The rain doesn’t ease up. Tori’s nowhere to be seen, but that’s understandable, given that most proper grown-ups are at work right now. I get out my sketchbook and try to lose myself in that, but my heart isn’t into it, so I decide to switch to terrorizing a Q&A board. People ask such stupid things, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
I potter downstairs to find some lunch, but the cupboards are basically bare.
In the living room, Mum’s watching TV again. The screen is reflected in her glasses, making it look like her eyes are flickering.
“Mum?” I say.
“Hmm?” She doesn’t look at me, just keeps staring at the TV. I purse my lips and swallow. She hasn’t been this bad since Dad left. I suppose it is coming up on a year, and everyone says anniversaries are the hardest things to deal with.
“Have you sorted the food delivery?”
“Hmm?”
“The Tesco delivery. Have you sorted it? We’re getting low on stuff.”
She slowly drags her attention from the screen and blinks once, twice, three times, like a lizard.
“I don’t know. I think so?”
“Shall I have a look?”
“That would be good.” She stretches her hand out to me, beckoning me to join her on the sofa. It smells faintly rank in the living room, and I am ashamed to admit that I hesitate before sitting next to her. She drapes her arm around my shoulders and pulls me close, cradling my head against her chest like she used to when I was small, and starts to rock me. I swallow again, harder this time; it’s all I can do to stop myself from breaking down.
“My little Bethany,” she croons. “So grown up now. I remember when you were little. You used to climb into my lap and beg me for cuddles. You don’t do that anymore. Too big now. Too old.”
Her voice hitches and I squeeze my eyes shut. Mum desperately needs to take a shower and change her clothes, but nothing could drag me away from her right now. I wrap my arms around her neck as she cries, piteously, and I cry too, a mixture of grief and anger; grief at my lost mother and my lost father, and anger that the two of them allowed us to get to this point.
Slowly, times slips by and Mum’s tears subside. I sniff, and the ugly sound echoes through the room. Mum slumps back, spent.
“There’s cash in the tin,” she whispers. “Go get some chips for lunch, love.”
Yay. Chips.
More carbs.
***
I guess I kind of saw it coming. Dad leaving, that is. I don’t think Mum did, though. Despite the arguing and all the “meetings” that meant he had to “work late” yet again, I know, I know, but if you want food on the table yadda yadda yadda . . . I think Mum was too close to the signs to read them accurately. Either that or she ignored them, hoping they’d go away. I think that’s why it hit her so hard.
Sometimes, I’m a bit ashamed of her. I mean, come on, she should be out every night, guzzling prosecco straight out of the bottle, celebrating her freedom. But Mum’s not like that. She’s too fragile, like a bird who actually liked the safety of her cage. I can’t help but wonder if she’s always been like this but did a better job of hiding it when Dad was around. I remember, when I was little, how she “liked a lie-in.” As a kid, I took that at face value—Mum liked to sleep, simple as that. Same with her never working full-time. She said it was so she could be there for us. Maybe it was actually because she couldn’t cope. I don’t know. I doubt I ever will.
The chips are soggy, but they still taste good. I love the way the acid of the vinegar catches in the back of my throat, offsetting the fluffy greasiness of the potato in quite a lovely way. Mum doesn’t eat much, so I polish off her leftovers, too. Well, waste not, want not.
She assures me she’s rebooked the Tesco delivery, but I check, just in case. I also add a few essentials to the list—hey, she’ll never remember, and it’s not much; just a pack of biscuits here, a couple of cheapo multipacks of chocolate there. Doesn’t even amount to a fiver—what’s happiness compared to a fiver? Not sure what we’re going to have for tea tonight. If I can’t scrape something together from the remnants in the freezer, well, there’s always takeaway.
I make Mum a cup of tea and then slope back off upstairs. I know it’s a long shot given it’s just past one, but I log into Metachat anyway to see if Tori’s around; she’s not, and I swallow down a little bubble of disappointment and switch to my favorite hunting grounds.
It doesn’t take long for me to get my fix. I’m flying high. No one can touch me up here. I have wings made of lies; I am carried aloft by the scorching thermals of their collective hatred.
And I feel alive.
Here, I am nothing. I have no flesh. No bones. No blood to shed. I am a binary figure, an abstract force, zeros and ones, data strings, Boolean scripts.
I am whatever I want to be, and you can’t stop me, no matter how hard you try.
When you’re nothing, you’re indestructible.
Freedomchick04’s back. Stupid bitch. She’s full of oh, I was hacked and evil trolls and pity me, for they are trying to destroy me! I laugh. You think that’s it? Give me a break.
Time to try on some new faces.
Of course, my old accounts have been blocked or suspended, which might work for the peasants, but for those of us who stalk the dark side, it’s par for the course. It takes less than a quarter of an hour to set up four new accounts, each with their own email accounts and IP addresses, and I’m ready to go hunting again.
I’m not just after Freedomchick today. A couple of my old targets have been lulled into a false sense of security and need taking down a peg. Plus, there’s a new girl, some stupid slapper who seems to think the world wants to see snaps of her sandy ass as she poses on various beaches. Stupid thing is, the number of followers she’s managed to accrue in a short space of time bears her confidence out. Sometimes I despair.
The new girl has already managed to gather a pretty hardcore group of worshippers, who go on the defensive straight away, calling me stupid, just jealous, and probably fat and ugly in real life, but I simply don’t care, because no one can say anything for certain; I’m an internet shadow, a ghost, out to haunt you and your idiotic so-called friends. Oh, she loves them all, does she? Yeah, right, even the spotty ones and the fat ones and the creepy ones and the ones who smell funny and the ones with weird hair—yeah, she’d toootally give them the time of day if she met them on one of her oh-so-perfect beaches and wouldn’t look at them like they were pieces of crap she’d just scraped off the bottom of her designer flip-flops.
I only have to switch accounts a couple of times before a band of vultures swoops in. Good old vultures. They make my life so much more fun. I sit back and watch them tear into the carcass that was a stupidly self-congratulatory Instagram account. Bumgirl is trying to delete stuff now, but once you get a few snowballs rolling, they quickly turn into an avalanche, and it isn’t long before she is buried.
Oh, when will the Beautiful People learn? We fuglies outnumber you. We may not have your glitzy life, but we do have numbers on our side, along with the rage stoked by years of being sidelined and belittled.
Do not underestimate us, or we will destroy you.