Cole grinned as he read the tweets directed at Alice and added one of his own.
Gonna slut choke #guiltybitch #alicemadsen and RAPE her til she cums #champagneterrorist
He sat back and admired the tweet. The more he thought about it, the more the notion appealed to him. What would it be like? Did he have the bottle? After what happened to Daz, she deserved it, no matter what the police said. Cole had seen her. He remained undecided as to what to do to her, and as he lifted his glass, he saw his pint was almost finished, which got him wondering how many he’d drank. It must have been a few as he felt elated, yet he had room for more.
He brought his plate and empty glass to the bar and kept an eye on the phone on his table while he waited for another lager. Back at the table he saw someone had replied to his tweet. He scratched his crotch as he read the message of support. Yes, he thought, TV Girl Alice deserves it. He spent several minutes thinking about how he should respond before he typed. Then he figured it didn't matter, as anything typed was fair game, although the bit about ‘up the arris’ wasn’t true Cole. It wasn’t his thing, but it might get inside her, make her even more fearful.
The screen flashed and he glanced down. He sat up straight as he read. It was her. Alice Madsen had sent him a message. Direct. This was unexpected, even if it was what he wanted. He stroked his chin while he tried to figure it out. Okay. This could be fun. He read the tweet again.
It takes a real man to threaten an innocent girl, no? Keyboard loser.
He drank more while he ran through various responses in his head. Nothing suitable came to mind, and he considered retweeting her reply into the public domain. But there was something about her reply he didn't like. The passive aggressive tone and the insinuation he wasn’t a real man. A keyboard loser rather than a keyboard warrior. What did she mean by that? That his tweets weren’t threatening enough?
He had thought about her earlier when he stood outside her house and first had the idea of confronting her. Now the beer he’d drank encouraged him. The notion sent a shiver through Cole, and he put it down to excitement rather than fear. Bottle? Of course he had it. It would be good to spy on her. Very good. But first, he’d reply to the message.
He tapped on her message, but when he went to type a response, he saw the info bar at the bottom of the screen read ‘You can longer send Direct Messages to this person’ followed by a link titled ‘learn more’. Several angry taps later, he realised Alice had either deactivated her account or changed her privacy settings. She must have done it after sending the message to him. The coward. He gave in to the urge to shout at her, and he thumbed out a tweet:
#terrorist #alicemadsen ur a BITCH and I’m gonna RAPE ur slutty hole until BEG for more!!! #guiltybitch #lockherup
The next five pints fuelled Cole’s anger and he lost all sense of time as he planned his next move. He searched for information on the South Kensington terror attack and the terrorist. There was plenty about Samir Hassan, a refugee from some Arab shit hole in the Middle East, who got asylum in Denmark and then came to London. In between cigarette breaks, he discovered Hassan and Alice were from Copenhagen, and that they worked together on a TV production. No wonder the two of them spoke last Friday Cole thought. They must have planned the attack together.
Like the TV earlier, several sites reported the police kept an open mind, and investigations were ongoing. That all the media outlets now reported either pending investigation or ongoing investigation convinced Cole the anti-terrorist police were still investigating Alice but didn't have the evidence they needed to charge her. It seemed her boyfriend was a nobody. Cole found it strange when he felt a flicker of jealousy as he read about Alice’s live in boyfriend, but he ignored it.
Cole knocked a beer mat against the table, beating a slow rhythm. He twirled the mat in his fingers, and it fell to the floor. Rather than stoop to retrieve it, he picked up another from the table and twirled that one too. Soon it too, fell to the ground, and this time he bent to collect it without looking. His fingers closed on a bookie’s pen, which he picked up along with the mats. The alcohol coursed through him, and his thoughts stewed in growing frustration. He thought of the tweets about Alice. Some were better than others, they showed imagination and menace. A good combination. He doodled as he thought, and filled a beer mat with hash tags from the tweets
He liked the fuck off back to Mecca one. It was short, to the point, and covered a lot of bases. Alice Madsen wasn't the only one who should fuck off to Mecca. She could take the rest of them with her and all. He took another beer mat and scrawled ‘Fuck off back to Mecca’ on it. Then he raised his glass in a toast to the messages on the beer mats.
Bored with the beer mats, he scrolled through phone photos of Daz and posted one on his FaceBook page with the comment My brother Daz lies in hospital because of the terrorists Alice Madsen and Samir Hassan. The police let her go even though she is GUILTY!!! Pray for Daz.
To hell with the tube, he thought. The night bus would do. Paying
