No one else can see them. No one except the Daughter, that is. In her Family, there is a Daughter and a Son, both quirky and opposite of each other, and there is also a Mother and a Father, who have a toxic relationship that never gets addressed. None of them look alike, but that isn’t addressed either. They live in a fake House with a fake living room, fake kitchen, fake bathroom, and they sleep in two fake bedrooms. Every time one of them says or does something funny, strange, unknown voices off in the distance laugh. If someone forgets what to say, they start over. Every few minutes, they take a break and freeze in place for a few minutes for an unknown reason until they continue where they left off. Every half hour, whatever superficial, trivial conflict plagues them that day gets wrapped up in a neat little bow. They aren’t allowed to dress themselves, eat their food, or even go into some rooms of their House.
And no one except the Daughter can see the cameras that film them, or the crew who wields the cameras, or the audience that laughs at them, or the people who dress them, or any of the other people in the studio outside of their House. Her Family is blind, unaware, and for a while, the Daughter was too. Her whole life, she had known that something was wrong. She had a deep discomfort with the fake smiles, got chills whenever she heard the laughter from the unknown source, and had a strange feeling that she was being watched but had no proof. She felt a buzzing under her skin. She was so sure something else was wrong, but no one else in her Family seemed bothered, so she thought she was going crazy. There was something churning low in her stomach, a gut feeling that there was something more than this, or maybe just the hope for it, until one day, there they were. Right in front of her, clear as day: cameras. Big, black cameras, many of them, pointed right at her. She wanted to reach out and touch them, but she wasn’t allowed to cross to the other side of the room. Like a dog with an invisible fence, she was trapped.
Once she saw the cameras, she couldn’t unsee them. She wondered how she didn’t notice them before. She started forgetting what she was supposed to say, being late, and missing her cues. She was distracted, only half-there. She found herself spacing out for hours at a time, too focused on exploring the other half of the studio to care about what she was supposed to be doing. Her eyes roamed over the dark lights and long cables, taking in the important-looking people moving about and talking in what seemed like a secret code.
She searched and scanned, until her eyes landed on a window, small and sitting high on the wall on the other side of the studio. Unlike the windows in her House, which were flat and fake and didn’t open, this one was cracked open just a little, and beyond it, she could see the outside world. That confirmed it for the Daughter. Her life wasn’t real. Realness was out there, and she had to get to it.
The first thing she did was tell her Family, but they didn’t believe her. Their eyes were empty. She tried to show them, but they didn’t see. Their eyes were unmoving. But while her Family might not be able to see, the Daughter could. She could see and she knew. She knew that life wasn’t situational or comedic. Nothing was ever wrapped up in a bow every half hour. Life was a mudbath, a cesspool, a landslide, both the shipwreck and the lovers clinging to a raft. It was shitty and short and unfair and torturous and long, but it was real, and it was out there somewhere if only she could get to it. She didn’t want to leave her Family (even if they were fake, they were still the only people she knew and she wanted them to be free too), but she didn’t see what kind of a choice she had. She had to get out.
She tried to escape multiple times. The first time, someone caught her and stopped her before she even left the fake House. They threatened to punish her if she ever tried again. The second time, she made it to the window, but was dragged back to the House before she could figure out how to open it. The third time, instead of acting on impulse, she devised a plan, one that was smarter and would assure her escape.
When her Family was on one of their breaks, just standing around and doing nothing in their house, the Daughter made sure no one was looking at her, then made a beeline towards the window. She made it almost the whole way there before someone noticed her. They called her name, but she kept walking. They grabbed her arm but she shoved them off. She pushed the window open. Hands reached out to grab her, but she fought, twisting and shaking and scratching, until she lifted her entire body up and wriggled her way through the window. At the top, she turned around for one last look, and saw her Family staring at the scene with their empty, unmoving eyes. She could only hope they really saw her, and would one day maybe join her. She jumped and landed hard on the ground. Head-spinning, pulse racing, it took her a while to get accustomed to her surroundings. She sat up. What was that she was sitting on? Grass. What was that shining above her? Sky. What were those robots moving around? People.
Grass. Sky. People. She was outside. She made it out. Not unscathed, but still, she has made it out. For the first time in her life, she was free. For the first time in her life, she had a life.
The fake Daughter was written off the show, probably given a job offer in another country or a sudden addiction arc that landed her in rehab or something fake like that, if the Daughter had to guess. But she didn’t know exactly what happened, and she didn’t care either, because she was free. She never had to concern herself with that show anymore. She had a life to live.
The Tributary 