"Be curious. Read wisely, try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity – Aaron Swartz "
Ding!
(You have 1 follow request).
While Shasha was having her brunch, new notification from her IG beeped. She glanced at it and accepted the request.
Whoever the person was, usually she would accept it first even if it was from the seller who was trying to sell their products.
She was one of the online shopping freaks who loved to buy things online rather than going out to shop, way before the pandemic happened anyway.
As for her, more sellers, more options. But if she was not interested, she would remove them later.
When she looked at her new follower. "Dang! A sexy hunk with the crown tattoos?" "Really?" this must be another type of scammer.
She had come across few scammers before. So, she felt it was such a fun thing to act like a fool for a fool.
"Let's start the mission! I'll follow you back" she clicked her tongue and huffed.
Once her request to follow back was accepted. Shasha observed his IG feeds. The new follower 's name was Lorans, 29 years old, location TXXX. There was something fishy when she looked at his photos, but she couldn't point it out yet.
She muttered, "Hmm, whose photos he is using anyway?"
"Oh. He has a Tellonym account huh?" She used to hear about Tellonym from her son. You could ask any question, put any statement and answer whoever's Tells anonymously. It was suitable for someone who have lots of complicated questions in their heads but didn't know to whom they were supposed to ask or they could ask anything without people knew who they were.
"Maybe I can try it later. It might be fun" Shasha said to herself with a smirk.
Ding!
(You have a message).
"Aahhh. I knew it! Here we go!". Shasha mumbled and read the message.
As usual {Hi} would come first.
Shasha typed her answer {Yeah. Hi!}
Then there was a question {How are you?}
{Fine, thank you. Hbu.} Shasha had learnt few acronyms which youngsters liked to use nowadays in their conversations.
Most of the information could be searched on the internet with only one finger.
Then that Lorans guy asked, {where are you from?}
Shasha retorted "Another stupid scammer who don't even have time to look at my feeds". But still, she replied, {SXXX. Hbu?}
{I am from BXXX, but right now I'm studying for my master in TXXX.} He answered.
Shasha raised her eyebrows and muttered to herself. "Educated scammer?". Then she replied, {I see. That's awesome, my son is also studying for his master rn.}
After she sent the message, she was counting the second hand on her watch and smirked. Would there be a reply? After two minutes.
{What? You have a son? You're married?} Lorans asked.
Shasha rolled her eyes and typed. {Didn't you look at my feeds first once you were accepted as my follower? From there you will know I am married and have 2 kids.}
The reply came. {Sorry I didn't look at it, but you look young, and your eyes are beautiful, it's okay even if you are married.}
What a flatterer. Shasha felt she wanted to puke when she read these kind of flattering words and how did he know whether she was beautiful or not anyway? She was wearing a mask for God damn sake in her profile picture. What a bluffer!
{Before you flatter me more. Why don't you look at your photos? I bet the person who is chatting with me rn is not the person in the photo.}
{I am busy, got to go!} Shasha didn't want to chat anymore. She was allergic to flatterers the most.
{Wait!} The message from that guy came.
Shasha ignored it and closed her chat screen, then resumed what she was doing. Finished up her brunch, washed the dishes and did the laundry.
As a fulltime housewife with two grown up kids who weren't at home most of the time and a busy working husband, she really did not have too many things to do at home.
She used to work at one of the banks in the city but resigned after working for 5 years and later she was helping her husband, Sean, at his engineering company.
She was also one of the directors and the Human Resources Manager in his company but because of the differences of opinion in operating the business, she decided to withdraw herself from the company 3 years ago and became what she was now, with nothing to do and no goals.
Her enthusiasm towards life began to fade away especially when there was a time, she really needed someone to listen to whatever turmoil she had in her mind and her heart but didn't know to whom she should turn to.
Someone like her who used to be independent when she was younger but after she was married, she seemed like a bird who had broken wings and that made her felt so useless.
Sean would be off to work by the time she woke up.
Her eldest son, Jeremy was renting a house somewhere near to his workplace. He started working at Software Engineering company 2 years ago and intended to pursue for his Master.
Her second child, Shirley returned to her dorm a week ago. She was a third year Architecture BA student in one of the public universities in another state. Even when she was at home, she would be out with her friends most of the time.
So, usually Shasha was left alone with her cat. But her beloved cat died a week ago caused by a hit and run. She felt like she lost her loyal companion. That was the second time she felt so lost within a year and she was still grieving.
In February of that year, she lost her eldest brother who was the closest sibling of hers before she was married.
The only brother who was always pampering her even she crashed his motorbike in an accident when she was 14 and when she was on her semester break, her eldest brother would be the one who was spending more time with her. He was willing to be her chaperone when she really wanted to go to the concerts behind their father's back. When she did a big mistake in her life, he helped her a lot.
After she got married, every time she returned to her hometown to visit her parents, he would buy the things that he knew were her favourites to be brought back to SA City.
She had lost him forever and she could not even see him for the last time because of the restriction to travel at that time due to the pandemic.
Shasha and Sean bought a house in SA City when she was still working at the bank, while her parents and other family members were staying in her hometown, BTU City.
She would go back there at least once a year, but because of the fu**ing pandemic, she could not be able to go back for nearly 2 years already.
She was completely devastated when she received the news about her eldest brother's death. For a few months she felt numb and empty.
Later, even without her husband and children's comforting words, she forced herself to strengthen her heart and mind.
When she thought she was getting better, she lost her dearest cat this month. She cried for few days and kept on thinking 'there must be a reason. They have gone to a better place. They are happy over there'.
She was trying to get her rationality back by reciting all those words over and over again in her mind. Once, she read one quote saying September would bring more happiness and love. She really hoped so.
But with her alone at home, no one to talk to. Her other friends would obviously busy with their own families and careers. If they had time, the topic of their conversation would be out of Shasha's league.
So, all she could do was immersing herself into novels and music to escape from the stressful reality. Sometimes when there were too many words appeared in her mind, she would jot it down.
She liked to write poems and sometimes she would turn it into her lyrics in her own song. She couldn't say they were good but at least she could pour her heart out into something.
She had learnt how to play guitar when she was 15 from her friend but she did not put too much effort and time on it. And when she was studying in the colleges, with a hectic life she was having, she did not even had time to touch a guitar.
Once she had nothing to do when her children were big enough, she started to play it again. She was a total bungler. Anyway, as long as it could make her happy, she wouldn't care no matter how bad the sound was.
While she was in another universe, which meant she was so into the novel she was reading, she got a message again from that Lorans.
There was a video sent in the message, Shasha clicked on it and she thought her jaw would drop and crush into pieces on the floor and exclaimed
"F***!..... What the hell is that?"
There was a message {I'm horny.}
"WHAT?!!" Shasha was so dumbfounded, she wanted to delete the video. But before that, she had watched it twice. "This fellow should be an adult movie actor, nice body though." She was mumbling to herself, she squinted her eyes and was distracted for a while before she deleted it.
She was no saint anyway. Then she removed that mf horny pervert from her followers, and she unfollowed him too. Done and solved.
She did not have a habit to block people anyway. Because logically, it would be useless. If the person really wanted to find her, there would always be a way to do so.
It looked like there was no need to catch the scammer anymore. Oops no..he was a pervert.
She thought most human beings in the planet during this suffocating moment were really trying their hardest to keep their sanity intact. The impact of this deadly virus was not just killing people, it was killing the norms. The living ones needed to adapt with the abnormalities.
She was also one of the stressful people, who was trying to hold on with whatever method she could think of to prevent herself from going insane.
But the message she got just now was totally, outrageously ridiculous. In her 47 years being a human, that was the first time Shasha had received that kind of video from a stranger. Not that she had never seen that thang before. Duh! She was married with 2 kids!
Few days went by, she didn't even think about what happened until one day a word Tellonym came to her mind.
She googled it and read all the information, she created an account and put her cutest photo to be her avatar picture. She thought it was cute though.
Later, she got few Tells which she knew was automated. Then she looked for someone to follow. Click, click and click. No need to be approved since she could follow them anonymously.
Perhaps some people might think she, the middle age woman, was crazy to do something like that. But for Shasha, she did no harm to other people by doing it anyway. That was just one of her ways to keep herself occupied.
One time she answered few Tells from one guy and the guy asked for her IG account so that they could chat more. Shasha only had one IG account which for her, that account was a little bit personal to be shared with some people.
Rather than dwelling herself in self-pity and sadness, she decided to create another IG account using her pseudonym and linked it with her Tellonym account.