Eli was excited. He was excited, and he was alone in his bedroom watching a livestream.

The stream wasn’t on any sort of corporate media site. The stream was on a website with a URL ending with the letters that began the name of whatever Central African or Eastern European country the server hosting it was located in.

Eli wasn’t watching a person play video games. He wasn’t watching a person play music or interview someone. He was watching a streamer named BH6X9 (A.K.A.”Babywhore666_69″) walk down a public street and talk into her cellphone.

Eli had been watching BH6X9’s streams for a few months, and he had become increasingly fascinated with her content.

BH6X9’s content didn’t include the typical flashing/teasing that other so-called “camgirls” engaged in. Instead, BH6X9 made long-form, elaborate, psychosexual stunts that she generously referred to as “pranks.”

The prank of BH6X9’s that Eli had liked the most was known as “Operation Shattered Dreams.” What Operation Shattered Dreams consisted of was, put simply, BH6X9 finding a married man, seducing him, and exposing the affair to his wife.

BH6X9 had found a candidate she liked for the “prank” after spending about thirty minutes searching through twitter profiles. She then sent her chosen victim some flirtatious banter, which evolved into sexting, which evolved into the sharing of explicit photos. Then BH6X9 leaked the evidence of this text based affair to her victim’s wife. This all happened much more quickly than Eli had expected.

BH6X9 had told her victim, whose name was Wayne, that her phone had been hacked by her own jealous ex-boyfriend. At first, he was sceptical, but BH6X9 never changed her story, and as his marriage continued to fall apart, Wayne began to believe her. Soon, Wayne wasn’t angry at BH6X9 at all. He told her he missed her.

The next few weeks of BH6X9’s content consisted of her “reacting” to the emails Wayne sent her about his struggles. She offered sympathy and flirtation, but always told Wayne that she “couldn’t get into anything serious right now.” Wayne, broken and alone, said that he understood, but continued to pine for BH6X9. He messaged her daily, unknowingly confessing his most personal fetishes and insecurities to the thousands of people who tuned into his object of desire’s streams. BH6X9 publicly mocked Wayne’s confessions in exchange for the money her followers supplied. This was her job.

“This whole thing is so fucking Satanic,” a user had typed in chat when BH6X9 read off a text from Wayne about how his wife had refused to offer him joint custody of their two children.

“Oh, you want to see Satanic?” BH6X9 responded. “Just wait until next week.”

That response served as the announcement of BH6X9’s next prank, which she dubbed “Operation Hail Mary.” This was the one Eli was sitting and watching, the one he knew was about to begin because BH6X9 was turning the camera to show a church.

“Okay, boys,” BH6X9 said. “I gotta put my phone in my pocket when I walk in. I’ll take it out as soon as I’m in the booth.”

Eli was excited in more ways than one. Yes, he thought that BH6X9’s content was funny, but he also found it erotic. The contrast of her young face and high, childlike voice with her shaved head and double tongue ring excited Eli. BH6X9 was so loving and encouraging to him and everyone else in her chat, and so mischievous and cruel to anyone she chose to target.

“Baby, you’re the Madonna AND the whore,” Eli typed in chat. He didn’t feel bad about calling her that. After all, she used that word to describe herself.

As the phone reappeared from her pocket, Eli saw, from the perspective of somewhere around her knee, BH6X9’s face draped with crossing lines of shadow and light. She was in a confessional booth.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four months since my last confession.”

“And what are your sins?” said a voice from the other side of the booth.

“I’ve been having impure thoughts,” said BH6X9. “I’ve been thinking of all sorts of sexual things to do with men.”

“I see,” said the father. “Impure thoughts can be quite dangerous, but if we look to the Lord, he can be our guide to proper action. Have you acted on these thoughts?”

“Yes,” said BH6X9. “I’ve had sex with all sorts of men. Men I barely know.”

“I see,” said the priest.

Eli laughed to himself. He could tell that things were about to get good. Knowing BHX69, he was sure that she had prepared all sorts of wicked things to say to the father. Yeah, this was going to be funny. And sexy.

“Some of the men know each other, though,” BH6X9 said. “I’ll fornicate with them all at the same time, a whole group.”

“Oh, my word,” remarked the priest. “This is a dreadful thing for you to be doing. Why would you…why would you do this to yourself?”

“I just like it,” BH6X9 said. “I like that I can make men happy by being used, by doing whatever they want. Sometimes I even do things that are dangerous, things that hurt me. I’ll let them…I’ll let them sodomise me, or choke me and hit me. I’ll let them cum, sorry, I mean, I’ll let them ejaculate onto my face, into my eyes if they want.”

Eli was laughing. This was so fucked up. This priest thought he had a real live nympho in his confession booth. He probably had no idea what to do. He probably even liked hearing her talk about this stuff. Poor guy probably hadn’t been laid in…

Eli heard a scream. “What the fuck are you doing?” BH6X9 said, in a voice much less high and cute than the one Eli was accustomed to hearing.

At the edge of the stream’s frame stood the priest. He didn’t look the way Eli had expected. He was old, yes, but his head was shaved and he seemed quite fit.

“You are playing a joke on me,” said the priest in a steady, calm voice. And then his hand engulfed the frame as he grabbed the phone.

“Hey, give that back!” shouted BH6X9.

Eli heard the sound of a struggle. When the frame stabilised, Eli saw the priest holding Babywhore666_69 by the back of her neck. His hand was woven through her tank top and underneath the strap of her bra. His fingers were digging into the flesh of her shoulder.

“You’re hurting me!” shouted BH6X9.

“You just confessed that you liked that,” said the priest.

There was a moment of pause as the priest stared into the phone’s camera. The chat was going crazy.

“Oh, shit.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He figured it out.”

“This motherfucker’s crazy.”

“You listen here, and you listen well,” said the priest. “I don’t know who you people are, but for you to put this girl up to this, this is an absolutely abysmal thing to do.”

“LET ME GO!” said BH6X9. She roughly yanked her body to the side, but didn’t even come close to freeing herself from the priest’s grasp.

“Not only are you hurting this woman,” said the priest, “you are hurting yourselves in the process. What good can your mind be to other people if this is the type of thing you’re fixated on?”

The priest took a deep breath. The stream’s feed was jiggling because the priest was shaking with anger. It made Eli feel sick.

“I spend a lot of my time in that confession booth,” said the priest. “I help people. Real people who are doing their best to live a good and honest life. These people have demons living within them that they need to contain so that they can continue to work and be productive enough to support their families. They are real people who really suffer. And for you all to waste my time, for you all to conspire to have this girl fashion herself into an object of lust for you, is a disgrace not only to God, but to yourselves.”

“I know what I’m doing. Let me go!” screamed BH6X9.

“Young lady, you do not have the slightest idea what you’re doing,” said the priest.

Then the priest pulled BH6X9 across the church. She punched and kicked at him to little effect. The two of them came to a rest next to the church’s fount.

“What is your name?” said the priest.

BHX69 said nothing.
Eli saw the priest roughly shake BH6X9 by the neck.
“Owww,” she said.
The priest shook her harder.
“Okay,” said BH6X9. “Emily. My name is Emily.”

The Priest threw the phone to the floor. It landed upright, but neither the priest nor Emily were visible. All Eli could see on his computer monitor was the elaborate mural on the ceiling of the church that showed a shepherd leading his flock to pasture.

Still, Eli could tell what was happening. He could hear the priest say, “Lord almighty, bless the mother who holds this child.” He could hear the priest say, “May almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit bless thee.” He could hear the splashing of water. Eli knew what he was hearing. He was hearing a baptism.

And then the baptism was completed and the priest retrieved the phone. Eli saw BH6…Emily standing by the fount. Her hair was slightly wet. She was crying and adjusting her clothes. The priest looked at the camera and spoke. “All of you. All of you have corrupted your spirits. Seek guidance. I am sure many of you do not believe in Heaven or Hell, but believe me when I say that you do not need to die to see Hell. I have spoken to many living people who’ve witnessed it. I will not allow this young woman to go there. And all of you, if you have any desire to preserve your own spirits, should do whatever you can to avoid seeing it for yourself. Repent, or you’ll be damned before you reach your grave.”

And then the screen said “babywhore666_69 is offline.”

“What a fucking nutcase,” said someone in the chat. “I hope our girl is okay,” someone else wrote. “She’s gotta sue him for all he’s worth,” said another. But Eli didn’t say anything. Eli turned off his monitor, and, realising that his pants were still undone, zipped up his fly and walked to his window.

Eli stared out at the nighttime street. It was quiet and peaceful. None of his neighbours knew what he had just done, but he knew. And he knew that he felt bad about it, and not just this night. He felt bad about every single one of the streams he’d watched in the past few months. He felt bad about laughing at Wayne as his life fell apart. He felt bad about not having a girlfriend.

Eli walked back to his computer. He turned on his monitor and went to Amazon and searched “King James Bible.” “Buy now with one click?” asked the website. Yes, thought Eli. And then he did.