Entangled

Cherie gave a soft smile. "Just not 'that way?' I kind of knew this would happen; it's the same choice you made before, but I could dream, couldn't I?" Her smile turned a little wry as she shifted her gaze to me.

"I owe you everything Cherie, we'll always be here for you." I meant that. Without her, my home could have become a tomb.

Kasey and I set Cherie up in a guest room and just held onto each other for a while.

Over the next few days we worked out what we could. Kasey insisted I know what had happened, now that it had come back. It wasn't hard to find the incident. A male dancer killed by a hit and run driver in the road near the club. Cherie managed to get a copy of his arrest record; drugs, repeated battery of a woman. He also had an aggravated rape charge that got dropped after the victim was publicly outed and fled the area. It was pretty obvious what he was planning on doing to Kasey.

Kasey had no way of knowing any of that; she didn't even know she'd hit him. Police always look for the easiest explanation; she'd almost certainly have gone to prison. She might have gotten off if she'd known she was drugged and gotten tested right away, but even that wasn't certain.

Cherie eventually went back home, though she promised to visit from time to time. She and Kasey would be the closest of friends, but forever ex-lovers. Cherie had a tough time reconciling her part in Kasey's hell, unwitting as it was. Eventually, we hope she'll find the princess she's been looking for. She at least started looking again.

I thought of going back and finishing the job on Chris; what he'd done was unspeakable, inhuman, but I decided against it. It wasn't because he'd suffered enough or because I just wanted to let everything go.

I let it go because it was possibly the cruelest thing I could do to him.

His experience broke something. Kasey and I got a call from Michelle. Chris had called her and meekly asked for her help. "Li'l Bitch" it seems, was a hit with a certain twisted demographic who paid very good money to watch his absolute humiliation on video.

We'd accidentally conditioned him. Probably because he associated the Fentanyl high with the humiliation, he'd become more and more obsessed with it. He was quickly to the point where he could only get gratification by watching and re-experiencing his abuse, but he needed fresh videos for his website along with fresh humiliations for himself. They became more and more extreme each time. It didn't take much to see what was happening. Pilots call it a "Graveyard Spiral." He thought he was level, but he was just going in a deadly circle, losing altitude and getting closer and closer to a final, inevitable crash.

The last time I checked, he'd added several new videos to his site with Michelle's help. Some of the titles included Li'l Bitch and the Great BIG Tranny Gangbang, Slap Happy Fun, The BIGGER the BETTER! and Up To The ELBOW. Michelle refused to make the videos, but she showed him how to set up the cameras himself. I think she didn't want to be there at the end.

He'd begged Michelle to get Catwoman and Angry Kitty together for another video. It's his most popular one. Disturbingly, the Teddy Bear one rates a close second; knowing that made me double check the doors at night.

Kasey and Cherie are not interested at all.

Post Production Notes:

The Blackmailed Wife trope is a staple in LW and it has always left me a bit uneasy. I decided to take a good hard look at it and came up with some posits.

1. Whatever the woman is being blackmailed for has to have far worse consequences than what is being demanded. Even if she is discovered cheating it has to be better than the original "sin" coming out. A woman giving in to blackmail for a drunken one night stand, then pulling trains and such makes no sense whatever.

2. There has to be no reasonable way out of the blackmail: coming clean would be devastating on a massive scale. It would have to have consequences for her loved ones. It has to be bad enough that she wouldn't want to confide in anyone for fear of putting them at risk.

3. Blackmail sex is rape. Period. She may pretend to get into it to avoid consequences, but she doesn't enjoy it at all. It's rape, plain and simple, why the hell would anyone enjoy that? She may build emotional callouses, but that's it. It's also rape over an extended period, so there's even more emotional trauma.

I do understand that Cherie gets a raw deal here; every beta reader pointed it out. She had no way of knowing what was going on, and pretty much gave her heart to somebody who loves her back but can't be with her. I can't really blame Kasey either, she absolutely had to hold it together for her kids at least until her husband got home, and clinging to Cherie was part of that. There is love there and just maybe there's a little Stockholm syndrome there too, though that is hardly Cherie's fault. Still, I feel I owe Cherie something, so I'm planning to work out a story for her in the future. Mercenary bisexual computer hacker? Yeah, I can work with that, add in a falsely(?)-accused-of-some-crime-or-other sexy blonde on the run and it practically writes itself.

Kasey is just a normal wife and mother caught up in something she didn't have the skills, money, or resources to make go away.

She did the best she could do. Lions have options, gazelle have escape routes.