Specter of the Past

"...Oh no..."

On a site dealing with escorts in the New York and New Jersey area, she sees the pics she had hoped she'd never, ever see again.

It had been her first year at SUNY, her first year away from home, and money had been running low. She'd been unable to find a job that payed enough to cover the rent, when one day her roommate Janine had seen an ad in a swinger's magazine for "nude modeling." A somewhat more polite euphemism for what it actually WAS, of course, but Sara wasn't completely naive, even then. It was doing something they already liked, right?

The first time they'd been enthusiastic--the director had really liked that, especially when they'd both treated him AND the actor to a double-team each. The pay had been decent, too--they'd been able to cover their rent and the late fees with that first check. The next three features they took took care of her tuition for the rest of the semester, and some mad money on the side. It had seemed like the perfect job. It had been only a short hop to becoming an escort; the pay was great, and the work was easy and kind of fun.

...and it had all gone wrong, at the party in Trenton that had seemed like such a sure thing at first. One of their clients told her about it, and the pay offered could have kept her and Janine both afloat for the next year. Lots of rich frat boys and their loser friends, also equally rich. They'd been nice at first.

And then, later on, after the spiked drinks, they'd taken turns at her and Janine both, singly, in groups, and with a variety of objects, for most of the rest of the night and well into the next day. She couldn't remember any of the faces, and she didn't really want to. She'd awakened in a hospital room after that--someone had dumped both her and Janine off on the pavement in front of the ER. She learned later that Jan had died of her injuries. The police investigation had gone exactly nowhere, but considering some of the people who had participated were the sons of various city and state officials, that wasn't altogether surprising. And then had come the cold, terrible days waiting for the results of the HIV test and the followups that came after, days spent huddled on her bed, hugging her dog and crying. By a miracle she was clean. Unable to concentrate on anything and with the semester shot to hell anyway, she'd dropped out of college and had returned home, and had done her level best not to think about it again. And for seven years, almost nothing had reminded her of it at all.

And yet, right in front of her, there they were. She closes the laptop and sits with her face in her hands, trying to hide the tears

1. Sara tries to find out where the pics came from.
2. Sara goes on a fifteen state shooting spree, culminating in a last stand at a hotel in Jersey.
3. Something from her past even more dark and depressing happens.
4. The Living End is beaten like a circus chimp for even thinking about writing something like this...
5. A herd of winged cows goes flying by.
6. A benevolent time-traveller decides to change Sara's past by stopping the party.

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