Information highway

‘Is it possible to be truly anonymous online?’ he asked himself as he was looking for a long-lost friend with whom he shared a traumatic experience. He knew this friend, Megan, years ago and was interested in finding her as he had done his time and was now a free man once again.

Five people went on that trip, himself and Megan the only ones who returned. He had been accused of killing the other three and it was Megans testimony and disfigurement that put him in Mountjoy prison for the past twenty-two years.

The world had changed since he was convicted. Cars were sleeker, land lines almost obsolete, the smartphone, something he had only seen on star trek when he was a boy, taking their place. He was amazed when his brother handed him an old beat-up Samsung that was his nephews and he possessed an individual phone number all to himself. Yes, the screen was cracked, but it still did the job.

The first thing he wanted to do as a free man was to find Megan. He knew that everyone had a digital footprint, so he went to the local internet café to search of her. She was the only one who was still alive, a fact which he had to rectify.

He, like everyone else, queued up in the busy barista line and when it was finally his turn, he ordered a latte. He brought the frothy coffee over to an empty computer. He didn’t have much when it came down to it. As he left the prison, they gave him €53.12 into his hand. He was set up accommodation wise, his brother letting him sleep in the flowery pink spare bedroom so he spent his first €4 on the latte.

It tasted even better than he imagined. He savoured the aroma of the coffee beans in the air and the feeling of having the froth on his upper lip for a second before he licked it off brought him back to the days when he was a much younger man who took coffee for granted. He closed his eyes and basked in the gloriousness of being able to enjoy something he remembered being good, this was better. It was orgasmic.

Once he opened his eyes again, the computer screen black in front of him, he knew to press ‘crtl, alt and delete’ together to spark it to life, the screen so bright he squinted his eyes for a second and was faced with his first challenge of the day…the password. He looked around to see if there was anyone around to help him out, his eyes drawn to the big sign above him. It was more a laminated piece of paper than a sign and it told everyone that the password was Password. He offered it to the blinking cursor and was in.

He firstly went onto Facebook and, like a stalker, looked up the name ‘Megan Cooney’. He knew her as Meg, and he didn’t even know whether she even had a page, it was just a stab in the dark, somewhere to start.

He was met with many Megans and went through the pages of them all whilst enjoying his latté. It was so good that he became disappointed when it was gone and equally disappointed when none of the Megans were the one he wanted.

The next thing he did was a simple google search and was delighted when a page with her face on it left him feeling triumphant. He was fascinated at her accomplishments. She was Dr Megan Crabb now.

‘Oooohhh, doctor no less!’ he said to himself as he put the new name into Facebook. Bingo, he had found her. He was amazed at how much information he found out about her, and all because of the internet no less. As he dug deeper, he was able to produce an address for Megan and wrote it down on a napkin.

 

He knocked on the thick, wooden, brown door of the house that the internet said Megan lived at. To his surprise a toddler answered. The kid was eight, but to him he was still a toddler.

‘Hi sweety,’ he said to the girl in a patronising tone, ‘is your mommy home?’

‘Who is it sweety?’ a woman’s voice shouted from inside the house.

‘It’s for you!’ the girl sighed and went over to the massive sofa in the open plan living area where she pressed play on the remote control, and the little mermaid resumed her singing on the big sixty-inch tv.

‘Megan did well for herself!’ he thought.

Megan ran down the stairs with a furrowed brow, something he didn’t think fitted her personality. He held a small bouquet of flowers in his hand and said, ‘hello Megan long time no see!’

Megan audibly gasped and ordered the little girl to her room, bribing her with pizza for dinner. She was astonished at his face but what she found even more frightening was how he tracked her down.

He saw her surprise, ‘you can never remain anonymous with the internet!’ he said to her and chuckled, the sound of which sent a shiver down her spine.

‘What do you want!’ she asked angrily through gritted teeth.

‘The truth!’

‘I said the truth in that courtroom and nothing has changed since then!’ She had her head positioned so that she could see clearly out of her one remaining eye.

He could see she felt vulnerable and exposed, aware her daughter was mere feet away from a true monster. That’s how he knew she felt because he knew that was what he was.

He noticed that she was paralyzed with fear so he let himself bask in the glory that he created that fear. It was the rush he was yearning for for all those years that she was responsible for taking.

As he entered the house, he stopped right beside her and smelled her hair, ‘umm coconut,’ he whispered just loud enough for her to hear. He ran his right index finger across her scar and over where her eye should have been. It was invigorating for him. He knew only too well that it was he who took her eye that night, and it was he who was about to take the other one also.

He placed the flowers on the shoe rack on the inside of the heavy door and closed it. She was visibly trembling. He put his hands on her shoulders and walked her into the kitchen. The massive granite top island the only thing separating the kitchen and dining room.

‘My my, we are doing well for ourselves!’ he exclaimed as he sat her down on one of the sturdy dining room chairs and whistled in amazement.

‘What’s your little girls name?’ he asked licking his lips.

‘Keep your hands off her you murdering bastard!’

‘There it is,’ he smiled, ‘there is the voice I fantasised about every day I was inside!’

He walked around the kitchen and picked a knife from the counter, the one that looked the sharpest.

‘Now I’m going to do to you what I should have done all those years ago before you ran away and got me locked up!’ he shuddered at the thought.

What he didn’t know was that there was a home office to the left of the hall where Megans husband John worked. Megan had almost forgotten how to speak she was so scared.

‘John,’ she yelled eventually, ‘call the cops, he’s here and he has a knife on….’ the rest of her sentence muffled as he ran over and put a hand on her mouth. He didn’t know whether John was in fact there or not so he acted as if he were and stormed into the empty office.

Whilst he was gone, Megan ran towards the phone and dialled 999 leaving the receiver on the counter so she could drop hints and feed the operator with as much knowledge as she could whilst praying for someone to come. She grabbed a small paring knife from the sink and slid it up her sleeve, the handle first, then the blade.

He ran back and chased Megan around the room, knife firmly in front of him. She kept talking aloud about him being there and it wasn’t until the sweet voice of Megans daughter asking if she could watch the little mermaid again did the game of cat and mouse end.

Megan choked back the tears and said, ‘not yet baby!’ his knife against her throat.

The blade was tight against her skin, so tight that she could feel a trickle of blood flow downwards onto her clavicle. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want her daughter to be the one who finds her. Situations were going through her head, ‘what if he kills her too? she’s only eight years old!’

‘Now, missy,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘you are the reason I was in Mountjoy for twenty-two years! You took my life away, and in return, I’m going to have to take yours!’

Just then in the nick of time, the doorbell rang. It was the police.

‘How you play out the next couple of minutes is on you!’ Megan smiled, ‘either way, you’re going back to Mountjoy!’ she grabbed the paring knife from under her sleeve and stabbed him in the thigh. He screamed in pain and dropped the knife he was holding to her neck, the police gaining entry to the property guns first and to her relief, cuffed him. She dropped the knife she was concealing and put her hands where they could see them.

‘Stupid bitch!’ he screamed, spittle flying with each word.

‘Who is this ma’am?’ they asked Megan as they put her in handcuffs as well.

‘His name is Francis Heart, he was responsible for the mass murder of a group of teenagers years ago. He has been in Mountjoy since and he was the one who took my eye.’

They called for an ambulance for the screaming Francis Heart and tried to sit him down and put pressure on the wound.

‘He’s overreacting!’ she smiled, ‘it was just a paring knife…. barely broke the skin!’

Megans daughter, Suzie, sat at the top of the stairs watching as she would the little mermaid.

As more officers came to the scene, they vouched for Megan and they took off her shackles. Suzie ran into her arms and buried her face in her shoulder.

‘Its ok baby, everyone is safe again!’

She smiled at the murderer as he walked out of the house limping.

‘I’ll be back Megan, wait ‘til you see, I’ll be back!’ he shouted as he left her property.

Megan went down to the police station to give a statement later that day. She was cleared of all charges.

She looked pensively into the abyss, ‘I tried to make a new life for myself but when he found me, I had to ask myself, is it possible to be truly anonymous online?’