Slice of Life by Andi Delott

At first, most of the partygoers thought it was a joke. A stunt. Part of the entertainment, surely. After all, they were promised a show. They’d been raised on a steady diet of the extreme, each video of the influencer somehow more outrageous than the last. Expectations were high, palpable. The thought of disappointing her followers never entered her mind, nor theirs.

They put her up on this pedestal, literally. Some guests allowed use of their hands, knees, shoulders to step atop a column making her the highest point in the crowd. “Statuesque,” one follower later described to the officers as way of explanation for their collective inaction. Her feet at eye-level forced her admirers to uncomfortably crane their necks. Seconds before, an attendee posted that the influencer compelled humanity to look up, for once. Ironically, that guest was looking down, posting that very comment when it happened. Many were loath to admit that they missed it, too; their heads buried in their phones at the exact moment. No matter. They could watch it on a loop, each view making it one of the most watched videos of the week.

“Sabrage,” she said as she held the sabre in one hand and magnum of champagne in the other. Few understood the word, but they liked how it sounded, how she caressed the long soft g, unnecessarily extending the syllable with her vocal fry. She considered her speech pattern one of her signatures, though at times she unknowingly emphasized the wrong part of a word. 

The sabre was a gift, as were most things she wore or used in front of the camera or live audiences. Though the sabre-maker did enjoy a brief surge in sales while she was a trending topic, ultimately her ambassadorship proved fatal to their business. The niche site AllTheWorld’sABlade.com referenced the sabre-maker as collateral damage. Capitalizing on SEO, the site received more daily unique hits than they’d seen since their launch.  

“Don’t call it a knife.” She corrected a guest and silently congratulated herself. She explained its French history to make it seem her own, priding herself on retelling a story that had been told to her, or maybe lifted from Wikipedia. As she had famously said, “You just gotta own it.”

Some speculated it was that catchphrase which lulled everyone into watching. Waiting. They assumed she was, in her own words, owning the moment. Even as blood gushed, poured really. According to one guest whose own post was viewed 4,726 times, “That’s why I thought it was, like, fake. Like, how was I supposed to know that, like, blood could just, like, you know… it just happened so… fast.” 

In fact, it took her a full three minutes, forty-seven seconds to completely bleed out, according to the multiple videos posted. So many guests live-streamed the event that YouTube audiences could enjoy a full 360° view of her accident/act/art. Followers debated what they should call it, what she would call it, if she could. 

Months earlier, one blogger again used the social media star’s own words against her, commenting on her meteoric rise, to which she chaffed, reminding him that at 19, she had been working her whole life to get to where she was. “Time’s a bitch.” She’d been quoted as though she coined the phrase. Never one to miss an opportunity, she monetized it, selling out of watches embossed with that phrase that didn’t, as it turned out, tell time. “The ultimate meta-meta,” she explained away complaints. She was unsuccessful in her suit against the Chinese manufacturer. 

One culture blogger faced a fierce backlash for her post praising the performance. A 500-word piece entitled “What it really means to cut off your nose to spite your face.” She was briefly cancelled until weeks later she leveraged the “cancel-motion” phrase, laying claim to the combination of the words cancel and emotion, securing a lucrative book deal. The publishing house that won the bidding war pinned their hopes of rebirth on the teen phenom.

Even after the funeral, some followers were convinced that the paramedics, police, coroner, even her parents’ impassioned pleas were all part of the show. Those fans were still waiting for her to pop out of a metaphorical cake. And when she did, they’d be proved right. Was there anything more important?

The rash of sabrage performances-cum-suicides in the following days was met with neither shock nor surprise. Some in her industry saw it as the highest form of praise, though after the fourteenth death, people tired of the act. It was the last one, done with a common paring knife, that was roundly critiqued for not staying true to form. It barely got any views.

Andi Delott is a screenwriter and novelist. Her script BEING SEEN won at the 2020 Nantucket Film Festival. She was an NBC Writers On the Verge participant. Her scripts have earned a Stowe Story Labs/Page Awards Fellowship and acceptance into the New York Women in Film & Television Writers Lab.