Ramsay Noble had been unemployed for some months until recent times when he found a job at a high school as a gardener. He had no experience, but surprised that any employer would be interested in his land scaping ideas, he immediately began spending time researching the library and the internet as well as wandering around landscaping supplies to generate ideas to justify his job description.
He enjoyed his own company and preferred to work alone with his tasks and his thoughts as reliable company. He began his work by tidying up around the gardens alongside the entry paths leading up to the admin building, pulling weeds and planting flowers, honeysuckle, lavender and roses, chosen for their colours and scents.
Pulling weeds around the building, while he was preparing fertiliser and removing worn and broken barriers outside the staff room, he overheard one of the new teachers boasting about her results she attained during her course and the reports she received from her tutors and the supervising teachers during her practicums. Her own assessment of herself seemed to be that of a brilliant student and outstanding teacher. Ramsay thought self-praise was always suspicious.
The new teacher dominating conversation in her loud voice told her colleagues she had never dated anyone without a university degree as they were all far too dumb to be wasting her time. Ramsay didn't like her from that moment. He filed that morsel of evidence away in his memory with a resolve that he would find a way to have her begging for him on his terms.
He looked in the staff room window and saw the woman with the loudest voice with the authoritative tone and found her to be a red head with a very healthy looking 167 centimetre (5 feet 6 inch) body. As she walked toward the door, he noticed she had a walk that emphasised her firm buttocks. Ramsay thought spanking them would be the culmination of a good day in the garden.
For the next few weeks he watched her in the schoolyard and at the bus stop doing out-of-class duty and as he was always maintaining the grounds until five pm, he was able to watch her ride home on her pushbike. A very nasty yappy little fox terrier would snap at her, trying to squeeze through the wrought iron of the decorative gate at the front of a house a few houses past the school. After a few days it was clear the dog would escape at some time, and the little bundle of fury would take a piece of her leg, if not her clothes.
One morning, Ramsay had brought his camera to work and after working in the grounds unobtrusively all day, he disappeared from his garden and had locked the shed and found a vantage point across the street from the gate and waited for Kate to appear. He filmed her as she approached the house, and sure enough, the angry little terrier squeezed himself through the gate and chased Kate along the road. She out sprinted him, but was clearly shaken by the fight or flight situation she found herself in.
Next day, in the staff room, one of her fellow teachers suggested she walk past the house next night and carry a weapon with her to protect herself. Still with his camera, Ramsay hid and began filming as Kate approached. Wearing jeans and a men's shirt, but with her long red hair flowing, Kate was holding the bike with one hand and the stick Ramsay had left near her bike in the other hand.
As the dog squeezed through the bars of the gate, Kate dropped her bike and began swinging the stick at the dog. He was caught a stinging blow on his back leg and he yelped, but was not ready to abandon the attack. Swinging wildly, she missed a few times before she caught him full across the face. This time he yelped again and Kate sensing victory was determined to teach the dog it would hurt him to threaten her again. She chased the limping dog back to the gate and caught it a few sharp blows on his back legs as it frantically squeezed itself back through the decorative wrought iron upright bars of the gate. To reinforce her message to the dog, she rattled the stick along the gate and the terrier went scurrying around to the back of the house to lick its wounds. Ramsay kept the video running and filmed kate, catching her face and flowing red hair clearly as she rode past him.
When Ramsay returned home, he played the footage of the film he had recorded and spent the next hour enhancing the sound. Using an editing software package he had downloaded from the internet, he freeze framed some pictures as Kate swung the stick at the terrier, editing out pictures from still images. He printed three of the pictures and composed a note for her consideration.
He waited two weeks, so some of the detail would slip from her memory. After school one night, left an incriminating envelope where she would find it.
Next morning, she found a blank envelope unsealed in her pigeon hole, and he watched her reaction. She opened it and read it. In shock, she hid the envelope with its contents in her large purse and red-faced, rushed to her class room. She read the note again, 'There are more pictures and a very clear DVD where these came from, but don't worry. Some of your secrets are safe for the moment. Do as you're told and they might stay that way.'
She began to drive her car to school after that note appeared, as she did not want anyone following her home from school. She also kept a watch on her pigeonhole to see who might be leaving notes there, but after a week, she gradually became less and less vigilant as there were no more notes or anonymous messages.
He left her in suspense for a few days, then when she thought whoever had left the note and incriminating pictures must have forgotten his threat, she received another note, this time, left attached under the windscreen wiper of her car.
The first instruction she received was purely to test her obedience. It read, 'Donna Edwards will hand in her homework and you will mark her work with glowing praise and give her a top score for her work, regardless of it's quality. You will give it to her at the beginning of class on Friday morning at 10.45. I am everywhere, so don't think you can evade your obligations.' He signed off the note referring to himself as 'The Wounded Terrier,' an unsubtle reminder, warning her that the evidence was ready to be put to use if she did not comply.
She thought, 'This demand was very clever and creative and although unaware of what else the fiendishly cunning adversary would demand, at least she was safe for a few days. And who knows? Giving Donna Edwards some encouragement might just bring out the best in the disruptive little bitch.'
She was ever alert to try and find out who was blackmailing her, but had no clue. She examined the photographs that were taken the day she had the altercation with the dog to try and identify where the video was filmed, but she couldn't figure out who it might be or even what their purpose might be. She was alert to who was present when Donna reacted with a high-pitched squeal to her surprisingly high grade on having her work returned. Once again, Ramsay was working nearby but out of Kate's line of vision, and she remained totally unaware.
Two days later, She received another note, left in her letterbox at home. It read 'So far, So good. What pleases me more than anything, is obedience. Next, you will wear a short skirt to school on Friday and when you go to your car to go home, you will not be wearing nickers. You will drop your keys on the ground and bend over to pick them up with your back to the rear of the car. Remain bent over for three seconds. I want to see everything. You will REVERSE your car into its usual space This will be your chance to see who I am, but you will NOT LOOK BACK. Remember how attached I am to obedience.'
This time he signed 'T. W. Terrier', which would remind her of the pictures he held that she thought would go viral if he decided to post his video on You Tube.
She read the instructions over twice more and began wondering if the perpetrator was someone who would be at school on Friday but no other days. Then she thought it might be a ruse to deceive her. She eventually thought better of spending time on these confusing puzzles she was creating for herself that were getting her nowhere. So far she had not been asked to do very much, but she had to find a way to stop it progressing before it got out of hand, First she would have to find out was blackmailing her.
