Spam

by Rajah Dodger {rdodger@hotmail.com} (c) 2006, 2009

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License (by-nc-sa). In
jurisdictions where the Creative Commons license is not recognized, United
States copyright and Berne Convention provisions apply; all rights reserved to
Rajah Dodger except that electronic not-for-profit reproduction rights are
explicitly granted with the stipulation that this authorship and permission
note must remain attached.

Abstract: Sometimes those junk emails should be opened, after all.

"We are having your wife."

I usually ignore junk email, on the advice of my daughter at college, but this
title caught my eye. It was certainly different from the usual run of Nigerian
bank transfers and email lotteries. I would have opened it to see what the scam
was, but I had a lot of client deadlines to meet.

When I checked before lunch, three more emails with the same title had arrived.
They had very big attachments, from 700K to 3 megabytes, and I figured them to
be viruses masquerading as sex videos. There had been a notice from corporate
just a few weeks back that the mail server would block multimedia files for
just that reason. I considered reading one of them just for grins, but the
title put me off. I've always found it odd, how these hackers will put so much
brainpower into getting around the spam filters but ignore the basics of
spelling and grammar.

Oddly, I was the only one in the office getting this particular version. Stan
in Accounting said it was probably the Indian offshore tech support mafia
trying to take me down. If I hadn't been snowed under with client calls I'd
have found that funnier. I called my wife to share the joke, but only got the
answering machine. She was probably out running her usual errands, or working
out at the gym.

The afternoon was a horrible mess, with three different clients clamoring for
my exclusive attention. Five o'clock came in a frantic rush, and I barely had
time to glance at my inbox before catching the carpool. Things were slowing
down – there had been only two more of those emails. Maybe I'd look at them
later; for the moment I needed the respite of having someone else drive me
home.

When I got home, I dropped my briefcase by the kitchen door and called for my
wife. She didn't answer me, but I heard music playing in the living room. It
sounded like one of her exercise videos. I checked the answering machine, where
the only message was mine from earlier, and went to see what Sharon was doing.

I entered the living room, then halted in shock. Sharon was in the easy chair
facing me, her legs spread out over the armrests and tied down by her ankles,
her arms pulled behind her. Tape covered her mouth, and a smaller strip held
something wedged between her thighs. Her body was covered with sweat and smears
of something else, her face was tear-stained, her breasts swayed from side to
side. I stood rooted in place as her lithe body arched against its bonds, the
familiar moans of her orgasm escaping the gag. My erection shamed me into
movement, and I crossed to the chair trying to keep my eyes averted from her
condition and her face. The hurt and anger in her eyes when she saw me were
palpable.

"Why?" Sharon cried when I pulled the tape from her mouth. "Why wouldn't you
answer them? Why didn't you do anything? How could you ignore ... those!"

I followed her gaze to the laptop on the coffee table. What I had taken for
exercise video sounds was a website slide show featuring a nude body I knew
intimately -- although never in such positions or activities. I suddenly
realized what was in those email attachments that the office server had
blocked.

As Sharon climbed unsteadily to her feet, her laptop beeped and the AOL voice
announced "You've got mail!" We both looked at the same time.

The subject was, "We are having your daughter."

/END/

Endnote: Originally written written 3/10/2006; this revision workshopped at the
Fish Tank (http://www.desdmona.com).