Lets get back on that dam horse! Weekly posts and my submissions to the Writing Prompts Sub-Reddit. Lets do this. First up, my first response to WP which is about a first response to WP. Enjoy.
I knew it wouldn't be anything special. Just a bit of fun. There was no way I would beat any of the other responses. It might get a few laughs for being silly, probably a few harsh responses. I'm an entertainer by nature. Always being the "funny guy" in the group. Self-deprecation comes naturally to get a laugh, so I wasn't worried about being embarrassed. Despite that, my finger seemed stuck on the mouse. Unwilling to click that save button. I wanted to write. I wanted to eventually do it professionally. But I'd have to get better first and you don't get good at something without practice and criticism. But this was the internet, not some friends. It would be no holds barred. I focused a thought in my head. Something to ease my nerves.
'Worst case scenario, a bunch of internet nerds insult you with nothing worse you could get in half an hour of DOTA.'
I clicked save.
After a few days of putting it off, I logged in and checked for replies. The worst case scenario played out:
TheREALSanta "The hell is this shit!?!"
Toasty_Waffles "I think my cancer just got cancer."
kegi17 "This is just terrible. 0/10. No star for effort. You should feel bad."
And so on and so forth. Battered but not broken, I figured I'd come back to it a couple weeks after regaining some confidence. Then it started getting weird. Two weeks later, I began to get emails. With some very specific and detailed descriptions of what they would do if they saw me. My post started getting passed around. More emails. Soon Facebook. I went too the police but it was one of those legal grey areas and I was basically fobbed off. I wasn't too worried but. Just a bunch of internet tough guys mouthing off. Give it a couple months and the next thing would come round. Maybe someone somewhere would bring up Gamergate again.
A couple months did pass, but nothing let up. It all just bled into my existence. I would wake up and check my email, picking out the more inventive or gruesome death threats. I even worked out a point system with people at work. Extra points for custom insults and interesting use of objects. The highest scoring one somehow managed to involve a live goldfish.
I caught sight of a few people hanging outside my house a few days a week. Not doing anything. Just standing there. The crowd got slightly bigger each time. Slightly closer. I didn't even notice at first. I couldn't see their faces. It was the middle of winter so it was always dark by time I got home from work. I made a few attempts to confront them but they always managed to back away before I could get close. I went to the police again. But you can't have people arrested for standing near your house.
I woke one night feeling rather groggy. I had no memory of going to sleep. I was sitting at my desk enjoying a good cup of tea and browsing TV tropes, casually debating internally whether to masturbate now or save it for later in bed. It took a while to sink in I was tied to my bed. Stripped to my boxers. A fact I found oddly reassuring. A few seconds more to make out that the shadows around me were people with red blank masks and, much more distressingly, a various assortment of sharp objects. No one spoke. They barely breathed. Each stared at me unflinchingly. I tried to scream, shout, laugh hysterically in fear, make a smart arse comment. The tape over my mouth put a stop to that. The leader, presumably, of my, also presumably, execution detail leaned over me and ran the tip of his blade over my body. Making small circles on the fleshier areas. He placed the blade next to me and reached into his coat and pulled out a small plastic bag. There in the liquid it contained, without a care in the world, was a live goldfish.
