I Lost My Samsung Galaxy Smartphone And Now Someone Is Pretending To Be Me Online
My throat was dry, but Kane looked invigorated. “I didn’t even think of it like that,” he said. He pulled his laptop out. He started clicking away and, with nothing better to do, I made us some dinner.
We ate and drank and brainstormed until late into the night. I fell asleep on the couch the the soft click-clack of Kane’s keyboard. When I woke the next morning, it was still dark outside. My head was aching and my guts were churning. Kane was hunched over the kitchen table, out cold with his face in the warmth of his laptop’s fan.
I grabbed my phone off the table and went to the bathroom. I took care of business, then decided this headache deserved a bath. I popped some painkillers with tap water, ran a bath so hot the air became thick, and crawled in.
As usual, I started to browse the internet on my phone. But as I scrolled down a webpage, my notification went off. It was a reply to a Facebook comment that I had apparently made. It was something mild and pointless. I hadn’t written it. I sat up in the water and started to check other things. Tumblr, Facebook, Triviacrack, Twitter…. They all had activity that I hadn’t done.
Not that I didn’t remember doing, but things I had not done. I have suffered zero lost time. I have a meticulous, vaguely OCD schedule and every minute of my life is well accounted for.
I drained the tub, threw on a robe and ran to Kane. I shook him awake and showed him what I found. He blinked hard at the phone a few times before…smiling. “There she is.”
I lowered myself in the chair beside him, cold and drippy.
“What? What do you mean?” I asked.
“I found her last night,” he said. “She’s been all over Blacklight. She’s been all over our private Trello board. It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before. She’s just…pretending to be you. It’s the most ridiculous identity theft I’ve ever seen. She literally took over your Clementine moniker.”
“Why the fuck would anyone do that? If she wanted it, she can fucking have it. It’s the internet.” I said.
Kane shrugged and brought up a grainy image of a girl in a dark room. It was a small apartment with paneling on the walls. She had black hair and thick black shadows covering her eyes. “I got into the laptop she transferred your info to and this is the best picture I could get.”
I was pacing now, staring at that face. “Any idea at all why she would do this?”
Kane shook his head. “No… but I bet I can find out.”
I had decided to make coffee. I looked up at him from where I filled the press, head tilted like a curious dog. “How?”
“What if I talk to her on Blacklight? Act like I still think it’s you. Maybe I can scare her off.”
Our conversation was stalled by the grinding of coffee beans wrapping the apartment in a crunchy yell of noise. As I watched the little beans get smushed and crunched and destroyed, I found myself remembering that girl’s face and wishing I could push it into a coffee press. I remembered the dead girl and the text messages and wondered if my little thief could really be responsible.
And then I realized how stupid it was to think she wasn’t. I turned to Kane as soon as the coffee beans stopped grinding. “Talk to her, but befriend her.” I said. I hooked the coffee up to drip. “Can you make me a new account on Blacklight and give it admin? Tell her it’s a programmer friend of yours. And then…I want to fuck with her. Like our April Fools joke from last year? With the spam accounts that could directly talk to users and everyone freaked out? We need something like that.”
Kane had a devious look in her eye. “What are you trying to do?”
“Scare her into giving herself up. For whatever she’s done.”
Kane looked at me for a moment. “You think those messages were her too?”