She laughed while he stumbled to stand on one leg…
Arthur’s knees shook, his hand gripping the barre for dear life. Behind the fake plant by the water cooler, Chloe’s phone recorded everything—every twitch, every misstep, every moment he wasn’t quite enough. Then she posted it. With sound effects. With commentary. With a laugh track. Over a million people watched and laughed at him, thanks to her.
I used to think I was lucky to have found Chloe’s class—safe, welcoming, warm. But now I know better. She played nice in person, and played god online.
She thought no one would ever find out.
She thought wrong.
By the end of this, she won’t be laughing. Not when the projector clicks on, the truth lights up the mirrored wall, and every quiet witness in that room finally sees her for who she really is.
Gentle Deception: More Than Just a Stretch
The air in the studio smelled of lavender oil and quiet effort. It was a scent I’d come to associate with relief. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I drove to this clean, sunlit room for “Joint Effort,” a class designed for people whose bodies had started keeping score. My scorecard was the persistent, grinding ache in my left hip, a souvenir from fifty-eight years of living.
Chloe, our instructor, floated around the room on a cloud of Lululemon and relentless positivity. “Beautiful, Sarah! Keep that core engaged. Remember your breath is your anchor.”
I breathed. My anchor felt like it was dragging along a rocky bottom, but I smiled back. Chloe had a way of making you want to try. She was barely twenty-five, with a cascade of blonde hair tied in a complicated knot and the kind of energy that suggested she’d never once woken up with a stiff back.
She moved over to Arthur, who was holding a light resistance band. At seventy-eight, Arthur was the patriarch of our little group of creaky joints. He was a widower, and I knew for a fact this class was the only thing that got him out of his apartment twice a week. He fumbled with the band, his papery skin creasing with frustration.
Chloe placed her hand gently on his. “Let’s try it this way, Arthur. Think of it like you’re pulling back a bow and arrow. Strong and steady.” Her voice was a perfect blend of encouragement and respect. We all watched, a silent chorus of approval. She was a good kid. She made this place feel safe.
After class, my daughter Lily was waiting for me in the lobby, her face illuminated by her phone. “Ready to go, Mom?”
“Just let me catch my breath,” I said, sinking onto the bench beside her. “Chloe kicked my butt today.”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, her thumb swiping furiously. “You have to see this toxic influencer I found. She’s the worst.” Lily angled her phone toward me, and the assault began.
A Familiar Venom
On the screen, a young woman with Chloe’s exact shade of blonde hair was narrating a workout video in a snarky, mocking voiceover. The person in the video, filmed without their knowledge, was an older woman struggling to get onto a yoga ball. Each time the woman wobbled, the influencer, whose handle was @FlexyLexi, made a cartoon “boing” sound effect.
“It’s like watching a baby deer learn to walk,” FlexyLexi’s voiceover sneered, “if the deer was a hundred years old and drunk on cheap gin.”
A wave of hot, secondhand embarrassment washed over me. “Oh, that’s just awful,” I said, pushing the phone away. “Why would anyone make that? Why would anyone watch it?”
“Rage-bait,” Lily said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She gets millions of views. People love to hate her.” She scrolled to another video. This one showed a man at a public gym, his form all wrong on a lat pulldown machine. FlexyLexi had superimposed text over the video: “He’s training to pull his own shoulder out of its socket.”
I felt sick. It was the violation of it—the assumption that a person’s private struggle was public entertainment. I was about to tell Lily to turn it off for good when I saw it. As FlexyLexi gesticulated wildly for the camera in her own intro, her wrist turned. There, on the delicate skin just below her thumb, was a small tattoo of a hummingbird, its wings outstretched in mid-flight, rendered in fine, black ink.
My breath hitched. It was the same tattoo Chloe had. I’d noticed it weeks ago when she was adjusting my form. I’d even complimented her on it. She’d beamed and said, “Thanks! It’s to remind me to always be light and seek out the sweetness.” The memory, once charming, now curdled in my gut.
An Anchor of Doubt
“What’s wrong?” Lily asked, noticing my expression.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image. “Nothing. Just tired.” It couldn’t be. It was a coincidence. Tattoos aren’t exactly unique, especially something as popular as a hummingbird.
The drive home was quiet. Lily chattered about her work, but my mind was stuck in the studio, replaying Chloe’s patient voice, her gentle hands, and then seeing that tattoo on the wrist of the cruel woman on the phone.
Mark was in the kitchen when I got home, wrestling with the lid of a pickle jar. He grunted, his face turning red. “This thing is hermetically sealed.”
I took the jar from him, tapped the edge of the lid firmly on the granite countertop, and handed it back. It opened with a satisfying pop. “It’s all about breaking the vacuum,” I said, the words feeling hollow.
“You’re a genius,” he said, kissing my forehead. “How was class?”
“It was fine,” I said, pouring a glass of water. I leaned against the counter, the cool stone a poor substitute for the certainty I craved. “Hey, Mark. A lot of young women have tattoos, right? Like, little birds or something?”
He crunched loudly on a pickle. “I guess. Lily’s got that weird moon thing on her ankle. Why?”
I tried to make my voice casual. “The instructor, Chloe, has a hummingbird on her wrist. And Lily just showed me this horrible video of some influencer who has the same one.”
Mark shrugged, already losing interest and reaching for another pickle. “So? It’s a big world, Sarah. Two people can have the same tattoo. It doesn’t mean they’re secretly the same person leading a double life as a fitness villain.”
He meant it to be reassuring, a simple application of logic. But his dismissal felt like a challenge. He was right, of course. It was an absurd leap. But the feeling—that cold dread that had seized me in the lobby—wasn’t logical. It was primal. It was the feeling of a mask slipping, just for a second, revealing something ugly underneath. I wanted him to be right. I needed him to be right. Because if he wasn’t, then the safest place I had found in years was actually the most dangerous.
The Search Begins
Sleep didn’t come. I tossed and turned, the image of the tattoo burned onto the back of my eyelids. Mark’s steady breathing beside me was a rhythm I usually found comforting, but tonight it just highlighted my own racing heart. This was stupid. I was a retired project manager, a woman who lived by spreadsheets and timelines, not wild, paranoid fantasies.
But I couldn’t let it go.
Slipping out of bed, I took my phone to the living room. The house was dark and silent. I sat on the couch, the glow of the screen painting my face in an unnatural blue light. My fingers trembled slightly as I opened my texts with Lily.
Me: Hey, honey. Sorry to bug you so late. What was the name of that influencer’s account again?
I stared at the screen, watching the three little dots appear and disappear.
Lily: @FlexyLexi. Why? You’re not actually going to follow her, are you? She’ll rot your brain.
Me: Just curious. Thanks. Go to sleep.
I typed “FlexyLexi” into the search bar of the app. The profile picture was a professionally shot headshot of a smiling, confident blonde. It looked a little like Chloe, but more polished, with more makeup. It could be anyone.
Then I clicked on the profile and began to scroll.
It was a nightmare library. Dozens and dozens of videos, each one a little square of casual cruelty. A man whose shorts were on backward at the squat rack. A woman who tripped on a treadmill. Each video was set to obnoxious music, plastered with captions designed for maximum humiliation. “Grandpa’s trying to get his groove back but he left it in 1978.” “Is this yoga or an exorcism?”
My stomach twisted. This wasn’t just “rage-bait.” It was a systematic campaign of mockery against the vulnerable, the unknowing, the people who were just trying. People like Arthur. People like me.
I kept scrolling, my thumb moving with a morbid, unstoppable momentum, pushing me deeper into the digital darkness. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I found it.
The Digital Rabbit Hole: Faces in the Footage
My eyes were burning from the screen’s glare, but I couldn’t stop. I scrolled back, weeks, then months. The videos blurred into a collage of other people’s worst moments. Then I saw a thumbnail that made my blood run cold. It was the water cooler from our studio. The angle was low, partially obscured by a faux-leafy plant the gym owners had put there to make the place feel “organic.”
The video was titled: “Some people fight their demons. This guy’s fighting gravity. (SPOILER: Gravity is undefeated).”
I pressed play.
The video was shaky, clearly filmed on a phone hidden behind the plant. It was focused on Arthur. It was from two, maybe three weeks ago. I remembered that day. He’d been having a bad day with his balance, frustrated but determined. The video showed him holding onto the barre for support, trying to do a simple standing leg lift. Each time his leg wavered, an idiotic “boing” sound effect played. When he finally stumbled and had to catch himself, the video zoomed in on his face, his expression of pure frustration, and a laugh track erupted.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was a fleeting, two-second clip at the very beginning. The person filming had fumbled with their phone, and for a split second, the camera had flipped, showing the filmer’s own face, wide-eyed with the thrill of her secret cruelty before she corrected it.
It was Chloe. No doubt. No filter, no professional lighting. Just her, in our studio, a smirk playing on her lips.
The phone slipped from my hand and clattered onto the hardwood floor. The sound was sharp and violent in the quiet house. I sat there in the dark, the silence pressing in on me, my own breath coming in ragged, angry gasps.
A Thousand Paper Cuts
I picked up the phone and forced myself to look at the rest of it. The video of Arthur had 1.2 million views. I scrolled down to the comments, a masochistic impulse driving me on. There were thousands of them.
“LOL he moves like a broken action figure.”
“My grandpa can fall better than that.”
About the Author
