Pitted

Haley woke with a start. Goosebumps pimpling the flesh of her arms and neck, sweat trickling from her brow. The nightmare, all too real moments before, faded as her eyes adjusted to the dark and her pulse began to slow.

Haley shuddered as she remembered the mud, the slime, pressing on her skin in the dream, first cold then very hot. She still felt suffocating stickiness filling her mouth and nose.

On the bedside table, the red analogue clock flashed “1:19” then “1:20”. Haley took a few breathes, steadying herself before swinging her legs off the bed. She pushed herself up and stumbled over to the bathroom. Once inside, Haley turned on the light and looked at herself in the mirror. Dark circles bruised her eyes and her cheeks were flushed. “Jesus Haley, get your shit together.” She whispered to her rather disturbing reflection.

It wasn’t shocking that Haley was being tormeted by these nightmares, she’d been laid off the week before. It had been a long time since she’d suffered from stress dreams, though she’d never had nightmares like this before. It had felt real. The mud, the closeness, the claustrophobia. Haley had never considered herself claustrophobic before but she sure as heck was now.

After splashing cold water on her face and throwing back several painkillers, Haley climbed back in bed. It didn’t take long for Haley to fall back to sleep. And she barely remembered the nightmare when she woke to her alarm at 7.

Haley’s plan for the day was fairly simple: find a job at all cost.

Sipping on her coffee, Haley sat on her couch and sifted through job listings online. It was a mammoth task, finding a job, in the current economy. Half the time she couldn’t tell if the position she was applying for was real or a phantom posting by some scammer. So far, in the past two weeks since she’d been fired, Haley’d had little luck in finding a new position. A chore that was becoming more dire each day as Haley quickly blew through her savings.

After a while of scrolling, Haley took a break. She flipped over her phone, which had been sitting face down on her coffee table, and raised her eyebrows at the screen that had just lit up with a rather surprising notification.

Fortunately, it was just a job.

Unfortunately, it was from her evil ex, Zach Wilson.

How he possibly could have known Haley had been laid off was beyond her, but she chose to believe this was a sign from God and clicked the link.

Unfortunately, again, it was actually not a job.

Immediately after pressing her thumb to the screen, in an attempt to click the hyperlink in Zach’s message, Haley’s phone went dark.

White blinking letters lit up the black screen,

“Good morning Haley.”

A rather ominous sign, Haley had to admit. Of course Zach would send her some kind of virus, it was just the vile thing he liked to do. Haley rolled her eyes at the message and put her phone back down. She shoved her hands into her eyes until lights danced in the darkness. Oh she desperately wanted to scream.

Remembering she had free will, Haley dropped to the couch cushions, shoving her face in as deep as possible, and let it rip. She screamed her heart out, hoping that the overstuffed cushions would muffle enough that her nosy neighbors wouldn’t call the police. After screaming herself out, Haley moved so her cheek was against the cushion and her mouth was free to breathe again. She gulped down breathes of cool air and tried to trick herself into thinking the screaming had actually helped the creeping anxiety.

After several minutes of 3 7 4 breathing exercises, a legacy left by the therapist she had been seeing, back when Haley still had health insurance, she sat back up and reached for her computer again. It was dark.

She tapped the space bar several times, then tried the mouse pad. The power button did nothing. Gasping in continued frustration, Haley shoved herself up to look for her charger. Unfortunately, yet again, even once plugged in, the computer was still dark. On the verge of a meltdown, Haley tried to her phone again.

The first message had faded. But clearly, Zach wasn’t done yet. Though the initial ominous morning greeting had disappeared, new letters occupied the screen, also blinking white.

“Put on hiking shoes Haley, you are going to need them.”

She stood there, shaking, from frustration and nerves. What the fuck was going on. Haley looked around the room, as if waiting for someone to pop out laughing at their joke. “Zach?” She whispered, half praying that the man who had been the bane of her existence would simply stand from behind her couch and mock Haley’s gullability.

There was only silence.

Haley looked back down at her phone, seeing that the second message had disappeared as well. Now, the screen displayed a photo. It was a photo of Haley. One she had never seen before.

In the photo, Haley was naked, on her bed, with her legs spread and a mans head between them. As Haley looked down at the picture, her eyes wide, she recognized not just herself but also the man.

She’d met Jack Willoughby at a bar the night after she and Zach had finally broken up. Jack had been incredible, charismatic, handsome. He seemed so kind and genuine. Haley had fallen a little bit in love with him that night, even if only because of the reminder that she could find a new partner, Zach wasn’t the only man in the world. Haley and Jack had slept together that night, the first of many nights they would spend together.

But then she found out that Jack was married, which prompted an absolute meltdown and a vicious break up text. She didn’t remember ever telling Jack about Zach. There was really no reason to, or at least Haley didn’t think there was. But why would Zach have a photo of her with Jack? She didn’t even remember the details of the photo, the bed was unfamiliar and she clearly looked dazed. Dazed in pleasure or true confusion, Haley wasn’t sure.

Jack had obviously filmed her, but why would Zach have the photo? Why would Zach blackmail her? Their break up had been hard, really fucking hard. But it wasn’t hard because he was psycho, not really psycho. Zach was psycho in the call you too many times drunk or show up with roses at your job after cheating on your kind of way. Not in the stalker blackmail ominous possible murder plot way.

The screen changed again.

The picture was gone. New words occupied the screen, “You see what I have. That was only a taste. You will follow my directions, Haley.”

The unwritten threat permeated the air in Haley’s apartment. It was no longer home. The creeping feeling that had been brushing at Haley’s senses since the forgotten nightmare blew through her body at full force. Ants crawled beneath her skin, nausea approached the base of her throat. And, again, that oddly specific dizzy sensation.

Haley gulped, forgetting to do her breathing exercises and instead almost holding her breath. She’d heard of sextortion before, read a few horrifying op-ed’s about kids being goaded into making sex tapes and killing themselves. She’d always been so careful about taking pictures of herself. She did, like any other girl in her 20’s, take naked pictures, but she was always careful of who she sent them to and never included her face.

“Put on your hiking shoes Haley.”

“Put my fucking hiking shoes on?” Haley yelled at her phone, incredulously, “What the fucking is going on?”

Immediately, the words disappeared again and a new picture was highlighted. It was Haley again, this time, it was a much darker situation.

Haley was not a sexual deviant. She had lived a fairly vanilla life, until meeting Zach. Zach had taught her to enjoy sex in ways she’d never before experienced. He choked her and slapped her and she loved every second of it. He pretended to assault her, while she orgasmed explosively. But what she saw at this moment, was never something Zach had asked her to do.

The camera angle was from above, showing Haley kneeling, several naked men surrounding her, shoving their penis’s into her face. She looked dazed in the picture.

“Oh my god.” Haley whispered, “what the fuck.”

I’ve been raped. I’m being blackmailed. I’m being blackmailed with pictures of myself being raped.

Haley slowly sat back on the couch, forgetting the instructions she had been given. Not a thought crossed her mind for a moment. The adrenaline crash hit her all at once. The anxiety turned into a shaking immitation of hypoglycemia. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the picture.

“Is that me?” She asked no one in particular.

No one answered.

“Yes.” The phone screen told her. “Of course that’s you, whore. Now put on your goddamned hiking boots.”

Haley was numb, but she listened.

She didn’t know why she listened. She should have gone to the police. But she did, in fact, listen.

Standing up, Haley walked towards her bedroom, rummaged in the back of her closet, and found her boots. She’d bought them years ago for a camping trip in the Tetons. She hadn’t worn them since.

Haley was still in her pajamas, a pair of boxers, a large hoodie, her hair braided back. But she put the boots on, over her fuzzy socks, not taking a second to wonder if she might instead change.

Then Haley looked down at her phone again, the words, “Good girl.” gave her no reaction. She was numb. She had seen herself being raped. Probably twice.

Jack. It must be Jack.

“Who are you?” She asked to the phone, still sitting on her bedroom floor.

“You will never know who I am Haley. All you need to do is listen to me.”

Haley nodded.

_________________________________________________________________________

Haley moved on autopilot as she grabbed her keys and headed down to her car, following the instructions as they were given. Again, she knew she was being stupid, but for some reason, she felt incredibly out of control of her body. Like she was being possessed. She couldn’t have been, but it felt like it.

There was no choice in the matter, whatever the screen told her, Haley was going to do.

Haley had never been good in a crisis. In a world of fighters and flighters, Haley was a freezer. But she wasn’t frozen right now. She was driving.

Driving out of the city and into the country. Farm lands sprawled on both sides of the road, bright in the sunshine that reflected on the stalks of corn.

Haley drove for a long time that felt very short to her. Soon the farmland turned to trees and Haley was in the mountains.

She followed the ongoing instructions to a cabin. It was starting to get dark, meaning that Haley had driven, quite literally, all day.

After putting her car in park, Haley closed her eyes. “Just put the car in reverse, Haley. Just pull away. Why can’t you just pull away.”

She didn’t pull away. Haley couldn’t put her foot on the gas. She couldn’t drive head first into the cabin. She couldn’t move at all really.

Not until the phone lit up again, “Get out of the car, Haley.”

She did so. _________________________________________________________________________

Haley walked around the cabin, she did not go inside. She didn’t want to go inside, but she would have preferred that to the walk that the phone directed her on. It really wasn’t a walk at all, but a hike through unbroken forest.

The movies make it look very easy to walk through an untouched forest, but in reality, it’s quite difficult, Haley learned. She found herself almost thankful that the phone had forced her to put on her hiking boots, any other shoes would have found her twisted up in the brush.

Haley walked for a long time, it felt longer than she had driven, though that would have been impossible. It was entirely dark now, and even with her professional shoes, she began to truly trip up on the roots and thorns lining her way forward.

The phone screen lit again, instructing her to push forward, to walk until she finds the clearing.

The clearing came almost out of nowhere. There was very little thinning of the trees before Haley found herself in a small circle. It felt poetic. The circle of emptiness in the thick of the trees. It was perfect too. A perfect round shape that enveloped a small patch of green grass.

The grass was not without flaw. There was a pit in the very center of the clearing. Haley approached the pit, anticipation building in her gut. It was deep and dark. She couldn’t see the bottom of the pit. It was also fairly narrow, a tight fit for any adult human.

Haley’s phone lit up in her hand.

“You know what to do, Haley.” And she did.

She didn’t slide in to the pit gently. She jumped, almost like off the diving board and the pool. The pit was not quite as deep as she had anticipated, though this wasn’t hard because she had been imagining the pits of hell at the bottom.

A stinging pain reverberated up her legs as she landed. It was hard earth.

Haley looked down to her phone to the next instructions.

There weren’t any.

She had no phone.

Dirt began to fall on her head.  _________________________________________________________________________

Haley’s body was discovered by police. Her family had called for a wellness check after going several weeks without hearing from her. The police found her in the bathtub, dried blood caked on every surface. She had cut her wrists and died from the blood loss.

Next to Haley was her phone. Once recharged and unlocked, the police discovered the pictures. It didn’t take long to trace the restricted number through Haley’s phone service. Both Zach and Jack were taken into custody and spent much of the rest of their lives in prison.