Insatiable (Just a Taste #3)

PROLOGUE

The screen faded in on a black room with blue and green lights pointing up toward the ceiling. Two mics sat on the square black table. Behind the mics, a lit sign hung up on the wall, and it read DaTruth . A theme song played as the two men sat down.

On the left, a man was wearing thick sunglasses on his face. His small, shaped afro was clean, and several thick gold chains winked against the white light that shone down on them. He was someone who took pride in his appearance. A gold watch glinted on his wrist as he effortlessly slid headphones over his ears. Adjusting the mic, he cheated his seat to the side and showed off the green t-shirt emblazoned with the DaTruth logo.

The man on the right was less flashy. He wore a ratty hoodie that he’d pulled at nervously the second he took a seat. Small, healing cuts covered his face. He glanced nervously at the camera as he put the headphones over his ears. Straightening, he looked toward the man across from him and tried to mirror his body language.

The man on the left threw his hands out and grinned at the camera.

“Hey, yo, welcome to this special edition of DaTruth wit’ Bruce. We’re coming to you live from the studio in beautiful Oakland, California. I see we’re already ten-k on the live. I see y’all!”

Bruce turned his attention to the man across from him. The camera switched to one that had a closer view of the newcomer.

“You may recognize my guy. Some of you may know him as Curtis4k, streamer and entertainer.”

Bruce pressed a button that had the stream erupting into applause.

“You may also recognize him from the viral video going around where he was assaulted by his ex-female and her homegirl.”

Curtis fidgeted in his seat and adjusted his headphones, before giving a tight-lipped smile to the camera. The camera switched back to them both.

“Curtis, thanks for joining me, man. Can I start out by asking you how’ve you been doing?”

“I’m aight. Healing. Taking it day by day. Still out here in the Bay. I’m trying to find my feet and make sense of it all, ya know?” Curtis’s tone was arrogant and a bit over the top. It was a caricature he was playing.

“That’s good, man. That’s good.”

It was obvious Bruce didn’t give a shit how Curtis was feeling. His eyes were on the live feed screen near the camera, watching comments getting pinned by his producer. Emojis were flying, mostly mocking Curtis.

“Can you tell us a bit about what happened for those who haven’t seen the video of your assault?”

The camera zoomed in on Curtis again. He started to wring his hands in his lap.

“Yeah, I was streaming my boy’s new release, BakedFire. My girl came in and started talking reckless to me outta nowhere. She got like that sometimes, so I was trying to de-escalate the situation.” Curtis started talking with his hands instead of fidgeting. His eyes watched as the emojis began turning from laughing and crying faces to hearts and shocked faces.

“I could tell she was drunk and acting erratic,” he continued, “and that shit was concerning. I’d just proposed to her the night before, gave her flowers and shit, got down on one knee. I was telling her to chill.” The hearts started coming faster with a lot of rage faces. The viewers were eating up every word he said, and that emboldened him.

“Then she went on and on about leaving, but she was trashed. I couldn’t let her walk out like that. What kinda man would I be, dog? So, I grabbed her and tried to reason with her. That’s when her big ass homegirl came outta nowhere and maced me.”

Bruce made a long whistle as he shook his head. The view counter on the screen ratcheted up to thirty-k and Bruce was throwing up all kinds of emojis on the screen as viewers typed in comments about Curtis, the video, and the women who attacked him.

“Then they held a knife on me as she cleared all my shit out of the house.”

“Oh, for real? That’s cold. Females these days are audacious.” Bruce shook his head as he looked over at the live screen chat. A ton of comments were pinned to the top.

“Normally I’d talk a little bit more, but the feed is going crazy, my nigga. Thirty thousand people in here. Let’s get in some of these pinned questions before we keep going.”

Bruce cleared his throat and talked in a higher pitch.

“Negro, why in the hell were you with that fat bitch in the first place?”

Curtis shrugged his shoulders, “She was making me feel better about myself until she wasn’t. After she graduated, she started acting like she was better than me with her flashy job and all the money she had in her pocket.”

Bruce pressed a button on his keyboard and the screen flashed with a big “no one cares” graphic.

“So, you’re saying she thought she was one of those high-value women and a man couldn’t tell her shit,” Bruce said, coaching him into saying exactly what his viewers wanted to hear.

“Exactly. We know it’s important for a man to hold a woman down, but these females thinking they’re high value are out-of-pocket. They’re no better than us.” Curtis was beginning to feel himself now. He was reading all the comments in the thread as they zoomed by, agreeing with him and degrading women.

“I guess that makes sense, but, before I dive into that next question, I gotta know. Was the ring fake?”

Curtis balled up his fist and hit the table. “We picked that shit out together. It was what I could afford. She said she was happy with that. Then, suddenly, that big ass bitch got in her head and made her feel some kind of way and sicced her on me.”

Bruce’s mouth dropped open as he dramatically moved from the camera to Curtis. “So, you’re saying that female’s homegirl is the reason why all this went down?”

Curtis nodded so hard that the headphones almost came off his head.

“Hell yeah! Denise never stepped to me like that before.” Curtis kept talking, ignoring Bruce trying to interject. “Especially not in front of a bunch of people watching me, and she knew that I was streaming. Cleo was the reason—”

“Hey, my boy, we already talked about this. You can’t say their names,” Bruce said, his eyebrows coming together in concern.

Curtis was pissed, fire in his eyes as he leaned to stare directly at the camera and the viewers.

“Fuck that. Denise Roberts and Cleo Johnson assaulted and robbed me. Denise works at Foxx Ventures and Cleo works at some ghetto marketing firm. Do their bosses know who’s working for—”

The sound cut out as Curtis continued to yell into his microphone.

A graphic that said “Technical Difficulties” popped up on the screen, and the feed to the studio was cut. But the viewers continued to talk amongst themselves, sharing links and data in the chat about Denise Roberts and Cleo Johnson.