by A.V. Flox
May 13, 2012 (edited)At first, I don't understand the insistence of the noise. I am pressed up against a glass wall, staring into the eyes of the snake standing at attention on the other side. I know I have to be eaten. The snake detaches its jaw and lunges as if to swallow me. It would have but for the glass. I have to get beyond the glass. But what is that terrible noise? The noise is like the longing I feel for the creature -- incessant, anxiety-inducing, torturous.
Rinnnnnng. Rinnnnnng. Rinnnnnnnnnng. I reach out for the noise and the glass becomes flesh, its warmth taking the snake with it into darkness. Rinnnnnng.It's behind me. I turn, seeking, grasping in the dark, scattering the things at my reach, still unable to locate the origin of the noise. I'm getting closer. I can hear it now. Rinnnnnng.
I fall, a short drop cushioned by something soft. Pillows. Ah, the phone, the phone. It's the phone. I attempt to untangle my arms from my hair, but they're caught in the sheets I took with me when I slid off the bed. Rinnnnnng.
I pull the blindfold from my face, locate the phone on my nightstand and reach for it. A number I don't recognize. Two missed calls. No messages, of course -- I killed my voice mail. I hate voice mails.
Wonder who it was? Not bothering to get up, I begin going through my inbox with my legs still elevated on the bed. Press release, press release, pitch, press release, news from a friend, press release, press release, someone added me on Pinterest, press release... courtesy notification regarding suspicious activity on my account?
Oh, God, what now? Once my bank froze my account because I bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers shoes. Yes, it was very unlike me -- but you try walking around Manhattan in the middle of summer with anal plugs for stilettos! You'd fall for promises of "almost like being barefoot!" too. (It was nothing like being barefoot, by the way. Never wore them again).
It would be so embarrassing if my bank had frozen my account because of how savagely I behaved last night. "It's just not who you are!" I imagine my personal banker telling me as he looks over the charges, his brow furrowing the way it does when I suggest we do something insane or slightly illegal with my money. Yes, yes, there was something particularly twenty-something about last night. No doubt my mascara's run down to my navel. I'd look in the mirror, but my body feels like ground beef.
Rinnnnnnnng.
Oh, all right, then. I answer the confounded phone and go through the mutual screening process with the bank. Once we're both satisfied we're talking to the right person, the woman on the other end begins reviewing the "suspicious" transactions.
Except they have nothing to do with my revelry the night prior. They're so horrifying, I find my strength and get up, running to my laptop as gracefully as the tangled sheets will allow, which is to say, not gracefully at all.
There, on my own screen, I see it, too. The dream of the snake and foggy memories of laughter and the sort of fun that only makes sense to people living through a somewhat stunted post-adolescent existential crisis fade immediately. I am wide awake, staring at the screen. My card has been involved in a number of transactions to purchase Facebook credits.
It's not the theft that bothers me. Money is money, it comes and goes. ButFacebook credits?! Of all the things in the world to do with fraudulently-acquired free money, some sad person somewhere in this country decided to buyFacebook credits. Thousands of them. Not Petrossian's special reserve Alverta caviar. Not a pair of Choos. Not a compound bow. Not a trip to Mallorca. Not even a Steam account to play real games! No, Facebook credits.
If you could have anything in the world, would you pick Facebook credits? I pictured the perpetrator. Unkempt, malcontent, chained to a desk at a tedious job, spending day in and day out in front of a huge, dusty monitor with archaic resolution with only Farmville to give their life meaning.
Farmville! I am the paradigm of fine living and someone steals my card to playFarmville?! That's outrageous! What kind of person loses touch with the pleasures of life to the extent that the only thing they can imagine thieving isFacebook credits?!
"This is heartbreaking!" I exclaim.
"This is why we have fraud protection available to all account-holders, ma'am," the woman from my bank's fraud department tells me. "We will return the credit to your account and investigate this further." She doesn't understand why I'm upset, but it doesn't matter. I thank her, and consider going back to sleep. But I don't. I can't.
There is a life out there to be lived, people. A life full of wonder and fun and all manner of delights. You are not your job and your obligations. You are a human hungry for experience. Get out there.
Don't be like the Farmville thief! There is more -- there is so much more! I promise. You don't need to be rich and you don't need to steal. You just have to step outside and be open to experience.
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