"This letter has been around the world twelve times. Send a copy of it to everyone on your mailing list within eight hours or your will suffer dire consequences. If you follow the directions contained in this letter, good luck will soon be yours."

She read the chain letter and immediately deleted it. They were constantly bombarding her computer these days. To tell the truth, she was getting damned tired of them. Lots of them were being sent to her from co-workers, others from friends, and she was taking a stand against them.

It would be nice if by sending a letter to everyone on her mailing list, she would receive good luck and great wealth as promised by some of the chain letters, but so far she had received no dire consequences as a result of deleting each and every one. Her job kept her too busy to bother with these silly chain letters. Not only that, weren't they illegal?

She immersed herself in her work for the next ten hours, working two hours of overtime. At 7:00 p.m. she shut down her computer and went to the parking lot to her car, ready to head for home. Unlocking her car, she settled herself in her seat, and reached for her parking ticket which she kept in her driver's side visor by habit.

The ticket was not there. She was sure that she had put it there in the morning. Before having a chance to really wonder where it was, she saw him in the back seat, her ticket in his gloved hand. "It's time to pay the piper, Miss," said the figure, "and realize that not complying with the directions in the chain letters will indeed result in dire consequences. You have been lucky until this day, but I'm afraid your luck has just run out." With that, he shot her point-blank in the head with the gun he had concealed in his jacket pocket.

Perhaps she should have continued the chain, after all.

Copyright © 2007 Jennifer McKernan (Luna)