Bad to Worse

Julie awoke Saturday morning to too many reminders of the previous night. Aside from the blistering headache and cottonmouth there were her sore nipples. There taste of semen on her tongue that she knew was only in her imagination but still seemed to linger on the back of her tongue no matter how many times she brushed her teeth. There was the wet spot on her bedsheets where she'd gotten off for the third time after coming home from the party. And there were the sweat-soaked pajamas and nagging feelings of frustrated sexuality to remind her that all her dreams that night had been of the erotic variety.

And now, she noticed, taped to her bedroom window were none of the pictures she'd been promised for the previous night's humiliations, instead there was simply a piece of computer paper on which was written the address of a website.

Frowning, she opened her window and pulled down the paper, then visited the website in question. There were three streaming videos on that site of a woman giving oral sex. Two featured the woman with two different men, and the third with a woman. While the faces had all been digitally pixilated, there was no question that the woman who "starred" in these three videos was Julie. At the bottom of the page were printed three simple words: "I OWN YOU".

Julie could have spent seconds or hours staring at that website in horror or dismay as she realized that the nightmare she had hoped would be over soon was going to last a lot longer. The remainder of the school year, at the very least. The "obedience for pictures" game had worked well enough, because deep down she knew if the blackmailer didn't keep his end of the bargain, she could just suck it up and admit to masturbating. Her parents would have disapproved, would have lectured, would have locked her away until college, but things would have returned to normal eventually. But there was no way she could ever risk them seeing this. It would simply be the end of her life as she knew it. And now she had no bargaining power whatsoever.

She sat contemplating this turn of events for an indeterminate amount of time, her mind running around in ineffectual circles like a program stuck in infinite loop. And she might have stayed in this state until she died of starvation, were she not interrupted by the sound of a ringing phone.