“AAAAANNNNDD 10 Heroins to 909 BarMeadown Lane”

My new apartment in Portland was pretty low key. I’d never truly be able to thank Johnny for getting me on the Dark Web. Not that I had a reason to. He was crazy. I thought he’d be alright. Hell, he was probably making more money than I was. But holy shit, this was just too easy.

I started selling drugs. Not like that messed up “stand on the street corner” junk. That’s for suckers. I sold it right off the Internet. Honestly, the first time I received a package, I nearly pooped myself. I unwrapped it, and I thought I got screwed. Spending $10,000 in Bitcoin was not fun. I got a large package to my secret apartment Mom didn’t know about. When I opened it, there was a brand-new Keurig. I felt like a dope. I’d never even tried coffee. I opened it up, and yea, it was a Keurig. What a dope I was, but then I decided to plug it in. See what this coffee thing was all about. I plugged it in, and it didn’t work. No lights. No nothin’. So I started to dick around with it, and I turned it over. The bottom of the thing had a scratch or two. It was near the electric assembly. After some screw driving, I opened it up, and out plopped a SUPER wrapped package.

These guys were creative.

That was the first time I realized how suspicious drugs were. Holding a stuffed, taped up bag of smack, well it definitely doesn’t come with any warning labels. I decided to be smarter. I would play all those fools on the Dark Web. Basically, there’s two kinds of people on there. The people who have stuff, and the people who want stuff. I decided to plop myself right in the middle. If some guy named sw4ggDokt4FL3X wanted heroin, I would take what I had, and just mix it with other stuff. I always sent it in coffee bags. Who didn’t love coffee? Honestly, the only thing I put time into was making something look right.

Johnny told me once that if he ever met someone who messed with his drugs, he would kill them. I thought I might eventually become a target. I screwed people over left and right. But it was the Dark Web. No one knew who I was. No one knew where I was.

I even found ways to make money outside of just heroin or LSD or meth… I got my mom’s cancer drugs ultra cheap. Like there was this one drug, Blincyto. It cost $64,000 a month. Are you SERIOUS?! Well, I found it on the Dark Web: $200 for a bottle. I mean, how could I not jump on that offer. I literally bought enough for Mom to have cancer for 20 years.

I eventually moved on from drugs to guns. That decision was a mix of two things. First, just because no one knew where I was, didn’t mean I couldn’t find them. I thought I was the king of the internet. If I wanted to, I could find you. Quickly and easily. I honestly think it was the drugs. After that first joint with Johnny, I didn’t see the internet the same way I did before. It’s like I felt it, with every magnetic pulse. And it was good. So with this super power, I also realized that Oregon had a huge gun problem. There were tons of dealers online. They were all from the edge of the state. Like the bat-shit crazy edge, where people were all about cows and guns. I found some messed-up crap from the people out there. High-powered, armor-piercing, helicopter-downing kind of crap you see in nightmares. I learned a lot about guns, simply to sell them to people. And sell them I did. Plus, I made way more money selling guns. I could name my price, cause the laws got all weird in America. And not just that, but with ISIS coming up, I could sell to them too.

Anyways, the other reason I stopped drugs was because… well… I’m not sure, but I think I killed someone. Not, me. I didn’t do anything. I just gave ’em the junk. It was this guy, ToastITonI. He’d been buying from me, no joke, every Thursday. I would get on at exactly 6PM sharp. That’s when ToastI woke up. In Oslo, Norway. He kept getting all these party drugs. Said they were for his heavy metal concerts. Whatever, I thought that music was garbage. But every Thursday he’d give me 2 Bitcoin, and I sent a package to Oslo.

So one Thursday in July, no ToastITonI. I figured he overslept. Maybe he was sick. Next Thursday, same thing. This guy went off the map. I did some research and I found his real name and his address. Anton Goslinki. The first Google search was his obituary. They didn’t give any details on the obituary websites. So I hacked into the Oslo police department. And I searched his name, and voila: Goslinki, Anton: Died in a club. Face down in the toilet.

I saw on the line that read “toksikologi”: NBOMe (N-Bomba). N-Bomb. That is exactly what I sold Mr. ToastITonI. So I wasn’t gonna see him on the ol’ Dark Web anymore. I freaked a bit after that. I had like a solid three days where I didn’t even touch my computer. But after I saw Mom, saw her skin all messed up, and thought about how the doctors just fed meds to anyone on the face of the earth… well, it felt like I wasn’t too bad of a person.

But guns, for some reason, were less intense. Like sure, people were dying, but it felt less personal. I didn’t feel like I was the cause of the death. I was just selling them parts. Screws. Metal. Springs. Bullets. I mean, maybe they were just using them for fun. I’m sure you could kill someone with a vacuum cleaner. Would a vacuum cleaner salesman feel guilty for selling one? I hope not.

I had buyers all over the world. Venezuela was a popular location. Lot of Spanish screen names that said GOOOAAALLL in the title. And this one from the Middle East. I swear, this dude must have been a Saudi prince, cause this guy made me rich. Thing is, when you deliver a few times, people start to notice. Not just cops, but bad guys too. Before I knew it, I got to hand pick who I was selling to, and how much I charged. I was losing business left and right but making more Bitcoin than I ever thought I’d have. Was I a millionaire? Not yet, but by my fifteenth birthday, I was gonna be pretty damn close.

So, I was selling guns to terrorists. And this one terrorist, Fr0ZnL4Mb, was filling as many orders as possible. He would send messages daily asking me for more weapon’s systems. More modified sniper scopes, silencers, howitzers. The guy was clearly some prince, probably some fat terrorist whose dad owned a skyscraper or two in Dubai. He played war for fun and had the money to do it. After a while, I stopped taking his orders. Dude got too pushy, and that wasn’t my jam.

So Fr0znL4Mb finally started messaging me personally. He was no longer spamming me. He was messaging me like we were friends. He wanted me to help the “holy cause”. Creeped me the hell out. He threatened to boot me from the server when I said “watch out for the drones, brosef”. The dude clearly didn’t understand the Dark Web. It’s not a room you can control. Hell, the Navy created this problem and they can’t even control it. TOR? The Onion Router? It was a Navy project to invite criminals into one location, to lure in criminal mischief. They need us to be here. HEfTY J came into these rooms because he decided to walk in. It’s the online Acropolis. No government can turn it off, and no person can control it. They didn’t even know who HEfTY J was. Hefty J could be a bot for all they knew. They could probably guess HEfTY J is American and not British, but that’s all they knew about me. That meant that if I could fit in with a crowd of 330 million, I was good.

I was good, until I was walking to the secret apartment, early morning, and I got a text. It made me rethink everything. All it said was, “Fr0znL4Mb wants to talk”. My mind went berserk. I walked for about 2 hours, looking over my shoulder. Thinking of what I might be in for. How did he get my number? It wasn’t a pleasant morning. When I finally got to my apartment, I instantly jumped on the Dark Web. I went straight for the hitmen. They were always in their own section of the Dark Web. I eventually saw the GoPro Killer. I typed out, “I need your services. 200 BTC. No Questions asked, the target is—” and then I stopped.

I thought of ToastITonI. Then I thought of Mom. This dude, this Fr0znL4Mb dude was trying to scare me. And he was succeeding. I mean, he was probably a terrorist. I knew what those guys were about. It wasn’t the violence; it was scaring people. Making people act before they think. I inhaled, then let it go.

It seemed like the right time for my vacation. Mom just went back in for more treatment. She was doing better, but something went wrong and she was in another coma. Surprise, surprise.

I’d been looking up ways to go around the world for a while on Dark Web. I was set on either seeing the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China. I’m sure they both had good food, though I’d never had Egyptian food. I did what I always did with important decisions and I tossed a coin, and when it landed tails, I got busy on Dark Web. I had to find out exactly how a kid could get into Egypt without any parents.

Instead of calling a hitman, or doing something stupid with Fr0znL4Mb, I deleted my messages, packed my bags, and ordered an Uber to the airport. I was gonna go get see the Pyramids. Get some real adventure in my life.

My Uber couldn’t have come with a worse driver. Brenda the Uberist almost hit a car siddling up to my apartment. “Hefty? Are you Hefty?” she said cluelessly rolling down the window.

Wait… what am I doing? You’re overreacting Hefty. Who could possibly know where you’re hiding? You’re gonna get killed with this Brenda idiot, and for what? Frozen-ham? Get a grip, and stop letting his cyber punk mess with you. You’re Hefty. How could they possibly know anything more about you?

I took my phone, staring straight at Brenda, and cancelled the Uber. My knees creaked as I pivoted, got back into my secret apartment and shut the door.