Backslash

A story about love and betrayal

On the snow-crusted back porch of her apartment they stood face to face, and with the extra inches that her boots gave she stood taller than he, the hem of her knee-length leather skirt just below his crotch.

"I had a nice time, thank you" Efe said again, tucking a braid behind her ear, aware that she sounded a little dumb, a little drunk from drinking too much wine. Isn't this where the guy would lean closer and kiss the girl? She should have said 'Good night' to him and moved inside, but here she was, standing with her date and wishing he would stop stalling. It had been different with Alex, though, her last boyfriend, who had kissed her even before she stepped out from his car upon returning together from Wright Brothers, where they had eaten grilled oysters, the evening warm and luminous.

"I guess I will see you on Monday" Billy said.

She said nothing and when she was inside her apartment, in the pale half-light of her kitchen, the door between them, she said "See you at work tomorrow"

He nodded and she watched him walk slowly toward his car, and then he was gone. She flicked on the light switch beside the door and took off her neck scarf, merely noticing the unwashed dishes piled in the sink, some jutting out, the open jar of honey with a spoon stuck into it and, farther away on the counter, the huge glob of something greasy sitting on an empty pizza box, like flamboyant icing. She made a mental note to clean up the mess as she went upstairs. She longed for a shower. But as she tossed her handbag on the bed and stripped out from her heavy clothes, her Blackberry beeped, signalling the arrival of an e-mail. Thinking it would be better to view the message on her laptop, she carried it from the dressing table and sat cross-legged on the bed.

She accessed her Yahoo e-mail account and clicked on the message but she saw, with mild irritation, that the message contained only the symbol of a backslash, set against the white background. No words. No reference. She deleted the message at once, slapped the lid of her laptop shut, and then bent over to pick one of the many pink towels folded neatly at the bottom of the closet. She stood up and wrapped it around herself, snugly, and was heading toward the bathroom when her Blackberry rang, a loud ominous ringing. She reached for her handbag.

"Hello, did you forget something?"

"Did you receive an e-mail?" Billy asked urgently, ignoring her question.

"What?"

"An e-mail. Please tell me you didn't receive an e-mail?"

"What the f**k are you saying?"

There was a pause before Billy's voice came back on "You don't have much time left. Tell me if you received an e-mail?"

"I d-did" she stuttered

"Holy s**t!"

"The e-mail was crab so I deleted it.

"That was no ordinary e-mail" he said, his voice close to panic "It's a lethal biological virus, one that has been engineered to be computer-borne. You remember that Essex professor?"

She forced her mind to remember "Yes"

"I'm driving back to your place now. Stay put." he hung up.

Efe stood in the centre of her bedroom, her phone still pressed to her ear, expecting Billy's voice to cushion the mocking silence, to assure her that there was nothing to fear. She thought of the professor he had spoken about; a middle-aged African American who had died mysteriously at his house, in a pool of his own blood. Some reports claimed that he had been very ill, while some uncovincingly linked his death to a strange e-mail he had opened on his laptop. It was absurd, the latter, to think that merely opening an e-mail could lead to one's death.

Suddenly she began to feel a cold numbness, as though a chip of ice had been pressed against her forehead. She felt something else, like liquid, drip from her fingertips.When she raised her hands a trail of blood snaked down her palm, making tributaries across her forearm. She slumped against the wall, tightly holding onto the curtain until it came off the pole and she lay swaddled in it on the floor. She clutched her chest, the air becoming dense and diffícult to breath. In those final moments when her vision blurred, awashed with transparent, scarlet needles, she heard the door open. A voice drifted over her head, cold and formal. It was Billy. He was on the phone, neither calling the police nor an ambulance.

"She won't be a problem anymore" he said, and a then a great darkness descended and claimed her.