CAPS LOCK WOMAN

So this is how it played out. Bill had come home from work and was puttering around the apartment doing some general clean up (the odd dish here and glass over there) and having a bowl of corn chips to get him through until dinner. Bob simultaneously knocked on, and came through the door.

Hey.

Hey

Hey, have you seen Jessie this afternoon? He was supposed to meet me but he didn’t show.

Bill hesitated a little, but kept on puttering. Finally he said

um, well, um…… yeah, well, um Jessie’s dead.

yeah, whatever. Where’s he at?

No I’m serious man. He’s dead.

Cut it out man, that’s not even funny.

No shit it’s not funny, but I seen him, and he’s dead.

What the hell? What happened? When?

Murdered man. Broad daylight. Right down the street at the café.

Murdered? Who?

Cops said that thought it was that serial killer.

Serial killer? What serial killer?

What? Have you been living under a rock or what? That lady serial killer…. CAPS LOCK WOMAN. She sends emails to guys, all in caps, and they wind up dead. Some real anger there.

What the hell are you talking about? How does something like this happen?

Oh well it happened all right and now Jessie’s dead.

Started a couple of months ago. Maybe three I don’t know. Jessie met this chick in a chat room….

Chat room chicks are bad news man

Yeah well, seems like that’s some information you could have dropped off ahead of time….

Yeah well, I ain’t made no secret of it

Yeah whatever… you wanna hear this or not? Any way, he’s chatt’n this chick up on the internet and it got to be a regular thing. Got to the point where he wasn’t watching much TV or anything else. At first it was every few days or so and it just got to be more and more. Last night I think they were on until 4:00 in the morning or some shit like that. Stupid.

So was it one of those cyber sex deals?

Pretty sure, the cops took his computer. But it wasn’t just that though… it was sort of weird.

Weird? What do you mean weird?

Well, it’s like I told the police. They’d have arguments and shit. He’d yell at the screen and talk about how she was being a total bitch and an hour later he’d be typing some dopy apology and an hour after that they’d be writing crotch poetry. Weird. I talked with her a few times when he was gone and she seemed okay, but she was like hyper sensitive and prone to going off on me about my being so insensitive about the stupidest stuff and how could I make a comment like that on HER page and that shit got old REAL quick. Sometimes she’d go to shouting with capital letters.

Shouting? What do you mean?

Shouting. You know…. using capital letters. Looks like you’re shouting? Heard of it?

Yeah, I suppose. I don’t email much.

Well, Jessie won’t be emailing much from now on. I really didn’t think much about it. Everyone that emails much uses caps for emphasis. Anyway, I just didn’t think much about it at the time.

You said that

Yeah well I didn’t, like I told the cops.

So how’d he wind up dead?

Yeah, yeah….. She’d get sullen every now and again and he just wrote it off to the regular hysteria you know?

Hysteria?

You know? Hysteria? That woman thing…. comes around periodically?

mm

Yeah, well, he told me he thought he was seeing a pattern. It never seemed obvious to me, but he thought he could sort of predict it. Anyway, they must have had a lot to talk about as much time as they spent on-line. Wouldn’t have been worth it to me, but then I wasn’t the one getting the cyber boinkefits.

Boinkefits? What the hell is boinkefits?

Boinkefits. Cyber sex? Boink?

boink.. Oh that’s fresh.

Yeah, cyber boink, friends with benefits. Boinkefits. Anyway, I don’t see what he was gett’n out of the deal….. or her for that matter. I know for a fact Jessie wasn’t that smooth a talker.

Yeah well maybe his font was bigger than yours.

Yeah, very funny. Anyway a couple of days ago they decided to get together and have coffee or something and today was it. I didn’t think anything of it.

You said that.

Well I DIDN’T. I came in this afternoon and was moving around and Jessie’s lap top was on the table there and then all the sudden it hit me

What?

Her last email was all caps just like the serial killer. I don’t know if he just didn’t see it or what. I ran out of here as fast as I could and down to the café but by the time I got there they were cleaning up and taking witness’s names.

What the hell happened? What could happen at the café?

Hey, I talked to one of the waiters and he said it looked like any other afternoon date at one of the sidewalk tables. They met, hugged, sat down and seemed to be having a normal conversation and then all of the sudden people inside noticed that she was standing up screaming at him and the next thing they new she was hacking at his neck with a rat tail comb. You know they say it’s best to let a puncture wound bleed. I guess that doesn’t work for your jugular.

No. I suppose not.

Anyway, she worked him over like some sort of killing machine and then just vanished up the sidewalk. Someone thought she was wearing a wig, but no one really got a good look at her.

That is just too weird man.

Too weird doesn’t begin to describe it my friend. Hey, where ya go’n?

I think I’ll go and change the security settings on my email account.

That sounds like it may be a plan

What are you gonna do tonight?

Ehh, I’ve been invited to a new discussion group on facebook. Looks like lots of handsome women. How can I not?

Oh yeah, and you can tell that from their…….. “profile pictures”?

True blue, every one.

From the lips of dead men to the ears of the living. Sounds like CAPS LOCK WOMAN suddenly has an opening in her schedule to me man. I gotta go.

And with that, Bob opened the door and left, leaving Bill alone once again logging on.

He looked over his shoulder self consciously, typed in the familiar log in and then did a quick friend search and clicked on the picture.

the box popped up and he typed "was it you?"

The response was almost immediate, like it had already been typed and was lying there just waiting for the pinky on the [Enter] key.

Was WHAT me?

You know. Jessie.

"Jasmine is typing" it said

Yeah, about Jessie. I was supposed to meet him this afternoon. WHERE THE HELL WAS HE?

He cringed as the large letters popped off the page at him.

I figured you knew.

Knew what?

You don’t know?

DID I ASK YOU??

Bill’s face flushed and his ears warmed as he looked at the words. He thought of the moment when he saw that last email on Jessie’s terminal and realized it had been in all caps.

Uh yeah. Sorry. Jessie’s dead.

Don’t be silly.

No, I’m serious.

Seriously? OMG! That’s terrible! You must feel awful.

And then there it was.s

“Meet me for coffee”, she wrote, “you can tell me all about it”.