A red dot

Published on Wednesday, 26 December 2018

The second I pressed "send" button on Facebook messenger, a box popped up on my smartphone screen saying, "send failed, this person isn't available right now." I repeated the action a couple of times and got the same result. When I returned to the main interface of the app, a red dot, an exclamation mark inside, by her name came into my sight. Despite wondering about the matter for long, I couldn't unravel the mystery. At least, chatting with me didn't grow her bored though she never had texted me first. Whenever I sent her a message, except for a few times, she responded without delay. She might have been seeing patients at her chamber at the times.

Nowadays, my adoration for her faded away, and even my heart turned to another girl. Still, I often texted her since I happened to like her profile picture, a photo of a portable swimming pool and her twin babies splashing around in it. The round and tiny profile picture on the messenger provided me an optical illusion of a blue ocean. Besides, sending her message lent me a feel of splashing around in a sea. Even when she replied to my messages, it seemed to me a sea wave splashed over my body. Indeed, as I peered at her profile picture, I envisaged myself standing on an unknown and secluded sea-beach, looking at the deep-sea. It filled me with pleasure while the concrete walls of my room enclosed me.

The profile picture made an impact on me like movie scenes where things happen like buildings collapsing, cars crashing and men dying. Though these things didn't happen at all, people take the scenes into their account and succumb to them. Likewise, even if I knew it was a picture of nothing but a portable swimming pool, it would deceive me whenever I looked at it, appeared to be a photo of a blue ocean. And I gave away to it, of course.

Apparently the red dot made the profile picture stop creating the optical illusion of the blue sea.

Years later, some people reported my Facebook account out of political disputes, and the Facebook team disabled it. So, to keep in touch with friends and relatives, I had to open a new account. While adding them, I spotted her name in suggested people list with some mutual friends. Under her name, appeared two buttons: 'Add' and 'Hide'. Though I should have taped the 'Hide' button, I taped 'Add' button and scrolled down to search people close to me. Getting Back the main interface, I caught her profile picture, she and her husband seated across a table on a mountain top, facing each other, wearing romantic smiles, a gloomy space in the background. I peered at the picture and as before, envisioned myself standing beside them, staring at the hazy space. After a while, I turned about and greeted her that meant I sent "hello" to her and the reply came hours later. At one stage, she inquired my profession and, in response, I sent a link of my short story published on an online literary magazine.

Days later, when I asked her if she had liked the story, she informed she couldn't finish the story since the literary language of the story went beyond her grasp. And then she mocked, "As I dipped into the story, I went almost unconscious," indicating a sentence in the last paragraph of the story.

Next day, I wrote, "You can try the story for a medical purpose. To induce anesthesia in a patient, instead of using an anesthetic agent, bid him to read the story." But the message couldn't reach her, for she had already blocked me for the second time.