Just Kidding

Honestly, I can't feel that bad for people who get trolled. Bullying… I don't really think too much of it unless there's physical violence. The problem is that I got really jaded really fast when I was a kid, and the stuff people whine about today just doesn't sit well with me.

Oh, someone said you were a skank online? That's probably happened to every girl at your school. People keep harassing you on a forum? Go to a different forum, Jesus Christ. If your interests are so specific that there ARE no other places to discuss them… maybe you should take a hard look at that.

It all goes back to this really nasty fellow I met in the early days of the web. I used WoW! a lot, and… well, wait… It's not the WoW! you're thinking of. This was a Compuserve company that provided internet access. I forget what the letters stood for, but any similarity in name to the MMORPG is purely coincidental.

Anyway, before it was shut down due to a lack of subscribers, WoW! had a bunch of chat rooms you could go to for pretty much any sort of discussion. Most, however, were Role Playing rooms.

I didn't know jack shit about actually RPGs, but I jumped right into the rooms and made up my own stupid character to annoy others with. "Kreecha" was the obnoxious moniker.

All my silly attempts at bothering people were just coming from my need for attention. I'd make stupid puns and comment on modern things in such a way that they would seem like part of the "Fantasy" discussion.

For example, I once offered people crossbow cables at no charge with the announcement; "Hey! I can get you guys free cable!" … Groan all you like, I think it was hilarious at the time.

Those comments paled in comparison, however, to the antics of a fellow by the name of LivingJoke. He popped into the rooms once in a while and would just sit there quietly until an opportunity to make a weird comment would arise.

"I've been poisoned!" one chat-goer exclaimed.

"You'll be fine, I've seen this thing before." LivingJoke replied, "… Just kidding!"

Then he started to "bury" her.

As you would imagine, everyone would eventually get pissed off at this guy and I watched him get kicked and banned from several rooms. After a while… maybe when he was blocked from all the RP rooms… I would see him pop up in regular chat, as well.

In the book chat room…

"Yeah, the main character lives through the end… Just Kidding!!"

Blocked.

In the Anime room…

"Cartoons are perfectly acceptable for adults to enjoy… Just Kidding!!!"

I think you've probably caught on to his immature game. It was always the same with little to no variation. Most, if not all of the folks he was chatting with had just gotten over the trend of following sarcastic sentences with "NOT!" so the whole thing just reeked of failure and desperation.

When he got banned from all of those rooms, as well… he would just come back with new names.

Like "LvngJk"… "Hey guys, nice to see you all again… Just Kidding!!"

At one point I'd started playing a new game called DragonSpires. It was a clumsy, poorly executed MMORPG, but without the "Massively Multiplayer" part. I'd read about it in one of those rooms, and when the discussion got going one of the users posted a program that would give you unlimited gold in the game.

"Check this out, infinite money!" followed by the download link.

I quickly grabbed the program and ran it, fully expecting to see my DragonSpires account instantly wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. However, after typing in my name and password, a familiar phrase flashed across the screen as it suddenly went black.

"JUST KIDDING!"

I had to reboot, and when I logged back into the game, my character had inexplicably walked across several towns and got himself stuck behind a row of trees. Though that shouldn't have even been possible, there my little knight was, being picked apart by "Swamp Dwellers" until he died.

I'd have enough of it by this point. I'd never been the target of LivingJoke's practical jokes before… but I'm an empathetic sort of person and it still made me increasingly angry to witness them.

I let into the guy with a fury I'd never unleashed before.

"Listen, LivingJerkoff, you shit. Nobody wants you here! Why do you even stick around? Just to piss people off? If that's the only way you can get people to pay attention to you, then that's sad and you're a fucking failure. Why don't you do the entire web a favor and suck on a tailpipe? Better yet, run out into traffic and French kiss the first Mac Truck you set eyes on. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!!!"

LivingJoke was quiet for a moment… thankfully… then he logged out.

Everyone in the room gave me a pat on the back, and before long others were coming in after being messaged. Folks figured he might be gone for good, and that would have been a blessing to all of us.

I logged off after that, feeling very pleased with myself. I was on a dial-up connection, a 14.4k modem at that. For that reason, the phone couldn't ring until the moment I got offline.

"Hello?" I figured it might be a glitch in the system, ringing the phone just because I'd disconnected.

"There you are! Finally!" I didn't recognize the voice on the other end of the line.

"I'm sorry, who is this?"

"That's not important right now, I have to tell you something… something real bad. I hate to do this over the phone, but there's no way I can get there to tell you in person!"

"Wait, what is this about? I don't-"

"Your Mother… I'm sorry, she's been killed."

My heart sank. I thought I'd dropped the phone receiver, but it was only the numbness in my hands… in my whole body, really… that gave the sensation I had fallen limp.

"W-What?!"

"This is Freddy Meeks, right?"

"Yes! What happened! What's going on?!"

"Well, I hate to say it, but your Mom was on her way home, I guess… and she veered off the road and into a ditch. I'm just one of the people who was driving by, and she asked for someone to call you… right before she… she…"

That time, I dropped the phone.

In the next few days, I went to the funeral and took the first baby steps toward the realization that my Mother wouldn't be around anymore. Ever. They had a closed casket because of the mangling she’d gone through. Truth be told, my obnoxious relatives coupled with the discomfort of wearing a suit that was too small for my growing form took a lot of my focus off of the depression.

I didn't go online or chat much after that. What little time I did spend on the web was eaten up by Pirating MP3s of dark, dark music that spoke of how bleak and meaningless life was.

It was after one of these illegal downloading sessions that I disconnected only to hear the phone ring again.

"Hello?"

"Freddy?"

I froze. It was my Mother's voice. She was audibly shaken… she sounded either very exhausted or utterly terrified.

"Mom?"

"Freddy, listen… that woman… I… that wasn't me. I can't explain everything right now, but…"

"You're alive?!"

"Yes, baby! Yes! Someone was trying to… I don't know… he says it's a joke! He thinks he's playing a joke, and I don't know what's happening…"

"Where are you? Are you okay? Who is it??"

"I'm fine! He says I can go now… that the prank is over… He's going to let me leave, but only if you come get me. He said he wants to see the look on your face! Oh God, sweetheart I'm so sorry all of this happened!"

"Where are you, Mom? I'll get there!"

She directed me to an old abandoned barn on the outskirts of the neighborhood, and within seconds I was on my bike. Some kids drawing on the sidewalk in chalk darted out of the way as I nearly ran them over. I must've had three near misses with cars and trucks, each honking their disapproval at me.

When I finally arrived at the old barn, I leapt from the bicycle as it slid into some thorn bushes. My feet were burning and my legs felt like they'd give out at any moment, but still I forced myself to sprint down that short dirt path separating me from my stolen Mom.

"I'm coming!" I screamed, "I'm here! I'm coming!"

I burst through the door amid a cloud of dust and flies. Through the haze I could see a form sitting on a chair at the center of the room.

"Mom! Are you tied up?"

I waved the dust away as I raced toward the silhouette. Before I could reach her, I fell to my knees out of sheer fatigue and slid through the dry soil.

Sitting in the chair before me was the mangled, rotting, insect-riddled carcass of my Mother. Her face was smashed to the right, as if all of her now hollow and black features had been cartoonishly punched off-center. Her broken neck caused her head to loll to one side as well, and the stiffening of the corpse had nearly tied her into knots. The skin on her body was leathery and receding where it hadn't been completely eaten away by burrowing creatures.

She was still wearing her favorite yellow and white flowered dress and the diamond crucifix necklace she'd been buried in.

The sight was so horrific, so devastating, that I barely noticed the note cruelly safety-pinned to her moldering forehead.

"JUST KIDDING!"

Outside, I heard the bell of my bike playfully ringing off into the distance.

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