One thing was clear to her from the beginning of her journey on wattpad- that once she reaches the top, she wouldn’t want to come down. It was a general knowing and a fact that was true for probably everyone. Nobody wants to be at the top and then slide down from there. So finally when she topped the what’s hot list, she made sure that she was there to stay.
She was churning out words from her computer like a maniac to keep pace with the readers. It took only minutes for them to devour chapters that had taken her hours to write. Not that she was putting much effort into her writing because a she did was put words into the customary mold that wattpaders like. The typical high school story or the sappy romance, the story about the glittering pixie or the love-hate relationship between two opposites. She chose the generalized plots and wrote multiple stories, not knowing which one will be the ‘hot’ one. It was more so the continuous typing that was a little bit problematic to her. Also following the trends like a hawk to cater to her precious audience was a problem. The what’s hot list was quite fickle and everchanging; thus forcing to keep an eye out 24X7. But all of this were just minor irritations to her. These were just the minor sacrifices that had to be given in order to achieve success.
However she had forgotten that she was human after all. In the haze created by the virtual world, she had neglected her mortal needs. Her round-the-clock non-payable work finally caught up to her. In her exhaustion, she finally collapsed. Her parents proved to be cruel, uncompassionate creatures who took her to the Hospital where the inconsiderate, unsympathetic doctors declared that she had to be kept under observation. So frail she had become because of her disregard to her health that she could not escape from her forceful imprisonment. Her doctors and parents chalked out unceasing burdens of studies to be the reason for her collapse and deemed it important to keep her away from all of it at least until she got better. It baffled her how uncaring the people in her life had become to keep her away from her dear computers. But try as she might she was not able to sneak technology into the dreary little cell that they called a hospital room.
She was afraid that in her absence her stories would slip from their positions. After returning home, that was exactly what she found had happened. It crushed her to see that her stories had slipped in ranking and because of what? Just a few days of absence from it all? Not only had her stories fallen down in rankings but there were bad comments on them too. Apparently someone thought that they would act smart and had pointed out some mistakes on her stories. Well, comments had come pouring in after that. Not good ones too. Following the ritual of copying whatever the last comment had said- all of them were rotten, criticizing her for her silly mistakes and shoddy writing-like they were any better! Each bad comment and lost fans were a stab to her heart. Was she failing again? It was like her earlier life all over again. Being at the top and then going down in flames. This can’t be it! This was her last chance at having a new, better life; she couldn’t- just couldn’t let this slip away from her hands.
So she followed whoever left bad comments on her profile, read their stories, left sugary comments on their stories. Maybe it made them feel guilty or maybe they wanted to return the favor; whatever the reason, most of them came back and left good comments to appease her. But still those weren’t enough. She sought out those who had defanned her. She tried to understand the reasons behind their disloyalty. Only reason she could think of was that they got tired of waiting for her and moved on to greener pastures.
She started uploading with new vigor. She was careful this time to edit her writing a bit more. But nothing she wrote drew as many votes as was previously getting. This was not happening! She was slipping into depression day by day. She was smart enough to see the signs of her downfall. This was not working; something desperate had to be done….
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I know I said that this was going to be the last chapter, but well, it's not. In my defense, I didn't plan the story out, so I'm winging it. But don't worry, I don't plan on dragging this forever and will finish this in a day or two.
