Dear Virtuous EBAY Buyer...

I don't know how we ended up here. This war to the death. I do remember you jumped on my hands with the full weight of your withered, witchlike body as I was reaching for the Highlander-like sword I was intending to use to cut you off at the lying, thieving knees by finally leaving you the FEEDBACK you deserve. You've intimidated other sellers into simply capitulating and eating the sale, haven't you? You've been growing emboldened with each little elephantine Victory. You've grown more brazen, almost satanically powerful. From the accretion of nerve with each little EBAY swindle successfully steered home. I can read between the lines of your feedback. Nobody has that many items arrive broken. Nobody. Nobody constantly writes "Seller was understanding," "Seller was reasonable," "Seller made everything all right" every other day. Nobody but a con artist. A porcelain elephant-obsessed escamoteuse like yourself. You got lucky, because you were dealing with rational people before. Sane people. But now. I'm so happy we've found each other. At last. I've been waiting for you. This is going to really hurt and I suspect we're both going to love it. We were made for each other, weren't we? Because you lie. You lie like Darth Vader. You lie like a rug. You like like jizz in a prison mattress. Let's face the facts. You and I both know the elephant never broke. That elephant "Madonna and Child" you stole from me is in some psychotically spotlit glass case right now. You are sitting on your fat ass admiring the pachydermatous prize you grifted. That's why you refused to take a photograph of the "smashed elephant." And you saw "no point in returning it" because it wasn't broken. This isn't your first time at the Porcelain Elephant Rodeo. I don't care if you're seventy-four years old. I don't care if you have emphysema or erythema or elevated blood pressure. In fact, I want that blood vessel in your forehead to turn into a fountain and paint the ceiling red. Because I read what you wrote to EBAY. I read it, and you lie like Kirstie Alley to Jenny Craig, like Mel Gibson at an AA meeting, like any guy without a rubber on a Saturday night. Your first email said one thing, because you were used to the typical craven EBAY seller, so fearful of what your little aspersion could do, and expected the usual ill-gotten satisfaction. But your third email said something entirely different, didn't it, when the light finally sunk into your ratlike little brow. There would be no elephant refund this time. And that's when you unleashed your full fury, first upon me, because the serpent had been scotched, and pulled out of its dark grasses. "SEND THAT ELEPHANT BACK TO PENNSYLVANIA!" was not what you wanted to hear. And then when the answer didn't change, you turned your full fury on EBAY, didn't you? You would "leave EBAY forever." You'd never buy another chintzy elephant in this lifetime or any other. The elephant market would dry right up. EBAY would fold overnight. And they capitulated. They caved. They pussied out. They gave you your pelf, your fake "refund" for an item you and I both know is sitting in your scary little elephant menagerie parlor right now, alongside the mummified cat and the dead husband you haven't gotten around to putting in the dumpster yet. Or is that a Welfare-recipient boarder you murdered, to finance your EBAY elephant junkie habit? It will be pigs next. Little pigs with wings. Elephant is only a gateway drug. I can't wait to see you swilling the stuff. Wallowing in your degradation. From pachyderm and thence onward and downward to some unattractive ungulate. I want you to know the money didn't come from me. EBAY caved and paid you with their own coin. You didn't get a single penny from me, Ms. Illy Font. You must have put on a much better spectacle with them than you did with me. What did you do, fake an angina attack or say the pessary fell out of your decrepit vagina from stress? I just want you to know I found another precious little elephant the other day at the thrift store and I thought of you. It's wee and hand-painted and has precious gilding all about it. Of course, you can't bid on it as we both know I blocked you from bidding on any future auctions. But you can look and salivate. (I can see you come back just praying I get more negative feedback. But it won't happen. Grifters like you only come along once a year or so.) I'd sooner smash it to bits than let you ever rub its trunk for good luck. See how its little trunk is upturned to hold rings? Just like those you remove from the Welfare recipients you take in as boarders and then murder to continue cashing their government checks to feed your disgusting pachyderm avarice, your corny cupidity. But doesn't that wee little elephant, that guy, sound precious? Fuck off! Enjoy the Madonna and Child elephants. I knew you were a bad penny from the moment you wrote me that fan letter before bidding on the elephants. I knew right away you write that email to all your sellers. I even said that to a friend. "Something's up with this bitch." That's why I didn't indulge you. I do not write "the best descriptions you've ever seen on EBAY." You lying whore. And then you threw that out casually, in the heat of our exchanges, didn't you..."treament like this, when I had even written you and told you how much I loved your EBAY descriptions!" You had lubed the hole and now you were ready to ram it home. You tried to guilt me with that pathetic move. Amateur! Were you surprised by what I wrote on your feedback after all the bloodshed? Did you think I would not sink that low? And it's a phonetic variant for that no doubt desiccated part of your anatomy, so EBAY can't even censor me. I drop to the level of combat my opponent assumes. And then I go lower. Yours aren't the first ankles I've bitten, my geriatric grifting friend. That's why they call them canines. Soon you will return to the primordial ooze that spawned you. And then the elephants shall be free. They shall return to roam the thrift stores which are their natural habitat, and will no doubt be adopted by someone much less psychotic than you or I. And freedom will once again be enjoyed in the porcelain jungle. The Elephant Madonna will remain forever joined, proboscis wound round proboscis, with her Christlike tusked progeny. And you will be only a dim soupcon of a memory of a nightmare these "charming two-of-a-kind" creatures "seven inches high at the shoulder" with "charming tusks worked in relief" once had. Long long ago, in the mythical land of EBAY.