a cure for wellness

 

Sixteen days before my inevitable incoming degeneration of mental health states, I sat on a call that would change my perspective several times within three very short-lived days. For someone to not misuse this information, I'll keep the person's name, K. Or we can call him the perp (too much?) or maybe just the narrator.

K, and I, have been friends since the beginning. He only recently began confiding in me and our friendship boomed. I couldn't be more glad about the consecutive events that unfolded in those three days. I don't know whether it's sarcasm at this point. K called me saying something had happened and it was urgent, we were on a Discord voice chat when he asked me if someone had some conflicting images of me then what would I do to get them to delete it? I said, who did you send nudes to? To which he anxiously replied asking what I would do, over and over till I coerced him into telling me what had transpired.

A little background on K, when I first met him, he was a living force obsessed with his own vanity and ego, trying to mimic his forefathers, telling us how he loved the privacy and how his love for the stock market, cryptocurrencies helped him research things like Blockchain and Decentralization. Now my question turned to, how can a man so irredeemably obsessed with privacy become so stupid? It was not just this event. K had been getting on my nerves for some time now. He'd fought with another one of our friends and said the cruelest and most condescending things that she didn't deserve to listen to. Previously, they'd been good to each other, going out to places together, and having fun, and how quick the split took place baffled me. It made me realize how even the best of relationships succumb to stupid decisions.

With all of this on my mind, I heard the dumbest story of my life which I'm about to tell by misusing my storytelling ability and telling it just how it happened without the dramatization going against the entire nature of a storyteller. K was horny. K went on Omegle, as suggested by a mutual friend of ours who supposedly does the same thing. He wished to see boobies. He met a Filipina woman, I'm not sure at this moment whether she was of the age of consent but he said she was hot. She willingly stripped for him asking him to do the same, which he declined but rather whipped out his penis to give her a good view and masturbated. (I want to add: for 45 seconds after which he came. But it's a lie, I do not have that information.) Little did he know, he was being recorded.

A short while after the consummation of this online phone sex (or Omegle sex) if you will, took place the woman cleverly asked for his Instagram which he provided. Post-nut clarity is not for everyone. He let the suggestive and obviously weird sex account follow him, texted them and they sent a message which was about 200 words long but can be summarized as:

"You've been fucked. We made a video. Pay us if you want to live in peace."

He lost it. Tried paying, failed, cried, and begged while they had copied his following list with the links to all accounts on a Gmail e-mail draft and uploaded the 60-second clip of my buddy not only showing us his beautiful face but his ugly dick as well in the most insane manner to YouTube as another private video draft. The Show, Don't Tell rule they say. Anyway, the little pegger tried everything he could before his scammers told him to wait for their next text and call. This is when I come into the picture.

He told me the story in bits and I put all the pieces in place as soon as he said Omegle. I made jokes. I'm not proud of that part. For the first one and a half days, I made jokes about him masturbating and cameras and him being stupid for doing this which he knew already and didn't need me to remind him of. I spent the next day with him hanging around me. We even met the friend he'd fought with and he didn't speak to her. 

He mentioned how the main scammer whom he spoke to told him that the girl was his cousin and through various Skype calls he made out that they'd been doing this to a lot of other people as well. He also told me he felt better with me knowing, which I liked because I didn't lose any sort of feeling I had about him as before. He was the same to me, except stupider. I don't know if other people would be able to say the same about him. After multiples Black Mirror references and jokes about "Oh there's a camera, hide." "Don't expose yourself" K laughed at the matter a little lightly.

On the Skype call, the International warriors in the war against phone sex charged K with questions such as, would you like us to send it to this X person from your followers they would send the video to that person and then unsend it before them watching it so that they don't lose their leverage. They did this thrice on three separate occasions. Two of which, I wasn't there. I can't imagine how powerless K had felt in both those times but the day I spent with him, sobered me up. All my jokes went out the window when they sent the video to a classmate of his, this girl who I had never spoken to or knew outside of her name. K trembled and the tears welled up in his eyes. His face was a different shade of red and shame. I can't forget how his words equivocally showed how difficult it became for him to articulate what he wished to say. How powerless is it when your dignity and reputation are in the hands of someone who can destroy everything at their will? At the click of a button, when not paying up or owning up to your crime becomes a matter of life and death. What scared me more was this was exactly that. If that video was shared, in an environment such as Engineering, in a college that clearly cared more about its reputation than student lives. He would be destroyed: his friendships, his career, his future, and his life. This made me tremble and the immense power his scammers held over him. The scenarios in which this situation could result in the loss of his life at his own hands swelled up in my head. I did not know what to do.

Upon finding out they'd sent the video to his classmate I asked him to call her and ask where she was so he could delete it off her phone and block the contact. But she said she wasn't in college. She was at home. His hands trembled as he asked me what to say. To which I said, tell her you'll call her back. He was panic-stricken and said what I told him without adjusting the words to fit what she'd said before. He was not thinking, he was reacting. I told him to tell them he'd kill himself if this continued because he was a student and did not have money to pay. They immediately fired back, asking him to show how he was killing himself, to call them and show them how he does it. Sadist fucks.

Later, they unsent it. We went to Sachi's house and discussed strategies on how to fix the situation and try to make him feel better. Telling Sachi somehow lowered the burden off my shoulders because now we had another confidant and didn't need to take up the entire situation on our shoulders. He didn't give any input but his presence became somewhat comforting to me at least. The accidental pornographer was made to call his following list, 100 or so of them, asking them; rather begging them to change their usernames and block the scammer's account. We reported the matter to the Filipino cyber crime branch by convincing K that the cops in Mumbai wouldn't visit his home to confirm the crime. I know. Stupid right? After some time it became time to leave. And coming home didn't feel as safe as before.

The next day, I took an off because of the whole mental instability. I forced myself to forget the effects it would have had on K. Maybe I'm a bad friend because I prioritized myself at that time. But I needed it. Turns out K blocked the scammers and deleted his account that day. I forgot to mention the number of people involved in this. This day, everyone knew what had happened. Our seniors, his friends, and K told them all that he felt bad about the ordeal and they gave him the most important thing, their time, and heard him out and offered to help. It brought him back from the jaws of oblivion I would say. His senior took him away to another room and explained how he could help with the resources and familial connections. Another told him whatever happens, they'll be alongside him and he need not worry.

Nothing has happened since. K is alright. I'm however still coping with the weight of everything. GG.