The otherwise harmless mobile phone, a technological breakthrough in communication, was the cause of my worst marital crisis. It started with a seemingly harmless text message: “Can I borrow you from your wife?” It came through my cell phone as my wife and I sat at the porch, luxuriating in the gushes of cool breeze in the otherwise sultry afternoon. We ignored the message, a harmless joke, perhaps from a bored prankster. But we were mistaken. Since then, I continued receiving messages almost every day from the unknown woman. The gender was an assumption since I never heard her voice. I continued to disregard her amorous messages but sometimes I was compelled to text back if only to appease her persistence.
Her words of admiration and love to me were harmless and these benign text messages continued for months. This prankster knew my whereabouts and communicated to me at home, at the office and anywhere I was. At times, her vexatious messages left me harassed and exasperated. But most of the time I didn’t care. What a heck, it was her money going the drain for these unsolicited texts. On second thought, why should she waste money for me? Is she obsessed with me? A grim thought! Is she an unknown enemy out to wreck my marriage? A grimmer thought!
I changed my SIM card several times but she always managed to get my number. One time, I got angry and texted her to go to hell and fuck herself, a mistake since after that her messages mutated from benign to malignant. She started insinuating that I have an illicit affair with a lady subordinate, which was the reason of my coldness to her. Then she started to harass my subordinate with text messages about her purported illicit relationship with me. This got the ire of the staff in the office. They sent messages to the prankster to go to hell and vowed to unveil her identity. This further angered my tormentor and threatened me that henceforth she will be in constant communication with my wife, which she did.
Her vile and vicious messages lasted for several months, then suddenly stopped coming. She completely faded into oblivion after wrecking irrevocable damage in my relationships with my wife and other people. Was she struck by guilt? Or, struck by lightning? I never found out her identity.
