by. Nothing happened. “Lips,” I said (I was mic’d up), “what’s going on?”

“Some technical difficulties,” he said. “But the weather’s good so . . .”

Lips was right. The animatronic wasn’t “remote controlled” per se, as in using RF technology or anything like that. As with everything else, it was controlled via internet. Satellite-based internet, hence Lips’s comment about the weather. Cloud cover could interfere with the signal and mess up the whole prank, but the night was crisp and clear. Interestingly, for this part of the country at this time of year, there was no snow.

If I’d been smart, I would’ve walked away, turned tail, threw in the towel, packed it in. If I had been smart, I wouldn’t have made a living being an internet provocateur. A prank guy. I’m a full-grown adult male still dressing and talking like a bratty teenager. Which I was. Am. King of the Influencers. Big deal. It’s like being President of the Booger-Eaters.

If I had been smart, I would’ve called it off after walking up to our mock Nativity and seen Parker Foley running towards me. Instead, this is what I said: “All right Playaz: time for drama. This kid wouldn’t leave us alone while setting up; I’ll tell the story later. Lips, do your thing.”

“You got it boss.”

The comments section, I saw later, went crazy. Parker was recognized by some of his IRL friends who were also Partyboy Playaz. His appearance was hotly anticipated as the kid had a reputation for taking these parasocial relationships seriously. Just like I did, really. An ouroboros, always consuming and never full.

The superchats came rolling in, funding my ego and operations in equal measure. Real jobs are for suckers. Parker is yelling something incomprehensible, the distance reducing it to babble lost in the wind. “Come on,” man, I want to say, “keep it down, we’re outside of a church!” Well, it’s what I now say I wanted to say then, more like it’s what I wish I wanted to say back then. An endless parade of masks. I can never just be honest, can I? Here goes: what I really wanted to say was, “Shut up bro, you’ll ruin the prank.” I wasn’t that pious back then. I didn’t have that reverence for sacred spaces, or for anything really. When life is comfortable, you can afford to make a joke out of everything.

I braced myself for the storm. For the show. Half my life up to that point had been lived on camera. Everything is a performance, even, I don’t know, ordering at the drive-through. I had to be on all the time. My poor parents; I even dragged them into it. The things we do for likes, right? It’s really funny. I don’t even like myself.

Closer now, I caught the gist of what Parker was saying. “. . . skateboard, you asshole!” and so on. A few things about my mom, about me being a fraud. That’s a word Massholes use a lot: everyone they don’t like is a fraud. But it stung because it was accurate. 

“We’re gonna spook him, we’re gonna spook him,” I said. “Lips, wait ‘til I get in front of the donkey. Make the baby jump up.” I turned and winked in the direction of the tree-mounted camera before moving into position.

The weather was good, the night cloudless and crystalline. But Lips said words I did not want to hear: “It’s not working boss.”

“I watched the stream, you asshole. You fraud. Try running your prank now.” Parker brandished a black rectangle. Antennae sticking up made it look like a mutant walkie-talkie. Who uses those, right? It took me, a genius, a while to realize it was a signal jammer. That explained a lot.

I felt like a jackass kneeling before the other jackass, the fake one, though I suppose we were both fake, in our own special ways. I stood. “Look man, if you want to be a part of this—”

He swung. He connected. Bony knuckles on hands likely unused to physical activity beyond typing, pushing buttons, and self-pleasure were still hard enough to hurt. Nobody likes getting punched in the mouth, not even your local influencer. But I’m sure it made for great viewing.

I had the wherewithal to go for the jammer. I took Parker’s bony wrist in my bony hand and squeezed, two pale, scrawny dudes with nothing better to do. This close, I saw Parker’s eyes, bloodshot and vacant. Clearly the guy had imbibed some chemical courage before coming back for round two. Whatever the substance, it didn’t keep me from giving him a pop in the nose with my free hand.

Parker reared back, but didn’t scream and didn’t let go of the jammer. Through grit teeth he continued to call me a fraud, a liar, a shill (sure, I had corporate sponsors, but who doesn’t?), and so on. “Turn that fuckin’ thing off,” I said. Somehow, no passersby saw us, no cars drove by. The normally busy park was silent.

Lips screamed in my ear, “The cameras are down, the cameras are down!” like Paul Revere rebooted. “I’ll call the cops.”

“No!” I said. The earpiece and mic still worked, which was curious. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the technical aspects of signal jamming. What I do know is that in the middle of our stalemate, locked in that loveless embrace, I heard a baby scream.

We turned to the manger, synchronized in fear. “Lips,” I rasped.

“Cameras still busted,” he said. “Nothing’s working. What’s up? You all right down there?”

Crying like a howl. A gargoyle come to life. From above, fat snowflakes descended from gathering clouds, turning us into the world’s saddest snowglobe. I always thought hell was supposed to be hot, until I read Dante months later. I know Dante isn’t, like, Scripture, but it scared me just as much. Hell is a topic of interest of mine, as you can imagine.

My fear was real, acute and lingering. Not Parker’s. His curdled to annoyance, a less healthy emotion because annoyance didn’t trigger your flight reflex. “This again?” he said. “Nice try.” He threw me off and walked towards the manger. “Like, for real bro? You think I’m falling for this again?”

“Come on, Parker. Just, just step away, all right?”

“Why? Afraid I’ll break something?”

I was, actually. “Prank’s over, man, come on.” The snow fell faster. “It’s, it’s not lookin’ good out here bro.”

He snorted. “Bro. Get the fuck out. Sorry about your little trick.” Parker then reached into the manger and oh my God the demon baby Jesus leapt onto his chest.

Parker screamed. I couldn’t. I stood transfixed while the animatronic moved in unanimatronic ways. It pulled Parker’s sweatshirt until their faces were nose-to-snout, a mafioso intimidating some underlying, spittle flying. Spittle? Lips was good but his animatronics didn’t have salivary glands. And those eyes . . .

They left Parker and found me. Parker was just an annoyance. I was the quarry. Me. I had opened the door when evil had come knocking and let it right in. And this thing knew it. It leapt to the sidewalk and raced towards me, galloping on all fours. I guess Parker ran away because I neither saw nor heard from him again. Lucky for him, because I’m bad news.

“Jack, Jack,” Lips yelled, “what the hell was that? I—” Then the earpiece died. So, this time, did my bladder control.

The warm piss against my inner thighs was enough to rouse me. I turned and ran across the street, barely missing a speeding love tap from a black pickup truck that just now decided to cut up this way. I slipped on some ice—ice that had already formed on a formerly dry road—caught my balance, and ran towards the church. Weren’t these places supposed to be open day or night?

Up the steps. That’s what I kept telling myself. Just make up the steps and into the building. Monsters burst into flames when they walk into churches, right? If they can even get in. That’s what happens in the movies. The good ones, at least.

I banged on the door. “Help, help open up!” Nothing happened. Only then I remembered I could, you know, open it myself. Luck was with me: the door was unlocked. It swung outward, the warm narthex beckoning.

Except I couldn’t go in. I tried to walk forward, but my feet would not move. They refused to step onto the red carpeted floor. Refuse is the word, I kid you not, like my motor function telling my brain “Uh-uh, bro. I ain’t listening.” I put out a hand, and felt a great cushion of air or something, gently but firmly keeping me out. Then it hit me. I was the monster. I was the thing that goes bump in the night. I’m the boogeyman your grandmother warned you about. No wonder I couldn’t go in. If that was the case, then why should I be afraid of a demon baby Jesus? We were basically family.  

I turned. The baby was at the foot of the steps, eyes pinhole burns in the darkness of swirling snow. “Uh, hey. You’re, uh, home,” I said.

The baby spat a lumpy glob of green puke onto the bottom step and then raced up, mouth now filled with fangs. “Oh God oh God oh God,” I said. “Oh God I’m sorry I’m sorry let me in oh my God—”

The thing leapt the last few steps and waved its clawed hands. There was a flash of red. I fell back into the church, a burning in my eye. The wind slammed the door shut, the sound timed to my head smacking the floor—a nice touch, I have to say. Though empty and dark, the church was warm. I felt like I could sleep there. I almost did.

Instead, I pushed myself to my knees and waited, ear to the door. I waited an eternity that I later learned lasted twenty minutes. I don’t know what possessed me to open the door, but I did at the exact moment the internet went back on line. The storm had cleared, there was no demon baby, and Lips later told me the first thing everyone saw when the stream went back live was my bloody face with a missing eye. You know, I thought everything had looked kind of strange.

---

Hedonic adaptation. That’s what they call it when your body and I guess your brain get used to some sort of formerly shocking stimuli. After a while, it just doesn’t bother you anymore. You tune it out, or it becomes your new normal. Both drug addicts and people in warzones experience this. I can relate.

No hedonic adaptation took hold of me. I’m still not used to this feeling of being under surveillance, of ancient red eyes watching me, weighing me, judging me, biding their time while I muddle through their panopticon.

The stream had raised over a million dollars that whole time I was AWOL. When I emerged from that church with my face ruined, they thought it was part of the gag, the greatest special effects since, since I dunno, actually. Nobody’s impressed by special effects anymore. I guess it was more like I was a magician. Deception and misdirection to give the illusion of magic. Not like those LaVeyan guys. That stuff’s for real. 

Of course, the eye thing wasn’t a trick. I really was half blind. Because my GoPro broke and malfunctioned to the point where none of the video footage was recoverable, I just told everyone I slipped on the steps after my fight with Parker and lost my eye that way. Nobody questioned me about it, not even the hyper-inquisitive autists that make up half of my fan base. Even they must’ve felt it was something they’d rather not poke at. That’s saying something.

This left me at a crossroads, and we all know the kinds of things that lurk at the crossroads. My choices were to keep on like I had before or make a drastic change in my life. A big part of that change involved money and the acquisition thereof. Me being me, I did the only logical thing: I fired everyone, ended the channel, dissolved my business, paid my bills, donated all my leftover money to the church that had saved my life, and decamped to a monastery in Arizona halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. It’s a nice place. The monks let me stay and I’m working towards getting baptized. Even better, their chanting keeps those eyes at bay. I’m hoping that after my baptism they’ll go away for good. I was never baptized as a child, you know. It turns out that maybe it’s more than just a dunk in the bath.

I like it here. I read. I study. I pray, or at least I try to. I’m not on the internet anymore, though my attention span hasn’t caught up with that fact yet. The thing I love the most about it here though is the thing I can’t describe. This feeling of just, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve learned the words yet.

So maybe you think it’s insincere, all of this, that only physical disfigurement, financial ruin, and a brush with the demonic turned me to the light and not, you know, a genuine wellspring of emotion and transcendence. Maybe you’re right. Maybe, if I had never gone through with this prank, I’d still be Partyboy and not Jaxon. You’re probably right about that too. But all that did happen, and I am here, and you know what? I’m better for it.

Because I’m afraid. Afraid of those eyes, like tiny holes in space-time made by the devil’s cigarette. They’re there when I sleep, and there when I’m awake, always at the corner of my vision. I’m a marked man. And I deserve it. And so I pray. For me and for the world. Because I’m not the only one. I can’t be. That would be too much to take.

Nights here are amazing. I like to grab a sleeping bag and some blankets and lie in the sand. Under the desert night, you truly feel your insignificance, but this doesn’t get me down. It cheers me up, pulls me closer to creation. The universe is unfathomably vast, but you’re a part of it. In fact, it was made for you. Some lose their minds contemplating this starry abyss, but I take comfort.

We’re all running from our demons, some of us just more literally than others. Maybe yours is in a bottle, or a strip club, or maybe it’s other people. Mine wasn’t even the demon baby. It was the face staring back at me in the mirror. No more. I’ve actually, finally, in some small way, started to like the one-eyed prick staring back at me.

This is my gift: knowledge of my nature. I’m an awful human being. Just wretched. Totally useless. Maybe I was born this way, or maybe I was made. But now I know I can change. I can do something about it. Merry Christmas, Partyboy. You’ve finally done something useful for once in your life.       

- Alexander