Stalk Her

Chapter 13: Filming

* I don't know who this is in the image, so I am sorry if this comes off as slut shaming in any way--you have a beautiful body and are a fabulous person.

*This chapter switches between present and past tense. Forgive me. I am tired from work (:

*Enjoy!!

What Autumn wanted to do next was too crazy and inappropriate to actually be done, so all she could really do was have only a mini panic attack. "He did what?" Her teeth her slightly clenched and her hands were shaking as she had to grip the sides of the table to stay stable.

Lily stared down at her cup as though what she'd said wasn't allowed. As though she was in trouble for talking about it. As though it was all were fault and any shame she felt wasn't enough to compensate for how disgusting she truly was.

Lily's hands gripped the mug again, perhaps for stability. "I found out he'd been selling them for a while...even to people across the country. People I'd never see...they were looking at me." She stared with glazed eyes at the white table and at a small stain on it.

"Why didn't you dump him?!" Autumn snapped.

Lily just looked up at her as though she was working through some kind of drug in her mind that was desensitizing her. "Because...I loved him."

Autumn's eyes widened but she wasn't sure what to say about that.

Lily looked at the dark window. "He said it was no big deal, couples did it all the time. And, I believed him...for some stupid reason I thought he was right..." her voice remains flat. 

"Why the fuck did you believe that load of shit!" Autumn's hand came down on the table.

Lily looked at her with eyes half-opened. "He made me feel good about myself."

"Him lying to you made you feel good?"

"...it was better than being alone." She looked down and ignored the way Autumn was about to blow up. She was feeling less and less as she spoke. "So...when he started taking more pictures and making more money, he told me that if I got breast implants, then we could possibly make even more."

A sickening feeling rose within Autumn's gut. "What a fucking sicko..."

Lily didn't say it, but she felt more like the sicko than she felt he was. After all, she had been the one to agree to it. He hadn't forced her...only suggested it.

Autumn's nostrils were slightly flaring. "So." She started harsher than necessary. "Then what happened? Did you call the police?"

Lily stared at the swirling steam in her mug, while the rain pitter-pattered on the windows outside. Her head slowly shook and tears barely climbed to the surface but didn't break down her soft cheeks.

Autumn's eye twitched. "Lily..." she started.

"He said it wasn't illegal...to take images of your girlfriend--"

"But it is if he's selling them! Plus I don't give a fuck if he thinks justifying himself is going to get himself out of this." she pulled herself back when Lily shook her head. Autumn mumbled. "You can still call the police for what he did--you're a total victim in this!" she folded her arms.

Lily was once again quiet until she said. "No...you've seen the images, I don't look anything like a victim...besides, I didn't feel like one at the time. Sometimes I wonder if I even was...I didn't hate all of it. Sometimes he treated me alright..." Lily's shoulders slumped slightly. "I know it sounds crazy and you probably don't understand it....but I knew if I left him, then...then no one else would love me for who I'd become." She looked up into Autumn's eyes with tears in her own.

Autumn's anger slowly morphed into an emotion too strong for her to yell, it took her by the throat and caught her tightly in the chest. She opened her mouth to speak but Lily cut her off.

"I'm not like you. You've always been okay without anyone...but me, I can't do that." She looked at the same small stain. "A part of me still feels like I shouldn't have left..like I know there's no one else who will love me the way he did."

Autumn blinked. "Lily--what the fuck are you saying?! Of course you know why you left!" Autumn stood suddenly. "When you came to me you were nothing but skin and bone--granted, you still sort of are--"

"At least I had somebody."

"Oh?" the anger rose once again in Autumn. "Then why did you leave?"

Lily was silent for a longer period of time and then said in an even quiet voice that nearly morphed with the rain. "There was one night...when he was filming me."

Autumn's eye twitched as she imagined her sweet cousin being in a porno...despite the fact that she and Eli watched them every now and then with an intense desire not to know who the people truly were in real life.

"I was sort of out of it, you know." Lily saw how the swirls were nearly dead as the drink had cooled down enough. "I had convinced myself it was what he wanted, so it's what we both wanted." She swallowed. "But then, I saw something, I don't know if I imagined it or not, but I think I saw a flower."

Autumn was lost but she listened with more forced patience than she wanted to.

"And then I remembered when I came to live with you as a kid...and suddenly I remembered what it meant to be seen as who I was. After that, I knew I needed to leave, just get out of there before I convinced myself otherwise."

Autumn's stomach flipped and she swallowed down a choke. "Lily." She whispered and her body slowly sumped back in the chair.

Lily couldn't look at her as she spoke. "It got really bad Autumn, I didn't realize it totally until I started living with you and Eli and you treated me like a...like a real person." her voice choked and she quickly wiped away the tears that fell down her face. "I guess it started upsetting me when you mentioned my chest because I hadn't realized until then that I shouldn't have gotten them...if--if you were there, you would have...I don't know, stopped me from doing something stupid like that." she choked on her tears as they continued.

Autumn snarled. "I'd have punched him in ripped off his penis is what I would have done."

Lily suddenly choked on sudden laughter. "Yeah--something like that." she shook as she giggled and cried at the same time.

Autumn smiled sadly and watched Lily try to grapple with her mixture of emotions.

"Autumn," Lily's voice became stern suddenly as she looked into Autumn's eyes. "He did things to me...really bad things. Things I can't t-talk about w-with you." Lily shook her head slowly. "Not yet...maybe never."

Autumn felt the blood leave her face. "What do you mean."

Lily swallowed. "There were things he'd do...things he wouldn't film."

Autumn leaned forward. "Why? Did he have some of his...you know, personal fetishes?"

Lily shook her head. "Maybe, but...Autumn, I think he knew if there was ever a chance of getting caught those things would...would--"

"Send to a place worse than prison," Autumn narrowed her stare at Lily.

Lily just stared back but the memories in her eyes were present. Haunting.