So I obliged.<\/p>\n
I stuffed myself into a lacy blue bra and posed with the knife rested against my cheek, between my teeth, and hovering over my neck. I figured the guy had some sort of fetish. Some bondage, BDSM, masochistic shit.<\/p>\n
For 500 bucks, I really didn\u2019t give a damn.<\/p>\n
And a few days later, when the same guy sent over $1,000 for me to email him again, I still didn\u2019t give a damn. Even though he wanted a video this time. Even though he wanted to watch me draw a heart on the wall in my own blood.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say I hesitated, that I had enough dignity to call the idea crazy, but a grand almost covered my rent for the month. I wanted to shut up my landlord, save myself from another eviction.<\/p>\n
And, honestly, I wanted to make the stranger happy to see if he\u2019d send even more money in the future. I wanted to test my luck.<\/p>\n
So I propped my phone against the counter, pressed record, and stood in front of its camera with the same knife I\u2019d used in my photo shoot.<\/p>\n
I forced a smile as I rested the blade against my palm, sliced the skin open, and dipped my finger into the ooze. Then I scribbled a heart onto the wall, as big as I could without having to draw more blood.<\/p>\n
After I finished recording and bandaged up my hand, I tried to wipe the design away, but the red lines turned to red smudges. No amount of water or bleach removed the stain, so I ended up covering it with a picture frame and forgetting all about it.<\/p>\n
Except every so often, when I would try to grab a water bottle or a broom, my hand would sting, reminding me of what I\u2019d done.<\/p>\n
But I didn\u2019t feel ashamed. Guilty. Embarrassed. I felt proud. Like I\u2019d finally figured out a way to beat the system. To survive as a twenty-something.<\/p>\n
A week went by without any contact from Morgan Alexander, and then a notification popped onto my screen at two in the morning. The alert woke me from a nightmare fueled sleep, so I squinted my eyes to adjust to the brightness, to the number on the screen I swore was wrong.<\/p>\n
$1,500.<\/p>\n
Before I even read the request, I decided I\u2019d do it. Whatever it was. I needed that money, even if I had to\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cPlace a dead animal on the stoop of [ADDRESS REDACTED] with a love note attached to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no way in hell I\u2019d hurt a squirrel or a raccoon or even a bird, so I jumped on my bike and rode down the side of the highway. I almost got ran over twice and was catcalled three times before I spotted a dead opossum on the side of the pavement, half in the grass.<\/p>\n
I pushed the kickstand into the dirt, got to my knees, and stuffed the road kill into the backpack I\u2019d brought with me. Another animal must have been picking at it, because the stomach came apart in\u00a0my hands. Guts slid under my nails. Fur stuck to my bloodied fingers.<\/p>\n
I felt the urge to vomit, but swallowed it, pushing the bile back down my throat.<\/p>\n
I should\u2019ve brought gloves. Tongs. A garbage bag. I should\u2019ve thought my plan through instead of bursting into action like a fucking idiot.<\/p>\n
I promised myself that I would be more careful the next time. Because I already knew there would be a next time.–<\/span><\/p>\n $2,000. I kept rereading the number to see if it would change, but it was solid, unmoving. A two and three zeroes. Two thousand dollars. It would take me over two hundred shifts at the movie theater to make that kind of money.<\/p>\n But in order to earn it, I had to break into a house, the same house where I\u2019d left a shoebox filled with road kill and a love note signed with my name.<\/p>\n I remembered how shoddy that place had looked when I\u2019d first snuck up to it with the opossum in my arms. Open windows. Broken glass doors. Rusty handles.<\/p>\n Breaking in would be easy, in theory. And it\u2019s not like I had to do anything once I got inside. I didn\u2019t have to steal any money or go through the person\u2019s jewelry. All the message said was that I should break in that night. That was it.<\/p>\n And that would be easy.<\/p>\n Of course, I didn\u2019t want to jump into a sketchy situation like last time, so I played Devil\u2019s advocate. I kept telling myself that there must be some sort of a catch, that no one gets handed money as easily as this — but there hadn\u2019t been a catch with the other requests. I\u2019d gotten my money and I\u2019d used it. On rent. On loans. On groceries. I even had some left over for cigarettes.<\/p>\n Nothing bad had happened so far. Why would anything bad happen this time?<\/p>\n I debated it for hours, listing out the pros and cons. Trying to convince myself that greed was the root of all evil,<\/em> and then deciding that wanting enough money to live comfortably wasn\u2019t greedy. That I deserved the man\u2019s cash to make up for the low salary I earned at the movie theater and the free internships I should\u2019ve gotten paid for over the years.<\/p>\n I\u2019d gotten screwed in the past — by my bosses, by my college, by the government. If I had the opportunity to earn some extra money,\u00a0why the hell shouldn\u2019t I take it?<\/p>\n So I did. I rode my bike down to the address, hid it behind a row of bushes, and snuck toward the open window in the back. Pushed it up just a bit further, enough to squeeze my head and torso through, and then climbed inside.<\/p>\n The living room looked like it belonged to any random person, with DVDs scattered across the sofa. Phone Booth<\/em> and Boondock Saints<\/em> and Se7en<\/em>.<\/p>\n But the walls\u2026 The walls were covered in stalker photos, taken from windows and around corners. Most of them were of a pretty blonde in sundresses. Pastels. And then there was me.<\/p>\n Me in pajamas, grabbing my morning coffee a block away from my apartment. Me in my work uniform, outside of the theater with a cigarette between my fingers. Me in a skintight skirt with high heels in my hand, doing a walk of shame back to my room.<\/p>\n What the hell was\u00a0this?<\/em><\/p>\n Before I had the chance to put two and two together, I felt my phone vibrate. Another notification. This time, for $5,000.<\/p>\n All I had to do was kill the person in the house.<\/p>\n I should have bolted for the door, back to my apartment, deleted my Venmo app after sending the remaining money back \u2013 but I had my knife in my pocket, the one from the photographs, the one from the video. I brought it just in case. Or maybe I knew I would need it. Maybe I wasn\u2019t as shocked as I pretended to be.<\/p>\n And maybe, maybe<\/em> murdering this stranger wouldn\u2019t be such a bad thing. They had pictures of me. Of multiple girls. They could be a rapist. A pedophile. A killer themselves.<\/p>\n So wouldn\u2019t offing them be doing the world a favor? Wouldn\u2019t it be a good thing?<\/p>\n Or maybe I was just justifying it for my own selfish reasons\u2026 I couldn\u2019t kill a human. I couldn\u2019t even kill an animal. No. No, I wouldn\u2019t do it. It was out of the question.<\/p>\n But the second I heard a voice, the knife was in my hand, pointed in the direction of the sound. It wasn\u2019t for protection. I was ready to do it. My mind might not have been, but my body was ready to fucking do it.<\/p>\n Until I saw a gun aimed at my chest.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would do anything for money,\u201d the man with the pistol said, stepping closer with each word. \u201cIt\u2019s disgusting. You were going to kill an innocent person.\u201d<\/p>\n That must have been him. Morgan Alexander. He was the guy that had been feeding me money. He had asked me to break into his own house.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope you understand,\u201d he said, swiping\u00a0my knife and letting it clatter to the ground. \u201cI can kill you and say it was in self-defense. I can claim that you broke into my house after sending me inappropriate pictures and leaving a dead rodent at my door with a note declaring your love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m confused,\u201d I said, straining to keep my voice from cracking. \u201cAre you going to frame me or shoot me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to shoot you. I\u2019m not a killer. I\u2019m just a man trying to restore good in this world. And extract the bad.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can have the money back. I spent some of it already, but you can have the rest. I\u2019ll pay you back if you give me a little \u2013 \u201c<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money for me. It\u2019s about the money for you<\/em>. That\u2019s the problem. People like you are the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Beg him? Blackmail him? Hit him? Which move was the right move? What could I do to convince him to let me go? He was twice my size, three times my weight, so attacking wasn\u2019t going to work. Bribing wouldn\u2019t work. All that I could do was talk. Talk my way out of it.<\/p>\n I told him how badly I needed the money. How hard it was to make a decent living while attending school. How I wasn\u2019t the type that needed a two-story house or designer clothes or a new Cadillac. That I still drove around on a fucking bike.<\/p>\n I was in the middle of a sentence, babbling for my life in the same way I babbled on my Facebook page weeks early, when I heard creaking. The window. Opening even wider.<\/p>\n I could hear something else, someone<\/em> else, climbing through, through the same window that I\u2019d used.<\/p>\n When I found the strength to twist my head, to see what the psycho had in store for me, I was face-to-face with the girl in the pastel dress. The girl from the stalker pictures. He must have been sending her requests, too.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry,\u201d she said after being handed the\u00a0gun, aiming between my eyes, and cocking. \u201cI really need the money.\u201d I stuffed myself into a lacy blue bra and posed with the knife rested against my cheek, between my teeth, and hovering over my neck. I figured the guy had some sort of fetish. Some bondage, BDSM, masochistic shit. For 500 bucks, I really didn\u2019t give a damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105961862,"featured_media":1069388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[433445945],"tags":[],"anchortext":[603229879],"posttemplate":[603196126],"adcampaign":[433422215,2811284],"coauthors":[432023958],"class_list":["post-728649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spooky","adcampaign-ad-heavy","adcampaign-naf","featured_content-ftrd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Venmo_Creep_Featured.jpeg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105961862"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728649"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069389,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728649\/revisions\/1069389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1069388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728649"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=728649"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=728649"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=728649"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=728649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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