Haterz

by James Goss

  Idly, I checked Gmail. There was a message from an account I didn’t recognise. I wonder how my life would have changed if the spam filter had picked it up?The message was just a link to a site. I knew better than to click the link. But hey, live a little.

  The page it took me to had just one line on it. Small. Dull. Times New Roman.

  We know what you’ve done. Killer.

  INTERLUDE

  WHEN CATS STOPPED

  BEING FUNNY

  THIS IS A picture of a cat.

  IT IS BECAUSE I like cats. A long time ago, when the internet was invented, it was a military operation. Nuclear war would have been run through the internet. Now the internet is mostly porn, shopping and cats.

  And cats are best of all. Once, when I was having a bad day at work, I looked at all the pictures of cats on Flickr. This was a few years ago and it was still possible to look at all of the pictures of cats on Flickr on a dull day. Before the cats took over. Before the cats took charge.

  Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that somewhere there’s a darkened room where the internet is controlled from a comfy chair by a cat. Running things. Although, sometimes, when the world is bad, I like to think that. It would be better than the truth.

  It’s just that I like cats. The cat has had two greatest hits. In Ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. Then came a few millennia where they didn’t quite fit in, and were frequently burned. Then along came the internet and the cats came into power again. You can’t move for cats on the internet.

  This annoys dog owners. Every now and then someone will try and make the internet happen for dogs. Pictures of Pugs looking miserable in hats will appear. But Pugs in hats are not a thing. So they go away.

  Cats remain. Somehow, whatever you throw at them, cats survive.

  A few years ago, the lolcat was invented. There is almost entirely no point in me explaining the lolcat to you like it’s 2007. A lolcat is a picture of a cat with a misspelt caption. The joke lies somewhere along the lines of ‘if cats could almost spell, and were a little evil, and a little more intelligent, this is what they would be like.’ Cunning and haphazard.

  For a long while, the cat joke worked. The site was an enormous success, fuelled by people coming to stare at a cat doing a thing. Then the site changed. People started making their own lolcats. These started being posted on the site. For a while it was a glorious, churning tide of endless pictures of cats doing a thing with a hilarious caption.

  But the problem was...

  The problem was that we’ve all stood next to someone at a gig saying, “They’re not as good as they were in the early days.” We’ve all been that person. For me it was trying to tell my friends at school about this amazing new, obscure, arty and independent (I had just discovered independent films) sitcom they’d started running late at night on Channel 4. It was, I said, like Steven Soderbergh or Jim Jarmusch if they did a sitcom about people living in New York. I told them the title. They nodded. They hadn’t heard of it. The sitcom was called Friends.

  I stopped watching Friends a couple of years later. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because I could never get a Rachel cut. That’s a glib answer. I just simply couldn’t stand that my beautiful secret thing was now the most famous sitcom in the world, and it knew it was and it felt the pressure, the terrible pressure of having to be the funniest sitcom in the world. I couldn’t forgive it for not being unpopular.

  Lolcats was the Friends of the internet. Suddenly, everywhere. Suddenly golden and wonderful. And then the wrong kind of people started watching. The kind of people who buy pink kitten plates. Who buy calendars with soft focus cats shot through a sock like they’re Joan Collins. Only they’re cats. They don’t need vaseline on the lens. Because they’re cats. They don’t have wrinkles. They’re cats.

  The rest of us, we carried on laughing at the clever, snarky meme about cunning evil cats who couldn’t write. But you’d notice the comments. ‘Aww cute!’ ‘LOL.’ ‘CUTE x100000!!!’ ‘sooo hugzy.’ ‘kitty.’ The people writing the comments were less clever than the cat.

  Here’s where lolcats broke. Because the way the site worked was that you took a picture of a cat, you slapped a caption on it and you sent it in. It sat in a slush pile of cats. And, if the people looking at the site went through the slush pile and liked it enough, it was promoted to the front page.

  In the early days, it worked like a charm. Some genuine genius found a picture of a cat sleeping purposefully on a television and called it ‘MONORAIL CAT.’ Someone else decided that a cat peering down from a loft door was ‘CEILING CAT.’

  Smart.

  Funny.

  Lol.

  But the pictures that were now coming in were just pictures of cute cats with captions saying how cute they were. Or CUTEZ. Or ADORABLEZ. Or, worst of all, ‘purrfect.’ I’m sure these came in in the early days. But they didn’t get voted up. Because the people looking at the site were, by and large, people who got the joke.

  The Turkish phrase for ‘foreigners’ translates as ‘Those Outside The Tent.’ But those outside the tent had pulled open the flaps and crowded in. Grinning inanely.

  For now a comedy site was being driven by people who didn’t quite get the joke. And weren’t funny.

  Friends was once the best programme on television. For a time, lolcats was the best thing on the internet. Then things changed. Other people got involved. People not like us.

  If you want to know how far things have gone, there’s now a payday loans company called Lolcat Loanz. Oh, yes. They’re on the list.

  The difference between lolcats and Friends is that it’s easy for us not to take the blame for Friends. All we did was watch it. We didn’t write the jokes. It’s not our fault (although it is) that it somehow wasn’t as funny anymore. We can blame the network.

  You cannot blame the internet for lolcats stopping being funny. You can only blame the people. The people who crowded into the tent and didn’t understand.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CHARITY MUGGER

  I SAT UP long and late that night.

  I looked at a lot of cats.

  I’d killed someone—and I felt fine about it. Right up to the point that I got an email saying that someone knew I’d done it. We none of us ever grow up, really. We’re all still somewhere between twelve and fourteen. Some of us are more broken by the world, some of us less. But the big, key, important point is that we all of us like doing bad things so long as we can get away with them.

  For a glorious moment, I thought that I had. Killing is the one big thing that should be so difficult and so bad and so wrong. It should have been harder than it was.

  If killing Danielle had been easy, then getting away with it should have been just as easy. Especially because, and don’t get me wrong, I was cleverer than she was.

  But by the time I’d got home, got home and poured myself a congratulatory drink, someone had already got in touch to tell me I’d done it. Not even Hercule Poirot was that fast. The internet already knew I’d done it. Maybe yeah, somewhere, a cat in a dark room had nodded to itself as it had written that message. Maybe.

  I stared at that message. I wondered about it.

  I did not reply to it.

  One lesson in life I’ve learned is that, if you don’t like the look of an email, don’t reply to it. A colleague sends you an email that makes you angry? Just ignore it. A Facebook status makes you boil with rage? Ignore it. An online column makes you shake at its wrongness?

  One golden rule in the world: Never Hit ‘Reply.’

  A MESSAGE TURNS up accusing you of murder?

  Well obviously. I mean what reply could I send? I couldn’t say ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty.’ Or anything much of anything. I could just stare at it.

  So I did.

  For a while. Then I went and looked at pictures of cats. Not on Flickr this time. All over the place. And videos. Videos of cats falling over. Or riding on robot hoovers. Or skateboards. Or hiding in
boxes. Or just videos of cats sleeping. Untroubled.

  Or just pictures of cats sleeping. Untroubled. Hunting dreams.

  Then I’d look again at the email.

  Then I’d look at some more cats.

  I LOOKED AGAIN at my inbox. Another email had arrived from the same sender.This time a link to an eCard.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the caption said. ‘We want to know what you’ll do next.’

  The eCard was a picture of a cat.

  I STARED AT the notebook screen calmly and quietly. Which is how it ended up at the other end of the room, sliding down the wall.

  I got up off the sofa, breathing heavily, my legs shaking. I made my way over to the notebook. My flat’s not a large one, but it took a long time. I flopped down onto the ground by the computer, praying it wasn’t damaged. After all, if it was damaged... well, if I threw it away, wouldn’t someone look at it? And, if I took it in for repair... wouldn’t someone wonder why? I mean, there was no guarantee that that email would be sat open on the desktop. But then, I’m fairly sure that no celebrity keeps their kiddie porn open on their hard drives either, and yet that never seems to go well for them.

  My head whirled. Hard drives aren’t unlike record players, really—just a big disc of data spinning round and round being read by a needle. And, inside my head, my disc was spinning but the needle just wasn’t connecting.

  I lay on the floor. The floor was dirty. I could see dust bunnies gathered under the DVD shelves. I could see grit. I could even see, horridly, peanut shells. That must have been from... when had I last eaten monkey nuts? Last Christmas? Would I ever earn enough to afford a cleaner? If I went to an internet café, could I log on to my Gmail and delete the email? Were there such things as internet cafés any more, or would I have to travel back to 2002?

  I eased the notebook open. It flickered back into life, suggested restarting in Safe Mode and then announced that Windows would be installing 128 important updates. Its way of punishing me.

  The needle bounced along the disc and connected. My phone! Of course. There was Gmail on my phone. I picked my phone up. As I did so, a text arrived.

  ‘THAT WAS STUPID’

  I stared at the number. Unrecognised.

  I’D NEVER EVER felt sick with panic before. But now, everything... everything was empty. It wasn’t just my brain that was spinning. Everything was out of control. Nothing made sense.

  I pecked at the phone. I started a reply.

  ‘Who are’

  Then stopped. Deleted it.

  ‘What do you want?’

  No. I started a third time.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I nearly sent it. Instead I put the phone down and scrabbled under the cabinet, fishing out the empty monkey nut shells, one by one, and stared at them.

  Rational thought just didn’t come.

  The police weren’t this good. No one was this good. No one could know.

  Unless Danielle wasn’t dead.

  That was the only explanation. But it didn’t work. I could imagine her sitting in a cab, smiling as she sent a text. But not this... Why would she do this? It just didn’t make sense.

  Her phone. There was a picture of us on her phone. What had happened to her phone?

  I stared at my mobile, and my horrified reflection stared back.

  And then my phone started to ring.

  Unknown number.

  I held it in my hand, feeling it jump each time it rang.

  I waited for it to stop. But it didn’t stop.

  I ANSWERED THE phone.

  “What do you want?” I yelled. My voice sounded strangled. Panicked. Guilty.

  “David, David, sorry it’s so late. It’s me, oh, God, it’s me...” cried a voice at the other end. More panicked and alarmed than me. It was Guy.

  My best friend Guy. Had Danielle told him?

  “It’s Danielle. It’s Danielle...” He broke off. There was an odd sound. Like a gasp, but lower down in the throat. “She’s been in an accident. I’m, I’m on my way to the hospital. It’s bad. Sorry for ringing you so late, but oh, my god.”

  “That’s... that’s okay.” I heard my voice. Calm. Clear. Very, very strange. Like a swim in a cold pool. “It’s fine. Would you like me to come over?”

  “No. I’m not at my flat. I’m at Danielle’s.” Hence the unrecognised number. Right. “I’m off out. I’ll... I’ll call you from the hospital.”

  “I’ll come. I’ll come. It’s fine, I’ll come. I’ll put some clothes on and come.” Again, an odd tone.

  “No, no it’s fine... well, look, could you? If you could... Maybe. I just need someone. It’s St Stephen’s. I’m going with the police.”

  “The police? What? How bad is she?”

  “Er... yeah.” A terrible pause. “I really need a friend. If I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Don’t be daft. I’ll get a minicab.”

  “Thanks, mate. I can’t go through this alone. You’re one in a million.” Guy tried a laugh, but it was just that same odd gasp. Oh. He was crying.

  I ended the call. The police had come for Guy. Did he know she was dead? Still, no-one had called me. That was fine. The police didn’t know I’d done it.

  I pulled my trousers on.

  My phone beeped. An email. Linking to an eCard.

  ‘BE OUTSIDE LEICESTER SQ MCDONALDS IN HALF AN HOUR.’

  What to do, what to do? The needle in my brain bumped uselessly across the surface of my mind.

  SO. I DIDN’T go to the hospital that night. I’d promised, but I didn’t go. Which meant that Guy wasn’t speaking to me.

  Instead I went and stood outside Leicester Square McDonalds. Which, at 2am on a Wednesday, is a weird place to be. It was cold, and my jacket couldn’t keep the wind out. A nightbus roared past, its side advertising careers with Sodobus in neon. A few people wandered in and out of the cafe. Men wandered past, shouting in Eastern European into their phones.

  I waited. I was frightened and bored. Like waiting for a date.

  A car pulled up. An oldish women with tight silver hair got out of it. She marched up to me. I looked at her, questioningly. She stood, appraising me coldly, waiting for me to say something—maybe to ask her for directions. Then she shrugged and walked away into the restaurant.

  Clearly, it wasn’t her. Well, I didn’t think it could be.

  I waited a bit longer.

  Normally, you’d text the person you were waiting for. But I didn’t dare. Not in this case.

  I waited half an hour, then I went home.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I sent Guy an apologetic email, explaining that I’d fallen asleep. This was after he didn’t answer the phone.

  It was a long time before he answered the email. ‘I needed you. She’s dead.’

  Well, this was horrid.

  I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him any of the truth. I couldn’t say, ‘Well, yes, I killed her. Oops.’ I couldn’t even tell him that, half an hour after I got home, there was another message: ‘MADE YOU LOOK.’

  I did not reply to the message. I said plenty to it out loud.

  I WAITED FOR the police to come and knock on my door. They didn’t. No one came and knocked on my door. I thought about skipping work. But then realised that would look suspicious, so I went even though I pretty much zombied my way through it. I thought I’d never sleep again, but the night after I killed Danielle, I got home and fell straight asleep. I’d just about taken my shoes off.

  I did not dream about Danielle. That came later. Dreams where I stood over her while she looked up at me with her eyes wide, as she choked and choked. Over and over.

  There was an inquest. It was ruled to be an accident caused by an allergic reaction. That was it. No mention of her phone. Why? Why was that? Someone had it. With a photo of me and Danielle on it. I just prayed someone had stolen it.

  As Guy wasn’t speaking to me, I wasn’t invited to the funeral. I wouldn’t have gone anyway. I’m not sure I could have spent t
wo hours not looking at her parents.

  But, at least, the funeral was over. And the mysterious eCards had stopped.

  I figured that would be it. I don’t know why I thought that, but I really did.

  THEN I GOT an email from Guy. The preview began, ‘Dear Friend,’ so I opened it, thinking it would be an olive branch. That we could get back to where we were.

  Instead, it was a round robin:

  Dear Friend,

  As you probably know, my beloved fiancee Danielle [what? They were engaged?] died last month. She was my angel.

  She didn’t deserve to die—and certainly not from accidentally eating a peanut. The whole thing would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve now lost the love of my life and my best friend.

  Yes, this is a begging email. I’m going to be running a marathon for Danielle and to raise awareness of allergies. My life is over. I don’t want other people’s to be ruined too.

  Here’s the JustGiving link. If you ever met Danielle, you’ll know she was really difficult to buy presents for. But just this once, I’m hoping you’ll find it easy. #DoingItForDanielle

  Best wishes,

  Guy

  I read it a few times. He made Danielle sound so nice.

  Right there and then, I almost emailed him and told him everything. But that didn’t seem such a clever idea. At all or ever. Plus, by the third time I was reading it, I was laughing. Laughing at how wrong he’d got her. She was a warped fascist with appalling punctuation. Sure, thinking about it a bit, she didn’t deserve to die... well, not exactly. But I’d had my reasons for what I’d done.