Solby One Shots ✔

39.Liveshow with an Illness

"Hey guys!! How are you guys doing ?" I beam into my laptop smiling to myself as I see the excitement-filled flood of comments streaming through the chat.

"Has everyone had a good day?" I inquire and hundreds of "It was good", "AMAZING" and "Alright I guess," messages appear right in front of my eyes.

It's really hard for me to imagine that each tiny row of text is a real person watching me, a real life that I am directly influencing, I don't really understand how I have this audience but I love it nonetheless. The next 20 minutes are filled with random anecdotes, terrible jokes and a wide variety of questions for me to answer from the people that watch my videos; overall it is an incredible feeling. Though, my happiness is soon shattered.

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I try to ignore it, I really do - after all people can tolerate much worse pain without making a scene. But the feeling is sudden, and takes me by surprise, a somehow sharp but dull pain spreads through my abdomen, a hazy mixture between the two sensations with the occasional added cramp.

I bite my lip and focus on the screen in front of me, the words slightly blurring but I can just about manage to read them. I carry on through another 10 minutes of strenuous torture, the feeling occasionally subsiding but re-appearing a couple of minutes later with a crashing wave of a throbbing soreness. As I speak my hands begin to tremble and a cold rush flows through my body causing a violent shiver to ripple through me.

But most of all, my energetic live-show mood was slipping away from me, I can almost feel myself getting more irritable, tetchy and sulky as the minutes drag by. Not only is the irritating, exasperatingly slow ticking of the clock on a mission to leave as much time between the ticks as possible, each click seems increasingly loud. Every, snap pummelling into my head and hammering into my skull.

I squeeze my eyes closed, and keep them locked a moment too long to attempt to relieve the pain, and when I open them, I am greeted by the blinding light of the screen in front of me, the light that burrows into my head that's beginning to pound and throb.

A sour taste forms in my mouth and my stomach lurches a bit as the smell of my burning candle on the table interrupted my thoughts, it was too sweet, too sickly.

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Yet, I don't say anything. I believe a couple of viewers have noticed something off about my personality, but there is not such an overwhelming amount that the regular flow of comments is interrupted, at least - not at first.

At a particularly bad stage where my constant concentration on not throwing up the contents of my stomach was high and the pressure in my stomach hit me with a stabbing pain, most of the inbox was filled with concerned messages. I've become increasingly aware of the fact I can't struggle through this for much longer, my urge to vomit was getting too high and concentration was slipping and sliding all over the place.

"Colby," I call weakly across the house towards my boyfriend who I think is currently editing a video, "can you come entertain the people for a minute?" I'm proud of getting through the sentence without stuttering to be quite honest, the shivers and flickering pains spreading everywhere throughout my body.

Mild aches are forming in my leg muscles and back, a cause unexplainable, but it was a pain all the same.

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"Why Sam?" he responds, strolling into the room smiling, at any other time, I would have stared, found him cute and endearing, but now? I need to leave the room as quickly as physically possible oblivious to my queasiness and excruciating headache. I manage a weak smile at him before clamping my lips shut.