Diallo is poor but gifted with the ability to tell great lies. After a bad afternoon with his friend Paul in which he nearly ends up in jail, the pair rely on fate to change their lives.
"Let's play it with a coin!" He says. "Flip a coin. Face: our...
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"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Revelation 21:4
*
After A-Tra(i)n leaves, I look up Jane Toppan on Wikipedia. He was right: the so-called reviewer indeed used the name of a murderess—a motherless child raised in an orphanage after her abusive alcoholic father left her. Is there any clue about the real Jane behind it?
But an once-in-a-lifetime chance came to future Jane after being abandoned. The Toppan took her into their home as an indentured servant. They later grew to consider her almost like their own daughter; even though they never adopted her, she chose to have their surname. With them by her side, she studied and began to work as a nurse, but this is where things took a bad turn.
During her time at the hospital, Jane got close to her chosen victims, who were either elderly patients or very sick, almost as if death expected them and they just needed Jane to guide them there. The more I read about it, the more fear grew in me. Who is the Jane Toppan on Wattpad? Who is this delusional person? Both of them never helped anyone; they pushed them further down to their own demise.
3 a.m., and my alarm rings. I rub my face with both hands, unable to move from my bed; it was another sleepless night. I didn't doze; I couldn't find slumber, and all my thoughts danced around the revelations of the day before. My mom thought that I was watching porn alone in my bedroom, then there was A-Tra(i)n.
He helped me when he could have just walked away. Tran, the blond, bleached Asian boy, in his oversize white hoodie, black cap, and his latest trendy trainers. I still wonder what he meant by "pretty mess up things online." What kind of crime could he have committed to live outside of the real world, locking himself in a pre-destined cage of his mind?
So many questions and no answer, but the first thing I have to do is call in sick to work. I don't feel like going there with that much baggage on my shoulders, so I call my boss and make up a lie—the most horrible of them all in my whole life.
I simulate an excessive dry cough. "Hello, Mr. Bernard?" I say and try to stay away from my phone so I can't listen to him clearly. "I think I feel hot, maybe some kind of fever."
You have the picture; it's the covid excuse. This is the same flagrant covid excuse used by many companies to justify their delay or to rip off even more money, except I use it to protect my mental health. I even send him the photo of a positive test. Thinking about it now, it might have been a positive pregnancy test instead, but nonetheless, he believes me and advises me to stay away and at home until I get better. There is another good news in my phone call to my boss: they found my jacket at work. I'll go back to get it, but first I need to get to the bottom of my problems once and for all.
As I'm trying to figure out what my next steps will be, I receive a text from Paul.
"Hi Diallo,
I hope you're well. It has been a long time since we last saw each other, and I would very much like for you to come to my house tomorrow afternoon."
At the bottom of his text, he leaves an URL location. Once I click on it, I'm on Google Maps, and to my consternation, the address is the same one that A-Tra(i)n got for Jane. I check my phone for the contact details of Paul; it is his address. How could I have been so oblivious? Could Paul and Jane have been the same person all these times?
He paid for my food on that day when we first talked about the dare. I remembered the wink of his eye, then the dildo beeped by the gate of the shop. Did he set me up?
He paid for my food each time, but why? Then Jane refused to review my book, maybe because he knows me?
More and more details come to my mind. Was Paul ever a friend?
I look at his message again, and suspicions piled up in my mind. Why is he inviting me and giving me his home address? Does he know someone hacked him yesterday? Is he up to something?
Another text pops up, and this time it's my acolyte A-Tra(i)n.
"Sorry, Diallo, I could not get M's phone numbers yet, but I think I've got her real name. It's Emilie Do; you might want to look at this about her."
As his many screenshots load in, an expression of fear plastered all over my face. My mouth is slightly open but remains frozen. I can not believe what I'm seeing. This is the truth, but this can't be true, and as my finger flickers through more and more pictures, my phone slides off my hand and falls to the floor.
I will see Paul tomorrow afternoon and I will put an end to his Wattpad Game.
