The Five Most Loathsome Secrets of the Internet Witches
Mark McLaughlin

Prepare your mind for horror, for you are about to learn the five most loathsome secrets of the Internet Witches.

But first, let us cover the basics:

The Internet Witches are all pale with dark red hair.

They laugh like dogs barking, even the baby witches.

Their unholy websites feature recipes, always for desserts.

Their favorite treats are vulture’s egg cupcakes, hell muffins, and cheesecake made from the milk of black goats.

They live among mortals and always work at jobs that involve computers.

You must never click on the green glowing eye in the bottom left corner of every Internet Witch webpage. Nothing will happen if there are others around. But if you are alone, green lightning will spring forth from the screen, split in mid-air, and strike you in both eyes.

If you are hit by the green lightning of the Internet Witches, you will fall to the floor dead. Then a crow will appear (even if there’s no window), pluck out one of your eyes and fly off, the same way it arrived. A moment later, your glowing, one-eyed corpse will walk the earth as a radioactive zombie as that crow carries your eye far, far away, to the main computer of the Internet witches. It will stick your eye on a wire and upload everything you have ever seen.

The information acquired via the eyeball upload will be used by the Internet Witches to shame and destroy all of your loved ones, and maybe a few of your coworkers, too, if there's time. They are very busy, these Internet Witches.

Now the lesson shall begin. Do not forget a single detail — for if you do, you shall surely die screaming, the victim of an Internet Witch.

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Secret No. 1: Viruses

The Internet Witches are responsible for all computer viruses, which look like tiny electric-blue monkeys with orange teeth, corkscrew tails and eyes as black as death.

The viruses evolve on a daily basis, constantly learning innovative ways to ruin the computers and lives of mortals. They cannot leave their sizzling electronic world, so whenever they are hungry, they upload a human victim, right through the computer screen.

The Internet is their madcap jungle and if you are not careful, my friend, you will become their next banana.

Secret No. 2: Spam

If you are a spammer and dare to spam an Internet Witch, she will visit you in your bed, tear off your head and sew it on backwards.

She will then reanimate you and upload you into the rocky wastelands of the Website of the Living Dead, where you will wander forever as a clumsy Backwards Zombie, constantly stumbling over jagged chunks of cyber-basalt. Believe me when I tell you, it will feel just as hard as real basalt.

Secret No. 3: JPG Files

If you slight an Internet Witch, she will eventually kill you, but first, she will shame you.

She will transform all the JPG files on your personal or business website into freaky S&M pictures involving whips and manacles and rusty needles and clamps and two or three corpses, maybe four.

Then she'll e-mail all your relatives and coworkers with a link to your altered website which reads, "Now you know."

Secret No. 4: Online Transactions

Beware of online transactions, for the Internet Witches can and will steal your identity and bank accounts and spend all your money on sextoys, candy and daggers.

When the Witches have had their fun, they'll zap all the candy wrappers, sticky used sextoys and bloody daggers onto your front porch. One of the daggers will be sheathed in the back of a dead department store Santa, even if it's summer.

Try explaining that to the neighbors. And the police.

If you manage to talk your way out of that, the Internet Witches will send you a PDF file.

Secret No. 5: PDF Files

Usually PDF files are harmless and very convenient for sending documents filled with words and graphics. But when an Internet Witch sends you one, PDF stands for Pile of Dog Flop.

That is what the repairman will find inside your computer.

Perhaps you are thinking, "Oh, that does not sound too bad. At least I won't be killed." But you will, and so will the repairman, for that Pile of Dog Flop will be teeming with incurable tropical diseases. It takes three weeks to die from these diseases. In the meantime, your nose and ears and genitals will wither and fall off.

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So ends your lesson.

No doubt you are wondering who I am, and why this message has appeared on your computer screen.

I am one of those Backwards Zombies mentioned in Secret No. 2. But I wasn't a spammer. I was an Internet Witch myself, and had angered the leader of my coven by daring to love a mortal. She'd found a love letter I'd written but had not yet delivered, and so she decided I had to be punished. I now find the Internet Witches loathsome and needlessly cruel. Is it so wrong to want love?

I managed to escape the Website of the Living Dead by adding a link to the website's HTML code and following it out to a friendlier domain. The Internet Witches did not realize I knew how to do that.

I am telling you all this because I wrote that love letter to you. I used to be a coworker of yours. You probably do not remember me, since we never talked. I didn't even work in the same area as you. But I used to watch you, fantasize about you.

Now the Internet Witches will no doubt try to destroy you, even though your only crime was being attractive. That is why I have sent you this information. Try to stay alive long enough for me to figure out how to upload humans into the Internet. It's something I've never done before, but the viruses can do it — surely I can do anything a silly little virus can do. You can live with me here in my online hidey-hole.

I am also trying to figure out how to download myself back into the human world. That might even be easier than trying to pull you into the Internet. We can then find some little love nest where we will be safe. Now that I am a Backwards Zombie, I may not be the prettiest girl in the world — but rest assured, my amorous enthusiasm will more than compensate for the questionable aesthetics of my appearance.

Do not worry, my angel. All will be well.

One way or another, we shall be together.

Mark McLaughlin is the author of the Delirium Books story collections, Motivational Shrieker, Slime After Slime and the forthcoming Pickman's Motel. He is the co-author (with Shane Ryan Staley and Brian Knight) of At The Foothills Of Frenzy & Other Freakish Forays from Solitude Publications as well as the co-author (with Rain Graves and David Niall Wilson) of The Gossamer Eye, which won a Bram Stoker Award for Poetry. In 2007, Sarob Press, U.K., will release Monster Behind The Wheel, a novel written by Mark and Michael McCarty. Learn more about Mark online at www.myspace.com/monsterbook.