Dark Fantasy · Horror · The Plot Calls Anthology · 15 septembre, 2025

The Plot Calls #35 : "Canceled Disdain"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Portia Vale never whispered her anger. She shouted it.

Her rants were lightning rods: scathing takes about frauds, cheats, abusers. Hashtags. Cancel campaigns. People trembled when she typed. Viral outrage was her currency. She bought clout with every accusation.

But the applause quieted. The targets vanished. Bans and accounts closed cleaned the stage. The algorithms shifted. She screamed into emptiness. Room-sized silence echoed back.

Late one night, as she refreshed her feed, a whisper crept from her laptop screen. Low. Voiceless. Something beneath static. Something familiar.

The words didn’t appear. But the pull did.

Portia closed her laptop, left her apartment in heels and rage, and followed the pull into a dim alley behind her high-rise building.

Moonlight fell on a pulse: black‑violet soil gathering amid garbage and cracked cobblestone.

A porcelain hand rose from the center. Delicate. Beautiful. Expectant.

Portia knelt and pulled from her phone the video that launched her empire—a seething expose that went viral.

She dropped it into the palm.

The hand closed. The soil exhaled softly, as if breathing itself alive.

The next morning, her subscriber count exploded. Her vengeful, venmous, wrathful content soared across platforms again. Targets took notice. Sponsors returned. Her outrage fuelled the outrage economy anew.A culture of anger that offered no solution only pride, excuses for lust and gluttony, moral and intellectual sloth of character expressed in wrath that sought to be envied as a means of merit.

Portia was another mouth with no stomach, no gut, and thus no gut feelings that spouted on and on about the swamp and how to drain it without ever defining what the swamp actually was because she couldn't see she was already in it, part of it, perpetuating it. She didn't understand the ocean, the rivers or the streams because Portia and those like her were the filth they hated most. They gravitated toward each other like flies on garbage while seeking for someone to clean the garbage they sustained themselves on. That' was the "what" that composed the "who" that they were as individuals.

Portia made a pact to fill her feed and shout her name, and attack a world that mirrored the face behind her name. A world without thought or shame that played a pointless game to scream in someone's face that she was special because of a insignifance of self that she thought she had overcame. In short, a narcissistic game of worthless aim.

She amassed followers and padded her digital walls with murals ablaze in a lion's tongue. Though her pocket, purse, and boards remained full, her soul, heart, and mind were emtpy. Her cup was incapable of running over as there was no cup. She was an opening that spiewed venom. The hunger to satiate her wrath never left.

Every new follower required fresh fury.

Every new sponsor demanded more content—insight was the past, indignation was the present, and accelerating collapse was the future.

Portia chased return clicks before sleep. She scheduled scandalous posts like sutras: morning threads, afternoon shorts, midnight compilations of those who deserved the ire of society without examining or investigating, only shouting into the hole that her followers dug for themselves and wallowed in like swine bathing in their own feces, confusing the comfortable coat of crap for soothing, cooling mud. Catharsis for the narcisists.

Over time, Portia's reflection blurred in office glass. Webcam fatigue gave her skin a waxy sheen. Her pulse slowed; she found herself muted in meetings. She scoffed and chopped it up to being, "In In her own flow." What was her flow? Portia didn't know, but in true Portia fashion, she didn't care. She had her sermon on the digital mount. She was above reproach.

And yet, she couldn’t remember the last time she felt enraged for herself. Her voice? Silent. On camera, she mouthed words. Offline, she lived in a quiet, hollow despair. When she sought to find herself, no one was there.

One by one, real humanity vanished: friends no longer wanted to chat on her blogs, podcasts, shorts, videos, and posts. Every new lover fled Portia like a terrible workplace. A revolving door of poor management, bad pay, hollow promises, and no sustainable benefits. Portia could pose for Tinder, but angles couldn't hide the lackluster, disappointing cesspool of drama that was her company. She was a swamp and anyone who stood with her sank into her emotional orbit, gasping for a breath of clean air, fresh water, and a feeling one could get from being real with another human.

Genuine interactions were replaced by filtered examples, branded applause, rehearsed outrage. Everything functioned like a performance—and Portia was the star actor with an empty script.

Eventually, only red static filled her feed, reflecting Portia's inner world.

Trojan zip files. Deepfakes. Old rants. AI-generated rage garnished with meme music and framed in nostalgia.

Her comment sections became ghost towns.

Late one night, she scrolled until her fingers shook. The screen flickered, but no alerts came.

That’s when the Idle Man appeared. His face repeated in every image, every post, and every video in her feed. Pale. Hollow. Idle.

No words. Just a still face ebdlessly repeating as she scrolled.

Hollowing herself, Portia felt the final semblance of an emotion: fear.

She tossed her phone and tried to cry into her hands. But, her tears stung like her venomous legacy.

Who was she really angry at? Was it her parents? Was it a her third grade teacher? Was it the boyfriend she pushed away? Was it herself?

What was she trying to teach the world? Why? Why couldn't she make people beautiful and happy like Mira Solis?

She sighed. It didn't matter. She was tired. Portia lied on the ground, her body weak, lethargic. She drifted to sleep.

One evening, Portia arranged another live reveal: a broadcast promising new data on "fraud and exploitation." She sat beneath studio lights. Microphones were live. Remaining followers logged in.

Her face was hollow. Her voice rehearsed. Her heart absent.

Portia spoke in static. Viewers watched intrigued. More eyes tuned to her rambling downfall.

Portia didn't see the cameras or lights any more. She didn't even hear her own words, let alone the thoughts behind them.

Portia only heard The One Beneath. The Plot called. Her mind saw black‑violet, pulsing soil, shimmering as a beautiful, glistening porcelain hand reached for sustenance.

She walked off camera mid‑stream, walked past lights and cables, slipped out the door, and stumbled to the alley that wshipered her name.

The smartphone in her hand vibrated endlessly with notifications—but she didn’t look. Portia's hand went limp as she knelt by the plot. She dropped her phone.

The porcelain hand extended. Still waiting. The One Beneath demanded to be fed. Portia had no wrath, and no trinkets imprinted with what remained of her rage.

She collapsed there, chest tightening. Breaths slowed.

The Idle Man knelt beside her.

Her phone’s screen was next to her ear. Portia stared at it, tears trailing digital glow.

The whisper came—not into her ears, but into the gut of her feed.

Her face paled. Her voice weakened. She exhaled, empty.

The plot fed once more.

Portia’s profile went dark.

Not banned. Not deactivated. Just silent. Infinite scroll. No voice. No presence.

The plot shimmered in the alley. Cold. Final.

The Plot and the Idle Man shifted, turnign Sideways. In the empty alley, the Idle Man faintly whispered: