I think the video opens up on the guy saying “And I don’t want to see you crying.” But of course she’s crying a bit already, face puffed out and hair frayed in a way that, when combined with the ominous security-cam-like energy of the half-length shot (and ambiguity of the camera placement) makes the whole thing look like a hostage video. You can see what look like granola bar wrappers on the floor and the bed doesn’t have any sheets. It’s either night or the blinds are drawn, and the off-camera light above them has that anemic yellow tinge that older indoor lights do. He’s in a white shirt and saying “Just stop it, we haven’t even begun,” and she’s saying “Why are you doing it like this?” And he’s looking in control and annoyed, clearly just wanting to get a start on things. At this point, I think, is when he draws out something that looks like a conductor’s baton and presses a button on the laptop, and the TV screen behind him blinks alive. It displays what’s definitely one of the default title slides in PowerPoint, text artlessly dropped in the middle saying something we can’t read from here. Here it becomes clear that this is neither torture nor porn. At no point in the video does anyone elucidate things for viewers who might not have the whole context, who might not know that G.B. Brooks used to post this stuff all the time and that his accounts keep getting deleted on all the other sites, and that he filmed in foreclosed apartments, and what’s in my opinion the most puzzling aspect, that it’s somehow a different woman every time. And he’d make these often. I thought it likely he’d filmed them, wrung them out in digital memory, and scrubbed it all way, way ahead of time. So when I found G.B. Brooks on ProtonMail and told him I’d pay for them, if he’d send them to me and not post them here, and that I didn’t want my site sullied by this nastiness, and he said he’d be filming another the next night and I could decide which one if I paid a bit more than I wanted to, I wondered if it was the same G.B. Brooks or if it was someone new. When G.B. Brooks left, or it looked like he’d left, someone said they almost missed him. Nobody loved him. When MasterCard blacklisted my site, it must’ve been for this one. It’s not the worst thing G.B. Brooks ever posted, but it’s up there. When the girl’s parents come into play, things get dicey. G.B. Brooks always pulls it out, though, and he deftly does here. This is the one where people saw the window in the second part, and found from the angle of the flagpole where in New Hampshire G.B. Brooks was, and that one guy said it was near his house and he could check it out. And the photos made it clear, but G.B. Brooks was already gone. That teased them, that’s what set them off, that G.B. Brooks had up and left without a message for them. And for a week or so, I’d ban anyone that mentioned the name “G.B. Brooks,” but they just called him Books or the Flask Guy instead and I couldn’t keep up, so I just let them run hog wild. That’s when they went back through everything G.B. Brooks posted and realized for the first time how much he’d made. And they did the math and even if he was like 30, he’d have to’ve made them every other week since college. Or he was making them every day, but I didn’t think that, and they didn’t think that. Someone posted that if someone found G.B. Brooks and got a full name before Christmas he’d send them a hundred dollars. Presently he was not joking. And then G.B. Brooks tried to pull everything, but I reversed the request and he popped up again. He said more was coming. I told him I didn’t want that shit, but nobody listened, and I acquiesced, and now I wish I hadn’t, because all anyone says is “G.B. Brooks, G.B. Brooks!” But I was maybe the most curious of all, and so I let them do anything. Of course, after word got out properly, it was only a matter of time until someone found one of the girls in New Hampshire given how their ranks continued to swell. In an uncharacteristic episode of morality the guy wouldn’t give her name or pictures, but insisted she was real and from the audio it’s difficult to disbelieve. She says at first she thought he wanted to touch her, but once things became clear and he brandished the equipment, she knew he was legit and that the videos are actually edited, and he films for at least two hours but cuts it down for our viewing benefit, but that she’d been scared ever since that G.B. Brooks might come back to her for some “greatest hits” sort of deal, and she wanted no part of that. I contacted the guy who put up the audio and said I’d pay good money if he could tell me how to find the girl, but I got no response. He knew I just wanted to find G.B. Brooks and wouldn’t help me for anything in the world. The girl also said G.B. Brooks stunk of nicotine and had grease stains on his white shirt. She said G.B. Brooks was six foot four and had eyes so sunken in they looked like they might collapse into his sinuses. I am changing the CSS background-color on the main board from black to dark gray. Despite PayPal shutting us out, donations are up 15 percent.