The group celebrating a suicide attempt
Jennifer's husband was out for the evening. Some curry night with his workmates or some-thing. She hadn't really listened. The good news was there was no need to worry that he would overhear the meeting that evening. She had curled up on the sofa and balanced her phone on the bookcase so her arm wouldn't ache forty minutes into the meeting, like last time.
Everyone was supposed to be joining the Zoom. They'd become a frequent thing over the months. A place to talk, offload, gossip, laugh, share new information, and crucially, to plan. Jennifer had never been involved in anything like this before, but it felt so right. So good. That woman was going to get what was coming to her, and everyone on the Zoom agreed.
Jennifer knew that her husband would never understand. She felt that if he knew what they were doing, he would overreact, or demand that she stopped completely, The main concern, of course, was not her husband, but work. Jennifer had worked as a therapist for the last six years for a national domestic violence charity, and she was uncertain how it would look if she was ever discovered. Sometimes that played on her mind, but most of the time, she would find a way to rationalise it away or convince herself that what they were doing was for a greater good. Sure, it could look pretty bad from the outside, but they all knew she deserved everything that was being done to her.
And truth be told, the greater good was this: that woman needed to be destroyed. For her own good. For the good of everyone. She was too big for her boots. She was disgusting, dangerous, vile, and self-centred. They say that justice comes in different forms, and unluckily for her, this was the way her justice was to be served. Publicly and without reservation.
Jennifer beamed and waved to everyone as the Zoom meeting began and everyone joined. Anna was wandering around her kitchen with the baby on her hip whilst she was making the older kids some snacks. Naomi was in her car on the way home from work and had put the phone in the holder whilst she sat in traffic on the M6. Jane was in her office, still at work due to a huge deadline that was looming, and Samantha was in her pyjamas and dressing gown, looking ra-ther unwell.
"Oh dear, Samantha, are you still sick?" Jennifer asked.
"I thought I was getting better and then Jacob came home from school with some virus, and its completely wiped me out. I cannot believe how terrible I feel. That pharmacist must be sick of me by now!"
"It's really going around, isn't it? All three of mine have had it, Sam. I am praying I don't come down with it next," Anna chimed in, the sound of her chopping some cucumber echoing in the background.
"Well, I've got something to cheer you all up! Are you ready for this?" Jane grinned. Jennifer was intrigued as she also had something to tell the group, but Jane seemed to have something big.
Everyone laughed excitedly and encouraged Jane to spill everything.
"So," Jane started, "Don't ask me how I got them, but I have screenshots of an entire conversation between her and a woman I know. And let me tell you, we can do so much with these!"
"Whaaat? How? Oh my god, you legend! How the hell do you have those?" Jennifer replied to the news, barely letting Jane finish her final word,
The thrill was obvious. Everyone jumped in, begging Jane to reveal her source. And it didn't take much. Jane had been desperate to share her scoop for days.
"I told her a bit about what we were doing and how fucking awful that bitch is. I got her to befriend her and chat to her to see if she would talk, and she fucking did. I mean, of course she did. She cannot fucking help herself. But you should see the shit she said. I've got it all in a zipped folder, ready to go!"
Jennifer gasped, not knowing what Jane could possibly have gotten her hands on. Her mind whirred with the possibilities. Were the mes-sages incriminating? Had she flirted with the other woman? Had she confessed horrible things she had done to people? Outed herself as the nasty piece of work she really was?
Anything could be possible.
There was a tense wait as Jane waited for the hubbub to die down.
"She tried to kill herself. She fucking tried to kill herself!"
Everyone gasped and clapped their hands to their mouths. This was perfect. Better than perfect.
"Nooooo! You have that in actual screenshots? She told her that she tried to kill herself?"
"Yep," Jane laughed.
"No way! Did she say how?" Anna shouted over her car engine.
For a moment, the Zoom meeting was chaos. Everyone was talking over each other, asking questions, laughing, speculating, and trying to get to the bottom of this revelation.
"Okay, okay. One minute. Let me just read the messages out to you. It's easier. I have them right here. They are fucking gold, let me tell you! She's fucking pathetic!"
Jennifer listened intently as Jane read out the conversation.
"Okay, so in one message she goes, 'I can't cope anymore. I don't understand what is happen-ing to me. They seem to know everything I do, everyone I talk to, everywhere I go. They target my work, my colleagues, my venues, my lec-tures. I've asked around and everyone pretends not to know. People must know. They must be lying to me. I can't get it to stop. It is going to ruin my entire life..."
Samantha screeched with laughter. "Yes it is, bitch! Yes it is!"
"At least she got something right!" Anna cried.
"Wait, wait, I haven't even got to the good part yet." Jane tried to calm the giggling women down so she could continue. "Then she says, right, 'I feel like I can't escape them. They've turned me into this monster. I'm losing friends and family all over the place, and I don't think I will live to see this through. My hair is falling out, I can't sleep, I'm so ill. Some days I can't even get out of bed. I have never ever been sui-cidal in my life until recently. I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but I actually tried to end it last week. Jay walked in on me and had to physically stop me. I don't know what came over me, I just couldn't handle it anymore. There was this really sharp pair of scissors in the drawer and I just wanted to die so badly..." Jane paused, trying to contain herself from bursting into fits of giggles. "I mean... I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh but... she's clearly a fucking loon..."
The whole meeting laughed, whooped and giggled.
"No Jane, laugh as much as you like! She deserves it all. And she's probably fucking lying anyway!" Naomi shook her head in disbelief, shouting over the other women. "She's too much of a cow-ard to kill herself."
The women were all nodding in agreement until Anna jumped in, then they hushed.
"I reckon she would do it you know, but only for the attention. She would probably be one of those people who does a pathetic non-attempt at it, so she could be hospitalised and pretend she tried to kill herself... and then write a blog about it or something!"
"Or another shit book!" Samantha cried.
Everyone fell about laughing again.
"So, listen. Listen. I will share the folder in the group chat in a minute, and then I think we leak it online. Let's put the link to it everywhere, and send it to key people who will want to see it." Jane became serious about the strategy. "It makes her look unstable, and it makes her look absolutely pathetic..."
Anna agreed. "Yes, but mostly, it will really mess with her to know that someone shared her pri-vate messages. That's when she'll realise how fucked she truly is and that no one around her cares about her. Even when she wants to 'die'
Anna said the word 'die' whilst sarcastically signalling quotation marks in the air with her hands.
The women nodded again.
"Oh god, true. She is going to fucking lose it when she sees these!" Samantha laughed as Jane beamed with pride at her work.
"Well, with any luck, she will do us all a favour and follow through with it next time!" Anna snapped, seeming genuinely annoyed at the interrupted suicide.
And speaking of dying, Jennifer was simply dying to tell everyone what she had found out, too. Although she thought it wouldn't be as big as what Jane had, which took a bit of the fun out of it, truth be told.
Jennifer waved to everyone on the camera to get their attention, whilst they were joking about the pathetic methods of suicide she would prob-ably use.
"Okay, so I have something too. Not as important as Jane's discovery by any means but... I'm in this Facebook group, right, and a few of us had all met up for drinks on Saturday. There was this woman there called Heather, and she works for her. She actually works for her. Anyway, I told Heather everything...and she was shocked. She said she really liked her and was always nice to her..."
Jennifer watched as some of the other women shifted uncomfortably at this. No one wanted their cover blown. Heather was a risk. Jennifer realised and immediately reassured the group.
"Don't worry, don't worry! I made her realise what she really is. And I managed to get her number. She said that she has access to all of her files. Her usernames and passwords. Accounts. Finances. She even has a list of everyone she is working with and the contract values. I think we work on her, get her into this group, and we go from there..."
The group was momentarily quiet. This was huge. The suicide thing was big, but access to her passwords? Her finances? Her private docu-ments? Nobody was expecting that.
The group burst into awe and loud excited chatter, congratulating and thanking Jennifer profusely for such an important development.
www.blockedandreported.org
The misogyny of using a husband figure as absent moral authority. The attempted undermining of professional criticism of Jess by making this fiction of a woman a domestic violence therapist. The damage, the harm, the purpose of it all.
