Part 9

 “You have…three. New. Messages.”

Groggily, I sit up in bed. Judging by the dim light filtering through my curtains it’s about six o’ clock. Casting a glance over to my laptop, I wipe the drool from my mouth and stretch my arms over my head. I have my computer set up to notify me audibly when I get a new email so that I don’t miss messages from classmates or professors about assignments. I’ve already got a ton of make-up work to contend with and I don’t need that pile getting any bigger. It’s not that I’m lazy, I just have a shit attention span, and a worse memory.

I shuffle over to my desk and plop down in the old swivel chair, which creaks as I settle in. Clicking open my email reveals that only one of my new messages is school-related: one of my professors has had a death in the family and will be missing class. The other two are from an address I don’t recognize. The first subject line reads “Find Me and F#ck Me” and was sent around 3 PM, the second simply says “hello”, received about half an hour afterwards. Both appear to be spam emails so I have no idea why they ended up in my main inbox, until I look a little closer at the email address. It’s the same as the web address of that weird porn website.

Suddenly my body is covered with sweat. After I threw up earlier I’d stumbled into bed and passed out (as I tend to do after a stressful situation), and I’d completely forgotten about what I’d done this afternoon. Busty Brianna. Now it all comes rushing back. My roommate must be back from class by now, and I’m willing to bet she’s been back on that site. I wonder if she’s been contacted. If I’ve been snitched on. The muscles in my hand seize up, desperate to click on the first email, but I hesitate. I’m always so worried about getting a virus from opening spam mail and that website was so freaking weird, who’s to say clicking this won’t explode my computer? Maybe the whole site is just a phishing scam (is that what it’s called?), where they bait you into clicking weird links and unleashing malware into your system with big boobies and pretty girls? But I know that if there’s a chance I can contact whoever runs the site and stop them from letting my roommate know I snooped through her shit, I had better take it. Hell hath no fury like a doomsday prepper scorned; she could literally hold out on me for the rest of our lives. 

The first email reads like any standard porn spam so I go ahead and delete it, but the second one reads like a letter. 

“dear Friend, 

so sorry to see you go before we truly could become acquainted. please consider further interaction. i humbly leave my contacting information below. click if you will

your roommate’s girlfriend”

A bright blue hyperlink underneath the body of the email appears to be the aforementioned “contacting information”. It looks like one of those shortened URL links you see sometimes with spam advertisements. 

My brow furrows and my mind reels with this new input. This is obviously a different person than before, judging by the typing style. But they must have had access to my roommate’s webcam during my chat with “Brianna”, seeing as they are trying to bait me by pretending to be dating my roommate. I must have visibly reacted when “Brianna” told me my roommate thought I was cute. I would have had to react pretty damn hard for it to be visible via her shitty webcam, but I never have been good at hiding emotion. Or this is just a stab in the dark, whoever this is “revealing” some personal connection to pique my interest had it faded by now. To instigate “further interaction”.

I turn my head towards the door, listening. If my roommate’s back, she isn’t making it known. I’m not sure I’d want to face her so soon after trespassing anyway. I still feel too guilty, my face would give it away. 

‘Well,’ I think to myself. ‘I’ve come this far.’

I click the link.