For what felt like the millionth time, I saw the words on my screen: You were poked by John Prescott.  Poke back?

It must have been the Facebook algorithm; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous code that feasts on the dead and the living…Why shouldn’t I poke him back?  It is not forbidden…The  Poke War ate my laptap, damn them all…No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon writer in the twilit cyber cafe! It was not Prescott’s face on my computer screen! Who says I am Mike Davis?  His iPad lives on, but my laptop died!…Shall a Prescott defeat a Davis?…It’s voodoo, I tell you…that contemptible Facebook poke alert…Curse you, Prescott, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do!…’Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust…wolde ye swynke me thilke wys?…Magna Mater! Magna Mater!…Atys…Dia ad aghaidh’s ad aodaun…agus bas dunarch ort! Dhonas ‘s dholas ort, agus leat-sa!…Ungl unl…rrlh…chchch…

This is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over my effulgent computer screen, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat. Now they have blown up my home office, taken my laptop away from me, and shut me into this barred room with fearful whispers about my heredity and experience.  They are trying, too, to suppress most of the facts concerning the Poke War. When I speak of poor Prescott they accuse me of this hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was Facebook; the slithering scurrying poke alerts that will never let me sleep; the daemon poke alerts that even now I see in my mind and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the poke alerts they can never see; the hellish, gibbering Poke Wars… the Poke Wars that shall never end.