I roll my eyes. All material is natural. But honestly, the mesh of sateen and voile boasts to be both posh and comfortable. I buy a few shirts before I tank Katy. What Rochelle doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
Okay—so what Rochelle is asking for technically can’t be done. Well, it can be, but the nerds will have Katy’s account back up not long after I take it down. She might not even register a blip in inactivity.
But there are other ways to nix a social media account. One just has to be creative.
I set the password cracker—that I proudly coded myself—and then go downstairs to make a cocktail. As I return to the loft, I’m surprised to see that my program has already cracked Katy’s Instagram password.
Pandas1234.
“Christ,” I mutter. Someone this naive is just asking for it. But her password gives me a terrible idea—and I love those.
I set to Googling endangered species hunters, and within a few minutes I find what I’m looking for. Brooke Cannon, a young socialite herself, likes to brag to the world about her number of kills. She’s quite the little serial killer of the world’s most endangered animals. And lucky me, she has a photo of her standing next to a dead panda—pink riffle held high in the air—that she shot herself.
How much sport is there in shooting a panda? Even I’m a little mortified.
More research proves that pandas bring in a lot of money for their fur.
Perfect.
With a little help from Photoshop, I have a believable pic of Katy Dee and Brooke sitting together and laughing over chardonnay as they toast the good life. The image goes up on Katy’s account. The post reads:
Throw back to that time me and my gal pal Brooke partied together! She was the inspiration for my panda prints!
I make sure to tag Brooke (so all Katy’s followers can hop over and take a gander at the mortifying images she posts to her account), and hashtag the shit out of the post, so every activist in the world will see.
I admit, I’m getting a small thrill out of this. It’s not my best work, but when something goes viral, there’s this surge of adrenaline. And Katy Dee’s post goes viral in a nanosecond.
My work here isn’t quite done, though.
Any journalist worth their salt will uncover the lie here, rushing to come to the aid of Katy and her reputation. But an even hungrier, greedy journalist will salivate over the opportunity to prove it true.
Hey, I’m not the bad guy here. The world loves a scandal. Give them a hero to shred, and the claws come out.
I create a metadata trail that can be traced, proving the two girls have been in communication over the past year. Deleted and backdated email logs. Internet HTML receipts of likes and social media shares from each other’s accounts that were deleted.
Then I bundle the proof into a zip file and shoot it across the Internet to one lucky journalist from my anonymous email account.
I sip my whiskey sour as I refresh Katy’s Instagram account, watching her followers abandon ship by the thousands.
My phone rings. A glance at the display shows it’s Ericson.
That didn’t take long.
One last sip of cocktail and I answer: “Naughty Playroom Escorts.”
His voice isn’t even bashful. No hint of shame. “I need an escort for this Friday evening.”
“Yes, sir”—he is dominant, therefore I am subservient in my response—“any special requests that we can accommodate?”
He lists his preferences. Blonde (of course; check). Meek (submissive; I’ll work on that). As he will be attending a company outing, the escort is to be dressed accordingly. Over the past few weeks, I’ve observed his “company outings”, so I know just what to give him.
The date is booked, and I end the call by taking his credit card number. Hell, no reason I can’t have Ericson pay twice for his own revenge.
I recline back in my chair and lace my fingers together, my mind diving deep into the plot. I like to watch it play out mentally, like on a TV screen, so I can visualize the outcome. It helps me uncover any obstacles and required contingencies.
The art of revenge is all about knowing your target. Know what will hurt them. The design of the retaliation has to be appropriately measured in direct and equal comparison to the slight against their victim…my client.
You can’t just spread a rumor about someone on social media. Or slap some graffiti on a billboard. That’s artless, and frankly, lazy.
No, as a bully, Ericson Daverns needs his face pushed into an ant bed.
Identify
Alex
The sound of the ticking secondhand is the soundtrack to my life.
I flip out the pewter pocket watch from my jean pocket. Click the spring cover open. It’s too dark to see the exact time, too loud in the night club to actually hear the tick, but checking the timepiece is a compulsion. It reminds me of why I’m here—that time is limited.
The tension in my shoulders eased, I tuck the watch into my pocket. Then I sip the club soda on the tiny industrial table before me. The club erupts with a pulse of flashing lights and a foghorn, sending a splintering shard through my skull. The clustered bodies on the dance floor gyrate even closer, hands lifted in the air, as if praising the god of debauchery.
The scene is ironic. In ancient Egypt, dance was used to tell the story of the gods—how the mother of creation established order through her song and dance. The ancients often danced in near-nude attire. They didn’t view nudity the way we do now; lust wasn’t a mortal sin.
As I look around at all the bare mid-drifts and revealing skin meant to lure in, a caustic thought comes to mind, how two thousand years of religious pruning has influenced civilization. Where once the body was worshiped and not viewed as a lecherous sexual device, being told no, do not look, touch, want has made the human anatomy the most sinful desire in the modern world.
Everybody wants a taste of the forbidden.
Unless you have a higher purpose—one that makes you immune to temptation.
As such, this isn’t my typical type of hangout. I don’t “hang out.” Maybe I should’ve brought someone with me, looked less suspicious, less like a creep. But again, time.
I don’t have enough of it to waste.
At thirty-seven, I’ve been alive for 13,608 days. I’m in good health, so if I die of natural causes, that leaves me approximately 15,592 days left…if my mind holds out to age eighty.
My father died of a heart attack at age sixty-four. The men on my mother’s side have battled testicular cancer. I get regular check-ups, and my blood pressure is decent. Foregoing any unanticipated diseases or accidents, I could gain an extra few years out of my life expectancy.
A minimum of thirty-five years left to develop a cure.
To the average person, thirty-some-odd years may seem like plenty—but when speaking scientific breakthrough, a lifetime is hardly enough.
As I mentally break down the math, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look at the woman in a black slinky dress to my right.
“You look deep in thought,” she says. Her eyes are heavily rimmed in black kohl, her smiling lips red and plump. The dress is tight and leaves nothing to the imagination.
Buying time, I take another swallow of soda. Then: “I’m not interested.” I turn my attention to the front door of the night club. I waited in line for two hours to get inside. I’m not missing a single person that passes through.