Hiding with Holly

It wasn't just the Petersen women whose lives had been thrown into chaos by Brendan's documentary. Things hadn't been working out much better for the director himself. Naturally, many people had reacted to what he had set in motion with fury, not least the families of the women affected. He had quickly become something of a public hate figure, and was receiving **** threats on an hourly basis. His documentary had at least succeeded in making him rich and famous, but if he had hoped for admiration, that had backfired spectacularly. There was talk he could be sued for everything he had earned and much more, or even imprisoned. He was fairly sure there were no laws around curses, but wilfully causing so many women to lose their liberty could prove more problematic for him.

Holly, in stark contrast, was America's new sweetheart. The film had shown an attractive, relatable, law abiding young woman, who had commendably worked her way into a position of relative success at an early age, having her freedom ripped away from her by an unscrupulous movie maker. The footage of her claiming had been shocking, Brendan's decision to strip her on screen outrageous. The #FreeHolly campaign was trending across the globe. But Brendan had no intention of letting her go.

It transpired that, as well as being a fool and a coward, Brendan was also a liar. He had always insisted he would let Holly go free once his movie had been completed, but she had become way too much of an asset for him to let that happen. The more Holly's popularity grew globally, the more he could charge to lure her many admirers into his Patreon with the promise of a personalised greeting message from his star. He already had ideas for follow up movies with Holly. The curse was huge news everywhere, Holly would forever be the face of the story, and she was his to do with as he wished. It was like having an A lister locked into a lifetime contract.

And so it was, as Brendan had tried to keep a low profile until the fuss around what he had done died down by sneaking from one out of the way motel to another, that Holly had become a permanent fixture by his side. And usually a naked one.

The number of personalised greeting videos she had to film now was insane. Even though they were only around thirty seconds each, they still took up the bulk of her time. To make matters worse, Brendan made Holly email out the links to them herself every evening. She had basically become his admin assistant while he worked on ideas for what to do with her next, either for a follow up movie or to keep people subscribed. One idea he'd been thinking out loud about was a new Patreon top tier with a 'Command Holly' feature - one filmed order per month requested by those willing to pay a fortune for it and issued by Brendan. There would also be competitions for regular subscribers to win the same privilege.

The only positive in all of this was that Holly was earning a fortune. Brendan had at least been true to his word about giving her a decent cut of the money he was making, but she would have given it all away to have her old life back.

"Okay, this one is from Sam in Kansas and he has asked if you can give him a wink at the end" Brendan informed Holly as she sat naked on the bed with his camera pointing at her.

"Sam. Kansas. Wink at the end" Holly repeated out loud to herself as she prepared. These things really started to blur after a while and she hated wasting time on retakes.

"Hey Sam. The Winchester brothers in Supernatural are from Kansas and one of them is called Sam. It's not you is it? Just kidding of course, but it is one of my favourite shows, so that is pretty cool. Anyway, speaking of the supernatural, thank you so much for signing up to our Patreon and supporting our movie. I really do appreciate it, and hope you will stay subscribed because we have a ton of cool stuff planned which I'm really excited about. Stay tuned Sam!"

Holly winked sexily at the camera to bring that one to an end. She hated that she was actually starting to get quite good at this entirely useless skill. And she tried not to think about how many strangers were going to end up with nude greetings from her.

"That was a good one Holly" Brendan raised a thumb in visual approval "I love it when you really give these messages a unique feel. He'll love that. Anyway, next is Frank from Rotterdam in the Netherlands..."

It was going to be another long and boring day for Holly in the eye of the storm.