Aggie spent the afternoon cringing at the memory of being dumped by a guy she wasn’t even dating.
Joe, who attended physical therapy the same days as she, used to chit-chat with her about their mutual love of film noir and classic game shows. Lately, though, he'd work out in a corner with his back turned away from her.
And today he told her he wasn’t interested in pursuing a romantic relationship. He sought a partner with a fresher, more optimistic view of life, which Aggie took to mean someone younger and prettier. The most humiliating thing was she’d never even broached the subject of dating or made any kind of overture! He’d simply sensed her devotion and rejected her. In response, she nodded ‘okay,’ and scuttled out to her car, stewing in shame.
On the drive home, she decided she’d switch therapy days, and if she ever worked out on a stability ball in Joe’s vicinity, she’d avert her eyes. Oh yes, she would.
Too morose to job hunt or do anything constructive, Aggie began her online solitaire ritual earlier than usual. For accompaniment, tonight’s gobble was Ricos Gourmet Nacho Cheese Sauce and tortilla chips.
The routine was to play three five-game series. After each batch of five, she'd tally her score, then try to beat it in the next round. As with every tournament, she attached a life goal to the outcome. In this one, if she couldn't top her previous score in the third round, she’d never lose weight or find love.
She dipped a chip into the Rico goop and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth. Chew, Aggie, she reminded herself. The last thing she needed was to choke on a chip and asphyxiate face down on her keyboard. That would be embarrassing.
During game three of the first round, a chiming sound she'd never heard before got her attention.
Dah-DAH-dah—like the old NBC Network ID—rang from every direction. Could it be another electronic thingy? She strained her bum neck trying to locate its origin, then pushed back from the desk, and spun her chair in a slow 360-degree turn.
The afternoon sun peeped in between the blinds, and the only light sources came from the computer and a 20-gallon fish tank, Aggie’s pride and joy. Goldfish, Angelfish and Neon Tetras glided over sunken treasure, through the broken hull of a shipwreck, and around flowering aquarium plants. The filter burbled in a comforting drone.
Another chiming brought her back around to her computer, to the many ads lining the right side of her screen. Which ad beckoned to her?
Aggie dragged her cursor down a multitude of headlines competing for her attention: “Petrifying Plastic Surgery Snafu!”… “A Tumor Filled with Spiders!”... “Lose 30 pounds in 30 Days!”... “Don’t Click Here Unless You Want to Change Your Life!” Bingo! The headline pulsed each time the chime rang.
Hmm.
Its thumbnail image was a smiling middle-aged Nordic blonde, ‘Kristin.' What could Kristin be selling? Diet pills? Self-help books?
Pish! Aggie needed to concentrate on the game tonight or face the grim possibility of staying fat and unloved forever. If she got a high score, maybe she’d find some new fellow at physical therapy, and she’d talk to him and ignore Joe. Stupid, cruel Joe. Gosh, all she did was bring him home-made cookies for his birthday. Why did he have to break her heart? “How did you know it was my birthday?” he’d asked in an accusatory voice before giving her the ‘I’m not interested speech.’ How mortifying!
‘Kristin’ probably never got dumped. If she brought Joe cookies, even stale, store-bought dreck, he’d propose. And, really, did Kristin need to change her life in the first place? No doubt she shot into the world on angel’s wings, living her best existence right out of the gate thanks to genes blessing her with angular features and a slim body.
“Don’t Click Here..."
The room got chilly. Maybe from the latent excitement of a new discovery. Or a sign? Aggie knew she should find a sweater or turn on the heater, but didn’t feel like moving.
“...Unless You Want to Change Your Life.”
Hmm.
Withholding her click amounted to a tacit acceptance of her depressing life.
Still, the game…
As if sensing her confusion, the chimes tinkled at her again. Dah-DAH-Dah.
Now Aggie remembered the quote her grandmother stitched onto a pillow. “You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.” Mary Tyler Moore said that. Mary Tyler Moore also had a wide, toothy smile. Yes, she did.
Click.
Aggie shuddered from head to toes with a serotonin influx. Instead of another boring stretch of evening, she was going to embark on a new adventure!
In screaming italic font Kristin promised to share her story of how she went from loser to winner, from jobless and poor to jobless and rich, from unhappy to happy, from uggo to hottie.
Ah, a miracle beauty product, Aggie decided as she clicked to the next page.
But not yet, no. She was still learning about Kristin’s struggles. Can people empathize with a woman struggling to figure out her path in life? Certainly. But a glamorous model? Aggie despised her cynicism. Joe also found her cynicism a big turnoff. Damn him.
Impatient, she tried skipping ahead, switching the page number in the URL from 9 to 17, resulting in an angry dinging. She gave up and plodded onward.
As of page 22, Kristin’s transcendence was manifesting. Oh yes, it was! She knew the secret and would disclose it to Aggie soon. Is that so? For free? It’s true! Kristin had entered a state of grace, and her greatest wish was to help other lost souls unearth their best selves.
Here, Aggie wavered. Would this be another endless stream of nonsense ending with a pitch to buy snake oil? She moved the cursor up to x off the screen, but the last line reeled her back. “Learn about others’ stories of miracle life transformation.”
Gosh. If any of them resembled an actual person rather than a model who put on glasses to fool us into believing they were relatable... Aggie sighed and clicked.
On page 39 now. She’d read several other success stories of more normal-looking folks. A few times she hastily clicked and wound up on an article about herbal diabetes remedies. Those tricky marketers, putting an ad where the Next Page button should be!
Aggie glanced at the window. Afternoon had become night. Oh dear.
By page 66, Aggie knew to wait until the actual Next Page button materialized. She also understood every 150-word information chunk ended on a cliffhanger too compelling to not click.
At page 137, she took a minute to adjust her eyes. Can eyeballs be both chapped and gooey? She should have given up long ago. There were many chances to turn back, but the article evolved into an endurance contest, with Aggie hellbent on winning.
When page 163 arrived, Aggie’s fingers and feet tingled in pins and needles. Her desert-dry mouth hung open. The chips and cheese were long gone. She still wouldn’t get up for water, for a stretch, for a pee.
Hours later, she clicked to 282, and realized it was day time again and she’d pulled a no-show at the temp job she booked. She’d also missed checking in on Mrs. Caruthers down the hall as she did every few days. Mrs. Caruthers enjoys my effing cookies.
Page 321. The cramping in her bladder went bye-bye. But since her lady bits were numb, she wouldn’t know whether she’d wetted herself.
Page 356. She breathed shallow, as though on reserve oxygen. Must she travel the depths of hell before she found the answer to fixing her misspent life? Hell, she’d take self-improvement books, diet aids, face yoga, anything at this point.
What was the secret? Dah-DAH-Dah…
By the time she reached page 395, ‘Helena,’ a sad, unfulfilled librarian, had learned the secret and was traveling the world as an Influencer. Helena made Kristin proud.
“What’s the secret, you blonde bitches? What’s the effing secret!”
Page 434. Aggie sensed it was dark again, but didn’t bother to confirm. All sounds disappeared under the ear worm racing through her—the Dah-DAH-dah on repeat, pounding through her skull, shooting down her spine. The single sensation left in her body.
Page 487. No secret. Not yet. But she’d read every life detail of a dozen people. All were losers. Now they were winners. Why? “Find out how they did it…”
Click.
Page 512. Flies rimmed the Ricos cheese container. Several buzzed around Aggie’s ears.
Click.
Page 579. It has come to passsss, hasn’t it? A voice in her head asked. Whose voice was this with the hissy S’s? Kristin’s? Blondes often squeaked their S’s due to never having to open their own damn door or beg for love. No doubt Joe squirted whenever he heard a sharp S—signifying a young Pretty lurking nearby with cookies he couldn’t wait to stuff in his mouth.
Page 644. Aggie smelled urine and excrement on herself now. Yes, she did.
By page something-or-other in the 700s, Kristin returned. Her picture spoke to Aggie, and yes, the S’s were sibilant spears stabbing her eardrums.
“You’ve made it so far! There’s not much further to go! Just a few more clicks and you will soon know!”
Aggie would cry if she had any moisture left in her body.
The landline rang, rousing Aggie from her stupor. She blinked at the sound.
“Don’t worry about that pesky phone,” Kristin said. “Just a few more clicks and you’re almost home! You’ve been so diligent and vigilant, you’ve entered Winner Mode, and soon you will navigate onto a newer, better road!”
The ringing stopped.
Aggie’s mouse hand was dead meat. Raw yet desiccated. Chapped yet slimy. Same as her tongue and her lips. The nails were gray, too. Her left arm dropped limp to her side a while ago. No secret for her. No effing secret! After all of this goddamn sacrifice!
Then it happened. Two seconds from tumbling off her chair, from giving up and letting herself die on her plastic desk chair mat, a miracle occurred. The page moved forward on its own!
Kristin’s face beamed bright as a stadium light. “Once you discover the secret, you’ll slap yourself on the head and go ‘this is so cool, I’ve been such a fool!’” Kristin’s image exploded into a rainbow starburst against a night sky.
Knocking sounds infiltrated the Dah-DAH-dah jingle, but Aggie ignored them, assuming her brain was stomping on the bleachers demanding the band come back for an encore—and in this encore, there had better be some effing answers!
Kristin’s rainbow fireworks reassembled in various places around the world, where Kristin posed with a knee crooked and both hands raised above her head in victory. Her mouth never closed, although she no longer spoke, but sang, “Dah-DAH-dah! Dah-DAH-dah!” Her soprano trills produced infinite echoes.
Other voices joined, calling to Aggie, “You’re almost there, almost there!”
Again, the cursor clicked on its own, resolving to a page with no photos, no ads, only a black rectangle with a giant PLAY button in the middle.
Somewhere outside of her head, voices called her name.
She waited for the button to deploy. Gosh, the pages had turned themselves! Using this same logic, shouldn’t the video play on its own? She screamed at it to “Play! Play! For the love of god why won’t you play?”
With great, grunting effort, Aggie lowered her chin to the mouse and pushed it around until the arrow sat on the triangle play button. Then raised and lowered her chin to click, leaving behind cheese crust.
The video counted down from five. Aggie squealed at the appearance of an on-screen version of herself, lovely, thin and glowing.
Dah-DAH-dah! Joe played frisbee with a golden retriever. On-screen Aggie set down the Williams Sonoma picnic basket on a checkered picnic blanket, revealing a baby bump! A baby with Joe! All the hours of solitaire goals and unrealistic dreams, and here it was happening for her! On-screen Aggie popped the cork on the bubbly apple cider. The dog capered. Joe nuzzled her neck and caressed her tummy. The skies couldn’t be bluer or the grassy hill greener! Dah-DAH-dah!
In the real world behind her, a loud boom shook the desk.
Someone had kicked the door open.
She heard her name. Once, twice. Again. Louder.
On-screen-Aggie raised her eyes to Real-Aggie at the desk. “I’m having the most amazing life, full of love, free of strife!”
Aggie felt the hand on her shoulder, but turned herself to stone, refusing to budge from the vision of herself and Joe embracing and kissing!
Then the video stuttered, fizzled.
“No! No!”
A different image materialized.
The monitor became a mirror.
A wretched face gaped at her. Bloated, chapped, wrinkled, slimy in places. Bloodshot eyes. Dried cheese on her chin with dead flies attached..
Two EMTs extricated her from the chair and placed her on a gurney. As she wheeled past the fish tank filled with belly-up Goldfish, Angelfish, and Neon Tetras, Aggie squinted up at the young men, and told them, "I changed my life! Oh yes, I did! Dah-DAH-dah! Dah-DAH-dah!”