As she finally finished hanging the shower curtain in her tiny new bathroom, Molly Sullivan took a step back from her work, shaking her hands to get the blood back into them. She'd had her arms up over her head for the last five minutes or so while she was hanging the damn thing and her palms had gotten all tingly.
Her new apartment was almost livable. Granted, there were lots of things she had forgotten to pick up, but for the first night, it would do. Or, possibly for the first week or so, until her next pay check. Getting here and getting basic furnishings had pretty much used up her savings until then.
It was true that she was going to be getting a per diem rate from the school for this place, but what with academic bureaucracy, lord only knew how long it would be until that would actually get into her hands.
She was an adjunct professor, which was not exactly the most glamorous or well-paying position to be in. Seven years ago when she had finished her PhD in English Literature she had thought she was on track to getting a good job and making decent money. So far that hadn't been the case. Now at thirty-two she was wishing she'd skipped the PhD, gone to teacher's college and then taught high school English like her mother used to.
"I'd probably be making more money," she said to herself, looking around at the tiny space she was supposed to live in for the next eight months. "Actually, forget the 'probably'. I'd definitely be making more money."
Her old school had suddenly downsized her department and her position at the end of the last school year, leaving her scrambling to find another teaching job. This one had come up in a city a good three hours away from where she and her husband lived. She'd almost had to turn it down, because they were tied into a lease that they couldn't afford to break, but then the university had offered to fund a meagre bachelor apartment for her to live in.
Her husband Jake had to stay behind in the old place for the time being. Things were just easier for him there. His physiotherapist and doctors were nearby and the apartment was better set up to accommodate his limited mobility. He was recovering from a bad back injury in a car accident eighteen months ago, which meant he couldn't work at his job in construction. They had some insurance and disability benefits, but nothing close to what his salary had been while he was working full time.
When he had been working, her salary hadn't been as important, but now that he wasn't she was the primary breadwinner. This was going to be the first time they'd lived apart since they got married back when she was still just starting her PhD.
It definitely felt like he was getting the better end of the deal at the moment. This place was a little bachelor apartment, basically just one big room apart from the bathroom. There was a little kitchenette along one wall, and on the opposite wall from that was the door to the bathroom and a separate door to a little closet. Her desk was set up along the third wall, just under the big window that was the only nice feature about the place. Although the view from the window left something to be desired because it was only of another apartment building across the way. On the opposite wall across from the window was her futon couch, which pulled out to a bed.
It was basically the smallest place she'd lived since she was an undergraduate. But there was no point in dwelling on all that now, it was time to make the best of things.
She microwaved herself a quick dinner, ate it, and debated unpacking a few more boxes then decided she couldn't be bothered. She settled for digging a towel out of one of the boxes and hopping in the shower.
After the shower she wrapped herself in a towel and walked back out of the bathroom. She realized right away that she not only hadn't hung curtains in the window, but that she didn't have any. She only had one set of sheets that was already on the futon, and she might have another towel that she could hang up, but it wouldn't cover the whole window anyway.
"Damn it," she sighed and then shrugged. It was after dark already and there wasn't that much light coming in from outside. She could sleep without curtains for one night.
Still wrapped in the towel she sat down at her desk, not wanting to get the bed wet while she dried off. She called her husband and they talked for a while about the move and the new place. When she jokingly mentioned that she was only wearing a towel because she hadn't really unpacked he seemed interested. The conversation turned a little sexier, and Molly was hopeful he might want to have phone sex.
They hadn't made love since the accident, not because anything was wrong with his equipment, but because they hadn't been able to find a position that didn't cause him any pain. They'd experimented with mutual masturbation, but Jake seemed to find it humiliating that it was all he could do, so they hadn't even done that in quite some time.
This time he seemed to be into it, so much so that she dropped the towel and laid down on her bed. But next thing she knew he was apologizing and saying he wasn't in the mood and they were saying goodnight.
She almost threw the phone across the room, but caught herself and just dropped it on her bedside table. Her attempts to get him horny had failed on him, but they had definitely worked to get her going.
She couldn't help but think about what their sex life used to be like. Before the accident Jake was an attentive lover with an enthusiastic tongue and a nice big cock. They had made love frequently before, so adapting to a life where they hadn't at all for a year and a half had been very hard for her.
Remembering their sex life quickly turned into fantasizing about it, and before long she found herself losing the battle to keep her fingers from sliding down between her legs.
It did cross her mind that she should probably get up and at least turn off the light, but the switch was across the room, and what she was doing felt so good that she didn't want to stop.
Before too long she was in the throes of an orgasm. But almost before she had finished she started fretting again about all she had to do, and about whether Jake and she were ever going to get back their sex life.
Eventually she fell into a restless sleep.
The next evening after she got home from a long and tedious day of running around campus doing paperwork and errands there was an envelope taped to her door.
Thinking it was probably from the landlord she grabbed it and started opening it while walking in her apartment.
It turned out to be something way creepier. It was a picture. Of her. Naked and masturbating the night before. It was taken through her window from somewhere higher up. At a guess probably taken from the apartment building across from hers. You couldn't make out a ton of detail, but it was still clear what she was doing with her hands all over her pussy.
All the blood in her body felt like it was rushing to her face and she knew her cheeks were blazing scarlet. She felt dizzy and nauseous and she had to sit down but she didn't want to sit in front of her still uncovered damn window. She went into the bathroom and sat down on the floor feeling like she wanted to cry.
She was still holding the picture and she noticed something written on the back.
"Are you okay?" it said. And there was an email address written underneath the question.
Her first thought was to ignore it, to throw away the picture and pretend this had never happened. But then she thought maybe that would be riskier. Maybe not responding at all would just make this creep angry. Who knew how many more pictures they had or what they might do with them.
She thought it over for a long time, sitting uncomfortably on the bathroom tile and then decided to reply.
First she took the time to create a new email account with a fake name and info.
Then she started a new email. The subject line was, "What the hell you creep?"
The message was only one line long. "Why the hell are you spying on me? I should call the cops."
She sent that off and waited for a reply. She didn't have to wait long.
