Surprise! It's a Death Threat!

Yesterday afternoon at 3:34 pm, I received a death threat.

A hit man somewhere in this big world sent me an email message informing me that someone whom I call my friend wants me dead. He has already been paid to do the deed. He has already investigated me and found me and is all set and ready to go. But he has the "friend" on tape. He offered me an exchange. My life and that tape for $8,000.00. I really would have thought I'd be worth more than $8,000 and was a little hurt, but it is okay because I can't afford even the $8K.

The email's provenance in very confusing. When the mail came in, it was listed as from Grace King. On the email itself it says reply to <jerryhong1@megamail.pt>. Megamail is an email service in Portugal I learned. The return path of the email is listed as <mrsking88888888888.ffffffffffffff@msn.com>. That's America. In the body of the message, I was told to reply to Alex Igos at <alexigos@megamail.pt> Portugal again. To settle any doubts I may have, Mr. Igos, the author of the message,  promised to send my name and address in his next email. He said the hit had to be performed within the next 10 days. I was instructed not to call to police and to tell no one.

The first things I did were to call the police and to post this on Facebook. A very nice and thorough officer came to my house twice yesterday afternoon and last night. He said he felt it was a scam - he called it "bull shit" - to extort money, but noted there was always a chance that I was truly in danger. Officer Mills recommended that I leave town for ten days. I have just had a biopsy done on a pancreatic cyst, I have 2 cats and a dog, I have depression...packing and actually leaving seems harder than dying.

Officer Mills filed his report and now the case is in the hands of investigators. Mills said he will now be "out of the loop." He was a nice man. I will miss him.

Late last night Mr. Alex Igos told me that he wants me to wire the money by Western Union to someone called Nzekwe Chinasa in the city of Cotonou in the Republic of Benin - another country, that makes 3, another continent, 3,  -  immediately. Otherwise he will go ahead with the hit. He says his network is all over the world and there is nowhere I can go to be safe. I emailed him back that it was 10 pm on a Friday night of a holiday weekend and there was no way I could meet his demand. I asked him to back up his promise to prove himself by showing that he knows where to find me. I asked him to send me my address.

So far, nothing.

This morning as I walked my precious dog Kia, a car pulled up beside me and stopped. The window went down. I was as calm and cool as a cucumber, but I believed with all my heart that a gun was going to appear in that window and that I would die there trying to walk my loving canine companion. But it was only a former neighbor, whose house here is for sale, coming to check on some things at the house. How nice to have friends to talk to, but I could have done without it this morning.

Now I am posting this, telling the whole world or anyone who will listen. This is a form of terrorism. The police asked so many personal questions about who might not like me that the questioning was painful. The stopping car almost stopped my heart. Maybe it is just a scam and they are hoping I will be so scared that I will wire them the money. They probably chose hundreds of Americans at random to receive their threats. Maybe they will punish me by killing me if I don't comply. I don't know. I don't recognize the world anymore, can't understand it. Maybe this is just a cruel update of the funds from Nigeria transfer scam. Watch this spot. See if I am still around in two weeks, and pray for me about that biopsy.  The doctor said it was ambiguous so he want to watch it and repeat it in 3 or 4 months.

Still no more messages from Alex Igos <alexigos@megamail.pt> in Portugal who wants his money wired to Africa. What is going on?

Oh, and the messages from Alex Igos? They were all signed William Yahman. What a jumble to make it hard to trace.

depression

abject, barren, bleak, blue, dejected, depressed, desolate, despair, desperate, despondent, destroyed, devastated, disconsolate, discouraged, dismal, dispirited, doleful, dolorous, down, downcast,  downhearted, forlorn, gloomy,  glum, grieving, grim, hopeless, joyless, lachrymose, lonely, malignant, melancholy, mirthless, miserable, mortified, mournful, sad, solitary, solitude, somber, sorrow, suffering, suicide, unhappy, wistful, woeful, wretched...

Purposeless

I bought some things at Rite Aid on Friday, and the cashier said, "Happy Mothers' Day, if you're a mother." I thanked him and thought to myself, "Of course I'm a mother. What other purpose would my life have?" The problem with this thinking is that I'm not a mother, and I don't know what purpose my life has had.