After Faith had left, I was alone in Chastity's room for quite some time. Her windows had been drawn, but even if I couldn't see out of them, I could get a sense of the time of day due to the shades' semi-translucent nature. Faith had seen me at what I was guessing mid or late morning. I didn't hear anyone else come into the apartment until the sun began to set.
When I heard the door open, I could tell it wasn't Faith. I'd been getting flashes from her mind all day. What I was getting from her suggested she was searching for a job, because I'd get images of sites like LinkedIn, Glass Door or Indeed, as well as extreme frustration. I could almost sympathize with her.
At first, I thought Chastity had come back. I'd heard the door open and then someone was bustling around the bathroom near the entrance and the kitchen. That made sense. Then I realized that the person hadn't used the toilet when they were in the bathroom and instead had opened up the various cabinets. Then I realized that they were only opening cabinets in the kitchen. Finally, I realized that their tread was a lot heavier than Chastity's.
Ok,
I decided,
Chastity's being robbed. That sucks, but maybe it'd be better if I get removed from here so I don't corrupt her.
That thought, while not nice per say, wasn't a bad fate for me.
Then the guy came in. He didn't look like a burglar. I mean, he was pasty white, fat, balding, and what was left of his badly dyed black hair was in a long, greasy pony tail and awful goatee. He wore mirrored aviators, black trench coat, and a black suit that was as expensive as it was tacky. Still, I was assuming that was how he got away with it.
Then he smiled at me. "Yeah, I know, I'm late," he said in a Boston accent. "Who cares? I've got an hour." By how he was speaking, I could tell he thought I was inanimate. He then began to search the room. "That weird bitch," he muttered as he began checking the closet, half to himself, half still pretending he was having a conversation with me. "I don't care how rich you are, there's something fucked up about hiring a guy to make sure your daughter doesn't have sex toys."
Well, that's a new level of unpleasantness,
I thought,
even from Christina.
This guy, unless he was lying to a stuffed bear or was being lied to, seemed to be a private eye Christina was paying to spy on her own daughter. Chastity was twenty-four. She had a job that might even be able to pay for this apartment. I think she deserved some privacy.
The guy kept chatting while he searched the room. He obviously thought he was the main character in a film noir. I tried not to judge. I mean, I had some pretty lame hobbies and a rich imaginary life. I mean, I didn't work as basically a hired stalker like this guy did, but my trust fund was pretty much funded by my parent's defense company. Then he crossed the line.
"You know," he said, emerging from the closet, something white in his hand, "your owner's a real cutie. Shame she can't show it off." I realized what he was holding before he spoke again. "Little miss Chastity's granny panties aren't exactly the most exciting thing in the world." Then, my rage increasing, he held my ex's undergarments to my nose and gave a sniff. "At least on the surface." His voice husky, he continued speaking as he rubbed them against his cheek, "Oh, I just gotta say, I wanna see her in nothing but these so bad."
Looking back, my rage as he described his voyeuristic, almost violent fantasies was extremely hypocritical. It still is. But I vowed, right then and there, I would find a way to hurt this creep in some way. I just had no idea how at the time.
He finally fished. Chuckling, he said, "And once again, I got carried away. Can't even use the bathroom 'cause she could come back soon. Well, don't tell Chastity, but I'll see you next week." He winked. "And don't tell Christina either. She thinks I come here every day."
With that, he went back into Chastity's closet. After a bit of rustling, which I assume was him putting everything back in order so Chastity wouldn't suspect anything, he left, pausing only to give me a cheery wave. I followed him with my bead eyes, willing him to drop dead.
It wasn't long after he left that I heard the door open once again. I was wondering who it was. Honestly, even though it sounded like they were making dinner, I would have been surprised if it was Chastity at that point.
And surprised I was. Chastity came in, wearing a white blouse and a grey skirt that ended below her knees. I'd seen this many times before. This is exactly the kind of stuff she wore in our private high school and at work. Her honey brown eyes were even more downcast than usual.
"Well, Teddy," she said looking at me, and I did a mental double-take at that, "I didn't expect Faith to keep her word. I'll have to thank her for getting you out of wherever the cops took you." She sat down on the bed and hugged me. "I know it's not really you," she said, tears in her eyes, "but I can't let it end like that." My back was to her with how she was holding me so I couldn't see her face, but I began to feel something drip on my head. "I lied to you so much," she sobbed, "even though you always tried to help me. Like how you and Maddie helped me sneak away to that Taylor Swift concert. And how I only knew she existed because of you."
I remembered that. That had been last year. Christina hated everything that even smacked of secularism. Chastity's best friend, Madison, on the surface seemed just about as Christian, but lacked an obsession with controlling literally every person around her. She'd covered for us when we went after I promised to not do anything more scandalous than to hold hands with Chastity.
In fact, music had been a key bonding point between the three of us. Both Madison and I would help smuggle in songs that Chastity couldn't be caught with when we were in high school. I'd had to curate some of my choices. For example, I could pretty much give entire Fall Out Boy and Chance the Rapper CDs to Chastity, but I had to make mixtapes of artists like Run The Jewels. Maddison, I hate to admit, also had good taste in music and it was more in sync with Chastity. Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Jars of Clay are actually kind of good. It was kind of bittersweet to learn that the time the three of us had spent sharing music had been meaningful to Chastity.
After a while, her sobbing was at levels that she seemed able to control. "And I know you hated my dad," and I could hear her smile, "but you never said anything bad about him after he... after went. Even mom and Madison said horrible stuff about him." She laughed dryly. "You didn't exactly say anything about him, but you let me grieve. That's more than most people." There was a pause. "And you were always so honest with me. Compared to how I treated you."
There was a long pause during which Chastity squeezed me much tighter. I felt her tense up. Finally, she said, "You told me long ago you weren't sure we were compatible. You asked me to not ask more than that."
I remembered that conversation. We were in college, and, out of the blue, when we were alone together, Chastity asked what kind of things I'd want to do if she could have sex with me. Being her, she'd been embarrassed, especially because she'd been trying to be sexy. I'd told her I wasn't sure she might not be prepared to hear the answer. She'd seen how embarrassed that made me, and respected it.
I really didn't want to explain that I'd gotten really into mind control porn. I didn't want to talk to her about how I found slow corruption hot, or that I liked the idea of having a bisexual switch who was submissive to me, but would dominate other women hot. She would have told her mother and her mother would have destroyed me.
"And then," she said, "when I asked about marriage, you basically implied you wanted mom's blessing." That was inaccurate. I had said I would marry her if her mother left us both the fuck alone. "Well, mom wanted to know what kind of man you were." She hugged me even tighter and began to cry again. "She told me to hack you. To find your secrets. And I told her everything." She gulped to clear her throat. "You must think I'm so weak."
To my shame, in that moment, I did. I had known Christina was abusive, and I should have known that Chastity feared that woman more than anything else in the world. But I had to struggle to feel anything other than contempt for her. She'd spied on me, violated my privacy because her mom told her to.
Eventually, she stood up. "Well," she said, "I should stop talking to stuffed animals, I guess." She then walked over to an armoire and opened it up.
