Chapter Three
Malone
My phone buzzed again, the third time since I turned it off airplane mode only a few minutes ago. My stomach dropped. My heart raced. A line of perspiration bloomed along my hairline.
I was at my wit’s end. My only solace was those hours when I was asleep or had simply had enough and turned my phone off or on airplane mode.
Even then, there were messages and emails on my laptop and now, even my work email.
I’d gone down the rabbit hole learning how best to protect myself. Tape over my cameras and speakers. Even unplugged the TV.
My laptop consistently glitched out and acted up hour after hour. I bought another one. Within a few hours of powering it up for the first time, it started the same thing.
My phone restarted and powered off on its own, sometimes turning airplane mode off.
It seemed to know when I woke up, since whoever was behind this madness at least let me sleep, in theory. The phone buzzing and messages ceased, but my mind was flooded with the what-ifs.
And the details had amped up. In my efforts to live instead of exist, I’d made a coffee date with my friend Alex. I didn’t talk to him about the things happening to me and glazed over my life with a you know, work is work.
Alex bought it and I enjoyed hearing about he and his alpha’s life together. Their plans for the future.
The only plan I had lately was to get through one fucking minute without this stalker person or people rattling my brain.
I didn’t bring my phone along, unplugging for peace of mind. A fragile peace that lasted until I got home and checked my messages.
All my texts were from a new number. Pictures of me along the way to see Alex. In my car. At the café. Calling me naughty for running a yellow light that turned red as I passed under it.
The digital receipt where I’d treated my friend to a coffee and chocolate croissants.
They even started giving me advice. Too much sugar was bad for me. I really shouldn’t run the yellow lights, and make sure I lock my dead bolt when I arrived home.
A text dedicated to criticizing the kind of coffee I bought, citing mold.
I’d detached the camera at my front door after seeing pictures of myself texted to me with captions like, shouldn’t omegas be home early? And another asking if I would like them to tuck me in for the night.
If it weren’t for the fact that my work and my salary relied on having the internet, I would’ve gone analog and done away with all technology.
I bought the best spyware and virus protection. Didn’t do any good. The night before, they had taken over my laptop and ran the virus program to teach me that nothing would stop them.
This whole thing had worn me out, mentally. Probably what they intended to do.
I jumped at every noise. Kept a bat by my bed. Locked and relocked everything before I retired for the night, well, at the end of my workday, more like sunrise.
The beep of an incoming email often made me cringe and sometimes brought me to the verge of tears.
My chest stayed tight all the time.
I didn’t know what to do, so by the end of the week, almost a month since the first messages started coming through, I did something desperate.
On my personal laptop, I did deep diving. If I was going to go down this rabbit hole, then damn it, I would find the end.
A couple of hours later, I stumbled into a place I’d never seen before. Everyone had fake profiles and as I created one for myself, I looked over my shoulder, sure the internet police were going to find out and hunt me down.
I shrugged. The person stalking me started this. And I was so fucking tired of being hunted.
Sure, they were only messages and emails, but it had gone on too long. And things were getting more and more personal.
Like asking if I wanted them to tuck me in for the night.
I shuddered just thinking about it.
My online profile on this thread with the black background was Pretender.
Lame, but I didn’t see myself trolling for long.
Only enough time to find out what I needed to do.
I read for a while. The people posting and asking questions and the answers skirted the lines of legal, but predatory activity wasn’t legal either.
So I posted the question, hoping they would help me and not kick me out for being so unknowledgeable.
A few answers came in immediately. Block. Virus protection. Move apartments. Ignore.
I’d tried all of those except the “move apartments” part, but that wouldn’t stop them since they’d infiltrated my entire online life. Location meant nothing to this person or people. Hell, they knew when I stopped for gas.
I was living in a nightmare.
More comments. Some asking what I’d done to this person. Why were they doing this to me? I would’ve liked to have known those answers myself.
Some of the answers were sinister. Telling me they wished they knew who it was so they would peep in on me too.
I pushed back from the desk and scrubbed my hands down my face. Fuck. This was hopeless. At this rate, I was going to move to the country and not have anything to do with the internet ever again.
Someone asked me to message them directly.
I did.
More nonsense.
I was so screwed.