Page 46 of Rule the Night

I scrolled through the comments.

These 304s are as dumb as they are used up.

My woman knows who’s in charge in my house and she likes it.

Don’t be a simp for women like this, bros.

The usual.

I paused the video, reported it for hateful and disparaging content, then opened my encrypted messaging service on my phone. I only used it to talk to the group of women I’d met through the Ethan Todd channel, and I saw that the chat was hopping: over thirty new notifications since I’d logged on the night before the Hunt.

They were talking about the latest videos, dissecting Ethan Todd’s logic, using facts to dismantle his arguments in a way that would have been pointless online. The men who listened to that crap couldn’t be reasoned with, and definitely not by a woman.

Jslittlesis: Another day, another fucked-up message from the incelosphere.

I used the username because it made me feel closer to June. She might have been gone, but I’d always be her little sister.

I heard June’s laughter in my head.You weren’t saying that back when I was bossing you around.

It was true, but how could I have known that one day I would give literally anything to have one more day of being bossed around by June?

Nat8965: You’re back!

Jslittlesis: Yeah, sorry. Picked up an extra shift at work.

Fuzzywuzzy: Have you seen the latest?

Jslittlesis: Unfortunately.

Nat8965: Sick bastard.

Jslittlesis: I assume you reported?

Fuzzywuzzy: As soon as we saw it. You?

Jslittlesis: Yep, for all the good it will do.

The platform that hosted the Ethan Todd channel had never, not once in all the times we’d reported his videos, taken action against them.

Nat8965: Ugh. This sucks.

Jslittlesis: Any word on the investigation?

Fuzzywuzzy: The usual.

Jslittlesis: I’m not at liberty to comment on active investigations?

Fuzzywuzzy: That’s the one.

I sat back in my chair. Ethan Todd had a long and infamous past, from MMA fighter to reality-TV-show contestant to podcast star. But he was more than the poster boy for toxic masculinity: rumor had it, he was under investigation for sexual assault and sex trafficking.

He’d also been a hero to Chris, June’s boyfriend, in the months before he’d murdered my sister.

Nat8965: I wish someone would do the world a favor and shut his mouth for good.

I stared at the words on the screen. They seemed disconnected from me, like I was reading them in a novel even though “someone” had tried to do the world a favor.

Me.