You've been chosen

“You’ve been chosen” the subject line stated. No punctuation, no specification as to what she’d been chosen for. The sender? A large hardware chain. What in the world would she want them to choose her for? she thought. Nothing, that’s what. She marked the email as spam and closed her laptop, never giving the missive another thought.

    “You’ve been chosen” greeted her once again the next morning, bright and early. She hadn’t had her coffee yet, so she nearly opened the damn thing without even looking, but then she noticed the hardware store’s name and the somewhat creepy headline.

Something about the missing punctuation. Shouldn’t they have used an exclamation point if she was chosen for a prize or something? Seems like if you wanted to generate a feeling of excitement, really get someone stoked to open an email, you’d use an exclamation point. Wouldn’t you? Whatever. The point was, she noticed just in time and didn’t open it. Mark as spam. Move on.

    “Emma you’ve been chosen” made her do a doubletake. Hey, the sender was personalizing things now. They still hadn’t figured out the punctuation (They weren’t just missing an exclamation point, but a comma, too. Where were these emails coming from, where had the sender been educated? Did they miss the day on punctuation? As an English major, it really was starting to piss her off.)

  Now they had her name. Had they paid a little more to the evildoers on the Dark Web to get her info? If she opened this particular email, would she find additional personalized tidbits?

Would she find the hardware store had chosen her to win a year’s supply of bird food (the only thing she ever seemed to buy at the hardware store…), or was her name the extent of the personalization? She was tempted to open it, but she wouldn’t. She remembered reading--somewhere, who knew where, that if you opened a spam email you would signal the sender you were reading their crap and they’d just send you more (and was it possible to get, like, a virus or something if you opened it? Or was that just attachments? Maybe she should Google it.)

Anyway. Mark as spam. Move on.

    “Emma, you’ve been chosen. Open now.” Whoa. This morning they’d seriously stepped up their game. Had Zuckerberg been bugging her thoughts? Punctuation, finally! She’d still prefer an exclamation point, because without it, this seemed ominous, but at least there was punctuation. Well done. She still wasn’t going to open the damn email. At this point, it was a game of wills. And now that she thought about it, wasn’t her email provider supposed to be filtering this crap out? She’d reported it as spam for three days now. The sender was the same (damn that hardware chain) and the subject lines were pretty much the same every day…why was it so hard for them to send this to spam? Why was it her job every day?

Whatever. Mark as spam. Go to work.

    But now she was pissy and starting her day on the wrong foot. She felt like she was not going to have a good day. Damn those hardware spammers, damn her email provider. Shit, she was running late. See? Bad day already.

    The next morning, she woke up in a bad mood and couldn’t figure out why. She stubbed her toe on the way to the bathroom. Put her yoga top on inside out. Nearly fell over putting on her yoga pants. Almost put moisturizer on her toothbrush. What the hell was going on!? Why was she so off today? Oh yeah. Yesterday.

Yesterday, she’d gone to work in a bad mood because of that damn email. What was it about those emails that was putting her in such a crabby headspace? Was it the fact that she kept reading too much into the subject line—it seemed so menacing. Was she just pissed that spam kept getting through her email filters? Well, whatever it was, she ended up at work yesterday feeling grumpy and was short with a colleague, who then decided to run to a manager and complain.

Then, she was called into the manager’s office and given a talking to. It wasn’t terrible, since she was able to fob it off on a ‘bad day’, but still. Who wants that?

This whole thing was giving her a headache, and it was really making her angry. It was SPAM for fuck’s sake! SPAM!

Dammit. She swore if there was another one of those damn emails in her inbox this morning, she was going to reply to the damn thing.

She was obsessed. These things were driving her mad.

Bypassing coffee, she reached for her phone. She opened her email. God DAMMIT! There it was. But it was…different.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Read this now. Or else.” Geez. Melodramatic much? She tried to laugh it off, but her skin had broken out in goosebumps. She felt a cold sweat on her brow, in her pits. This subject line was so not cool. What the fuck was going on? Someone had to be messing with her, and it wasn’t the hardware store, of that, she was very sure.

But she refused to open the email. Mark as spam. Move on.

    “Emma, you’ve been chosen. Open this, or we’ll come back.” Wait, what? Who was coming back Emma wondered. What the fuck? Who was emailing her? This was insane. Jesus.

Who did she know that a) had gone away and b) was really pissed at her for some reason? Pissed enough to threaten her? The subject line said ‘we’…not ‘I’…so that was odd. And the sender said ‘come back’ not ‘be back’…was that a clue? It had to be, right? ‘I’ could mean an old boyfriend coming back to haunt her…but ‘we’? Maybe it was just her parents. Maybe they wanted to visit her again? Those visits always went well. Ha.  

Shit. She had no idea. She really wanted to open this email. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Right? Who could she ask about this? She worked at a tech company—she wrote marketing copy, but still, it was a tech company. She had several friends in the IT department who could (possibly? She had no idea how these things worked…) help her trace this thing. Maybe they could tell her who was actually sending them to her.

But, shouldn’t she read one of these emails before she asked for help with them? Would it sound too crazy to just say the subject lines were freaking her out? No. She was sure she’d read (somewhere) that opening spam was bad.

So, she’d take her laptop to work with her and ask someone to help her. She’d beg if she had to.

    “Hey, Chuck! You busy?” she asked the bespectacled young man who sat behind a desk laden with D&D figures and Funko Pop bobbleheads.

“Hi, Emma, what’s up?” he asked, smiling.

“So, I’ve been getting these weird spam emails,” she began.

“Oh, man. Sorry about that. The filters here are supposed to grab those before they get to your inbox.”

“Actually, no, they’re in my personal email. At home, and I was just wondering if I could show them to you? I have a question about them…” she said.

 “Oh, sure. Not to worry, I can help,” he smiled. His smile assuaged her fears. He’d know what to do. She could just tell.

“Whew, thanks. I just keep getting them. I don’t know why my email provider doesn’t filter them. I get them every single morning, and they’re pretty much the same.”

“Have you opened one?” he asked, giving her a stern look.

“No! I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to,” she explained.

“Good. Usually, it’s more dangerous to open an attachment, but it’s safer to just delete spam without opening it,” he said.

“That’s what I thought. The thing is, though, they’re kind of creepy. It seems like they’re a little threatening? I think. And the subject lines seem to be getting…I don’t know, more aggressive?”

 “Whoa, Emma. That’s crazy. Let me take a look,” he said, gesturing to her laptop.

She passed it over, with her spam folder open. She’d left all of them there, so you could see the escalation as you looked from the first to the last.

He peers at the emails for a second, reading the subject lines.

“Yeah, Emma, these sound crazy! I mean, it’s most likely just sent from a spammer—someone who’s paid to generate this stuff. But I’m guessing whoever the spammer is, they took some weird liberties with their subject lines. I guess they were bored at work. Maybe a creative lit major with a second job?” He laughed, and smiled at her, trying to ease her mind. It worked.

“Are you sure? Nothing to worry about?”

“I don’t think so, but let me trace their IP address, and I can ease your mind a bit. Shouldn’t take me long. Do you mind if I keep your laptop for a moment? It could take me a few minutes, or it could take hours, depending on how well they’ve hidden themselves.”

She thought quickly. She’d closed all her tabs, and there wasn’t really anything embarrassing in her email right now…”Sure, that’s fine. Thanks for doing this.” She must have looked relieved because he smiled again.

 “No worries! Happy to help. Like I said, I’m sure it’s nothing.”

 She went back to her desk and got to work, with one eye on the clock. She hoped Chuck would find something out for her, and relatively soon. She hated to take time away from whatever he was supposed to be doing.

 Losing herself in work, she was surprised to look up and find

Chuck standing next to her cubicle. She looked down. Two hours.

“Did it work? Did you figure out who’s sending me those emails?"

He shook his head and shrugged. He looked defeated. His entire body drooped. He seemed sad to be disappointing her. “No, I’m sorry Emma. I tried everything, but they’re hidden pretty good. I assumed they’d be using a VPN, but I thought I could at least track down the company. But no luck. They really don’t want to be discovered. But, if it’s any consolation, most spammers use practices like this. They never want to be held accountable for clogging up inboxes. I really don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, though.”

She sighed, shrugged. “Ah, well. Thanks for trying. I appreciate it.”

    That night, as soon as she got home, inexplicably, Emma checked every lock on every window and door. She felt a vague sense of unease. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew it had something to do with those damn emails.

Her phone dinged. An email. No, she thinks. She can’t take another one.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Don’t try to find us. We’ll find you.”

WHAT? Freaking out, she looked out the kitchen window. With the lights on inside and the darkness outside, she felt like she was on display, under a spotlight in a shop window. She closed the kitchen blinds, then ran through the house again, this time closing all the curtains and blinds.

 This was insane. They knew she’d had Chuck try to track them. Whoever they were. And they were coming for her. Her hands shook as she opened her laptop. She had no idea what to do, but she started going down rabbit holes. How to track spam. How to track an IP address. How to stop spammers.

The consensus seemed to be that there was nothing she could do. She felt powerless. She was powerless.

A new email popped up.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen. Don’t fight it.” She screamed and dropped her laptop. She ran to the kitchen. She needed her phone close at hand in case she needed to call 911 call; a knife to defend herself. She had no other weapons. No dog to bark, no pepper spray.

She couldn’t sit down. Should she just leave? She didn’t want to just walk around the house, randomly looking into rooms. She’d seen so many scary movies where the woman, all alone, walked into a dark, empty room, only to have the door close behind her, finding herself trapped with a killer. “I will not be a final girl!” she yelled out loud, at no one. At nothing. Wait, did she want to be a final girl? She was so confused about final girls…were they the final ones left alive, or the final ones to die?

She shook her head. She was delirious. She needed to leave. To go somewhere where there were lots of people. Phone in hand, she grabbed her purse, her keys, headed to the garage door.

Her phone pinged. An email. She wouldn’t look at it. But she did. She looked down. “Emma, you’ve been chosen. There’s nothing you can do.” She’s reading the email and doesn’t look up in time. The door leading from the garage opens while she’s preoccupied.

“Emma, you’ve been chosen.” She hears the words and looks up. She screams, but it’s too late. They had come back.