Hammerport

‘I’ll be down in a minute, Mum, okay?’ Henry shouted from his bedroom.

There it was, sitting on YouTube. Brenna, you bloody bitch! A mobile phone video of a real live dead body.

He lost his job, he’d angered Mum and now the internet knew that he’d let his friends see a dead body before he dialled 999.

If the police didn’t call on him again soon, someone else surely would. He started typing an e-mail to YouTube, to ask them to take the video down. He would use words like ‘insensitive’ and ‘offensive’ in the e-mail.

‘HENRY! GET YOUR LAZY UNEMPLOYED ARSE DOWN HERE!’

‘Alright! Alright!’ he shouted back. In panic, he kicked the power off button on the beige PC under his desk. The e-mail vanished, along with games of both Minesweeper and Spider that he had not finished.

‘Oh shit shit,’ he moaned aloud. Henry started the PC up again, waited for the usual messages and rubbish to get displayed as it loaded Windows. A blue screen appeared, complaining about his hard drive being corrupt. Brenna had told him many times not to hit the power button to switch off his PC. Always tell Windows to shut down. You might get a blue screen saying that your hard drive is corrupt, she had said.

There would be no e-mail tonight.