Patient ID: 9658

Name: Peter

Sex: Male

Case File: Viral

Notes: Peter a man in his early twenties shows signs of aggression and lack of sympathy for those around him. He has agreed to meet with me to discuss the events surrounding an incident with his brother in an attempt to become a viral sensation. Below is our conversation. – Transcribed by Reese Parker.

– Excerpt taken from Thaddeus Botgore Session #9658 recorded 2024

Viral

The internet is a big place. They say 4.13 billion users have access to an internet connection, that’s more than half the world. We didn’t always have the internet, I can’t imagine a time when that was true but my father told me about those dark ages. Search engines have been like a father to me. I’ve relied on the internet to complete reports and prove my friends wrong when they knew with absolute certainty that Napoleon was short. He wasn’t, he was 5 ‘6 that’s taller than average for french at the time. How my dad lived most of his life without access to this information I’ll never know. If I were him I’d feel robbed. To live a life without knowledge of the name of that plastic piece that sits at the ends of shoelaces (they’re called aglets) for most of your life sounds like a hellish nightmare but according to google, some dead guy named Thomas Gray said “ignorance is bliss.”

Before websites where you could post pictures of your dying grandmother existed, stories were told by word of mouth. I remember my dad telling me a story from when he was a kid. 

The story goes something like this…

Brandon Allec was out with his best friend and his friend’s family on a camping trip. Sometime during the middle of the day, Brandon and his friend decided to go for a hike. Brandon camping for the first time relied on his friends’ knowledge to conquer the rugged terrain. At some point, Brandon turned around and realized he was alone. Out of sheer panic, he kept running without knowledge of where he was going. The legend says it took three days to find Brandon and when they finally found him they said he was huddled in a log covered in his own shit. My dad said he went mad from fear. Fuck, imagine how viral something like that would have gone? Some people have all the luck. To this day Brandon is locked in a psych ward. I tried to find his contact info in hopes of interviewing him but hospitals for the mentally insane are surprisingly private with their patient records. 

Nine years ago on December 12th my parents came home and to my surprise they held a baby in their hands. The baby had a soft head and two different colored eyes. This is a condition known as heterochromia. Like the star of a freak show, Jack’s different colored eyes quickly became the talk of our small town. Not much goes on in our town. With a population of 15,000 everyone knows your business. My family was rather private so we spent most of our time inside where prying eyes couldn’t see. 

As a result of our reclusion, Jack and I grew up on the internet. At first, we discovered games like minesweeper and pinball but quickly grew bored of those. It was shortly thereafter we discovered a website dedicated to posting videos of yourself. This website was great. People shared windows into their personal lives and for Jack and I, it was a way to escape the house without actually going anywhere. 

My mom grew up on the east coast and only experienced summer a few months out of the year. In an attempt to vicariously live through us she would insist, no, demand we play outside. 

I don’t know your knowledge of summers in Arizona but the average summer day is hot enough to cook your skin like a roasted ham. You could smell the burning flesh as the searing warmth slowly baked your top layer of skin a savory golden brown. 

In an attempt to avoid the scorching heat we would visit our friend down the road Jacob Backbore. 

Jacob was a mild-mannered kid. Both his parents were doctors and raised him with the paranoid delusions that everything could kill him. Typical for a Jewish mother, she meant well but put the fear of God into him. Jacob was taller than most kids on the block; he had a big nose and wiry curly untamable hair he would call his “Jewfro”. He was the only Jewish person we knew but my parents thought it was important we learn about culture not our own so they let us spend as much time at his house as we wanted. 

What they didn’t know was his parents were never home. Both his parents were surgeons and were often on call at the hospital across town. With Jacob in charge of himself, we would look at his house as a mini vacation. 

When we visited we would spend most of our time searching prank videos. 

I remember this one guy who would step out of the bushes with mangled clothing and a bent bike claiming he was just hit by a car. The driver that helped him would be horrified by his injuries only for that horror to turn into anger when they realize it was all a joke. The drivers may not have liked it but we loved it! 

There was this other guy who would pretend to carry a baby only to “slip” and let it fall hitting the hard concrete of a busy city street. People would drop their coffee, let go of their dogs and laptops in an attempt to catch the child before it met its demise. When they realized it was a toy the look on their face was priceless. 

We always spoke about making a prank video but never knew what it would be about.

Chapter 2

It was a hot day when they left me in charge. 

This was the first time I was alone with Jack. It was nice that they trusted me enough. Jack and I planned our day as they were heading out the door. They left us money on the counter to order a pizza. Extra sauce and mushrooms were Jack’s favorite. Shortly after my parents left we relished the idea of freedom. Out of pure excitement, we started jumping on the couches. The cheap springs recoiled and released, lifting us to what felt like a hundred feet in the air but that only lasted a few minutes until we got bored and decided to eat ice cream and watch cartoons. 

By eleven we were bored of the cartoons and decided to watch prank videos. 

We watched a video of kids filling balloons full of mayonnaise and throwing them at unsuspecting cars on the freeway. It was hilarious, one car almost crashed into those concrete barriers they put up to stop drunk drivers from swerving into the forest. But of all the videos we watched, my favorite was from a channel called “ChaoticGood”. 

He was the most popular prank channel on the internet. One time he went into a public bathroom at a local coffee shop and poured concrete in the toilet. An hour later the entire store was up to their ankles in toilet water. They said the damage was so bad they had to close the store and relocate down the street just to get rid of the smell of shit. 

One day I hope to be as funny as him. 

That’s when we had an idea! 

Let’s start a channel and make a prank video! If it’s good enough, we’ll even go viral! 

Our first video had to be good. Something you can’t help but share. 

Eat a tablespoon of cinnamon?

Not funny enough. 

Pour ice-water on my sleeping brother? 

Too boring. 

It’s hard to think creatively when you’ve been raised in a bubble your entire life. My mother’s a health-nut, the kind where everything causes cancer. Having soda in the house was a luxury reserved for Christmas. Most men hide pornography or a mistress but my dad was different. My dad’s love affair wasn’t with a person but sweets. My mom didn’t know about it at the time but my dad kept a secret stash of sweets in his office. Let me rephrase that, his collection of candies, gummies, chocolate, and soda was enough to put Willy Wonka in a diabetic coma. He didn’t know it, but once in a while, I snuck a bottle or two of soda. I’ll never forget the first time I tried soda. The bubbles danced on my tongue like an explosion of a thousand little fireworks. It was ecstasy in a little glass bottle. Ever since that first hit, I’ve been hooked.

At the time, Jack didn’t know about the man cave but that day felt like the perfect opportunity to pass the torch. I brought him downstairs where my dad’s home office was. Normally, we’re not allowed in there without his supervision but what he didn’t know can’t hurt him and as some dead guy named Thomas Gray once said “ignorance is bliss.” My parents must have trained Jack well because like an obedient dog Jack stood at the cherrywood threshold too scared to pass through. I grabbed two bottles of that liquid bliss from my dad’s hidden mini fridge and we made our way back upstairs.

We talked more about ideas for a video and that’s when we came across a genre known as “viral challenges”. You may have heard of them. People do dares and upload it online. After they complete the dare they challenge their friends to do it. We watched one where a boy fills his bathtub with water and holds his head underwater until he passed out. There was another where a man would smack a stranger in the middle of the street and run away. They’re so funny! As we scrolled over a list of videos Jack noticed a thumbnail of a bottle of soda exploding like a volcano. We clicked it in curiosity. As it turns out if you mix soda and Mentos a chemical reaction happens that causes the soda to erupt in a violent explosion. We’re not talking about shaking a bottle and opening it, I mean cover your parent’s imported Persian rug and drapes in a mint-flavored soda kind of explosion.

Jack was excited to try it. I didn’t know for certain but there was a good chance our dad had Mentos amongst his treasure trove of diabetic delights. I headed back downstairs into his office in hopes of finding those disgusting mint-flavored candies generally reserved for grandmothers and smokers. Ta-da! Under a pile of half-eaten snickers and a melted Hershey bar is an unopened package of Mentos. My next dilemma. I can open the package so we can make the video but Dad would know I opened it and my secret sugar-filled oasis comes to a crashing halt. Without hesitation, I took the whole package. Such is the cost of going viral.

We set the camera up in the living room. I was too short at the time to reach the mantle so we piled old copies of Time Magazine and those National Geographic, you know the ones with the African tribes with the plates in their lips? On the coffee table to get the camera positioned high enough.

Jack sat on the couch while I adjusted the camera to assure we both fit in the frame. I hit record and rushed over to the couch to sit next to Jack.

“Hi! I’m Peter and this is my little brother Jack!” Jack waved at the camera as if someone was watching. I don’t think he fully understood what we were doing but that’s okay, I could carry the load. I looked at the camera with a big smile and said “We’re about to do the Mentos Challenge!”

I was so excited I could barely speak, everything led up to this moment. We’ll look back years from now after we’re viral celebrities like ChaoticGood and remember how it all started.

I handed Jack a Mentos. That’s when I had a great idea!

I nudged Jack and said. “Instead of putting it in the bottle, what if you ate the Mentos and drank the coke?”

He shrugged and put a handful in his mouth. Watching him chew a handful of Mentos didn’t look easy. He still had most of his baby teeth, I could see him struggle to break the exterior egg-like shell. After a few minutes of chewing with mostly his front teeth, Jack swallowed them all.

It will probably come out of his nose I thought. This HAS to go viral.

I wasn’t wrong.

As I handed Jack the soda his eyes lit up. You could see the pleasure in his face the moment the first drop hit his tongue. The sweetness overload is a once in a lifetime experience. Cherish it kid, soda will never taste this good again.

Jack finished the whole bottle in minutes and let out a burp so loud I thought the roof would cave in.

We waited five minutes and nothing happened.

We kept the camera rolling just in case.

 After another ten minutes of waiting, we kept the camera rolling but didn’t expect much. We put on Looney Toons, Jack’s favorite. It was the episode where Wile E. Coyote would try to catch the Road Runner. I always loved how confident Wile E. Coyote was until it was too late, by that point it would blow up in his face. Classic comedy.

A few minutes into the show Jack started complaining of a tummy ache. He can be a baby at times so I brushed it off. 

About a minute later he started wincing and holding his stomach. I told him to go to the bathroom but he said he couldn’t get up. He’s such a baby.

I tried to help him up and that’s when he SCREAMED! I’ll never forget the bloodcurdling primal make the hair on the back of your neck stand up sound that came from this little nine-year-old boy.

It was that moment when I noticed his stomach was big and round. “Was it always this big?” I thought to myself. Maybe he ate too much ice-cream.

I tried to get Jack to the bathroom but every time he moved he let out that hysterical scream reserved for those tortured at Guantanamo Bay.

After several attempts, I was finally able to get him to the bathroom.

He looked like he was going to be sick. The only time he stopped screaming was when he inhaled so he could gather enough precious oxygen to belt out another ear-shattering scream.

I knew I needed to deal with this before my parents came home. I’m an adult. Adults don’t call their parents, they handle things themselves. 

I told Jack to lean forward while sitting on the toilet with hopes to push the gas along his digestive tract. 

At this point, he was so bloated he couldn’t bend over. His stomach looked like it was going to explode. 

That’s when it happened. He blew chunks everywhere. In seconds the entire bathroom was redecorated in bile and mint-chocolate chip ice-cream.

So we had a lot to clean up, at least he’d be fine by the time mom and dad came home.

My parents are obsessed with those nature documentaries. Every Sunday night as a family we would sit in the living room and learn about the wonders nature has to offer. I remember learning about Yellowstone Park. They say Yellowstone sits on a giant volcano that’s been dormant for millions of years, as a result, Yellowstone contains more geysers and hot springs than any other place on the planet. There’s one geyser that goes by the name “Old Faithful” It got this name due to it shooting a hot stream of pressurized water every 35-120 minutes like clockwork. Every year tourists gather in hopes to see the geyser erupt. Geologists Claim Old Faithful erupts 17 times a day. This may seem like a lot but at least the geyser has moments of respite.

I wish my brother had that luxury.

Since the vomiting started, he hasn’t stopped.

As he tried to talk you could hear the pain as the bile from his stomach ate away at the lining of his esophagus. 

He’s been throwing up for so long we’re starting to see blood.

The poor thing.

The blood started as a small spec but now it’s a lot more and much thicker almost like a blackberry jam. He’s exhausted. You can tell because he’s so pale, he can barely speak or even keep his eyes open. He looks almost as if he’s falling asleep.

I tried my best to hold him up so he can get most of the vomit into the toilet but it’s hard, there’s blood and stomach acid all over the floor. I can’t seem to get my footing without slipping. The smell of iron and bile is enough to make me want to vomit. I need some fresh air.

I left him for just a minute while I went to get more paper towel from the kitchen.

That’s when my parents came home.

I’ll spare you the details but as it turns out, Mentos and soda explode with enough force to rupture every organ. The skin, however, has the elasticity to stretch to twice its normal size. Instead of your body swelling like a balloon, your organs swell until the pressure against the stomach wall is so hard the organs rupture causing an organ and stomach stew to brew inside you like a human crockpot.

The doctors said they’ve only seen internal damage of this extent in fatal motor vehicle accidents.

The surgery alone cost my parents their home. 

The ridicule from the media cost them their jobs. People started throwing things at our house, leaving hateful messages at our door about how my parents are unfit to care for us. Some YouTube celebrities even came to our house to make videos on the incident.

After everything that happened, I have a lot of regrets, but the silver lining is, we did go viral!

The End

Botgore: Peter, do you know why you’re here today?

Peter: court order.

Botgore: well, more than that do you know why we’re talking?

Peter: it was over a decade ago. A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t thought about it.

Botgore: And what have you learned from that experience?

Peter: hmm, I guess…if the cost of fame is a pound of flesh, better someone else’s than your own.

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