When the message appeared, Shay was in a relaxed butterfly pose, coral manicured toes touching, knees splayed wide. Deep breaths inflated her naked abdomen, per the instructor's soothing suggestion. The message, arriving with an accompanying, jarring alarm stirred Shay from her meditation, punctuating the melodious piano music. Confused, she slowly drew her legs together and sat upright, wispy ponytail hairs clinging to her sweaty nape. It was two days into a heat wave and, as her dilapidated studio didn't have air con, Shay had decided to take advantage of the high temperatures. Although perma-perspiration caked her upper lip, trailed between her breasts and pooled at the creases in her summer-tanned thighs, the heat also allowed maximum stretching of her toned yet sore limbs. She worked doubles at the diner, had to pinch tips to pay rent, could barely afford groceries let alone a yoga membership, which is why she practiced with free, online videos.
She paused the virtual class and closed the web browser, but the wailing alarm continued, seemingly emanating from a flashing message on her desktop. Her eyes strained to read the text, the screen's brightness a sharp contrast to the darkened room, her weak attempt to combat the relentless sun with moth-munched curtains.
Show Daddy your downward dog
, it read. Horrified, Shay gasped and traced her trembling fingers over the trackpad, searching for an X on the ad. The blaring bell furthered her panic as she realized that there was no option to eradicate the atrocity.
CTRL+ALT+DEL she pressed to no avail, her bare breasts hovering above the keyboard, shaking beneath her hammering heart. As Shay went to slam her laptop shut, she realized that the flimsy Post-It she'd pasted atop the built-in camera had fluttered to the floor in the window fan's persistent breeze... and some creep had just watched her practice over half an hour of vinyassa flow. The notion soured her plummeting stomach as she imagined a Russian hacker huddled in a dark bunker, a culturally cloistered Saudi prince drooling in the desert, a gaggle of horny tweens giggling at her vulnerability, gaping at her wide-leg forward fold. Covering the camera with her thumb, she closed the computer and shielded her curvaceous body with a musty towel hanging behind the door. The alarm, however, amplified as if an ambulance arrived smack dab in her shabby studio. Her pulse pounded along with a sharp rap upon the paper thin wall, her grouchy neighbor's lazy way of grunting, "Keep it down." Shay was often late paying rent; she didn't need a formal complaint to encourage eviction from her dry landlady, who liked to remind her of other potential (punctual) tenants waiting to snatch up her "steal of a studio". Plugging her ears at the piercing shriek, Shay opened the laptop lid, the blare subsiding slightly.
The invasive window was still stuck on her desktop and with it, a new line appeared:
Take off the towel and I'll silence the alarm.
She needed not a second to contemplate as her neighbor slammed the wall again with an accompanying "God damn it girl!" and allowed the cloth to cascade to the worn, wood floor. As promised the siren stopped. Shay clicked on the message and typed "Who is this?" though her text didn't appear.
Now let's see that downward dog
. Shay froze. She was supposed to be in savasana, relaxing after a grueling yet satisfying yoga session, not succumbing to demands of whoever had hacked her computer.
How had this happened?
She always covered the computer camera per the diner's stoner grill cook's insistence that the CIA accessed them to spy on citizens. Besides the occasional after-work joint, Shay had nothing to hide. Nothing illegal, at least.
It'd been a slow summer for getting tips: both from customers and cocks. Poor and pent up, Shay had taken to porn. She'd never much cared for it, only agreeing to watch women theatrically finger-bang each other per her ex's wheedling. His unrefined palate craved bleached blondes with bad boob jobs, a far cry from Shay's brunette bob and modest B cup. When she ended the relationship and moved out a few months ago, he'd shouted in a fit of rage that she was "unfuckable". Shay was starting to believe his cursed words, crying as she saw his social media crawling with bimbos while she suffered alone in a sulfur-smelling studio, rubbing herself to furtive fantasies of rape. It must have been through one of those free sites, riddled with pop up ads for web cam girls, that her IP address had become compromised... or whatever. Shay didn't know the difference between a motherboard and a modem when it came to technology. She was more aware of the emerging penchant she had for watching women bound with rope and fucked by throbbing cocks that turned on a trickle inside her own pussy.
A single howl of the alarm snapped her attention back to the screen.
Downward dog NOW you slut.
Positioning herself on the mat, Shay considered facing her ass away from the computer, just to piss off the hacker creep. But her ears still echoed the shrill alarm and, spreading her hands upon the mat, she lifted her bare butt towards the computer camera. It was just a yoga pose, after all. She'd been practicing them in the muggy heat for the past hour anyway, wholly unaware that the camera was uncovered by the pathetic Post-It. As she drew her stomach up and in, a twisted inkling of satisfaction stirred within her core; that someone, somewhere was seeking pleasure from her, would surely deem her "fuckable".
Releasing the pose she faced the computer and, as she was unable to type to the mysterious voyeur, said aloud, "There. Can you leave me alone now?" though her intuition knew it was just the beginning of something darker, more twisted.
I'm more of a cat person
, the next message read.
Show me your pussy.
Shay bit her lip.
That
couldn't be confused as a yoga pose. Plus, she didn't want to. She didn't want whoever was watching to see that she was already wet, practically sopping at the notion of another receiving their gratification from her. In her time of contemplation, he threatened again,
Show your wet pussy or I'll give your computer a virus equivalent of HIV.