Under the Flag

From 5 houses up the street, Jahon sat in his leased Trooper with Kelly beside him in the passenger seat, watching the Scroggins's front door through the rear view mirror.

A few moments earlier, Kelly had quickly jumped out of the vehicle and knocked on Tammy's front door, dropping the envelope on the welcome mat in the process, before darting back to the Trooper and easing up the street with Jahon to watch as Tammy came out to see who knocked.

Just as Jahon slipped the transmission into park, Tammy Scroggins emerged from the house, swinging the door open curiously as she stood there in nothing but her black terrycloth robe. Both mens' sexual radars went up immediatly when they saw Tammy pop out of the house and bend over to pick up the large envelope.

Tammy's long blonde hair clung slinkily to her shoulders and both boys licked their lips suggestively at the striking contrast of Tammy's pale white upper thighs underneath the solid black robe.

"Bitch looks good in black, Dawg," Jahon gleamed.

"Damn right," Kelly replied, neither of them believing what they were on the verge of.

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At 6:30 that night, Tammy sat at the dinner table staring straight at the old fashioned grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of the room.

Both her husband and her two boys gave her quite a strange and curious look as they slowly went about eating their hot pizza.

Roger and Brian were in heaven eating the pipping hot Pizza Hut home delivery, but Carl Scroggins was a little more disappointed in the night's menu. Looking down at the slice on his plate, Carl fumed internally. Knowing that today was Tammy's only weekday off from work, he had naturally assumed she would have spent all day putting together a really special home cooked meal. What he came home to was dorm food and he wasn't at all happy about it.

Tammy knew Carl would be pissed about the lack of effort that went into dinner, but after receiving the package that was now safely hidden underneath the sofa, Tammy just couldn't focus her attention on anything long enough to actually do a dinner from scratch. As she sat there trying to eat a slice herself, her head became evermore scrambled with each tick the clock made towards 7pm.

There were several times that afternoon, before Carl and the kids had gotten home, that Tammy had been tempted to call the police and seek out their help. Rehearsing her story to the cops in her head, Tammy knew there would be no way to logically go through with that idea without totally embarassing herself.

As the 7pm deadline neared and her family all arrived home safely and waited for dinner, Tammy knew she couldn't lie well enough to get out of the house at dinner time and face whatever demons that had instigated her burgeoning nightmare.

Watching as the clock ticked to 7, Tammy exhaled a deep breath and started to clean up the dirty dishes littering the table.

"Maybe it all was a hoax?" Tammy tried being firm and rational with herself. "Still, how did they get MY pictures ...and... WHY..."

After getting the kitchen straightened, Tammy quietly grabbed a fifth of rum and disappeared downstairs with a novel in hand. By 9 o'clock, pressed severly from the conflicting emotions of the day, Tammy fell asleep on the basement sofa.

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Two days passed without incident and Tammy finally started to breath comfortably again. With Sunday coming up, Tammy planned on hopefully putting the entire week of travails behind her. Eventhough Sunday , in a lot of ways, was her most stressful day of the week she treasured the chance to sleep in just a little longer.

Once awake however, she'd have to fight the kids to get ready for church, fix a light breakfast, then head off to church where she had to help out with the sunday school first, then sit through the entire service and afterwards help out with the greeting committee that inducted new members into the parrish. After all that was done, Tammy usually had to hurry home and fix the Sunday dinner.

Thankfully, there was to be some relief this particular Sunday because Tammy had to work at the grociery store from 1 until 5. After hurrying home to take a quick shower and grab her work clothes, Tammy headed to the Food Lion, leaving Carl and the boys to some Sunday male bonding.

Arriving at work with about 10 minutes to spare, Tammy rushed through the doors and quickly made her way to the bathroom to change into her uniform.

Hurriedly rushing through the store, Tammy couldn't help but get a strange and eerie feeling as she greeted several of her co-workers. Every person she said "hello" to almost automatically lowered their eyes and tried not to engage her. In her haste to go get dressed, Tammy just assumed the shift manager had lit into everyone earlier in the day for too much scoializing and now they were just trying to be good soldiers.

Tammy had no clue that the reason for everyones' ackward reaction to her was much more personal.

After changing in the bathroom, Tammy headed out to the office to clock in and get her register till. As she neared the glass cubicle where the shift manager would give her the assigment for the day, Tammy slipped past the small bulletin board where employees and customers could post notes ranging from yard sale announcements to buy and trade notices.

Hurried to clock in on time, Tammy passed the board with only a fleeting glance until she was about 3 steps by it. Something horrible suddenly clicked inside Tammy's head and she stopped dead in her tracks.

Everything around Tammy felt as if it grinded to a frozen halt as most of the employees in the store stared at her as she turned slowly back towards the bulletin board.

What she saw when she turned back and faced the board was a series of composite pictures that had been copied and posted crudely with thumbtacks for everyone in the store to see.

Tammy shuddered seeing that they were the same stolen pictures of her from years earlier that she had been threatened with a few days before. There were at least eight pictures up there and with each new one Tammy cringed seeing herself being blatantly playful and salacious for the camera.

Feeling like she was going to throw up, Tammy desperatly tried making her feet move as the pinpoint laserlike stares of her co-workers branded her indeliably.

Snapping in a moment of tortured insanity, Tammy reached up and tore as many of the polariod copies down as she could with two rips of her hand, causing almost everything else posted on the baord to come crashing down to the floor as well. Grabbing as many of the pictures of herself as she could, Tammy cried profusely as she left the store, wounded in shame.

Knowing she could never go back inside that store and that her job was effectivly over, Tammy rushed thorugh the parking lot with her hands over her face and jumped into the family van as dozens of onlookers curiously gawked. Back in the sanctuary of her vehicle, Tammy put her head down on the steering wheel and sobbed 30 minutes trying to think of who could have been so cruel to do such a thing.

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For the second time that week, Tammy had left the Food Lion lot with her mind in a desperatly clouded fog. Once she was able to finally gather herself enough to turn the ignition and leave, Tammy realized that she probably shouldn't go home first. There would be the nasty reality of having to explain to her family that she had lost her job and the streaks of her tears etched across her face also wouldn't make the best impression either.

Deciding to wander around for a while, Tammy found herself driving to a park on the other side of town to collect herself for a few hours while she tried thinking of an excuse while she quit and perhaps even who could have set her up in such a dispicable way.

Looking down at the balled up polariod copies that she had ripped off the wall sitting in the passenger seat, Tammy's stomach knotted up realizing that the real ones were still floating around out there in Lord knows who's hands.

Once she reached the out of the way park, Tammy eased the van into a parking space that was hidden from the main road and just sat there fuming for an hour and a half.

The time alone had been fruitless in trying to come up with a suspect behind the picture ordeal but Tammy did take some solice in the fact that she was able to come up with a plausable excuse for quitting her job. Tammy knew how upset Carl got when she had to go in and work nights, so she figured she would lie and tell him that the management at the store had insisted on her switching to nightshift and that she had bravely refused. Figuring Carl might be upset about the loss of income, he would certainly appreciate the fact that there would be someone home everynight to fix dinner.

After stopping by a gas station on the way home to clean herself up, Tammy finally went back to the house to break the bad news.

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Tammy spent the better part of the next day fighting off the snipping teeth of depression. The morning paper sat on the coffee table in front of her, begging to be opened to the help wanted pages so she might quickly get back on her feet and find a new job.

Part of her knew she could probably still go back to Food Lion and get her old job back if she explained to the manager about the embarrassment she felt after seeing half naked pictures of herself posted for everyone to see. Still, with Carl and the kids buying the shift change excuse the night before, Tammy figured that bridge was now completly burned.

The job hunt could wait another day or two, Tammy finally told herself as she mustered the energy to at least start on some of her house chores. Pulling her tired ass off the sofa, Tammy started out of the living room with the intention of rounding up a few loads of dirty laundry. Just as she was to start her way up the stairs to everyone's bedroom, the phone suddenly rang.

Stopping cold in her tracks, Tammy felt her heart lodge in her throat." Calm...down," a rational voice implored her internally.

Turning around to get the phone, Tammy scolded herself for overreacting so much to the simple sound of the phone ringing.

Taking a protracted deep breath as she waited for it to ring once more, Tammy finally reached out and took the phone from its hook.

"Hello," She answered confidentally.

There was nothing but the sound of breathing on the other end so now more nervously, Tammy greeted the caller again. "Hello...who is this? " she begged sheepishly.

"Who is this...HUH?" The gruff muffled voice on the other end replied. "You obviously showed you don't know how to take a hint Bitch by not showing up at the bridge the other night...are you really that stupid ...Tammy?"

"Wh...wh..who are you?" Tammy cringed, feeling herself descending into madness.

The male voice on the other end simply remained silent.

Holding the receiver in a death grip, Tammy again tried begging for an answer. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"HAHAHAHA...we haven't done nuthin' yet! You didn't see the need to heed our warnings the first time did you and you saw what happened..you think everybody at that store liked seeing you up there half naked?" The voice cruelly asked.

Tammy leaned backwards, her shoulders and back slumping against the wall when she heard that. The support of the wall was the only thing that kept her from falling down as she now listened intently to the chilling voice on the other end, realizing that whoever it was doing this wasn't playing any games.

"What..do..you..want?" Tammy asked soberly.

After a pregnant pause, the male voice took on an aire of biting confidence. "Get in your car ...RIGHT NOW...and drive downtown to the bookstore on the corner of 11th and Market. Go inside and ask for room number 2."

"What.. ," Tammy nervously shivered. "I don't even know where that..."

"FIND IT!!", He interrupted rudely, " Or maybe a few of those pictures will show up at your husband's office...maybe even on the activities board where both your kids go to school. How do you think those precious little boys would feel if they had to see their Momma posing like a slut for the whole school to see?"

"You can't...," Tammy started to plead before the phone connection was abruptly ended when the man on the other end hung up on her.

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Thirty minutes later, Tammy found herself driving down Market Street, heading to some bookstore that the voice on the phone had basically given her no choice to go to. Her slick and sweaty palms wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, Tammy tried keeping her wits as city block after city block whizzed by.

Slowing down for a stoplight, Tammy anxiously waited for a green, feeling her world starting to close in on her. In the silence of her minivan, Tammy couldn't help but hear the echos of that cruel male voice on the phone talking so viciously to her, telling her with unquestioned certainty that if she didn't comply, Tammy would have to face having her reputation irrevocably ruined both at her husband's place of employment and at her childrens' school.

Goosebumps covered her body as the sound of that voice played over and over in her head. Tapping the gas when the light turned green Tammy continued her deseperate drive downtown to make whatever deal she could to preserve her life as she knew it.

With every city block she passed heading into the bowels of downtown, Tammy could see the standard of living around her get progressivly worse.

On each street corner she passed, the amount of drugged out prostitutes, dealers, stoners and homeless urchins Tammy saw seemed to multiply the closer she got to 11th Street.

Her white knuckles now straining on the steering wheel, Tammy sick feelings only intensified as she neared her destination.

Stopping at the traffic light at the intersection of 12th street, Tammy pensivly looked one block up and saw for the first time where the man had ordered her to go.

Tammy's first inkling of the place she had been ordered to go, one that she had been engrained with since childhood was that the concept of a bookstore meant a BOOK store. What she saw ahead of her was a place called Delph's World of Adult Entertainment. The implication of that made Tammy Scroggin's feel as if her insides had been turned into a slurpee.

"You gotta turn back," an internal voice begged.

"...And do what," Tammy said out loud to herself.

Pulling the family van into a street side parking space, Tammy hestitantly got out, clutching her purse tightly and went to deposit 50 cents into the graffiti laden meter.

Her hands were shaking so intensly however, all she managed to accomplish was dropping the quarters on the sidewalk below.

Bending over to pick up the scattered change, Tammy couldn't help but notice and feel the weighty, heated stares of all the riffraff surrounding her on the corner.

The stares were insistant and focused. Sensing she was completly out of her environment, Tammy inherantly understod how out of place she appeared. A middle aged blonde white woman dressed in a nice sweater and clean blue jeans driving a vehicle usually reserved for suburban moms didn't readily make appearances in that part of town.

With the quarters finally in the parking meter, Tammy was left with nothing else to do but turn and stare at the forebodding presense of the ramshackled building that housed Delph's adult bookstore. Everyone assembled on the street around her seemed to come to a standstill, watching to see what this strange, out of place, woman was going to do.

Tammy could hear the muffled voices chuckle knowingly as she started to slowly walk in the general direction of the seedy bookstore.

Reaching out to grab the grimy handle of Delph's front door, Tammy had to dodge several of the winos that caroused in front of the entrance. Saying a private prayer to God, hoping for forgiveness for whatever she was about to do, Tammy walked into the shady establishment and descended into the cesspool of filth.

The first thing to strike Tammy as she entered the store was the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke and incense from the drug paraphinallia on sale there. Tammy felt her lungs start to burn in reaction to the sullied air as she tightened the fit of her dark sunglasses on her temples. Dropping her chin down to her chest in an attempt to conceal her identity, Tammy nervously jumped when the door closed with a whoosh behind her.

Hearing the bell above the door to his business ring, the greasy looking man with a cigar in his mouth behind the cash register looked up to acknowledge the new customer. Right as he looked up, so too did the other half dozen or so men browsing around the place.

"Oh ...my...God..I'm gonna throw up,"Tammy moaned to herself, feeling the lurid and burning stares of the perverted men gawking at her.

Tammy's instincts were correct. Each man that had stopped browsing through Delph's erotic inventory to look at her did in fact get a stiffer erection in their pants after feasting their eyes on the petite blonde that had just walked through the doors as if she was lost, looking as out of place as a surfboard in Switzerland.

Tammy's eyes drifted across the room behind her tinted sunglasses, trying to determine if any of the men looking her over were the ones behind her last 3 days of Hell.

"Can I help you lady..ma'am..ma'am..may I help you?" Delph, the proprietor behind the register counter, casually asked trying to get Tammy's attention.

Finally, Tammy was stirred from her fear induced trance and turned towards the pudgy owner of the establishment. "UUHH..well.. aaahhh..mmmm..uuummmm," Tammy started until her tongue froze up.

"Are you sure you're in the right place ma'am..you really don't look like you belong down here?" Delph said truthfully.

Feeling an itchy red rash crop up on her chest and neck, Tammy pitterpatted her feet softly in place until her tongue caught up with her brain. "I'm..ahh..kinda..ahh..looking for room #2."

"OHHH," The owner replied, his eyes lighting up at the realization that the special customer he was to be on the lookout for had finally arrived. "It's right down that hall ma'am..second door on the left..just walk on in and lock the door behind you. If you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them. By the way..the half hour has already been paid for."

Tammy felt her legs quake and tremor as the obese man behind the counter politely pointed her to her destination as if he had been expecting her.

"Who...," Tammy started to ask before seeing the look of reproach in the man's face, telling her silently that particular question wouldn't be one that got answered.

Turning towards the main sales floor, Tammy felt like a turtle trying to hide underneath its shell as she walked the gauntlet of salivating men that led to the hall where room #2 was located.

Trying her best to ignore the pornographic filth and pungent scent that surrounded her, the first thing Tammy told herself she'd do when she got home was to take an extremly long and cleansing shower to remove the disgusting aroma that the place was bathing her in. Little did she know however, the shower would be more neccassary than she'd ever imagine.

As she disappeared down the dimly lit hallway, Tammy could feel her tennis shoes have to fight to walk across the shop's sticky crusted floor. It felt a little like soda does when its spilt and left to dry, but the all knowing voice inside Tammy's head told her it probably wasn't Pepsi making her shoes cling to the carpet.

Her head swimming, Tammy hestitantly came up to the door simply marked room #2 . Feeling as if she might pass out from her delerium, the only thing that kept Tammy from blacking out on the spot was the horrible embarrassment that would come if she had to be taken out of an adult bookstore on a stretcher and put into an ambulance. Grinding her teeth together and trying to convince herself to be brave, Tammy bit her lower lip and mustered every last bit of courage she had before reaching for the crusted and stained doorknob in front of her.