Social Media

by JA Huss

  Marjorie steps out of her car wearing the houndstooth suit Lauren Bacall made famous in The Big Sleep. She eyes me up and down as she approaches. “Looking good, Bogie.” She slips a masquerade mask over her eyes and I do the same.

  I smile down at her. “Ready?”

  She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’m not sure, but I’m going through with it.”

  She wraps her arm in mine and we walk into the party together.

  Chapter One-Hundred-Eight - Grace

  #NUNYA

  IT’S dark and there must be a smoke machine somewhere to add to the eerie effect, but it’s not necessary because this party is creepy as hell. Everyone is dressed up and no one looks familiar. I just hope no one recognizes me until I find Vaughn.

  God, I pray, please don’t let him be cheating on me. I don’t think I could take it.

  With that little prayer I walk forward into the cavernous room. The party is really all six floors of the building, but only the top two have ‘exhibits’.

  The exhibits are partitioned off with thick white canvas sheets hanging from the ceiling to make a sort of cubicle. And even though I know that there are things inside the makeshift rooms that I don’t need to see, curiosity gets the better of me and I peek inside. On three sides, each sheet is displaying a looped video of an unlucky actor.

  I wander through the crowd, not taking a drink from any of the servers—who are all dressed up as the Invisible Man and that makes everything triple creepy—because I don’t actually trust that the drinks aren’t drugged.

  I’m here for one reason only. To find my husband and ask him what the hell is going on.

  A curtain opens as I walk past and I catch a glimpse of some nude photos of a famous starlet and the sounds of a sex tape playing. Jesus. So that’s what this is about. The hall of shame. The pictures that couldn’t be posted publicly for fear of being sued? The sex tape someone paid to have scrubbed? Because while I might’ve been depressed for a few weeks this year, I was certainly on top of my celebrity gossip until very recently. I never saw or heard of that sex tape.

  I follow the person who came out of the tent-like room right into the next one.

  This time it’s a picture of a famous singer with two black eyes and her assailant’s mug shot. So he was arrested? That was never in the news either.

  The singer’s music is playing in the background, but her frantic call to 911 is superimposed over it.

  I leave the tent, repulsed at how they are invading her privacy. Why is that anyone’s business? Why do people think just because you’re famous that they get to know every detail of your life?

  I mean, I get it. It’s wrong for him to hurt her and he deserves to be held accountable. She needs help. But how is this helping her? How is exposing her most private moments helping her?

  Suddenly there’s a hum of murmurs circulating through the party. People are leaning in to whisper, all looking at the elevator. I watch with them as the outdated counter over the top of the doors calls out which floor it’s on.

  It dings that it’s arrived on six, and then the doors open. A collective gasp goes up from the crowd as Vaughn appears dressed as Humphrey Bogart. On his arm, and clinging far too tightly to my husband, is a blonde woman dressed as Lauren Bacall.

  People start muttering Grace, around me.

  “Grace!” someone calls out. “Why did you let your husband bring you to this?”

  I look over to find the voice, but the crowd is far too thick now. People are pouring out of the stairwell, desperately trying to get a glimpse of Vaughn and the woman they think is me.

  Vaughn ignores them, as does the woman, and he steps forward. People move aside as he enters the vast room and then he leans down and asks a question of a girl standing close.

  She raises her arm and points to a tent behind me.

  The whole room looks in that direction.

  That tent is made up of thick black curtains. I’m only a few feet away, in fact, so I start walking towards the entrance. An arm darts out to block my way and a large man dressed as a Stormtrooper stops me from entering. “Guests of honor first, bitch. You know the rules.”

  OK. I stand my ground, waiting to see what they’ve got behind the curtains about Vaughn.

  He steps forward, only a few feet in front of me, his eyes straight ahead.

  And then the curtain is pulled back.

  Chapter One-Hundred-Nine - Vaughn

  #JustReturningTheFavor

  HER whimpering fills the room. They’ve got the sound on every speaker. Her sniffles boom out from every corner. But it’s the images onscreen that stop me dead and make my heart want to crack.

  Grace. On the floor. Trying her best not to cry as Derek Hauser kicks her in the back. I knew it would be bad, but I honestly never thought they’d show those videos of when she was kidnapped as a teen.

  My heart speeds up. My face goes hot. The rage I feel at this moment builds, but then the image shifts and it’s another girl lying on the floor. This one is covered in blood too, but this one is dead.

  “He killed her.”

  Everyone goes silent as the words echo from the speakers.

  “He killed my sister.”

  The image switches back to Grace, her nude Twitter pictures up for all to see.

  I’m mortified that these scumbags should see my wife in this way.

  “He uses women,” the speaker system booms. “All of them. See what he made that poor Daisy Bryndle do?”

  The tweets on that account are private. They require a password and no one has ever gotten our passwords. I changed them the day Grace was found to some incomprehensible string of numbers. But the pictures are not protected. If you know the link, you can get the pictures.

  The scene flashes to Grace in a Nebraska cornfield, being loaded onto the Life Flight helicopter, bound for Denver.

  “It was your fault she was taken again, Vaughn Asher. Your fault she was shot. Your fault she lost that baby.”

  How dare that bitch mention my wife’s pregnancy. I turn and face the crowd. “Show your face, you bitch. Show your fucking face!”

  Amy Stratton steps out of the mass of people and they part for her, just as they parted for me. “Here’s my face. The one you’ve been trying to forget for more than a decade. You killed her and you got away with it because you’re famous. You celebrities all feel entitled. You all live by your own rules. You flash your money and use your status so you don’t have to be accountable. You make me sick.” She walks straight up to me and spits in my face.

  I say nothing.

  “What, no denial?” she snarls at me.

  “You know I didn’t do it. You know that every word you’re saying is a complete fabrication. You’re the sick one. Your sister did not commit suicide—”

  “You made her kill herself!”

  “She was on drugs, Amy. She was doing some very questionable things.”

  “She hired you to be in her movie, and you fucked her over. You ruined her career. You made her kill herself.”

  “That’s not what happened and you know it. I told you back then, that’s not what happened.”

  “Yeah, you tried to blame her boyfriend—”

  “Her boyfriend, are you fucking kidding me? Frankie Miller was thirty years older than her. He was a scumbag who was taking advantage of her.”

  “No. He loved her. You’re just mad because he tricked you. And then you threatened him. You threatened to send him to jail.”

  I shake my head and look at the crowd, trying to decide if I need to make my case or not. But then I remember who my date is for tonight, and I realize I have no choice. This is it. I have to come clean and whatever happens afterward, so be it.

  “Frankie Miller killed DeeDee Cisco ten years ago.”

  “You’re a liar,” Amy screams. “He was found not guilty.”

  “He was not found not guilty, Amy. The charges were dropped. There’s a big difference. And the charges were dropped be
cause…” I look over and find Carey Keefe in the crowd. She’s not dressed up and she’s in front to see my reaction. “Because… Because I—”

  I stop talking.

  But Carey steps forward. “Because what?” Her face is strained. She’s breathing a little faster than normal, so her heart must be beating fast. She’s nervous.

  And I realize that she’s as nervous about the truth as I am. She might have set me up tonight, but it’s only because she never believed me. She’s been trying to convince herself for months that I was lying.

  But now that we’re both here, she knows I’m not lying. And she wants me to shut the fuck up.

  Because I am almost positive that Frankie Miller did kill DeeDee Cisco, aka Danielle Stratton. The sister of Amy Stratton, star gossip reporter for Buzz Hollywood.

  I know this because I have video that I never turned over to the police.

  DeeDee was just a film-school student in one of his classes. I met her on my eighteenth birthday. They set me up. Drugged me. Had me sign a non-disclosure agreement. And then proceeded to film me doing things I never imagined myself doing.

  When I woke up in my car on the UCLA campus, there was a note congratulating me on my next blockbuster film. That was before I was a megastar. Before I made that crucial transition from the world of child actors into the world of the professionals.

  So I went to my father. The great Adam Asher. And the whole thing disappeared.

  Until DeeDee was found dead and I received a package in the mail a few days after her death that had the original footage of the movie they made with me, plus more. Plus a lot more. The NDA I signed and dozens of videos of Frankie Miller beating the shit out of her, demanding to know where she was hiding the film they made of me. It felt like a call to action. Like I should avenge DeeDee’s death for her because she held out. She played ball with my father’s offer and refused to give Miller the film.

  But I didn’t give her the same respect back. I never showed those films to anyone. I didn’t want to be involved in this tragedy in any way. I was hopeful that the tide was changing with my career. I had been called in to read for three very big films, all of which fell through, but at the time it all seems so promising.

  I didn’t want to fuck it up. I didn’t want to care about her. And I certainly didn’t want to help her. She got what she deserved. I couldn’t even fathom why she’d sent that package to me, of all people. Why me?

  I figured she was setting me up again. I mean, that’s a legitimate reaction. That incident changed my whole outlook on life. And not in a good way. I stopped looking for girlfriends and started looking for sex. I ran with that nondisclosure idea I was introduced to, and made every girl I fucked sign one.

  Carey Keefe picked up the story of poor, ousted Frankie Miller and became his champion. After a long wait for trial and with the help of a top-notch legal team, the charges were eventually dropped. Six weeks later, DeeDee’s death was ruled a suicide.

  Carey is suddenly right up in my face. “Because why, Vaughn?”

  I only have one out at this point. The truth. “You need to believe me, Carey. That I’m not doing this to ruin you. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”

  She snorts. “How would you have the ability to ruin me? I think it’s the other way around.”

  I lean down in her ear and whisper, “Because you’re in those films too.”

  Her face goes white. “What films?”

  “The ones DeeDee sent to me before she died.”

  “What’s going on here?” Amy asks a stone-faced Carey.

  Carey puts up a hand to silence Amy, and then proceeds. “You ruin lives, Vaughn Asher. You stomp all over women like they are things. Just watch everyone.”

  And then she throws her arms out in a flourish and the screen changes. There’s a line of women.

  “My name is Jasinda Gonzales and I’m a victim of Vaughn Asher.”

  “My name is Sandy Delaney and I’m a victim of Vaughn Asher.”

  Chapter One-Hundred-Ten - Grace

  #AndAPrincessShallLeadThem

  THEY go on and on like that. Dozens of them. And as much as I love my husband, this does make me pause. Because this is who he was before we were married. Everything they’re saying about him is true.

  I know this because he used the same words on me. He asked me to do the very same things. It was Yes, Master. It was sitting at his feet. It was being hand-fed tiny morsels of meat. It was signing a non-disclosure agreement. All of that is true.

  Vaughn stands quietly as the film ends and then two more curtains are raised to reveal all the women who just spoke out.

  Vaughn walks up to one of the girls and looks her in the eyes. “Did you get anything out of our relationship, Terry?”

  She shrugs.

  “Money? I recall giving you about seventy-five thousand dollars before we called it quits. You wanted a condo in Miami with a beach view. Done, correct?”

  She stands perfectly still.

  He moves on to the next girl and repeats his questions. “How about you, Lisa? You wanted your student loans paid off? I did that.” He moves on to the next girl. “And this one, she was a one-night stand. There was no agreement. There was no Master. There was none of this that they are claiming.”

  “So I don’t count?” the girl asks him.

  “Do you want me to lie?”

  She turns and walks away.

  “They’re not people to you, Vaughn Asher. They are things to be used and thrown away,” that editor for Buzz Hollywood tells my husband.

  “You’re wrong,” he says with conviction. “They were possessions, but only in the sense that I felt obligated to care for them while they were in this specific arrangement with me.”

  “You make me sick,” the reporter seethes. “You killed my sister. You made her so depressed she took her own life. And then you accused her boyfriend of abuse and murder.”

  Vaughn says nothing to that.

  “Grace!” the girl calls out. And everyone turns to find the blonde woman Vaughn came in with. “Where did she go?”

  I look around along with everyone else, but the girl in the houndstooth suit is nowhere to be found.

  “Put her movie back on,” the editor woman shouts.

  The film of me as a teenager is back up for all to see. I can’t believe they are showing this. As much as I hate the fact that my husband was that person this woman describes, and as confused as I am about this other stuff with this DeeDee person, there is no good reason to have this disgusting footage of my kidnapping on display.

  “Take it down right now, Carey,” Vaughn says calmly.

  “Or what?”

  “You’ll see.” The ice in his voice is so clear it sends chills up my arms.

  “I want everyone to know what your type is, Vaughn. Broken. That’s what you like. You want victims. You want girls who can’t get up off the floor and stand up to you. You want to tie them up and stick them in a closet and—”

  I slap her across the face so hard my palm is stinging.

  I have no idea how I got so close, but I slap the shit out of that bitch. The whole place gasps as I remove my mask and my wig.

  “What the fuck?” the Carey woman says as she palms her red cheek.

  “That’s enough.” I say it with confidence, one hundred percent in control.

  “Grace,” Vaughn whispers. I smile up at him and he gives me a small one back. And then I step forward until I’m right in front of him, so close that I have to tip my head back to look him in the eye. I nod my head to the line of women. “I’ve seen that man they describe, but that’s not the man I married.”

  “Grace,” he says again. But the screams from the movie cut him off. We both look up at the scene to see teenage Daisy get smacked across the face and fall to the floor. “Let’s go.”

  He takes my hand and starts to lead me away, but I plant my feet firm and pull him back. “No. I’m not leaving.” I turn to look up at that film
and I watch. I make the whole room watch as I am hit and kicked, and they really chose an Oscar-winning segment for this teaser, because just before it ends, I piss myself from fear.

  “Please, Grace,” Vaughn pleads. “Let’s go.”

  I turn to face the crowd instead. “Did you all enjoy that?” I ask them. “Is that what you came to see? Are you satisfied now?”

  Vaughn takes my hand and leads me away. But when I pass the Carey person responsible for this, I stop again. “You got that film from him, didn’t you? My kidnapper contacted you before he took me and offered you that film.”

  “I don’t reveal sources,” she says flatly.

  “Well,” I say, turning to the crowd, “I’m so glad you were all so entertained by the images of me being abused as a little girl. You must all feel mighty superior right now.”

  This time when Vaughn tugs on my hand, I let him lead me away.

  We take the elevator to the roof and the blonde girl Vaughn came with, who is no longer wearing the houndstooth suit, but a slinky 40’s looking flapper dress, is waiting by his car.

  “Did you get all that?” Vaughn asks her.

  She smiles widely. “I got every second.”

  “Grace, this is Marjorie. She’s a reporter for Everyday Celebrity Magazine.”

  “Holy shit. I love Everyday Celebrity. When I lived in Denver I had a weekly subscription. I read you guys every week.”

  “We like to call ourselves the ‘Real Celebrity Magazine’ because we deal in truth, not rumors,” the pretty blonde reporter says. “People trust that our stories are accurate. And this tonight, what Vaughn did… what you did… well, let’s just say, most of these people won’t have jobs this time next week, let alone be putting on this kind of show next year. Some of them might even go to jail.” She winks at Vaughn. “That’s your good news I promised, Vaughn. I have a detective friend with LAPD who’s been looking into some hacking cases and this footage I got tonight will certainly give him leverage with a judge when he starts asking for warrants.”