The spidey sensed and scented non sensical chain letter

I smell a rat.🐀

Suspiciously, surreptitiously ratty.

The never-break-the-chain-kind-of-stink-a-link.

That never ends.

Never goes away.

Destined to continue to take up residence in the nooks and crannies of existence.

Never ending ly sends my stomach into a free fall of barf and gag.

It starts slow, nagging, never really goes away.

Some days, it comes on full force, in full force and effect.

Exhausting.

Literally.

Figuratively.

And all the empty spaces in between.

The literal.

The figurative.

The open and empty spaces.

Awry.

Amiss.

Ugh.

As small children we curiously ask the adults “Why”. Seldom if ever hesitating to ask the difficult question, the difficult questions. We have yet to learn the social cues of self-censor.

Oh what a beautiful world.

Fast forward.

In the blink of an eye.

A tall person with the grown up face of an adult and the innards of a little boy, a little girl.

Some people have way too much confidence. (U2) Unchecked for years and we have ourselves quite a conundrum of conundrums.

Ambivalence.

Boggling.

Qualms.

When the un-returned addressed letter arrived, it was torn, partially ripped in the lower left corner. Casting aspersions on the way it came through the slot. Did the deliverer not notice? Did the deliverer get caught on something, passing the buck on…..to another unsuspecting dufus? To deal with.

It is a federal offense to read another person’s mail.

Yet. There it sat. On the floor, all ripped and limp. In this dwelling. How was I to return it when I did not know from where it came? If I open it, I will become a felon.

Well, maybe it is not quite that dire.

But. It is still wrong.

I could be maligned, skewered and harangued.

By my own conscience.

That is a headache I prefer not to partake in, today.

So I walked around the letter.

Now that it was here, what was I to do?

”You can’t touch this” rang over and over in my head. Well. I have to if I am to return to sender……..

I remember so vividly the commination. The condemnation.

I really thought I had gone crazy. The crazed feeling has taken up residence in my core, in the middle, turned up again, inside me, the inside

Of me.

The insidiousness calls on me often to awaken at certain points in time. This was one of those such times. I stared down at the letter. It stared right back at me as if to say,

”Go ahead.Take a peek. No one will ever know. We are alone, just you and me. I won’t tell if you won’t tell……..

The suspicious suspense was killing me.

What is the worst that could happen?

Doubt and fear radiated throughout my body.

Conscience can be a powerful motivator, when taken as directed.

Intimidation.

Coercion.

The vivid smiles of lies and deception.

Flood, flooded again and radiated with the intensity, the feelings of familiarity and the

“Crap”.

Here we go again.

I have a rapid fire conversation with my left and right hemisphered self and say, “No. This is not that”, not the same thing.

Then why does it feel all TOO familiar.

Again.

The sensations become stronger even after my left and right hemisphered convo.

Ugh.

I will pick it up, put it near a light and see if I can see who sent it to this address, even though it is indeed unaddressed to

anyone.

So I take a deep breath. And hold it up to the light.

Crap.

A chain letter.

I see the the three words written at the top. Having had some bad, really bad ball and chained experiences of and chains in my past, I reactionarily (made up word) drop it on the ground.

“Crap.”

“Crap.”

“Mega crap.”

It is as bad as I thought.

No.

Not a traffic citation.

Not jury duty.

Not an invitation to the dance.

A chain letter.

No wonder. Why it was addressed to no one, and yet addressed to everyone.

Pity the one who breaks the chain. The bullying never seems to cease. Just continues “enveloped” into something “different”.

Enmeshed too.

Tormenting.

Demoralising.

Menacing.

How does one break the chain?

Finally?

One thin, tiny piece of paper causing so much angst. And the two of us are, at this time,

alone together.

Tempting me to attempt to make copies and pass them on.

Emotionally manipulative, if you ask me.

But no. They did not ask me, to play.

And I was a-ok with that.

Bull dozing has a way of plowing through unencumbered and carelessly.

Today, with electronic capabilities, the “love” matches take on whole and entirely new meaning. Set of meanings—bumping and grinding out at one another at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a chain letter.

What to do. What to do.

Hoax?

Urban legendary?

In some neck of the woods, the practices are flat out outlawed. Chains. letters. Chain letters. Written, electronic, webally.

Ugh.

I pine for the day when our faces and selves were not plastered all over the place.

There is, needless to say, the fraudulent activity of “getting to know you, getting to know all about you”…getting to like you getting to hope you like me too”……

Oh. The simple times.

Funneling.

The funneling of information.

To a singleton. In the form of a “chain” letter…...a chain of letters…….l

Wire fraud.

Trojans.

Viruses.

They come in the form of lettered “packages” too.

Damage, loss, hardship.

All from the plastered faces of who knows who. And spies like us…or you, or me. Surfing and browsing, browsing and surfing….Listen as the wind blows the chain letters to and fro.

Can the chain ever be broken?

For good.

For worse.

Damn.

Your love.

Damn.

Your lies. (fm)

Chains. Keep things together.

Chains are the dies that find the way to bind the wrong together.

Not always a good thing, mind you.

Linking things together that do not belong together.

I shake myself to.

As if on cue.

I rip it to pieces.

The chain.

The letter

Just as I do so, my ratty friend appears, twitches his hairy little nose as if to say

“Good for you.”

Glad you ripped off the bandage.

My ratty friend twitches, if you ever need me again, rest assured, I will be around.

That familiar sinking feeling overcomes me

Again.

I smell a rat.

Again.

This time, the stench is stronger, too much to handle, too much to be believed.

Again.

The chains that bind and link the present with the past in the least delightful way.

Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious.

Atrocious.

Preposterous.

Precocious.

Yep.

I smell a rat.

🐀