I received permission to write about this.
The story is better than this, but the only person whose whole process I am at liberty to put out there on this page is my own.
******
She came into the room with the name “oxygen waster.”
I shouldn’t have laughed at it.
Because she kind of meant business.
But I did laugh.
I saw other people do the same thing:
“LOL. OMG I LOVE YOUR NICKNAME.”
She was confused: Why is that so god damned funny to everyone?
Because we’ve all felt like that before.
She explained that she got it from a band.
Not everyone comes back.
But she came back.
And then she came back again.
It only took a couple of days before the chat robot offered another animal in the hunting game.
Somebody typed !axe
I don’t even know what the bot says anymore. Something like: “Whoop whoop! [your] hatchet swings right and left, [you] have massacred a [$animal]. This juggalo killer has smoked X animals.”
The new arrival has a question: “wait, which one of you is the juggalo?”
The near 40-year-old with a hatchet girl tattoo who wrote the website with the aforementioned juggalo Easter egg.
“Mmfwcl”
“MCL”
And when she said we made her cry and want to live,
I cried too.
Maybe other people leave this place with hope,
But I’m not usually one of them.