"You're going to get demodded if you don't pick up the pace,"

'No, that won't do,' I thought to myself as I racked my brain for an appropriate way to reprimand someone. She was pretty cute, and I couldn't bear to make a cute girl sad. When I was in 1st grade, I remember throwing a spelling bee so that Maria would win. She was pretty sensitive and she cried a lot, but when she won, she was glowing.

'she needs to be demodded, she's only done like 10 reports the past 3 weeks,' I thought. My better half was always trying to reason with my weak, mushy, haven't-been-to-the-gym-in-4-years half. I had never seen a picture of her, but she spoke in a way that made you think she was really pretty, you know? The kind of girl you'd want to bring home to your parents around the holidays. But she was my mod, and I was her admin. She had a job to do and she wasn't doing it.

I sat at my keyboard in my dark bedroom. The sound of Iron & Wine whispering in the background caressed my ears and attempted to ease my soul, but i couldn't focus. I stared at the screen til my eyes got blurry, blinked, and did it again. I couldn't figure out what to do. I was staring at the private chat she and I shared.

We never really talked much outside of mod chat, but when we did, oh man, sparks flew. I once made a joke and she replied "lol". I never felt the same after that day. My spirit uplifted to a height I had never been too, but with new heights come a nervousness that's impossible to shake until you get back down or get used to the altitude, and I was torn between both.

'you've got to do something about her,' he would tell me privately. he was one of my good friends, had been there since the beginning, before either of us made it big on the internet. he was my #1, my go-to guy, the right hand man. I trusted him more than I trusted myself. And even he said she had to go. 'she has to go,' he said once, in fact.

Eventually, I couldn't bear it no longer. 'Hey' I typed out, then erased, then typed 'hey', in lower case, to look more casual. I hit the send button and prayed. Was this really what I wanted to do? Was modding that big of a deal? I didn't think so, but the world, the masses, they thought it was everything.

I remember when my friend and I - you wouldn't know him, he's not from the internet - used to talk about girls. I thought about bringing her up, but instead defaulted to talking about the girl i liked in 5th grade who got pregnant in middle school. 'dude you've gotta do something about that,' he'd tell me. I was already over her (i think i was anyway), but i couldn't even tell him how i felt about her, a girl he didn't know, a girl I barely knew.

"He's gotta demod her soon," they would say on the forums, like villagers around the town square discussing the goings-ons of the governor-general's private life. That was me, the Governor-General of this website. But heck, it's not like they cared. Did she even care? I tried to calm them down. It's funny - I could've talked to any one of them with greater ease than I could talk to her.

A few minutes had passed. Her skype said she was online, but she never replied. Sweat ran down my forehead and dripped onto my keyboard. I probably should've gotten up to turn on the AC, but I couldn't stop staring at the screen. 'where is she?' i thought. 'we need to talk. i need to tell her how i feel about her, and her work ethic'

I shook myself out of the trance. What was I thinking? Why was I doing this? I loved her, at least I thought I loved her, a girl on the internet that I've never seen and was probably a dude (heck everyone's probably a dude). I couldn't bear to make her feel sad.

BA-DOOP was the sound that skype made when she replied moments later. 'hey' she said. my legs felt like jello. 'how r u'. She always spoke in shorthand, it was really something else. I could barely remember my own name much less what I had to talk to her about. whenever she typed words, i knew that there was something special about this stranger on the internet that i had fallen in e-love with. Was it even e-love? I thought about this to myself. Did my love for her transcend the internet? was it just love?

'You're demodded,"

I said it out loud first. My mom called up to my bedroom to ask if everything was alright. I yelled back that it was, angrily. My mom never understood me.

'we need to talk' i thought of saying. No, it's too passive aggressive. Too cliche. 'i think you should step down', would've been easier, but it was too harsh. I couldn't bear to put a cute girl in the dumps like that. it'd be wrong. she was maybe 22, possibly older. i couldn't tell. she never told me, now that I think about it.

'has everything been okay?' - this might do. I sat on it. I even typed it out. my fingers were cramping up from the stress of doing this. I looked at it and imagined her receiving it. the way the words would look in the text box. Yes, this was it.

I hit the send button, and again, I waited.

And waited some more.

A few hours passed and she never replied. It was almost 3 AM and I had work the next day. I finally gave into my better half

"you stupid idiot why do you do this to yourself, it's just the internet" he would say. "but what if she likes me back?" my weaker half would say. "we could maybe meet up sometime and hold hands at a chain restaurant. I think she's from the mid-west, they have Carl's Jr. there. Maybe even Hardees" To that, my better half couldn't really refuse. And awake I stayed, staring.

She never came back on the site or on skype. She never replied. I let her account stay modded for another 3 weeks, like a corpse you don't do anything with in hopes that it wakes up. It's a pretty wild thing, passion, I mean.

When I demodded her, it was worse than breaking up, it was a burial. I really did love her, on the internet. It was a passion that couldn't have thrived anywhere else. It was definitely mutual and I think it could've gone really far. I remember dreaming about us having matching anime avatars and saying 'uguu~~" on each others' profiles. it would've been perfect, man, you would've had to have been there. I mean, if it had happened, I guess.

I try not to think about her too much these days, but it's hard not to think about a girl you met on the internet.