Good Old Boys

9 - The Cyberbully, Round One

Will woke at 8 a.m. feeling a bit dazed. The apple was beside his alarm clock. He wondered what Derek was doing today. Grabbing his cell phone, he meant to check to see if Derek had really put his number there, or if he'd dreamed the whole thing. What he saw instead were 47 messages: some were multiples from one person, others were from college buddies, and some were even from high school friends.

He looked at the message before the most recent one and saw it was from Chuck: 'WTF, Dude? Are you INSANE?!' The Beef answered on the first ring.

"Chicken! Holy Effin' Christ, dude! What is wrong with you? Are you frickin' high? Half of my friends want to kill you, and the other half want to torture you for years – and not in a good way."

"Chuck, I..." Will started to say, but Chuck kept on going.

"Do you need money? I checked the stock market, and your family's doing great. Will, you're blackmailing people! You're threatening to expose some very important closeted people! It wouldn't surprise me if one of them has hired someone to murder you – like Vinny Santangelo, that kid from High School. Do you have a death wish? You sent his fiancée a copy of that naked selfie, you remember, the one with you and him enjoying a double-headed sex toy?"

"Chuck, I never sent anything. I've been asleep all night. I haven't read any of these, I just called you when I saw your message."

"Read them, and then call me. I know a really good lawyer - you might need him. If I'm to believe you, and you didn't write any of these, then you've been hacked. Someone is out to get you. And this might just be the beginning. You've gotta catch whoever it is and stop them."

Will began reading and was sickened by whoever had dreamed up this prank. What frightened him the most was that the language, the tone, and the structuring of the messages was identical to his own writing style. This meant that someone was using an AI to produce the messages. That would make it doubly difficult to deny that he'd written them.

The worst part, he thought, was that he agreed with some of the sentiments expressed by them. But this criminal bully was a full-on Rainbow Radical, who didn't give a damn about the Right to Privacy or understood what a very personal decision coming out was. That's when he remembered Pietro La Roca's last words to him last night.

"William Poulet, you will pay for this meal – one way or another."

The man had been majorly upset. Furious, in fact. Will remembered how painful Roca's grip was on his wrist, and how much it hurt when he was yanked back into his seat. He felt certain that when Derek Singleton intervened, La Roca had been considering punching the guy.

But Pietro didn't advocate coming out to anyone. From what Will could remember, he was all about secrecy and living in the dark. Why would he 'out' Will's acquaintances that were publicly in the closet? To hurt me, and spit on my belief that it's better to live honestly in the light than afraid in the dark. It had to be him – who else had threatened him lately? 

He called Chuck and told him about La Roca. "No shit! I can't believe my mother would set you up like that! And what an asshole! Look, I'll get his numbers from her before I start tearing into her; that way, you can contact him on his cell, or at his office. But are you certain? You need some kind of proof."

"It has to be him, Beef boy," Will moaned in frustration.

"Do you know any hackers? There must be some telecommunications nerds at Boxton! See what IP they can trace it to, I don't know. I guess even if they appear to have come from you, maybe they can trace it backwards to its true origin. I'll text you Pietro's numbers. Let me know what goes down."