Tag Archives: Diary

Covid Diary pp. 36-37

An email address is all you need to get payback.

There’s no need to hack anything, find a back door, or enter the Matrix like a pissed off Neo. Just visit their social media accounts, rummage through their footprints in the global network, puke a couple of times at their selfies with skinny grandmothers and chubby kittens, and bada boom! You’re about to destroy the life of someone who’s trying to destroy yours. Use that person’s email to leave some provocative comments on various news sites, forums and anywhere else online, then sit back and watch everything about them unravel into glorious chaos.

I haven’t limited my imagination either. I’ve thought outside the box, even running circles around it and performing hyperkinetic rain dances in order to create the most damning shit possible. My moves have been so calculated that my stalker should soon be ‘enjoying’ a run-in with the law. The police, the federal police, the army, and at least four or five other official bodies with many intimidating letters in their titles ought to be crashing through his front door any day now. I believe the internet gaming community calls it ‘swatting’.

Of course, I’m not an idiot, which is why I’ve posted this bullshit from internet cafes and the like, and not my personal PC. I may be a girl but I’m pretty aware of how IP addresses can be tracked. And with the kinds of outrageous things I’m writing in my stalker’s name, I definitely don’t want those traced back to me!

PS: All that social media bullshit came to an abrupt halt within two days. But I’ve not had a chance to bask in this sweet tasting victory because all my personal accounts were banned by each site’s administrators. Pretty suspicious if you ask me. I mean, ALL of them?! I’ve a hunch that my stalker probably decided to burn everything to the ground before being hauled off to whatever grand punishment awaits him. Never mind. It’s high time to put a pause on my virtual life anyway.

It’s good sometimes to step outside and pat the grass.

PPS: Fuck. That went downhill fast. Now I’m at the clink, face to face with my stalker—well, not exactly face to face. He’s across the room, handcuffed to a railing near the watercooler, answering the female detective’s questions.

He still doesn’t know what I look like but I certainly know him from the selfies on his social media accounts. He’s a lot shorter than I expected in real life. I can’t believe he’s trying to flirt with the detective who’s clearly a lot taller and a lot less interested.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

Covid Diary pp. 33-34

‘Journeys end in lovers meeting.’

Dear Diary,

Why he’s quoting Shakespeare I will never know. Nor do I care to. Never in all my years did it occur to me that I would one day attract an internet stalker—but no matter. The fool clearly doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.

I started streaming late night gameplay because of boredom, the deadly scourge of security guards everywhere. Especially those, like myself, who prefer the evening shifts. I can’t imagine how our predecessors managed to kill the endless hours of tedium before the advent of smartphones and mobile internet. I’ve heard of reading, exercise or gorging until you puke, but even those activities must get old fast, mustn’t they? Hell, if I wasn’t so lazy I’d sooner be masturbating myself into a coma.

Anyway, my current game isn’t very original, but if truth be told I do love the hidden irony of it. In it I am a lycanthrope hunter, and I’m packing some serious heat—a flintlock blunderbuss to be precise. It’s a bugger to reload but boy does it punch through those candy-ass lycans like so much tissue paper! Yes, I admit I hate their sissy guts. They’re nothing like the lycans in real life, and they sure as hell don’t represent me!

And don’t even mention my character’s costume! Purple velvet knickers, high-heeled kinky boots, a lacy corset with an absolutely shameless décolletage, and a tiny calotte with a massive feather. I think everyone should fall dead if only because of the sight of my gaudy outfit. Or puke all over themselves at the very least.

It should be pointed out that this is what my character looks like. Not me. My character. I never show my face in the live stream. What the viewers get to see and hear is raw gameplay with my commentary. That’s it. So, this stalker has fallen in love with whatever idealised version he has of me in his head, a hypersexualised videogame character in a ridiculous, revealing outfit doing over the top, ridiculous things. I have to ask if he has ever met reality at any point in his life.

So, I’ve been streaming for a little while now, and my stalker didn’t start off being a stalker right out of the gate. If anything, he was positively charming and respectful… until the week before last. I quickly grew bored of his purple prose, self-referential jokes and fawning attention. He was clearly fancying us as something of an item—which clearly we were not. We never would be either. I hate liars.

So, you know what I did? I banned him. Even if he was the last man on Earth, I don’t fucking need him. But, of course, the banning was only the beginning of my troubles. The cowardly weasel somehow managed to hijack all my social media accounts and was soon spamming all my online haunts with naked photos where the faces were cropped out. Obviously, these images were meant to be of me. They weren’t but no one but this prick and I knew that.

Well, two can play at that game. Let the hunt begin!

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

Covid Diary pp. 26-27

Dear Diary,

I will not thank God for CCTV. CCTV is the Devil’s work. Or God’s work. Perhaps they’ve collaborated on my humiliation.

Every day I enter the shit hole that is my work space and plop my bottom into a saggy arsed chair before a bank of dull, flyspecked screens. Maybe some people feel like God (or the Devil?) when they’re spying on and controlling human beings from such a vantage point, but I sincerely and wholeheartedly hate this. I would not be here during a pandemic if my job hadn’t been deemed an ‘essential service’.

Honestly, why do people scratch their genitals when they’re the only ones in the lift? Why do they check for nostril hairs in the mirror? Why do they do this whenever they damn well feel like it? And do they think if they spoil the air that their mask will make them invisible to whomever enters the lift next? I don’t know what they’re eating but it smells worse than my own ungodly clam after a session on the exercise bike. I just don’t need this shit.

It’s clear that they’re not computer scientists, aeronautics engineers or high powered executives. They’re human-sized babies. Frankly, they can’t even open a packet of potato crisps without committee approval. And the aforementioned masks? Don’t get me started on the frigging masks! Those thin strips of fabric deprive their tiny brains of oxygen and common sense. They end up with nothing in their heads but a basket of fucks not given. What other explanation could there be for their flagrant disregard for my territory?

Anyway, it may be a minor point to them but not to me. They’re always mucking shit up and I’m forever doomed to supervise it. The best place for my shapeshifting is in the lift, so how am I supposed to bear this ignominy? It’s enough to make you howl in despair…

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

Covid Diary pp. 19-20

Dear Diary,

I still can’t kick the habit of eating off of a knife. I remember my mother would get mad every time she saw me do it. I’d listen to dozens of reasons as to why I should avoid it. There were rather sensible ones such as hurting my mouth, and completely superstitious ones such as getting an angry temper for the rest of my life.

I did, of course, attempt to state my position. I’d declare dozens of reasons as to why I should be eating off of a knife. There were rather sensible ones such as reducing the amount of dirty utensils that would need to be washed after dinner, and completely superstitious ones such as it helping to develop an immunity to werewolf bites for the rest of my life. But my mother wasn’t having it—and anyway, why shouldn’t she have the last word? She was my mother! Her verdict would always be delivered with the same stinging whip crack as a wet kitchen rag to the neck—which she also did.

All rationales aside—even the irrational ones—I learned not to fall into these habits while my mother was in the room. But at other times? Well, then all bets were off. I didn’t have to concern myself with her displeasure and so I’d often not be conscious of all the wrong things I was doing until after I’d done them. And then I’d get a wicked little smile on my face. I still kinda do.

In these days of lockdown and social distancing, I find myself wishing she was still here. I would love to defy her again, to find new habits with which to earn the pleasure of her displeasure. I wonder… could that be the reason why I still eat off of a knife or walk under ladders or leave umbrellas open inside the house?

And also, I’m not afraid of werewolves, but that’s a completely different story for another time.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

CALIXIAN // Ranting Up the Wazoo

I am in a crappy mood. That’s why I’ve decided to kill Darwin this very day. Somehow. And quirkily.

I’m wandering around in the shed when I stumble upon a dusty, old megaphone. This could be exactly what I need! “Darwin, baby, come here! I have something for you.” I can barely contain my glee.

Darwin’s tumbled head pops in at the door. He’s looking at me with curiosity. It’s definitely one of his best traits. He’s as curious as a kitten. I crook my finger at him, beckoning him closer. Darwin enters the shed.

I take my time. I want to savor the pleasure. I smear half a bottle of grease over Darwin’s mop then meticulously comb it back. Then I pick the nastiest tie I can find from a dingy, old wardrobe in the corner of the shed. Yes, the orange tie with the big blue hot-dogs. That should do it.

Darwin twists and turns before the mirror on the wardrobe door, giggling. He obviously thinks it’s a funny role-playing game. Perhaps he’s now imagining that I’ll put on a nurse’s costume, or dress like Harley Quinn, or like a big violet papulose lobster. Frankly, I neither know nor care what this pervert daydreams about.

I take another look at him. Darwin is smiling like a brewer’s horse. He’s shining like a spit-and-polished samovar. I don’t recall him ever being this happy, and certainly not since that time he won ten measly greens in bingo. I feel something approaching a light pang of conscience, but I shake it off. I have to finish this game.

I need a finishing touch. I survey the shed interior before noticing a shabby leather suitcase in another corner. Perfect! Feeling like real Pygmalion, I thrust it into Darwin’s hand and take a step back to admire my handiwork for a moment. It’s unbelievable but Darwin looks even worse than he usually does. Is that even possible? It seems that, yes, it is.

Darwin shoots me a questioning look, waiting for whatever’s next. I push a megaphone into his arms, give him a wink in return, then abruptly push him outside. I slam the door. Right before his nose. Take that!

Darwin knocks insistently, begging to be let in, but not for too long. Curiosity killed the cat, I suppose. I know that a protest movement on the next street over will soon catch his attention. And I know that he always jumps at the chance to rant about his favorite topics, especially now that he has the megaphone and some sympathetic listeners around.

There’s a knock at the door.

Darwin’s tumbled head pops into my bedroom. I barely have time to minimize my window.

“Calix, dinner’s ready. Come and get it!”

“Sure.”

By the time I’m leaving the bedroom, the Sim Darwin is standing on the suitcase, shouting frothily into the megaphone. “Death is supposed to be the last, great refuge for troubled minds!” he squawks. “From ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and into the big black!” His face is flushed. The tie hung loose. Darwin is as cute and convincing as Lenin on the armored car in 1917.

Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper stands just around a nearby corner, wry faced and skittishly rubbing a scythe. He doesn’t like anyone ranting about death too much, you know.

I step into the kitchen and give Darwin the biggest smile I can muster.

“What do we have for dinner?”

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2018