Sorry I Offered

Story Sent in by August:

Martha was all about talking to me about how great her older brother was. He was apparently some VP at a big bank in Kansas City or St. Louis or one of those midwestern cities that Google kept weirdly choosing as places to test their broadband. Anyway, at dinner Martha was showing me pictures of her brother and the two of them together and the two of them separately and even photos of her brother's vacation to Jamaica. Every photo was a beach photo of sand or water or water and sand or the same smiling doof in every shot.

When I asked Martha how often she saw her brother, the mood noticeably darkened. She said, "Not since that thing married him."

I asked, "What thing? A donut? A taco? It's a taco, isn't it? They make awful, messy mates."

Martha didn't join in the fun. She said, "He married one of his coworkers and now I almost never see him. He's allowed to call me on Christmas and maybe my birthday and that's about it. When I tried calling him on his birthday, his stupid wife got on the phone and told me to never call him again."

I said, "That's not right. Can you email him or text him to let him know that it's a bad situation?"

Martha replied, "She monitors his emails and texts. It's really bad."

I agreed. It was really bad. And I didn't know how else to advise her and just told her that I wished I could help more. The rest of dinner went on and I had a good enough time so I told her I'd be in touch, which I was over the ensuing week.

During that week, though, something strange started to happen. I began to receive calls from a number I didn't recognize. The same number each time. They hung up when I picked up and they'd never leave a message. Well, that is until the day they left a message. And it wasn't a nice one. A woman with a low voice hissed into my voicemail, "You will stop calling here, you..." and she used all sorts of wonderful language. This was obviously a wrong number and the next time she called I picked up and told her so.

There was silence on the other end of the line and then she barked some more curses at me and hung up. I ended up blocking the number but then the emails started. They were always from weird addresses, like asldawinwin92ej2@gmail.com and seemed to be pretty random although Gmail said that they were sent directly to me and they contained similar language to the words the weird woman used over the phone.

This came up in conversation with Martha while we were talking about our weeks and Martha said, "Sorry about that. I gave my brother's stupid wife your info and told her that if she had a problem with me getting in touch with my brother that she should just call you."

A bit stunned, I asked Martha why she would do that. Martha explained, "You said that you wished you could help. And you have. That woman needs a rage-channel."

I ended up blocking all of the angry sister-in-law's email addresses and eventually the emails trickled out and stopped. As for Martha, I didn't think it wise to continue on with her. After all, she clearly needed an insanity-channel.