It’s Not a Cult by Joey Batey

Author:Joey Batey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526676870
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2025-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

13

Sneck, Solkat of thumb prints and blurted thoughts

The computer on Kaylee’s desk has been on for so long, the heat from it has joined the afternoon sun and warmed the wood beneath it. Bits of tack, hundreds of them, dot the desk, her walls, her monitor. They have a sweaty sheen to them now. Lonely splinters of expensive Argentinian coffee descend from the thin biscuit of grounds around the rim of her cafetière and into the murky depths. A shaky, tired hand plunges the press and they’re gathered, one by one, by the sieve, whirling and diving to escape it before being crushed as one at its base. She pours herself another cup. The fifth in as many hours.

It’s three-thirty in the afternoon, but she’s been awake since yesterday morning. The livestream has been running for just as long. It’s had breaks of silence and study, caffeinated rants at new discoveries, followed by rotten depths of withdrawal and fatigue. She looks at the number of people still watching. It’s about the same. She’s gained a hundred and fifty thousand followers in the last three days alone, double the total she had a month ago, and about a quarter of a million people or so are watching. With her, beside her, on her search.

She’s punctured the time with occasional interviews, the odd hour here and there where she’s chatted with others about theories, updates, plans. There was a three-hour stretch in the night where she got drunk and just re-listened to Cycles. At least twenty other influencers are doing the same, constantly streaming, engaging with this new watchful audience during a momentous night. She’s found a crew in them. No longer bent to their pressures or prejudice, no longer their idol, but part of them. As much a shipmate as shipwright.

She flinches as she rests her hand on her computer mouse, her wrist – freshly tattooed with lines on a broken circle – catching the desk’s edge. She sees a message pop up from Willow.

Got live footage of Durham. NOW. Colab?

She pours some energy drink into her coffee. If she were listening closely, she might have heard her kidneys renounce god.

Ye! Two mins.

She goes to the bathroom and sits, pulling her phone out. She flicks through the ascension of photographs and memes, the captions and comments, hunting for likes and upvotes and approval. Without thinking, she double-taps photos of puppies, lyrics imprinted on sunsets, a friend publicising their new television show. She does this, over and over, for two straight minutes before pausing. Then she looks at the awkwardly-placed pre-installed mirror opposite her.

Why there’s a mirror facing the toilet begs theses on the inherent perversion of Los Angeles. But within that pause, as she looks at the young woman opposite her, now ten pounds heavier, her natural weight, tired but happy, enjoying this prolonged case of the ‘fuck-its’ she’s so acutely diagnosed herself with, there is something. A tousled, exotic beauty. She looks at the phone in her hand, automatically reaching for toilet roll with her other.

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