The Last Web Chat (short story)

The Last Web Chat is an unfinished short story written by Matthew Little in 2013 and published in 2017. It centers around a teen named Michael, and catalogs his last summer of freedom bonding with a girl he meets online named Jessica. The friendship, which bordered between friendly and romantic, turns catastrophic once Michael learns Jessica is being emotionally abused by her alcoholic mother.

Plot
The story takes place in Massachusetts; it is presented as a true telling of an experienced Michael, newly graduated from high school, had during his last summer of freedom before his parents would eventually make him start looking for work. He spends his time online, writing poetry and publishing them on a poetry forum, and occasionally logs onto a webcam chat site in hopes to find someone to talk to.

One night he meets Jessica a girl around his age from Virginia who doesn't immediately decline to talk. He finds out she is artistic too; she sculpts various objects and animals from hard clay. At the end of the night they decide to exchange information so the two can keep in contact.

They end up chatting almost nightly; they discuss various art related things and eventually open up about one another. Michael finds out after an awkward disconnection that Jessica lives with her alcoholic mother, who blindly drinks vodka and listens to country music at an irritating volume. One night he witnesses Jessica's mother drunkenly barging into her room and berate her as she cries. The next day while talking about Jessica to his best friend, Rachelle, he realizes that he really cares for her, and wishes he could do something.

A little while later he goes to chat with Jessica but something seems off to her. As her mother's music plays in the background he asks what's wrong and she confesses that she had taken a bunch of pills. He pleads for her to make herself throw up but she refuses. Having no clue about how he could help, if that were at all possible, he keeps her talking as an attempt to keep her away, but he eventually watches her die on camera. He tries to yell for her to wake up, but he could see that her chest wasn't going up or down. He watches her for a few more moments while in shock that he had just watched somebody kill themselves, and then cries himself to sleep.

The next day he checks to see if she was still there and through the feed sees that she hadn't moved a muscle. He sits on his bed and narrates that she had meant a lot to him even though he had only known her online, and openly admits that he could have done more. He wonders why they had to cross paths, why this new friend of his had to go the way she did and why he had to see it. The story ends with Michael stating that he still doesn't know "why nature did that to us".

Background
In the story's publication, Little mentions that he doesn't remember exactly how the idea came to him. He remembered having the idea and asking a few of his friends if it sounded good.


 * I remember one friend in particular, we had met the way the characters in the story meet. We met on TinyChat and we're still friends. I asked him one night how a story about a guy meeting someone online, befriending them, and eventually kills themselves on cam and he said 'Matt, I would cry'. So that was enough for me to try and write it.