Muddy Blackmail

Hello readers, this is an edit of the first part to make it flow better with part two, which I should have finished soon!

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As Faith made her way down the winding trails of the local woods, the crisp air filled her lungs. The feel of her sneakers drumming against the dirt path provided a steady rhythm for her Sunday morning run.

Faith's best friend Eliza was on the phone with her through her earpods as she ran. Faith and Eliza were part of a close knit friend group who tended to spend tons of time on phone calls with each other when they weren't together in person.

Eliza was doing most of the talking as she was home in bed while Faith was out running. She was currently delving into the topic of the upcoming senior superlatives votes. Faith and Eliza had both recently turned eighteen and were a few months from graduating.

Their school had a tradition of the students getting together to vote on unofficial senior superlatives on top of the vote the school allowed. This let them add more controversial categories, like the highly coveted title of 'Hottest Girl.' Faith had been unexpectedly nominated for that award.

Faith had been a bit of a late bloomer in terms of looks, having always been tall, skinny and uncomfortable with her body, not paying much attention to fashion. Recently however, she had found a workout routine that had transformed her body to be lean and athletic right as her curves finally filled out. Not only that, but her skin had gotten clearer and she had started paying more care to her hair, makeup, and clothes.

Faith had noticed guys starting to give her looks almost constantly at school, but didn't really know what to make of it after years of being shy and awkward. The nomination for the superlative had surprised her even more. She had no idea people considered her to be one of the most attractive girls in the class.

Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised that she was lusted after as a 5'7" redhead with an athletic body, a plump ass and tits, a pretty face, light blue eyes and now perfect skin and gorgeous red hair. But confidence with boys was still a weak point for her.

Her nomination was a big deal to her friends, though. The excitement was clear in Eliza's voice as she said, "Apparently among the boys they're considering you one of the favorites!"

"I mean, it's flattering, I guess," Faith admitted. She continued talking between breaths as she ran. "But I'd honestly prefer to just stay under the radar and get through this year without any drama."

Eliza, ever the supportive friend, responded, "I get that, but think about it -- this might be the perfect opportunity to shake things up at school. Especially with Adrienne, if it gets under her skin, that's an added bonus."

Adrienne Morrison was the school's queen-bee, a hot, rich, blonde girl with none of Faith's confidence issues. Anyone you asked could tell you she was the most popular girl at the school and by far the most likely to win any contest like the Hottest Girl superlative.

"It's just weird being in the spotlight all of a sudden. And knowing Adrienne, she won't take it lightly if anyone affects her chances of winning," Faith said.

Adrienne usually avoided getting in trouble for outright bullying but she had an infamous cruel streak and was known for backhanded compliments, passive aggression, and rumor mongering.

Eliza chuckled, "Fuck Adrienne. Let her be annoyed. It's about time someone challenged her. And if you win, it's a little victory for all of us who've had to put up with her bullshit. She's definitely heard that people are talking about you for it, it's probably getting to her already."

Eliza had been one of Adrienne's favorite targets for years.

"It's not like I'm gonna beat her. I mean, it's basically a popularity contest," Faith said as she slowed to a walk.

She had reached a large clearing almost a mile into the woods. It sat alongside the river that ran through the woods. The clearing surrounded a large lone tree right on the riverbank. People at school called it the Party Tree as this was a well-established location to gather and drink whenever none of the popular kids had their house free to host a party.

There were some signs of recent use littered about, including some empty beer cans and solo cups.

Eliza went on, "Don't sell yourself short. I've already started to lobby for you, most people outside of the popular crowd aren't too crazy about Adrienne. Just let me do my thing."

"Fine, but you owe me if this turns into a shit show."

"I got this, what's the worst that can happen?"

Adrienne tries to murder us.

But Faith kept that thought to herself. She was getting tired of talking about it anyway. "Hey guess where I am?" she said, changing the subject.

"Where?" Eliza asked.

"The Party Tree."

Even Faith and Eliza had attended a couple of gatherings there, though there had been many other occasions that they had only heard about after the fact.

"Oh nice, I saw some people posting about a party there last night," Eliza said.

"Yeah there's some evidence of that, but it's actually really pretty here during the day." Faith said, looking at the scenery. She then turned back to the tree. "Low-key, I've always wanted to try climbing it."

"What, the Party Tree?"

"Yeah! I feel like I should try it now." Faith said.

"This coming from the girl who's afraid of being up against Adrienne. Now you wanna climb a huge tree?"

"I'm not afraid, I just think she'll make a whole stink about it. Besides, climbing is the kind of risk-taking I actually like."

"If you're gonna do it, put me on FaceTime, I wanna see." Eliza requested.

"I'll set up a good angle, just a sec." Faith swapped the call over to FaceTime before gently placing her phone on top of a rock at the edge of the clearing, pointing towards the tree. The phone was still close enough to the tree that the earpods would stay connected as Faith climbed.

"Hi!" She stepped back and waved to Eliza, whose image was now on the screen.

"Hi!" Eliza waved back. "Ooh cute run outfit!"

Faith looked down at her lavender-colored sweatshirt and legging combo. "Thanks! Actually, I wanna take my sweatshirt off so I don't get it dirty."

"Strip show!" Eliza laughed.

"Relax, I have a sports bra underneath, it's just a bit old," Faith told her as she peeled off the sweatshirt. Her sense of modesty was too strong to wear just a sports bra in front of anyone but her closest friends. But the ones that she had got a ton of use as she always wore them under other clothes when she worked out. This one had seen better days and was even fraying a bit in the back, but still held her breasts quite well for their size.

"Faith, that looks like it's about to fall apart... You need a new one, we should go shopping!"

"We can soon, but this one's fine for now," Faith said as she approached the tree. She grabbed a large, low hanging branch. "Ok, I'm going up."

"This is fun. I feel like I'm watching a sport," Eliza remarked.

Faith ascended the tree, her eyes scanning the branches above her for the best path.

"How's the view up there?" Eliza asked.

"I'm mostly just seeing other trees so far." Faith answered as she scanned the horizon. She looked down towards the riverbank, she had worked her way around the tree til she was out over the edge. The river was low and a large stretch of the bed had revealed a large pit of what appeared to be viscous clay mud. "Damn, the riverbank is a mess though. It's like pure mud right now."

"Oh my god it's the time of year the Muddy Mary thing happened," Eliza laughed.

Faith rolled her eyes. Muddy Mary was the exact kind of ridiculous rumor that could only spread in a highschool. About fifteen years earlier, a girl who had gone to their school had been seen by fellow students coming out of the Party Tree clearing covered head to toe in mud and allegedly, apart from the mud, completely naked. After a week during which the story spread, she never came back to school and no one really knew where she had gone. The most widely circulated version of the story was that she had been masturbating while covered in mud and disappeared because she had been arrested for it.

Everyone at school knew the story and far too many of the students believed it. Faith thought that a much more likely explanation was that the girl had fallen and gotten a bit of mud on her. She likely wasn't naked and had probably left the school due to the ridiculous rumors that had been started about her.

"You don't actually believe that shit do you?" she asked Eliza.

"I don't know, my cousin said his friend was one of the people who saw her coming out of the woods."

"That doesn't mean she was masturbating! I can't imagine how humiliating that must've been. That's exactly the kind of dumb rumor I can't stand."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Only Adrienne really deserves a rumor like that." Eliza quipped.

Faith chuckled, "If only." As she said it, Faith grabbed a branch above her and started to pull herself up to it, but as she did so, the branch partially snapped and it slipped out of Faith's grip.

It took a second for Faith to fully realize what had happened. But as she passed the branch she had been standing on, she processed that she was falling out of the tree.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Faith plummeted towards the ground. Even so as she tried to grab at branches, they seemed to pass before she could reach them. She could hear Eliza's shouts of concern through her earpods as she twisted through the air.

She was above the soft, muddy ground of the riverbed, but the fall had begun high enough that she was still quite concerned about her chances of injury. Her heart pounded in her chest as she grasped at branches and leaves, but they slipped through her trembling hands as she flew closer and closer to the ground.

Then, just as she braced herself for the impact, a branch snagged on the back of her sports bra, arresting her free fall with a violent jerk. But the reprieve was short-lived. Before she had even come to a full stop, Faith was horrified to feel the front of the bra give way as she tore out of it. As she finished her fall, her top remained snagged on the branch. Faith was now fully nude from the waist up.

Thankfully, the branch had slowed her down almost to a complete stop before she began to fall again. But getting snagged had also spun her so she was now falling face-down. She got a quick glance of where she would hit, and didn't like what she saw.

The mud she was about to enter was far worse up close. Though the river was low, there was enough moisture saturating what looked to be a patch of clay that was glistening wetly in the morning sunlight.

Faith barely had time to contemplate her fate before she flopped face-down into the slop and was swallowed up.

She could feel the mud all around her as she fought to push herself upright and get her head above the surface. The consistency of the muck was somewhere between cake frosting and peanut butter, making it difficult for Faith to move around in it. But thankfully she was able to get her feet to a relatively solid surface under the mire and push her head up to the surface.

Even as her head emerged above the surface, a thick coat of mud clung to every inch of her face and body. She could feel it weighing her down and saturating her hair. As she stood up as much as she could, she could feel that the mud still came up just below her breasts. It was going to be a slog to get out of there.

She tried, tentatively, to crack her eyes open, but there was just too much mud piled on her face. She did her best to wipe it out of her eyes, but it was stubbornly sticky and with her hands also covered in mud, she could only really push the mud around her face rather than remove it. After a few moments of struggle, she was able to finally blink her eyes open. But even when she got them open, the rest of her face was still thickly coated.

Looking down at herself, she couldn't see a single clean spot of skin. Though it was still fairly apparent that she was topless, much to her chagrin, as the mud gave a clear outline of the curve of her breasts. The feeling of the heavy layer of it all over her sent a shiver up her spine.

Oh. My. God. This has to be the most disgusting thing that's ever happened to me.

Faith let out a shuddering groan of disgust.

"Faith?" Eliza's voice came softly through her earpod. Faith was startled for a moment, she had forgotten about her earpods with all that had happened.

Thank god for waterproofing.

Her left earpod must have fallen out in the mud, she could only hear Eliza on her right side. She doubted she'd be able to find it in the mess she was submerged in. Just another cherry on top of this shitty situation. She did her best to scrape the mud off her remaining earpod so the mic would pick up her voice.

"Hey I'm..." Faith trailed off; she had been about to say fine, but seeing as she was topless in a mud pit and covered head to toe, she didn't exactly feel fine. "I'm not hurt." She finished.

She could hear Eliza let out an exhale. "Jeez I thought you were dead. What happened?"

"A branch broke my fall a bit." Faith said. "And you know how I said the ground looked muddy?"

"Oh god ew! Did you fall into the mud? Are you sure you're ok?"

"Yeah, I'm just... covered in it." As they talked she started to try to shift her legs but now that the mud had settled around her, it was almost impossible to move them.

"Oh my god..." Eliza suddenly gasped. "Wait a second, I think I see you."

Faith could hear Eliza getting closer to her phone screen. Faith froze, realizing she might be visible from where she set up her phone. If she were forced to pick someone to witness her being covered in mud, she probably would pick Eliza, but she really didn't want anyone to see her at the moment.

"Holy shit that's you??" Eliza guffawed. Despite trying to contain her laughter, she couldn't help but giggle at the sight of Faith. "Oh my gosh, I wish you could see yourself right now. I didn't even notice you at first, you're like part of the mud."

"Yeah, laugh it up." Faith grumbled as she renewed the struggle to free herself. She was not in the mood.

"I know, I'm sorry. You just look so ridiculous."

Faith ignored her as she looked around and realized that her fall had landed her further out in the riverbed than she had anticipated. The mud seemed denser here, better to resist her attempts to navigate through it. The pressure of it around her legs was just too much. It seemed like the only way to get out of the mud would be to pull herself out somehow. As she searched for some way to pull herself out, she found nothing was within her reach except more mud. Even the branch her sports bra got snagged on was several feet above her. With all her struggling, she had barely been able to inch her leg towards the solid ground by the tree trunk. Any attempt she made to leverage herself just led to her hands sinking in the mud, pushing more down onto her legs, further trapping them. The reality of the situation sank in -- she wasn't going anywhere without help.

She interrupted Eliza who was still giggling to herself. "Eliza, stop it and listen to me."

"Sorry, sorry. What is it?"

"I think I'm really stuck, I need you to come out here and bring a rope or something to pull me out." Faith told her. She looked down at her mud-covered body. "And probably some towels and a change of clothes." She added.

Eliza sounded more serious now. "You can't get out?"

"I don't think so, not on my own."

"Ok, I'll get some stuff and drive down there." Eliza shifted seamlessly from having a laugh at Faith's expense to dropping everything to help her. Such was the nature of their friendship.

"Thank you," Faith said as she heard Eliza beginning to move on the other end of the line. "I guess I'll just sit tight."

"I can stay on the phone and keep you company while you wallow," Eliza said with more than a hint of mirth in her voice.

"It's really not that funny! Please just get down here. I don't wanna be covered in mud a second longer than I have to be," Faith said.

"I know, I'll be there before you know it. I'm grabbing the stuff now," Eliza reassured her.

Faith sighed, waiting as her friend prepared to come to her aid. She looked down at herself, taking in her mud covered form. With a flush of embarrassment coloring her cheeks under the mess, she shifted awkwardly in the thick mud, longing for the solidity of dry land. Unfortunately, she had no way to get the leverage for that until Eliza arrived.

With a frustrated huff, Faith resigned herself to trying to scrape some of the mud off so she didn't look quite so ridiculous, but even those efforts were futile against the sticky mush that coated her from head to toe. With her hands also covered, each swipe only seemed to add to the mud that was already stuck to her.

In the midst of her struggle, a faint noise down the trail caught Faith's attention. She froze and strained to listen to the distant sounds. After a moment she recognized the sound of a conversation in the distance, sending a shiver of apprehension down her spine. There was no way she could be seen like this, this whole situation was embarrassing enough without witnesses.

"Eliza," she whispered urgently into the earpod, her voice tinged with desperation. "There's someone here."

"Oh shit, do they see you?" Eliza may have been willing to laugh at Faith but she would never let anyone else do so. Faith appreciated the concern in her voice.

"No, they're still somewhere down the trail." Panic knotted her stomach as she realized that the approaching voices were nearing the clearing, their conversation becoming clearer with each passing moment. "But they're definitely getting closer. I can't be seen like this." Faith's heart started to pound. She couldn't imagine anything more humiliating than being caught in her current predicament.

"It'll be ok, I'll be there as soon as possible." Eliza kept her voice calm to try and stop Faith's descent into panic. "They might not even go through the clearing. Just try to get out of view as much as you can."

"I can't move!" Faith whispered as she looked around herself, feeling helpless. There was only mud within her limited reach. Then she realized her only option.

I have to hide in the mud.

It might make her even more of a mess, but at least these people wouldn't see that.

As she came to that realization, Faith was finally able to pick up what the approaching people were saying. It sounded like they were both young women. The louder of the two had become clear. "I can't believe you left your wallet in the woods. Are you sure it isn't in Brennan's car or something?" she said.

Faith knew that voice. This was bad, this was very, very bad. It was Adrienne, Adrienne Morrison.

No. No. No! Why her?

The thought of Adrienne finding her topless and covered in mud, stuck in the Muddy Mary mud pit of all places was so absurdly humiliating that Faith knew there was no way she could let it happen.

She quickly whispered to Eliza, "It's Adrienne."

"Oh fuck!"

Faith didn't leave Eliza much time to react. She had gone into fight or flight mode and was forming a plan. "She can't see me like this. I'm going to hide in the mud. You hang up the phone, that'll lock it. Hopefully they'll think it was here from last night and leave it alone, if not I'll find a way to get it back from them later. If they're still here when you get here, just wait for them to leave. I'll be fine."

"Shit! Alright, alright." Eliza sounded like she was the one panicking now. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Just stay hidden."