Thomas Wictor

Today I got a funny message. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the person it was intended to help. I’m in a trough. Oh, I’ll climb out; I always do. But yesterday I realized that the rest of my life is going to be as unpleasant as its been up to now. There won’t be any rebirth because I simply have too much to overcome. The best I can hope for is abidance. So I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who’ve condemned me to this twilight existence. Sorry, Becca Pilkington. You made your bed.

Here’s the message I got this morning.

That’s rich. Really. First, a pic of Becca without her sunglasses. She’s on the right.

Since Mike Albee destroyed most of the evidence that he defrauded me, I can’t tell you exactly when Becca began working for Sandpiper Publicity, but it was in late July or early August of 2013. Here’s the first mention of her I have in the Basecamp postings I kept. It was my birthday!

The message was about the author photo for Hallucinabulia: the Dream Diary of an Unintended Solitarian. This is the image.

Tim and me in 1966. I chose that photo because it’s the year—as far as I can determine—that my twilight existence began. Since the age of four, my life has been an almost unbroken series of assaults. That’s one reason I have no pity for those who attack me. There’s another, much darker reason; I’ll get to it later.

Becca knew perfectly well that Mike Albee and Lura Dold were running a scam. She moved on after she got a job in the field for which she’d studied. The stint at the fake book publicity firm Sandpiper was a summer job to make money. Becca sent me lots of messages about how hard she was working on my behalf. Here’s a good example.

It looks like something’s getting accomplished, right? Now, you have to keep in mind that Mike Albee, Lura Dold, and Becca Pilkington knew that my father had died horribly on February 23, 2013, and my mother was in the process of dying horribly. Also, I’d been ripped off by three Web designers in a row. Due to the post-traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychotic features (PTSD-SP), I was dissociating like a son of a bitch. Every day was a fucking nightmare of horror, pain, and predation.

But Becca liked me. We joked around because we were kindred spirits, you see. I asked her if she’d be in the fetal position by the end of the week, and she replied.

She had all sorts of plans for me.

She was going to get me on Danny Bonaduce’s show! What a pal, what a pal, what a pal. She was in my corner, had my back, and was trying her damnedest to mitigate the catastrophe unfolding day by day in my personal life.

No.

Actually, she was using my mental illness, my physical illness, and the indescribable agony of my parents’ deaths to make money off of me. I was the biggest, fattest sitting duck Mike Albee and Lura Dold had ever come across.

Becca also pretended to set up a Twitter and Facebook account for me.

I was fifty-one years old, sick, and in the middle of trying to save my mother, finish two books, and get a working Website up. Facebook and Twitter were sweet mysteries. Becca understood and expressed her solidarity.

Despite everything else, at least my career was starting to flourish. I could take some solace in that.

Then Becca ended her time at Sandpiper. She sent me a message of farewell.

It’s hilarious that she’s now trying to convince me in her birdbrained Millennial way that she’s somehow not to blame.

Becca, you and Mike and Lura used the worst moments of my existence to squeeze money out me. Do you think I’m going to forgive you? Also, here’s the fallout from what you did:

1. My three best books were stillbirths. You destroyed any opportunity I had of promoting them.

2. Class-envious cretins thought I was a rich bastard who lost a few bucks, so nobody cared. In reality you cleaned me out. You stole my life’s savings. If my parents hadn’t died, I’d be working as a greeter at Wal-Mart right now.

3. Every single person who was interested in my Phoenix-like rise from the ashes ran from me as far and as fast as they could. Ghosts and Ballyhoo was about overcoming trauma and failure. You turned it into my worst failure yet, and you made people not want to read it.

You’re actually a lot luckier than you understand. Not a single law-enforcement agency is interested in prosecuting you. The publishing industry is indifferent to your scam, and the media doesn’t think it’s worth reporting. Only about five people on the face of the earth gave a shit about what you, Mike, and Lura did to me. So I taught myself all about search-engine optimization, and I made sure that when people look up Mike Albee, Lura Dold, and Becca Pilkington, they see right away that you’re criminals.

And now you have the audacity to try and weasel your way out of the miniscule accountability you’re facing? Be happy! You got away with it. If you want me to take down the posts about you, contact that lawyer of yours and have him or her send me a cease-and-desist order. I’ll refuse, so then you can sue me. I’ll countersue you, and I’ll win both cases. You’ll be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Since you were stupid enough to put in writing that your parents advised you to not contact me, I’ll sue their asses too. You’ve tied them to your fraud, you moron.

After Dad died I went on a quest to discover who he was. I found lots of photos of him I’d never seen. Here’s the best.

Take a closer look at this face, Becca.

That’s Dad in 1955, but it’s also me. I am that man. In 2011 Meniere’s disease helped me overcome the rage that crippled me, and then you, Mike Albee, and Lura Dold came along. Now I’m back where I was for most of my life. Someday, I’ll try to banish the rage again.

But for now it’s not possible. You did that, Becca. Own it.

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

—Hosea 8:7