The video starts as these things usually do, for entertainment such as this, in minor variation. There’s a slight shake to the chest-cam’s frame as the POV holding it walks amidst the distant sound of Walmart foot traffic. Shoes squeak on the darkened tile. The overhead fluorescence flickers.

Rows of crooked shelves stocked with off-brand cereal and faded plastic toys barely parse in the low-resolution stream. A shopping-cart wheel clatters as the POV walks deeper into the store, breathing a little too heavy for a casual late-night run.

They are in pursuit of someone, as per the title of this video: 32-Year-Old Wanted to Get Freaky. Most shoppers notice the group immediately. Viewers can see it from the passing glances of those caught in the recording, because of the outfits these men are wearing.

The Main POV is a chest cam, but he walks alongside two other men in werewolf costumes. They step in and out of view as they move. Body armor is a bulletproof vest, bear mace dangling from the sides, while secondary cameras are gripped with stabilizers. Their eyes glow blood red. Eye contact with the chest cam is constant whenever it tips in their direction. They’re clearly hungry for screen time.

They catch up to the man, this 32-year-old checking his phone as he casually walks from the main Walmart thoroughfare to an adjacent aisle. Hair is a jet black swirl kind of like ice cream for the entire stream. Whispers or giggles or something mutters from Main POV slapping the side wolves casually on the arm.

“Over there.” “Look.”

They speed up enough so they are at a reasonable distance. When the 32-year-old pauses to check his phone, they stop and sync, continuing forward only when that man is moving.

It is when the man stops near the soda section, absorbed in his screen, and a young girl emerges from an aisle behind him, saying, “I’m underage, and I’m horny,” before walking sideways off-screen. This line of dialogue startles the man and whips his head around—eye contact with the three figures in pursuit, but who are now as paused as he.

It is only then that the shaky chest-cam footage steadies.

The man turns and continues down the main aisle, thus prompting the werewolves to resume. The 32-year-old glances over his shoulder again, and the wolves freeze. Every time this man slows down, so do they. One of the side wolves in view is caught mid-stride in the frame, shoulders tensed like a dog on high alert. It goes like this for almost ten minutes.

For a first video, the whole thing feels eerily well-choreographed.

It ends when the man turns down a perfume aisle.

“Go get him!” The main wolf whispers in a sort of yip at a side wolf who hustles down a parallel aisle. (The side wolf hustling seems to be deliberately recorded by the main wolf.)

The 32-year-old stops as that one werewolf emerges from the far end of the perfume aisle. When he turns back, the Main POV and other side wolf record everything. The chest cam is skewed at a sharp, predatory angle.

“Why are you dressed up in costumes?” The 32-year-old calls out mid-aisle.

“Because we’re werewolves,” the Main POV replies.

“What do you want?”

“I want to have a conversation.” The chest cam steadies into a normal front-facing view. “We can go outside if you don’t want anyone here knowing what you’re here for.”

The man agrees.

“Okay. Come on. Get out,” the Main Werewolf shooes him over.

The man picks up his pace, zipping past the two werewolves he’s clearly terrified of.

Overhead, the intercom booms, “Werew—” then cuts off. This slows the 32-year-old down significantly.

“That wasn’t for us,” the Main POV says.

The man jerks his head, trying to stay calm.

*

So now it’s a single fella standing framed in the corner marks of a camera feed. Both hands are in his pockets. Every so often, he looks off at the parking lot. He and the three men dressed up as werewolves stand in that inset bend which caters to a bike rack and picnic table, speaking cordially, but the 32-year-old has been evading the questions. Almost entirely.

“What’s your name?” the Main POV asks.

“Keith.”

“Keith, what?”

“Worth.”

Keith’s eyes pop split-second considerations for the Main POV’s camera. On either side, the two side wolves, with their phone’s cameras, lean into the view of the main camera feed, which kind of tips Keith backward, and the main wolf has to walk forward to keep the two from obstructing view. Viewers can see his hand waving them back.

“Why are you here, Keith Worth?” the Main POV asks.

“I came to meet a friend.”

“How old is that friend?”

“18.”

The werewolves all bark a bit at that.

“Keith.”

“She said she was 18.”

“Feralyn, go ahead and contact the authorities,” the main wolf snaps.

Keith is nervous, and it’s palpable. He’s trying to step forward to explain, and that only serves to piss off the main wolf, and all three tell Keith to back the fuck up. One of the side wolves has unsheathed bear mace. Both side wolves sort of putter in the way hyenas do.

“I need honesty, buddy. We don’t have to contact the authorities, but we will if you bullshit us. You don’t have to talk to us, but we have this binder.” The Main POV flourishes a man’s privates from the binder, which for the audience is a blurry, congealed smear. Both side wolves are still escalating in vocal tones. “Look at this. Not very impressive, Keith.”

“You don’t have to show that I know what I sent to her.”

“Then tell me how old the fuck did she say she was?”

“She said she was under 18.”

Silence.

“Alright,” the main werewolf holds up a knuckle in the frame.

The predator on screen doesn’t know whether or not to bump.

“C’mon, Keith. Don’t leave a dog hanging. We all gotta feed some time.”

Keith hesitates, then sort of smiles in a sideways head-jerk resignation, “Okay.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, Keith Worth has just fist-bumped Bobby Sabo on live social media feed,” the main werewolf announces himself in the third person.

The languid ache of compressed air from Keith’s mouth, like how his shoulders react, sags. His entire posture wobbles in the frame crafted by Ls at the corners.

“I’m on live social media feed?” Keith asks.

“100,000 people. I’m basically famous.”

Keith’s eyes effectively make eye contact with anyone watching the livestream / video upload. He stands there stunted and frozen between two men in werewolf regalia closing in (but again, they do this more as a blatant bid for screen time; they’re making eye contact with the viewers whenever they tip themselves this way).

Bobby Sabo carries on, “All your chats are saved digitally, buddy, and probably a lot of other places. I’m honestly just a cog in a machine. The only reason it’s going to feel like I’m so aware of the chats is because I thought you were a woman, and from what I was able to gather, or imagine, you were attractive, so I was able to pay attention.”

“That’s why we changed the name,” the side wolf on the right says.

“Okay, well now you’re breaking character. I am not okay with that.” The main wolf then holds up the chat logs to the chest cam. “And now that I actually look at these, every instance of your name has been changed to Addison.”

“Why do you think someone named Addison sent a picture of this man’s penis?”

The comment makes the Main POV turn to face the side wolf, who looks down at the camera (therefore the viewers), eyes red and punctured with a sort of black and blue bruising that makes him all-out demonic.

“Did you just throw me a Keith Worth curveball?” Bobby Sabo asks.

“What?”

“Did you just try to fucking throw me a Keith Worth curveball?”

Pause.

“No,” the side wolf admits.

“Orange tab,” the wolf on the left breaks character.

The binder is opened to the orange tab in front of the chest cam. “Oh, yeah. I remember this. It says you were planning on dropping a 2-gram marijuana brownie. Did you forget you were supposed to share it and eat the whole thing, Keith?”

The chest cam is now back on Keith Worth, the sexual predator caught in headlights, eyes glass, posture locked.

“Fuck,” is all Keith can really say.

Both side wolves erupt, cameras raised on stabilizers that, the nearer they get, start to resemble clubs. The editor has clearly leaned into the effect. They continue barking, occasionally glancing back to make sure they’re still in frame. The lead werewolf finally raises a paw, and they taper off.

“I apologize. My wolves didn’t mean to alarm you, but their trigger word is fuck.”

Again, barking, escalating, the main POV waves his paw, and they settle down.

“It’s a lot like flicking a light switch,” the main wolf explains. “Anyway. Alright, now I’m gonna have to ask some heavy-hitting questions. I don’t want any more Keith Worth curveballs. Can we both roll with that?”

The man nods.

“Good. Now, how old did that gal of yours say she was?”

“Girl.”

“Girl,” Bobby corrects himself, too. “Gals are between the ages of like 29-34. Girls, when overage, are more akin to 18-28. Now, there is a variation of girl—the kind we’re using right now—which encapsulates those more illegal numbers.  Do you know what type of girl I mean, Keith?”

“Anyone below the age of 18.”

“You’re exactly right.”

Another fist, another bump.

From the parking lot, a single line of dialogue howls, “I’m underage, and I’m horny.”

Keith Worth’s head jerks toward the parking lot, considering. The chest cam’s view follows. Above, a purple-hued moon casts an eerie glow across Walmart’s midnight asphalt.

“Don’t do it.” “Keith, don’t run.”

The side werewolves call out as they drift in and out of the chest cam’s frame.

“Guys, you gotta stop breaking character.” The chest cam frames each side wolf individually as they turn their bloodshot eyes toward the viewers. “Now work with me on this one. Keith. Keith! How old did that girl of yours tell you she was?”

“17.”

“Try again.”

“16.”

“Keith Worth, age 39, currently living at ADDRESS DROP.  Married to NAME DROP. You work at EMPLOYER. Currently under investigation for SOME PAST INCIDENT. Has just thrown me another Keith Worth curveball in front of 100,000 people who will go to these places if you continue to lie to me.”

“13. She said she was 13.” Keith pinches his eyes into almonds, and it’s almost like he’s crying, as all onlookers listen to his voice whimper.

“Now, Addison.”

“Keith,” Keith Worth says.

“Oh, right. Keith, sorry.” The binder tips up to a page, some part of the chat logs. “Every instance of all the names that are supposed to be you are changed to Addison. And… I can’t believe I looked through this entire thing and still didn’t know you were a man.”

“We all think you have ADD, bro,” the side wolf on the right says.

“Christ, I have no ability at retaining information.” The main werewolf wipes a paw over his face, and this is visualized like a bar of fur over the chest cam’s viewport. Let forth that languid ahh as Bobby Sabo, the main werewolf, the man holding the camera is more disappointed with himself than angry at the two side wolves unable to play the part. “Alright, Keith, you’ve been pretty honest, so I’m going to be honest right now. I thought this girl, Addison was sending a picture of some man’s privates to a young girl she was going to groom. She was pretty hot, and I’m currently single, sooooooo…”

“Bro, we can’t use the footage if you keep doing this. We’re in front of 100,000 people,” the side wolf says.

“That reminds me of our first catch,” Bobby Sabo admits. “Remember, boys?” They both do. “We told ourselves to fuck up. Chewy here didn’t have a girlfriend at the time,” Bobby Sabo seems to be reminiscing to Keith now, “as I do not have one now. Chewy ain’t single anymore.”

The side wolves shake their heads as they bark at one another.

“What I mean is, Keith. And what this werewolf is barking about is that we need to make our mistakes now… or then… before we have people watching our feed. Because now, 99,180 people are here with us.”

The number on their YouTube channel viewer tally, then, 2.

*

Now, 10,000+ viewers. All it took was four more videos.

Hazard symbols flicker along the borders of the screen, framing a lone man in the spotlight.

“It wasn’t me!” this new fella screams amidst the fusillade of barks that open fire from the surrounding folks. His eyes are darting in every direction. At the end of two frantic glances stand the costumed figures from earlier. Both side wolves are on either side of this fella: blonde buzz-cut, hat turned forward, shorts, and sneakers—eyes popping out of his head. Werewolf regalia is closing in.

A narrator’s voice overlays the video footage. “Bobby Sabo, ladies and gentlemen, in this video, has just been caught soliciting the very same decoy he used to catch pedophiles for… four videos? Now being exposed on the same channel he started four videos ago.”

“I wasn’t looking at her!” Bobby says. “I was looking at the girl across from me. When our eyes met, I got nervous, so I looked away, and then she looked away, so I felt safe looking at her again, and when I looked back at her she was just starting to consider looking back at me, and I could even see her gaze returning to me, so I looked away again, it’s like we were windshield wipers wiping out of sync, and when I looked away that final time, my eyes landed on the underage girl standing inside the glass walls of the Shake Shack.”

A photo overlays the footage of Bobby Sabo looking at some gal’s butt through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, taken from the angle where that first girl whose eye contact he avoided should have been, if she did exist—which, yes, she did exist, as it was her photo of Bobby that was being included in this critique.

“The underage girl had her back toward you?” one of the side wolves asks.

“Yeah.”

“And you decided to approach her and exchange phone numbers with her.”

“I walked away after she gave me her age. She looked like she was in her early twenties, easy. Isn’t it legal to date someone who’s 16?”

“We have this binder.” One of the side werewolves from the previous videos makes sure it’s in the frame, vibrating. 

Bobby Sabo stands clenched. His mouth agape and skewed, warping again and again.

“Do you remember Addison?” one of the side wolves asks.

“No.”

“That’s the girl you were just talking to.”

“The girl whom I walked away from after asking for her phone number, and she said she was too young?”

“No, the girl you were talking to online.”

Bobby Sabo squints, “She didn’t give me her age.”

The side werewolf opens the binder with his exposed hands, of Bobby Sabo’s exposed dong. “What does this say?”

Bobby Sabo leans down before jerking upward. “Okay, it looks like it says 13, but you gotta believe me, I swear it said 20. The numbers switched. I’m seeing halos right now.”

“You’re seeing halos?”

“Yeah.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like around traffic lights and shit.”

“You are seeing halos around traffic lights and shit?”

They all look down on Bobby for that one, barking, before the once main wolf explains halos form around lights because of how bad his eyesight is. It’s like turning an amp up so loud that the sound begins to distort.  “But its for my eyes,” Bobby explains.

None of them know what to say to that.

Cue to: Bobby running from the camera in the shopping center, chased by a few folks and the two men in werewolf costumes.

The group’s tagline howls: We aren’t humans; we’re werewolves. Before a single beckoning awoooooo, played at the end of every Werewolf versus Predator video intro, triggers. There are small animations of cartoon animals with the awooooo.

The footage cuts to a cozier scene inside Bobby’s place. He’s rambling about being hacked after connecting to public WiFi. He holds up his laptop; he points to the clock in the corner as the time visibly flips.

“Look at this. It’s been happening 24/7. When I went outside, there was a flash of light in the vacant lot — someone said it was a camera. Then it happened again at my house. I’m literally being brainwashed.”

The narrator cuts in dryly: “So I guess that justifies trying to lure a minor. Totally. This man is delusional as fuck and needs to be institutionalized and medicated. He’s not insane. He’s totally going out of his way to protect himself.”

99% of the comments agree anti-psychotics are the only way.

But there is one buried deep beneath the rest. It was I who switched the time on his computer while he was on public WiFi at an Airbnb. I’m the reason for school shootings. No one has free will under his hue. Implant the idea: remove the working memory. The word spills their id onto the world, whether they covet it or not.

But no one pays attention to a comment submerged under thousands of others, dangling 2 likes.

*

2,000,000,000 years later, 2,000 layers below this one, there is another fella in a suit and tie watching through a telescope they said took 10,000 years to make. Its structure stretched so far across space that an entire solar system had been consumed for its marvelous construction. The lens alone spans from its sun to one of the outlier planets, gathering ancient light and feeding it into an ornate chamber of gears and colossal mechanisms so vast their purpose was difficult to understand.

There, inside ancient light, only now arriving in the nebula, this man with curly jet hair looked upon those ancient souls walking along the aisles of a Walmart, debating the possibilities.

Endless probabilities unfurled both in his head and from the surrounding data levitating in translucent columns and geometric blooms. Millions of futures expanded and collapsed with small adjustments of the telescope’s knobs. The platform he stood on levitated.

This planet in his sight lines, so distant, already existed, but still does. Really, it’s only a short ride up the floors. Most of them were barren. This layer was one of many, and it was this executive’s job to figure out why it mattered and how it figured into the ensuing equations.

Ancient light again howled with Werewolves beneath a purple-hued Moon. A predator whimpering beneath the weight of his own stunted nature. The business suit rewound the footage repeatedly, streamlining the quality in dazzling sub-atomic resolution.

Entertaining, he had to admit.

He returned to a frame.

It was I who switched the time on his computer.

Two likes.

The business executive watched a chap sitting down with his wife and showing her this. They laughed together. Then another, a young student who had suffered at the hands of someone similar. His father killed his dog when he tried to speak up.

The business exec stood motionless, black curls framing a pale white face, black lips. Metrics overlaid on his eyes. No iris or sclera—only gears and metrics clinking into one another, forming what these folk in the ancient light would call eyes. Cosmic ancestors. His invisible eyes zoomed in.

“You want it to be him,” one of the surrounding intelligences observed. A mechanical eagle.

“I want it to be anything,” the man thought.

Because right now there were only fragments and contradictions.

Beyond the windows, planets drifted between the transit lanes like dust in sunlight. Somewhere below, two thousand layers away, a Walmart still sat beneath a purple moon. The only purple-hued moon recorded on their news feeds.

Distance, in the modern sense, had become a philosophical problem.

The planet’s memory only expanded. These endomorphic projections still existed.

Had this business exec so chosen, he could take this reprocessed sunlight and make it whole once again. Every aisle and shopper. Every passing thought and adjustment preserved in ancient photons.

Maybe he would run the simulation somewhere deep in space.

I spilled their id onto the internet.

The lone comment hung there and the business executive stared at it.

He didn’t even smile.

“Found you.”

The probabilities surrounding this man immediately began to collapse.