Page 88 of White Noise

My gaze drifts back to the broken monitor.

Cleaning this is going to be my problem too.

“Cool. Love this for me.”

Nothing answers.

I don’t know whether I’m relieved or offended.

Cleaning takes most of the morning, mostly because there is no cleaning the desk itself.

The frame is bent, one side is split near the base, and every attempt to lift it just makes another piece shift loose.

After ten minutes of swearing at it, I give up and drag what I can toward the front door, adding the broken monitor, the ruined surge protectors, and anything else Silas managed to destroy to the growing pile beside it.

I’d take everything down to the garbage room, but I’m still locked inside my own fucking condo, so apparently the entryway is a temporary graveyard for expensive electronics.

The camera survived, barely. One mount is cracked and the cord is stretched, but the camera itself still turns on, so I prop it carefully on the nightstand beside my bed and start building the saddest streaming setup I’ve ever had.

The nightstand is too small for any of this.

I balance the surviving monitor on the back half, squeeze the keyboard in front of it, and move the lamp to the floor because there is absolutely no chance everything is fitting. The mouse gets maybe six inches of space, which means tonight’s stream is apparently happening with the precision of someone operating on a fucking airplane tray table.

It looks ridiculous.

I hate it, but whatever, for one night, it works.

That matters more.

I sit on the edge of the bed and adjust the camera until the angle finally looks intentional instead of like I’m streaming from the aftermath of a break-in.

The setup is cramped and awkward, but it works, and right now that is enough.

From here, I can still see part of the mess piled near the front door, including the cracked monitor lying against the wall with its dark screen catching faint pieces of the room whenever I move. I force myself to stop looking at it.

The whole setup feels wrong now.

Too small and temporary. Too obviously put together because Silas tore apart the place where VioletHex normally exists.

The equipment can be replaced.

That part doesn’t matter.

What pisses me off is that he got into this room, into my work, into the one space that always felt like mine, and left it looking like this.

So I look at the pathetic little setup balanced on my nightstand, take a breath, and decide I’m using it tonight anyway.

Because fuck him.

By the time I finish cleaning up what I can, there isn’t really a question about whether I’m streaming tonight.

I’m going live.

Silas has already taken too much from me, and I’m not letting him take VioletHex too.

So I shower, force myself to eat something even though it’s already well into the afternoon, then spend the next few hours doing the boring parts of my job that usually happen without much thought.

I answer messages, check subscriptions, make sure the temporary setup actually works, and test the camera twice because if I’m going to stream from a fucking nightstand, it’s at least going to look intentional.