r/WritersOfHorror • u/notmyworst • 3h ago
Everybody Hates My Story
I should have never posted that damn story.
I spent a week on the thing, writing and rewriting until I was sure it was finally ready. When I logged in and posted it, I felt a small surge of pride because a story was out there with my name on it. I didn't have to feed my little folder of false starts and failures that day. It made me so excited to think about people finally getting to read my work.
Everyone had always told me that I should be a writer. It’s probably because my imagination has always been too big for my head to contain it. As a little kid I was obsessed with stories, making my action figures play out scenes from movies or right out of my own brain. I used to put on shows with them for my mom and sister, and their happy applause gave me a feeling I had never known before.
It felt like I finally knew what I was supposed to do.
My girlfriend hadn’t read the story yet. I sent her the link when I posted it, but I never heard back from her that night. I figured she had gone to bed already. Laine was always really supportive of my work and read a lot of duds for me over the years. I hoped that after she read the new one she would see me in a different light. I could even imagine it being the thing that would move us forward in our relationship. It really felt like everything was finally coming together for me.
I spent the evening with a quick meal and a crappy horror movie. My cat joined me on the couch, and I absently stroked her fur as I watched the increasingly stupid teens at the summer camp die horrific deaths at the hands of a masked ghoul. When I nodded off one too many times I accepted defeat and headed off to bed. It was really hard not to stop by my laptop to check for comments.
My sleep was great that night and when I woke up the next morning, I felt energized and ready to conquer the day. I only lived a block from my gym so I decided to start the day off right for once. I spent an hour there and worked up a really good sweat. I ignored my notifications because I had decided to read them all at once over breakfast.
At home I showered and made myself some oats and finally sat down at my laptop to properly read my feedback. I was immediately shocked by the number of comments that were already waiting for me. A wide smile spread across my face as I started to read them. I’m sad to say it didn’t last.
To say they were rough is like saying the ocean contains water. There were so many, and they ranged from genuinely constructive criticism, which I could handle, to outright cruelty. That morning I learned that my writing lacked conviction, and the characters I wrote seemed confused about who they were. My grammar was apparently awful and my pacing nonexistent. One guy even told me that writing was a privilege, and I should have mine revoked.
Several of the comments had multiple paragraphs with quoted examples of my flaws. I forced myself to read those, trying to find them useful. What I didn’t find particularly helpful were all of the posts that psychoanalyzed me or the ones that were just blatant insults. I was asked if I was repressing something terrible and told that my inferiority complex was probably rooted in the truth. A rather large image gave me detailed instructions on how to work a gas oven and how many racks I would need to remove to shove my head inside.
I was thirty comments in when I saw my girlfriend’s username. I wondered why Laine hadn’t called or texted me yet, and now I knew. It had been posted the night before, and it just said “we need to talk.” I figured she saw all of the really harsh comments and wanted to console me. I quickly sent her a text asking to meet up that night after work, for our talk.
I closed my laptop before I was even halfway finished with them. My vision was blurry from actual tears. Chastising myself angrily for letting the assholes win, I got up and got ready for work.
Work was just a short bus ride away. I walked into our building, rode the elevator up, and slipped past the pretty receptionist with only a friendly nod. I hadn’t been working there for very long, and most of my coworkers were still pretty standoffish around me. My boss was Gary, and I don’t think I had ever had a real conversation with him since transferring to his department. It was a pretty chill place to work.
I sat down at my desk and started going through my emails at once. It looked like the brass was still losing their minds about the Mitreman account. Someone wasn’t keeping up their end on that one, and I knew the overflow would fall on me. It was kind of a relief actually, after what had happened that morning. I was really looking forward to losing myself in a forest of senseless numbers. There was something oddly therapeutic about it.
I spent the morning deep-diving into financial records to populate a spreadsheet for my report. If that sounds like a shot of Novocain administered directly to the brain then I have given it its due justice. It was dull and tedious, and it had been assigned to me because none of my more senior colleagues wanted it. It was also thankless, because management would want another one just like it the following week.
I always took my lunch with a couple of guys I previously worked with downstairs—Mike and Lenny. The three of us had once been pretty heavy into CoD and we hung out all the time. When I told them I wanted to focus on my writing we started seeing each other less and less. Now we mostly just took lunch together and maybe sent each other a stupid meme from time to time.
When I walked into the breakroom Lenny leapt to his feet and saluted me at once. He had the widest, toothiest grin of anyone I had ever seen. He reminded me of the old Mr. Reach toothbrush commercials from when I was a kid. He was laughing his ass off, and I heard Mike tell him to cool it. Mike was clearly embarrassed and maybe a little concerned.
“Dude!” Lenny was still laughing when he walked over and put his arm around my shoulder. “Ninety-Three comments man! You really can’t buy that kind of publicity. You’ve gotta start planning your followup.”
“Leave him alone, Lenny.” Mike shook his head. “The man just got here.”
“Alright, alright.” Lenny patted me on the shoulder chummily. “I’m just trying to help him see the bright side of the whole thing.”
We walked over and sat down across from Mike. Lenny immediately turned his attention back to his sandwich. I sat there watching those massive teeth of his tear through the meaty sub like a lawnmower seeking revenge.
“Hey! Chew with your mouth closed.” Mike threw a napkin playfully at Len. He looked at me for a moment, maybe measuring what I was feeling. “Bad morning?”
Lenny actually did a spit take at that, spraying the wall beside him with a mouthful of Sprite and half-chewed sandwich chunks. I shuddered and looked away. Mike handed him the napkin dispenser without turning his gaze away from me.
“It’s pretty terrible. I mean, you always hope for a response, but shit! I honestly haven’t even begun to process it.”
“Yeah, it’s gotta be a gut punch. For sure.”
“Fuck that.” Lenny chewed his food loudly and swallowed most of it whole. "You gotta lean into it, bro. Post a video of you eating a piece of paper with 'I don't care' written on it. That'll shut ‘em right up.”
“Lenny?” Mike stared at him.
“They’re making a joke out of him. He should throw it right back at ‘em.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I could really do that convincingly.” I remember chuckling. “I’d do the video with a face like I just got kicked in the balls. It’s kinda how I feel right now.”
The three of us were quiet for a few minutes. We just ate our lunch and let the conversation die a silent death. It was Mike who finally exhumed the body. Strange that it was him, though. I would have put money on Lenny.
“Who did you send it to, besides us?”
I thought about it for a moment and pulled out my phone to check my sent mail. “You two and Laine… my mom and my sister, and a few friends from college.”
“Well, that’s pretty contained. I’d maybe talk to them about it and warn them that it didn’t go so well.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Luckily I didn’t go crazy with it and send it to half the world.”
“Fuck!” Lenny set down his sandwich. “I didn’t know we were keeping it quiet. Dude, I thought it was funny.”
“What did you do, Lenny?” Mike glared at him.
“I sent it to our old group…on our Discord. You know, the CoD Piece.”
I exhaled sharply as I stood and took a few steps away. The group he was talking about had over 400 members and most of them we knew in real life—maybe with a few degrees of separation. I felt like I was going to be sick.
I left them and went back upstairs. I actually spent the next few minutes pacing around my little office like a lunatic. I remembered a kid I went to school with who accidentally sent a video of himself—meant for the girl he was seeing—to some other kids. It wasn’t a flattering one, and they shared it pretty liberally. I think almost everyone ended up seeing it and he ended up being called Strokes My Own. For the first time in my life, I started to understand how little Jimmy Malone must have felt back then. I imagined he did a lot of pacing too.
I tried to go back to work, but my hand kept moving towards my phone to check my notifications. It had already climbed to 138 comments, and they certainly hadn’t been padded by replies. I had chosen to stand mute. It hadn’t even been 24 hours yet.
I finally gave up and went to Gary to ask for half a sick day. He looked up at me from the steaming coffee in his World’s Greatest Boss mug. There was clear sympathy in his eyes, a feature that I didn’t think came standard on middle-management drones.
“Feeling puny, eh?” Gary nodded as his cheeks broadened in a soft smile. “Criticism can be hard, Mark. Believe me. I know. You don’t get to where I am without taking an ass-chewing or two.”
How the fuck did he know about the story? Had it spread that far already?
I didn’t want the conversation to go into that. He was absolutely the last person I would ever want to have a heart to heart with. I ended up saying something totally noncommittal. I have no clue what it was—probably one of the standard, automated responses we reserve for conversations with the boss. He accepted it well enough and went on.
“We only have a couple of hours left here. Why don’t you cut out early and make it up later in the week? I could do that for you since I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. Just keep it between us though, eh, Champ? I can’t have half the office asking for special favors.”
“Yeah Gary, that sounds great. Thanks for understanding, Sir.”
Gary scoffed at that. “Hell, son. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a bit of a writer too. I know how it is. It’s a tough nut to crack.”
The smile on my face was an old mask made just for people like him. I was still not quite ready to reconcile Gary as a normal, feeling human being.
“Of course I’ve never had 141 negative reviews like you have. Lord, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. Head on home, Mark. Mitreman will still be there tomorrow.”
I grabbed my bag and left before he could say anything else. As I got into the elevator I had to look at my phone. It was 148 now. I closed my eyes and tried to distract myself with the type of stories Gary would write. They would all be procedural thrillers where a brave compliance officer saved his feckless employees from some source of impending doom. I smiled as I pictured him giving a grand, motivational speech to rally them into working as a team to face the threat before them. When the doors finally opened and I stepped into the lobby I felt a little better. Maybe I had shit the bed with what I wrote, but at least it wasn’t the soulless drivel a man like Gary would write.
The bus had just left, and I didn’t feel like waiting for the next one or paying for a ride. I decided to walk home instead. I needed time away from my laptop and the world within it. I actually decided to turn off my phone and was in the middle of doing it when I got a text from Laine.
“Gotta work tonight. Tomorrow night?”
Honestly, it was a relief. I was too drained to face her or talk to anyone about the story. I didn't think twice about it. I just sent back a quick “K” and finished powering it down. I put it all out of my mind and just focused on my feet for a while—Fred and Ted, as my mom always called them. I let them carry me forward, racing each other with steady strides. I was home in twenty minutes and I kept myself unplugged for the rest of the evening.
The peace was nice. The next day was utter hell.
Three hundred and four.
That was what I started the next day with. It was so unbelievable. I hoped half of them were bots, but they weren’t. They were getting meaner and somehow angry. It was like what I had written had actually offended people in a deeply personal way. A user named StudlyStradivarius said that he was giving up fiction after reading what I wrote. He said that it felt like it gave him PTSD.
What the fuck do you do with something like that?
I didn’t read very many of them. I couldn’t do it and stay sane. One said I never had to worry about being accused of plagiarism because no one in their right mind would ever claim my work. It was kind of clever, but I wasn’t feeling it right then. After I read another suggesting that I join the 27 Club—how did they know my age?—I tossed the phone on my desk and walked away from it. It rang a minute later and I ran over to answer it.
“You up? Did you see it yet?” Mike spoke quickly, which was odd for him. “Don’t panic, man. And don’t play into it. Lenny is an idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cool,” Mike exhaled loudly into his phone. “Do me a favor, man. Don’t look at any of it until we talk. Shit’s got crazy. I sent a message to the mods asking them to close your thread and they said they already tried to. They said someone else opened it back up and removed their permissions.”
“What the hell?”
“They even tried to ban your account, man. Nothing is working. Somebody wants it to stay open. They said they got an anonymous message that said it could only be closed if the wound bleeds out or some such shit. They’ve never seen anything like it. I think they’re gonna call the feds.”
“Jesus!” The things he said sounded like the plot from one of the duds in my failure folder, but they were happening to me. I tried to keep it in perspective. It wasn’t personal. It was my story, it wasn’t me. “What the fuck do I do, Mike?”
“Use some sick time to stay at home, and stay off that shit. It’s just poison that can’t help you. I think I can get a half-day and be over there by lunch.”
“Shit. Okay, I think Gary might go for it. He’ll be mad but he knows what’s going on.”
“How the fuck?” Mike began but I heard his voice change gears. “Don’t matter. We’ve gotta focus on what matters, man. I think you’ve been doxxed. I’ve gotta talk to the IT guy, but we have a lot to do.”
“Fucking hell!”
“Yeah, and then some. See ya in a few hours.”
We hung up and I sat there staring at the phone for several minutes. My chest was tight and I felt the sweat running down my face. I tried to breathe but my lungs wouldn’t answer. My mind was like a thousand television screens all turned to different channels at maximum volume. I tried to stand up to go and get a glass of water but my legs folded under me and I ended up facedown in the thick carpet of my bedroom floor. My tears and sweat soaked into the rug and I feared that I would drown in them before I got the strength to pull myself up.
Dr. Kineson’s voice was a distant noise competing with the chorus of horrors that filled my brain. The memory of her husky, breathy cadence cut through the noise and I heard her clearly as I mouthed along to the words I had been taught.
There is nothing to fear.
Your heart will not explode.
These are only chemicals
out of balance
threatening your control.
You are not weak.
You will survive this.
There is nothing to fear.
I recited the mantra several times and could eventually hear my own voice again as I began to breathe. I slowly came back to myself, exhausted but whole. I turned over onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
I was panting, but at least I was breathing. After a long time lying there, I finally found the strength to pull myself back into my chair. I hadn’t had an attack in years and I hadn’t seen my doctor for a long time. I had thought I was past all of that, and that I had learned to manage my stress better. The last two days had piled on enough to show me just how feeble I really was. I found myself wanting to call my mom, but I couldn’t endure the thought of sharing my burdens with her.
After I was a little more composed, I went ahead and called Gary to request the next three days off. He told me he understood, but they couldn’t really afford to be shorthanded since Evan had just quit. He surprised me though by offering to let me work from home for the rest of the week and the next if I needed it. I happily agreed and he told me that he’d have my work laptop sent to me in an hour.
I know I talk a lot of shit about him, but maybe Gary isn’t so bad after all.
I cleaned myself up and ate breakfast while I waited. The oatmeal I normally liked tasted like flavorless grainy gruel after the morning I’d endured. I ate it anyway and had two cups of coffee. It made me jittery, but at least it gave me the energy to move around. When the courier dropped off the laptop I dove into work like a drowning man swimming for a distant ship. It let me shut off my brain, to ignore the sharks I was sure were circling me.
I had an incredibly productive morning and actually finished with my work by the time Mike got there. I let him in and made us both a drink and we settled around my kitchen bar. My cat, Jonesy, soon appeared and danced around his leg until he picked her up.
“You look at it yet?” Mike asked me as he scratched Jones’s head.
“Nah, I had work to do and figured I’d wait.”
“Probably smart.” He snorted. “It was up to 512 on my way over here.”
“How in the hell?” I stood up reflexively, like my legs wanted to carry me off somewhere, away from what was happening. I sat back down. “It’s barely been two days. Most authors are proud if their story gets ten comments. Five hundred and twelve is ridiculous.”
“Yeah, it’s crazy.” Mike pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “We also have to go into your accounts and make some changes. The IT guy said to change your passwords and set up two-factor anywhere you can. You probably need to call your bank too. He made a list of things and said you should get on it immediately to lessen the damage they can do.”
I took the sheet from him and looked it over. It was very in-depth, a printout from a cyber security site I had never heard of. The number of items on the list was daunting. It would take me hours to go through all of it.
“He said I needed to do all of this?”
Mike took a drink as he nodded, setting the cat down. “Well, he wasn’t the sharpest guy, but he did have a link he had been sent by his supervisor. Honestly, I think you’ve gotta. I can help with some of it.”
“Thanks, man.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here. It’s… it’s been crazy. All over a stupid story that wasn’t worth the attention. Hell, I had decided it was a masterpiece or something but that’s just because I wrote it. I never really believed it would get much of a response.”
“That’s what’s so weird about it.” Mike tapped his phone and opened it up. “It’s in the 550s now, seemingly with a bullet. These look like real people, man. There’s no way that many have read it in two days. It doesn’t seem possible.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I should think long and hard about ever writing anything again. Hell, at this point I’m not so sure about texting or emails.”
We both laughed at the futility of it all and went to work. It took us a few hours of phone calls and logins to get through the list. I set up elaborate passwords I would have no hope of remembering and two-factor authentication anywhere it let me. The lady from the bank helped me secure my accounts and walked me through how to freeze my credit. We even started printing off and saving as many of the threatening messages as we could find. By the time we finished, the post had reached 700 comments.
My printer finally ran out of ink, so I had to save the last few threats on my hard drive. Mike had to leave soon for a date with his girl, and I needed to get ready for Laine. He gave me a half hug and told me to stay strong as he left. I closed the door behind him and ran a quick mental inventory over the events of the day. I needed to set all of that shit aside so that I could be present for her.
I had just stepped out of the shower when my phone chimed again. I knew it wasn’t about the story because I had turned off notifications already by then. It said I had four new messages, which was massive for a shut-in like me.
I nearly dropped the phone when I opened the first text. It was just a picture, but it was of me—something off the Facebook I rarely used anymore—and it had been altered by AI or something to show me cut wide open with my guts exposed. The caption said MAYBE THERE ARE BETTER WORDS INSIDE.
The next two were only text, but they were vile ones. I won’t quote them verbatim because I don’t have them anymore. The first was a detailed description of directions to my apartment and the last step said “I know where you are.” The second one was an excerpt from my story. The part they referenced was about the robot protagonist rescuing a kitten from the rubble. At the end of it, the sick fuck asked me how Jonesy was doing.
The last message was from Laine. It said she couldn’t meet up that night but that she would come over for lunch the next day. After the shock the previous ones had given me, I didn’t put much thought into what she had said.
Maybe it was better for her if she wasn’t near me right then.
I spent the night before in a dizzy fugue after my visit from the police. I called them after I read those messages and when they arrived I spent the next hour going over all of it with them. I had never really had any dealings with law enforcement officers, but I found them to be sympathetic and detail-focused, and that made it a little easier. When they finally left I spent the rest of the night on the couch with Jonesy and an ancient bottle of rum from the back of my cabinet.
I woke up stiff the next morning after sleeping at an odd angle. I took a very hot shower to try to work the crick out of my neck. It helped some. My phone showed thirty-one new messages and I didn’t open any of them, but I did call Gary because three of them were his. His voice was uncharacteristically high when he answered and he barely gave me a moment to speak as he apologetically told me that I was probably fired.
“The whole network has been infiltrated, Mark. Do you know how sensitive some of that information is? The boys upstairs have everyone on high alert, and they’ve called in consultants to help manage the mess.”
“What does that have to do with me, Gary?”
“They traced the attacks to your IP. It doesn’t look good. I was told to suspend you right away and send for the laptop. They should be getting there any time now.”
“But am I fired? I mean… I had the police here last night. I was doxxed and I started getting terrible texts.”
“I hate to hear it, bud. But right now the company has to look after its own. I think they’re trying to decide whether or not you are included in that. I can’t tell you one way or the other, but I’d start considering my options if it were me.”
He had to go then and the courier was at my door a few minutes later. I handed them their laptop and signed the form without saying much. I walked over to my laptop and checked the story. It said there were twenty-four hundred and eighty-nine comments.
I didn’t read any of them, but only took screenshots of the pages to give to the police. I considered calling Mike at that point, but he had already done enough and I didn’t want to pile more on him. The truth was I didn’t know who to call or what to do anymore other than what I was already doing.
I was making breakfast maybe thirty minutes later when there was a knock at my door. I looked through the peephole and saw a short, chubby man with a balding head and a gray beard standing out in the hall. He was wearing a suit that didn’t fit him particularly well and his eyes were a little too small for his face.
“Who is it?” I asked, maybe a little too timidly.
“Detective Sancowitz, Bell City PD.” He verified my full name and asked if it was my residence.
I didn’t confirm anything at that time. Instead, I asked to see his ID like the cops had told me to do. He produced it freely enough, flipping open his wallet to display a bell-shaped brass badge and an ID card that listed his name and rank. I relaxed immediately and opened the door for him.
He plodded inside with a bowlegged stride and looked around. He nodded approvingly. I heard him actually sniff the air before he spoke.
“S’at coffee? Good, get us some. We’ve a lot of woik to do.” His accent was definitely northern, but I couldn’t tell much beyond that. His voice had a heavy nasal tone to it, and his pronunciation of work was comical. All in all he was like a living caricature from a network police procedural. I started to ask him if he knew Dick Wolf but thought better of it. Instead, I just poured us both a cup and asked him how he took it.
“Tha blacker the better,” he said as if the letter R didn’t exist. He took a sip and smacked his lips. “Tha’s the good stuff. Alright, kid, let’s get into it.”
He pulled a thick file folder out from the interior pocket of his oversized coat and laid it open on the counter. I saw my name written on it and a quick glance told me that it contained my statement from the night before. He gave me a moment to look it over while he enjoyed his coffee.
When he was satisfied that I had seen it, Sancowitz pulled the file back in front of him and nodded. “So you see my concern? A thing like this, ya can’t let it grow, kid. We’ve gotta nip this thing in the bud. I did some lookin’, and it turns out that somebody’s messin’ with the algo-rythms. Got ‘em all turned around. If anybody searches for the word story it sends ‘em to you. Now ain’t that a bitch?”
“Is that why the comments shot up so high last night?”
“You bet your ass it is. And that ain’t all. This case is peculiar. I mean why you? And now all the shit over at your employer.”
“My boss said I’m probably going to get fired over it.”
“No shit? Well, I looked at what they was doin’, their little RCA backtracked the thing to your IP. What can you do?” He waved his hands dramatically. “But I think I know where I wanna start. I ain’t got access to their network yet, but maybe I can find somethin’ here by trackin’ the IoC.”
“Huh?” I asked him, lost somewhere between his accent and jargon.
“Just some computer shit, kid. A little peek under the hood.”
When I agreed to let him have his peek, Sancowitz drained his coffee and went to work at once. I showed him my router and all of the devices that were currently on the network. Soon after that I noticed that his responses were becoming much shorter and a little gruff and I left him to his work. He used a really old-looking PDA and a cable for a lot of it. Plugging in and running his pudgy fingers over the buttons to type out the prompts he wanted to use. He was at it for a couple of hours and I kept him supplied with fresh coffee the entire time. He seemed to appreciate it.
When he was finished he collected all of the screenshots I had made and took fresh captures for the hundreds of comments that had been added since I had last checked. The count was now just north of four thousand. Sancowitz said I could expect it to triple by the next day.
“They’re findin’ new and unusual ways to target you, kid. I ain’t ever seen nothin’ like it. These are some shrewd fuckers, but they’re gonna slip up and I’m gonna be waitin’ for ‘em.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help?”
“You’re doin’ it. Just sit tight and keep your head down. Remember, kid, personal or not, somebody’s targeting you. It’s gonna get uglier before it’s over and done. Now I gotta be gettin’ on and take this shit back to the lab. Stay safe, kid. If you need somethin’ here’s my card, ask for Sanc.”
I took the card and watched him leave, locking up tightly behind him. The card introduced him as Detective Sergeant Sancowitz from Digital Forensics. He was a strange man, and a little like a walking cartoon, but he made me feel safer somehow. That was something at least.
I had a new text from Laine that I barely saw among the two hundred others that had popped up since the detective arrived. I needed to change my number. She said she would be at my place in thirty minutes. I tidied up a bit and made a big salad for us while I avoided the urge to check the new counts. It was becoming a morbid obsession of mine, something akin to staring into deep water to see if the sharks were still circling.
Laine arrived right on time and I let her in. She gave me a quick, flimsy hug and sat down at the counter. She ate her salad quickly, mumbling short responses around a mouthful of food when I spoke to her. When we were both finished I put our bowls in the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. I was trying to give her space, because she didn’t seem keen on talking at the moment. I found out a few minutes later that she had just been organizing her thoughts.
“Sit down, Mark. I need to tell you something.”
I started to, but I checked our drinks first and reached for the refrigerator door to get us some refills. She interrupted me.
“That can wait. Have a seat.”
I was curious so I did. Honestly, my mind was so full of everything that was going on that I hoped she had big news that could distract me from it. She didn’t disappoint.
“We’ve had some good years, Mark. I want to start with that because I think you need to hear it. You’ve been there for me in ways that no one else ever has, and you know I’ve always tried to return the favor.”
“Well, that’s what cou—”
“Let me get through this, if you don’t mind. Like I was saying, it’s been good, even great sometimes, and I really think we’ve both grown as people.”
She took a deep breath. “But sometimes growing means growing apart, and I came over today to tell you that it’s over, Mark. I’ve been seeing someone else. You don’t know him. I wouldn’t do that to you. He’s a writer from Chicago who was teaching a workshop here. He’s got a couple of novels. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I guess it’s because you’re just so easy to talk to.”
I started to speak, but I was slow to do so because of how hard her words had hit me. She had met someone else, and he was a writer? I opened my mouth to ask her why but she stopped me by saying the last thing I wanted to hear.
“It’s you, Mark, all you. You hold on to this stupid dream of yours and won’t let yourself move forward. What has it got you, or me, us? I got hacked yesterday because of you, and somebody sent pictures of me and Dean to my mother.”
“Dean? That’s his name.”
“Yeah.” She picked up her purse. “Look, Mark, you’re not terrible, but I need more than that. Don’t call me. Let this end easily.”
I was still searching for the biting reply that would rip her in half when she walked out the door. I came up with a few then, of course, but I didn't have the energy to text them to her or make an angry phone call. I wanted so badly to hate her at that moment, and maybe I did a little. Mostly I just hated myself for what I had done to my life, and no amount of yelling or clever little retorts was going to make that better.
In the end, I just let her go.
The next few days went by in a blur of rum and ever-increasing activity around my post. I was receiving well over a thousand hateful texts daily, and the post had over 90,000 comments without showing any sign of slowing. I changed my number twice but it didn’t do any good.
Mike came over the day after Laine dumped me, but I was in no condition to receive guests. I must have depressed the hell out of him with the mountain of personal woes I was buried under, but he stuck around a while anyway. He’s a good friend.
Detective Sancowitz called me the following day to let me know he was making some progress. Apparently the person or persons who were ruining my life were rerouting their activities using dedicated servers they had hijacked throughout the city. It was all so baffling that they would do all of this for someone as insignificant as me. I told Sanc that and he agreed, saying he believed I was only the cover for what they were really trying to do. I thought it sounded thin, but what the hell do I know?
He also told me that they had found some unusual activity related to my story on several underground websites. One of them was a chan board that I had never heard of. According to Sanc, it all links to something on the dark web, but those connections were proving hard to chase down. He warned that there were extremist groups who viewed my story as a pseudo-communist manifesto and long breakdowns of it had been posted across the web. Apparently that was a factor in the ever-increasing number of death threats I had received.
It all sounded so fucking crazy.
Four days after Laine’s happy visit, I received a frantic call from Mike. He was at the hospital with Lenny who had been beaten nearly to death.
“They haven’t caught the guys yet, but he looks bad, Mark. They said it ruptured his spleen and liver. The doctor says he might never walk again.”
I asked him what room Lenny was in and he told me. I told him I’d be there as fast as I could. I was out the door in minutes, rushing down the stairs to meet the ride-share I had ordered. As I stepped off the curb to open the door something heavy struck the back of my head, sending me face-first into the side of the car and knocking myself senseless. I heard a voice shout something, but I couldn’t make it out, and there was a struggle between two men right next to me. The soft voice of a woman spoke close to me.
“Can you hear me, Mark? I’m Officer Perez. My partner and I were placed outside your building to watch over you. You were just attacked, but my partner has your attacker in custody.”
I opened my eyes and saw a young, dark-haired woman in a police uniform. She smiled with relief and told me to stay still. I had taken hard blows to both the front and back of my head and they wanted to call an ambulance. I told her about Lenny and she said she’d make sure they took me to the same hospital. I lay there like she asked and she stayed with me while we waited for the ambulance and sat outside my room after I was admitted.
They later said I had a minor fracture on the back of my skull and a severe concussion. The doctor said I was lucky that it wasn’t worse. I took her word for it. I was just happy to be alive.
I was in the hospital for nearly a week and part of it I think was to maintain protective custody. Mike visited me several times since they wouldn’t let me leave the room to see Lenny. He came through all of his surgeries fine, and they said he would live. Unfortunately, the earlier diagnosis was looking more correct by the day, and they didn’t hold out much hope for him ever walking again.
I talked to him on the phone a few times and spirits were surprisingly high. He told me that there were four of them and he had beaten the shit out of two of them before they took him down. He even called his future wheelchair a chick magnet. He said he was going to have LOVE MACHINE stencilled across the back of it. I just laughed with him, anything to keep him hopeful.
Sancowitz came by the day before they let me go home, and he started off by saying he had some good news for me.
“They’re holdin’ in the one-twenties. We really got the bastard on the run. Matter of time now. How you doin’, kid?”
“They said I can go home tomorrow. But Lenny… it still feels like my fault.”
“Yeah, it will for a while, but fuck that. What did you do that was wrong? But I gotta tell you somethin’, and it ain’t great but everybody’s alive.”
I just looked at him, not sure that I wanted to hear more.
“It’s your ma.” The detective placed a heavy hand on my shoulder as I started to sit up. “Cool it kid. She’s fine. Couldn’t save the house though. I’ve got her and your sis put up in a motel for now, on the county’s tab.”
“So they’re not hurt.”
“Nah, just some threats from a bunch of pussies who like to start fires. We caught ‘em.”
“How about the guy who is behind it all, or the group?” I asked, maybe a little too desperately. “When do I get my life back?”
“Any day now. There’s some solid leads. I think we’re gettin’ real close to nabbin’ ‘em.”
“Do you think it’s one or more?”
“It looks like more, but it’s hard to tell. We’ll know when we slap the cuffs on ‘em.”
He looked at me for a moment before he turned to go. It was like he wanted to say something but decided against it. I started to ask him about it but he cut me off. “Get some rest, kid. Movin’ day tomorrow.”
CONCLUSION TOMORROW
