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Status Anxiety

                                                                    
I suppose you could call it a practical joke but it wasn’t funny. Adam Twain’s so-called friends were wetting themselves. It was a status update that did it—nigh on ruined Adam’s life.

“I killed Jemima Dukes” they’d posted on his Facebook page, gaining access when he’d left his screen unattended to go to the college loo. That’s what he got for wasting time on social media. He should have had a science website open. If not that, then he certainly should have logged off Facebook before going to relieve himself.

He had always been an absent-minded fellow, his head in the clouds on higher things. That’s why the “friends” hated him, mocked him, and bullied him. He should have been more careful knowing them. 

Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

It was too late now.

The comments came rapidly: “Scum”, “Filthy bastard” “You’re dead” were among the mildest.

Jemima had been missing for a month. It was all over the internet, the papers and the television. CCTV showed her last known movements down by the canal.

Yes, it was too late. The online mob had materialised. They were outside Adam’s front door.

© Brian Ahern 2014



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