Submitted to: Contest #306

Insider Threat

Written in response to: "Tell a story with a series of emails, calls, and/or text messages."

Crime Suspense Thriller

This story contains themes or mentions of suicide or self harm.

Jamie, do you have it?

Who is this?

Do you have it?

Leave me alone

Reported you as spam

Jamie, do you have it?

Who is this???

Not important.

I’ll report you again

You can report me and block me as much as you like.

Do you have it?

What the hell are you talking about?

You know what I’m talking about.

Please stop pretending.

Leave me alone

All right.

I will spell it out for you.

Where are the documents you stole?

I didn’t steal anything.

Please don’t be tiresome.

I know that you’ve arrived at St. Elizabeths.

Tell me when you get to your workstation.

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT???

So you are being tiresome.

You know that we can see every message you send on your Homeland Security laptop.

Every keystroke.

Every website you visit.

Every email you send and receive.

I know what you saw and what you took.

I know you’ve visited the OIG site.

I know you filled in the whistleblower form.

I have rights and protections

You can’t intimidate me like this

You can’t be that naive.

Are you at your workstation?

Fuck you

There’s no need for that, Jamie.

Are you at your workstation yet?

What workstation?

No room for everyone. Back to the office bullshit.

Lucky if I find a seat in the cafeteria.

Jamie, tell me when you login.

Jamie?

Stop ignoring me.

Very well. We’ll continue this in Teams.

____________________________________________________

Jamie, are you there?

Jamie?

Leave me alone.

I’m just trying to get my work done.

What work? Sitting around designing PowerPoints all day?

Fuck you

Where are the documents?

This is harassment

Look. No one at OIG ever got back to me anyway.

Not a surprise. The Inspector General has been politely asked to resign. And the staff has gone through an RIF. I would think the office is in a bit of disarray.

But I’m interested. What do you think the OIG was actually going to DO? You must have had delusions of being some kind of crusader for justice.

Asshole

Language, please.

You can’t treat people like this.

Like what?

Like this!

We’ve been given our mandate from the American people.

I didn’t mandate anything.

You are there to serve the policy of the administration.

Why am I bothering to argue with you? We want to know where the documents are. I can see that you emailed them to a personal gmail address on April 25, 4:17pm, and again at 4:43pm. Must be your own? It seems to me that this clearly violates your info sec training.

I have rights as a whistleblower.

You can’t possibly be that naive.

Go to hell.

I don’t care for your abusive tone.

Go ahead and fire me.

How brave. But the word isn’t “fired.”

Your position will be eliminated. In fact, your entire office of parasites will be eliminated.

All I want is for you to tell me what you did with the documents.

You don’t have any foolish plans to send them to the media, do you?

Because if you did, that would be a clear violation of DHS info sec policy and we would be forced to consider you an insider threat and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.

Jamie.

Jamie.

Jamie, stop ignoring me.

You can’t do this. I’ll get my congressman involved.

How quaint.

LEAVE ME ALONE

____________________________________________________

Why did you log off your laptop?

Where are you going?

Jamie?

Jesus, you asshole, I’m going to the restroom. Maybe I’ll take a shit.

Charming.

You know, I can take pictures of you while you’re in the stall.

Not my cup of tea but you know are things are these days.

Sick SOB

Leave me alone

All I want to know is where the documents are.

You’re the big hacker or whatever. Don’t you know already?

Maybe I need to rephrase my request.

I want an assurance that you will delete the files and not release them.

You don’t scare me.

Maybe I should.

Speaking of pictures, here is a nice one.

Your daughter is a lovely young woman.

Looks like she was a little late getting to school this morning.

Looks like she stopped at Starbucks. Naughty naughty. Some kind of frappuccino. With whipped cream.

She needs to be careful. Those things have a lot of calories. Fortunately she’s quite slender. If only she didn’t wear such baggy sweatpants.

Jamie?

LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE

No one’s bothering her, Jamie.

How paranoid you are.

I’ll delete the documents.

I won’t send them anywhere.

What proof do you need?

That’s a good start, Jamie.

I’ll send you screenshots.

Just please leave her alone.

When will you do this?

I’ll log into my Google account from my DHS laptop.

Give me 30 or so

Very well.

Jamie?

Jamie?

Where did you go?

I thought you were logging back onto your laptop.

It’s been far more than 30

Hold on.

Working.

I hope you’re taking me seriously, Jamie.

Oh I’m taking you seriously.

Don’t worry.

I take get more pictures of your daughter if you like.

I’m sending you a screenshot right from my phone.

Here it comes.

Get ready.

Tyler?

Are you there?

That’s your name isn’t it, Tyler?

Do you like the pictures I just sent you, Tyler?

What the fuck you bitch

Language, sweetheart.

Goodness, how old are you anyway, Tyler?

I thought at first you were another high schooler.

You have a lot of interesting content on your phone.

Not my cup of tea.

In fact, I don’t think it’s anyone’s cup of tea.

bitch

Your employers would be deeply embarrassed if they saw what you were getting up to in your spare time.

Even with the way things are these days.

I can ruin you

Have you fired and sent to prison

Ruin your daughter’s life too

I don’t think so.

You’re about to lose a lot of credibility right now with your masters.

You’re just another lowly contractor, aren’t you dear?

I don’t think you understood who you tried to harass.

You were annoying but then you decided to bother my daughter.

Tyler?

Are you there?

How did you get that bitch

Come on Tyler, no more cool Bond villain quips to share?

I’m glad you reached out to me.

I really am.

Do you know what I do? Do you know what my office does?

Of course you don’t.

I DESIGNED the insider threat training, Tyler.

And I know how to spot an insider threat when I see one.

I work with a lot of smart people. Smart and angry people.

Your little cheap tech tricks are not too hard to reverse engineer, super genius.

Look, here’s some more pictures!

What should I do with these pictures Tyler?

Please

X it is

Please no I’m sorry I’ll leave you alone

I was just trying to make my quota

trying to impress my boss

Too late

please

Where did you go, Tyler?

Wow, look at that engagement! So many likes, views, reposts!

What do they call this? Earned media.

Wow, no one likes you. Not even the regular pervs.

Not even your employer. Crossed a line even with them. That’s saying something.

Hey, looks like you just got fired by tweet.

The DC attorney gen’s office is curious, looks like

Tyler?

Tyler?

Where did you go, Tyler?

____________________

WMATA Service Alert: Red Line Metrorail

Please be advised we are experiencing a delay due to a medical emergency involving a person on the tracks at Union Station in the direction of Shady Grove.

At this time all red line trains are single-tracking through Union Station. We will keep you up to date on further developments.

Thank you for riding Metrorail.

A reminder: If you see something, say something.

Posted Jun 14, 2025
Share:

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

9 likes 1 comment

S. Hjelmeset
07:23 Jun 17, 2025

Great! It's so impressive how easy you made us understand who talked to whom without using any kind of formatting. And I love that you put in that service alert at the end. It happens too often, and as a railworker myself I have little sympathy for those who chose departing that way (one should do it by ones own design, without involving another driver).

Reply

Reedsy | Default — Editors with Marker | 2024-05

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.