My first crack at the dark web and suddenly I was butterfingers.
Only two, at most three clicks away and my keyboard ninja skills were failing me.
Steady brother, I thought. But I wasn’t steady. Something terrible was happening. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t right. But I couldn’t describe the feeling. Or maybe it was like the feeling of losing all feeling?
My hands went reactionary, unceremoniously defecting to fear; blatantly disregarding my brain’s chain of command. Fingers don’t fail me now! Come on, come on, I thought frantically.
I sucked down a long and slow draught of air followed by three more sharp inhalations. I was going to hold this breath; I was going to get a grip before the abyss rolled in.
I felt my jaw perma-clenching. I redoubled my efforts. They paid off. I finally managed to successfully negotiate with my left-hand to persuade my right-hand to stop my left leg from engaging in any more of that St. Vitus Dance bullshit.
I looked up at the clock on the wall.
Almost high noon.
Except for the clock, you might never have known daylight was working.
Vera had done up my place with blackout blinds and blackout curtains right after she’d begun making herself at home during Covid lockdown. Before I knew it Vera was a permanent fixture, hand creams and endless potions all. But she was serious about the blackout thing.
She said it would make sleeping the big sleep a lot easier. I might have asked her what she meant but by then I had realized Vera wasn’t much for questions. And as for opinions? My opinions were only okay when they were the same as Vera’s. And even then, sometimes, they were met with disdain.
But it didn’t matter. You had to know Vera to know what I mean. Vera was like a demon goddess. She could bring sad and lonely me to the heights of ecstasy, for sure, like nobody ever has; but beware; even the slightest infractions would be met by outrageously incongruent punitive responses; there was nowhere safe for me as we shared a futon.
I let the desperate breath pass.
I was praying I was wrong and that I wasn’t sleeping with the enemy. I was praying that the sweet and sexy Vera I met in 2021 was not draining me of my essence.
Yes, breathe. Restore your essence one breath at a time. One breath in. One breath out. Then another.
I felt the immediate panic passing along with the morning as the church around the corner rang in the afternoon twelve times.
The morning was gone but the free-floating anxiety remained at large.
Vera wouldn’t be okay with sleep for too much longer. She’d wake up grouchy. She’d want her Lexapro. She’d want to know what happened to the body. She’d want to drink her brunch out of a vodka bottle. She’d want a filter-less cigarette and a coffee black as the hole where most women have a soul.
And then maybe, maybe she’d want my soul, too.
I heard a low whistle. It came from my nose. The whistle reminding me where Vera had accidentally busted my nose; her elbow making a dramatic point after getting tight one night. I remember how she looked down as my blood collected on her elbow and then dripped on the black satin sheet.
“Serendipity-doo,” she said arching her threaded eyebrows. Her mesmerizing black and bloodshot eyes examining the spiderweb tattoo adorning her bloody elbow.
“I should get some red ink dripping down from the webbing part. Maybe a big bloody fly too with a human face. Yeah, that’d be too cool, wouldn’t it?”
I did what I usually did. I agreed with Vera.
Now, three fear-filled years later I shook my head like a wet retriever.
I unclenched my jaw.
Snort more air, I thought. Head the panic off at the pass. Focus on the task at hand. Run down that mystery. Steady as she goes. Don’t choke now. Just one more breath. In. Out. Breathe innnn. Breathe ouuuut. I felt my heartbeat begin to slow again…
Just as I was maybe getting it under control-
From the other end of my small, one bedroom apartment, I heard what I presumed to be the glass vase on the refrigerator, the one with the dead roses in it, taking a swan dive. This cacophony was interrupted by a piercing and psychotic mewl from gatita; that crazy cute but also very crazy feral cat that started coming in my living room window by the fire escape one snowy January morning.
“Fucking gatita!” I heard myself whisper-curse as my heart did it’s version of parkour.
I sat back in my swivel desk chair and ran my hands over my horseshoe head.
Just that crazy fucking cat again, I heard myself think. Focus Gary. Vera could wake up any moment. The shattered glass. Her tortured, violent sleeping. Her sleep talking for Christ’s sake.
And that oft-repeated phrase: “Which witch is which, bitch?” I was sure Vera was insane and now maybe I could prove it.
I took another deep breath and held it.
Full steam ahead and damned the torpedoes.
I slowly positioned the mouse over the black button. It was raised and beveled, sitting ominously on a charcoal background. The button read in gothic font, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who ENTER”. My eyes shifted a bit to the left. It’s sibling button, adorned in gothic bold, read, “GET OUT!”
I looked down at my fingers splayed upon the keyboard. What a sight. Gnawed upon nails, hangnails, dry cracked skin, chapped cuticles and callouses. If I survived, I would start treating myself to spa days. I would go to the park. I would stop and smell the roses. I would-
“Which witch is which, bitch??!?” Vera badgered her dream.
My shoulder involuntarily shuddered and hunched. Vera snarled in her sleep from the futon in the other room. I pulled my robe close feeling a chill. Vera made a sound that didn’t sound quite human let alone feminine.
The surrealness of my predicament was not lost on me.
Me. Gary S. Kraft, full stack software consultant for hire. Thirty plus years battle tested in the IT business and now mi manos decide to go on the fritz in my hour of need?
Slowly, and deliberately I put the cursor in the password input. Even more slowly I typed out the password my sniffer had captured.
It was: 50Sh@d3s0fD0r1@nGr@Y@666
I heard Vera stirring. The cat mewled like someone stepped on her tail. The mouse went, “click,” and I felt the dark web beckon.
Then I was greeted by an animation of fire and brimstone that dispersed to reveal the lone word, “instadamn” engraved in a Stonehenge background.
It was like instagram only it wasn’t. It was deep and dark and all buttons led to Vera. Vera’s instadamn; Damn!
There were pictures, so many pictures, of a very hideous and gnarled caricature of an old woman.
I rubbed my eyes and readjusted my glasses.
My heart sank and I knew. I knew beyond any doubt it was Vera.
Only it wasn’t the Vera sleeping fitfully on the futon ten yards away. Not sexy Vera with her impossibly long sexy legs twitching restlessly. Not breathtaking Vera the goddess, her long tresses of silken blonde catching all slivers of light.
No, this was another Vera.
Vera’s beautiful black eyes weren’t very beautiful anymore. And her face, it wasn’t smooth as peaches and cream. On the futon maybe. But not on her instadamn.
On her instadamn Vera was old as sin and twice as hideous. She was gnarled, her limbs like old tree branches waiting for the next storm to release them. But there was no release. Just ever more pictures. And every picture more hideous and Medusa-like then the last.
And then I found Vera’s reels.
My hand covered my mouth once it began its silent scream.
There it was. In black & white. Reel after reel of young men turned decrepit in time-lapse terror. And there stood statuesque Vera next to them all.
Each played out the same drama. Each reel starting out with Vera hideously decrepit yet by the time the curtain dropped Vera was again young as springtime. But for the men, it played out exactly the opposite. They had been drained of their essence; sweet bird of youth never to fly high again.
My first thought? Run! My legs response?
Fuck you, Chief.
No, my legs did not cooperate. I remained frozen in my chair. The crazy cat now scooched in, pawing at my robe frantically; mewling piteously.
Then a funny thing happened; the lights went out.
I picked up my phone. It hesitated, but it still recognized my face.
The camera app was open and pointed at me. It captured my face effortlessly only it wasn’t my face. Well, not quite. This face had more character if hard times build such a thing. And more fright lines. Wrinkles, wrinkles deep enough to hide a sesame seed.
I felt a strange pain in my hands. I looked down at them. Several liver spots began to form before my eyes. Then…
Then Vera rose from the futon.
“Where’s my fucking cigarettes goddamnit!?” a voice that sounded liked consequences barked.
I dropped my phone on my bare foot and stifled a yelp.
Hopping to it, I got Vera a fresh pack of smokes from my desk drawer. She grabbed it from my outstretched hand. She didn’t seem to notice the liver spots that came and went with the dance of the dust motes.
Vera got a smoke going then ambled off to the bathroom, a silver plume crowning her mare’s nest of golden tresses. For a moment, I thought I saw some gray. Then before my eyes, as if someone were running the cosmic avid, Vera’s tresses reverted to blonde again.
I wish I could call a friend. But somehow since falling for Vera I am no longer in contact with my family or old friends. Just Vera’s friends. Not that she has many. Just that old Haitian lady she speaks French with when they make chicken once a month.
The cat scratched my foot. It began to bleed but it did not move. I saw a blue varicose vein begin to form, then recede, then reform.
Vera hacked up some phlegm and spat it in the sink.
Vera looked at herself in the medicine chest mirror. I fake-reached for a pen and caught a peek. There, in the mirror, clear as day was Vera… old Vera. Ugly Vera. Angry, hungry and hungover, Vera. The reflection gave me the malochi.
“Can I make you coffee, Vera?” I asked.
“Quit making husband noises!” she barked, then coughed spastically before she spat into the sink again. I saw a crack appear in her forehead. Then her cheeks.
Yep. Vera’s in the bathroom and I’m having trouble moving. I hope someone can help me.
How does one go about reporting a murder not yet committed with no murder weapon except the looks that kill?
And then I remembered a quote from somewhere long ago, “I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very life essence itself with each release.”
It’s getting harder to think clearly and the cat is beyond frantic. Vera’s gonna be done in the bathroom soon and I haven’t slept all night.
Has anyone heard of instadamn?