Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online

by Amy Heydenrych

  ‘I know you’re here somewhere!’ she shouts, voice shrill and out of control. Softer now, ‘Don’t think I don’t know.’

  Hands shaking, she scrolls up to see when the video was uploaded. June this year. A whole month before he attacked her.

  Chapter 17

  Tyler

  It’s going to be one of those horrific days at the hospital. Tyler can feel it in the buzzing static of the air. The panic setting in before the patients are even pushed through the door.

  Everything feels a bit too raw today. The old man with dementia smoking outside, telling him that his daughter will visit today, he’s sure of it. The sobbing Muslim family filing into the prayer room to surrender their mother’s health to Allah. The smell of infection that his keenly trained nose picks up immediately, despite the disinfectant liberally applied to every surface of the hospital.

  He tries to numb the sense of foreboding the day ahead holds with some filter coffee and a moment spent scrolling through Holly’s latest posts. There are no signs of cracking, even after the stunt he pulled last night. Her captions are just the right amount of vulnerable. The style of her photographs never falters. It is like a robot has kept automatically producing content while the real Holly, the Holly he holds in his grip, begins to lose control. It’s only a matter of time before she does, he just knows it, and he has all the time in the world.

  His phone lights up. He is needed. As he runs to the surgical ward, he sees the patient ahead of him. The writhing body is too little. The pool of blood soaking into the sheets too great. High-pitched crying of random words, ‘dog’, ‘mummy’, ‘light’, ‘shoe’, ‘bye bye’. Poor little girl, she is repeating every word in her vocabulary to impress them, to stop them from hurting her. By the time he’s scrubbed up and inside the theatre, she’s passed out.

  She is just two years old, and still wearing the muddy red wellies she was playing in. Her dark brown pigtails are damp with drizzle. Her T-shirt has a picture of Peppa Pig. There are deep fang marks clustered around one eye, and more still over her nose. Dog bites.

  His hands shake as he assesses the damage.

  ‘What the fuck happened to this kid?’

  One of the nurses says softly, ‘She was playing in the park with her mum and this Rottweiler ran towards them out of the blue and attacked. The mum tried to fight it off – she’s downstairs in the ER getting her hand stitched up. The mum said it looked possessed, on a mission.’

  The blood on the sheet continues to pool around her neck. He knows what he’s about to discover before his hand even touches it. Two deep bites, one on her back and the other on her neck. He swallows the panic in his throat. He doesn’t have much time. Stop the bleeding. Close the wounds. Perfect the stitching. Disinfect, disinfect, disinfect. The world around him is a blur. His only focus is to get through each step, to make her well.

  It’s happened before, often even. He’s performed a miracle at the last possible second and left everyone high-fiving bloodied gloves across the table. He’s run down the stairs and into the waiting area, found the waiting family and said, ‘I have good news.’ But not today.

  The little girl, with all her grown-up words and favourite things, remains limp in his hands. Her heartbeat, that must have flashed so brightly in her mother’s pregnancy scan, is now a flat line on a screen. All because some dog got loose and mistook her for prey. All because her mum thought it would be lovely to take her to the park to feed the ducks. He kicks a table behind him. Steel instruments clatter to the ground. The nurses stay out of his way. There is no discussion. The assistant surgeon makes the dejected trip downstairs to her mother.

  Tyler finds a dark storeroom and slams himself inside. The tears, hot and angry, are a surprise to him. He wipes them away with clenched fists. A sob sticks in his throat. He screams it away into his sleeve. Saliva bubbles down his chin. They used to be just patients. But he can’t take the injustice anymore. It’s just not fair. The best people, the innocent ones, are always the first to go.

  It hurts to breathe, to think. The buzz is back, shrieking in his ears. He pulls out his phone. His typing sounds like a swarm of flies slamming against a closed window. Words and images come out that he has never used before. Disgusting words. Appalling images. But with every letter the pain constricting his heart releases until he can dry his eyes, slide his phone in his pocket and walk out the door.

  Chapter 18

  Holly

  There’s got to be something Holly can feel other than this. Her eyes water and the edges of her mind feel blurry. Memories, dreams and fearful fantasies become one. It’s hard to keep a solid grip on anything when he could always be just around the corner.

  She tries to focus on her blessings until she can no longer feel his eyes on her. She attempts to manage the gaping expanse of her day through the timing of her various medications, meals and tasks. She tries to not be so self-centred, and do something nice for Zanna. After spending hours agonising over the perfect thank-you gift, she has a Jo Malone candle and a bunch of exquisite black roses delivered to her studio apartment across town. For a second, that felt good, although nothing could really show just how grateful she felt for her loyalty. These days, just the sight of her fast, determined walk through the door is enough to bring her to tears.

  She sits in front of her mirror and recites her daily affirmations through hot tears:

  I am worthy.

  I am beautiful.

  I am strong.

  She doesn’t feel any of this, but she’s read enough spiritual literature to know that positivity attracts positivity. What you put out into the world comes back to you. She recites the words again, voice shaking, battling to feel anything other than revulsion at the scars on her face and the situation she is in. If only there were words that could act as a salve for the guilty, for those who feel they deserved everything they got.

  She’s put herself on her signature detox system to cleanse her body of negative energy. This involves a ruthless regime of lemon water, regular vegetable juices and a colourful handful of sulphuric supplements. Her hours are spent in nun-like dedication to making sure that every minute is a sacred act of devotion to herself. She should use her experience to help and heal others. This is supposed to be her greatest revenge.

  If only Holly could stop screaming. She does it without warning, unprovoked. Her violent, strangled cries turn everyone’s eyes on her. It happened in Sainsbury’s the first time. As she was reaching for a packet of spinach on the top shelf, a teenage boy appeared out of nowhere, leaning forward for some apples. Next thing, she had dropped her groceries and was screaming in his face. Everyone was shocked, but understanding in that tight-lipped, awkward British way. Every time, it leaves Holly breathless and with her heart pounding for hours afterwards. What is this unpredictable beast that coils within her throat?

  She can’t help but feel him edging closer. Nowhere is safe. There are little signs wherever she turns. The rubbish bin outside her door appears to have been rifled through. She sees the footprints of a man’s shoe in the dust on the stairs. Sometimes she thinks she sees him, walking across the street in that cursed Burberry coat, but the second she looks closer he is gone. He lives in the silence, and in the space that swells around her as she falls asleep.

  She received a message from an unknown number late last night. The words blurred into one another and she threw down her phone. Sick, sick, sick is the only way to describe it. Long and rambling, the message described exactly how he wanted to torture her and make her plead for mercy. She ran to the bathroom to retch. It was him, because only he would think of doing that. And every time he taunts her, she is even more certain that he knows the one thing she has tried so hard to keep hidden. If she were to go to the police now, if they were to trace his number and bring him in for questioning, her secret would be the first thing he would mention. She deleted the message, took a deep breath and tried to remain calm.

  The signs point to an impending danger that has beg
un to keep her awake at night. He has access to her apartment. He knows her habits. Or is her mind playing tricks on her? Did she really see those pictures and smell urine in her home? Did she really see that YouTube clip playing last night? Or is she becoming unhinged? She’s started to fear for Tofu, who has finally found a sanctuary in Holly’s quiet home. Would he hurt the thing she loves the most just to get to her?

  Still, how could she admit to anyone what she truly fears? It seems hysterical to say it out loud, the self-centred ranting of a social media celebrity used to the world revolving around her. She saw how the police looked at her, smirking at her tight, provocative yoga leggings – if she voiced the depth of his hatred, they would wonder what else she has done to ask for it.

  Until he emerges out of the shadows, she performs for him. She tries to invoke him, like an evil spirit too absent to be fought, but present enough to make her sick. The brazenness of her plan makes her feel out of control and dangerous. She pictures his pretty face reddening as she posts another picture of some artfully arranged fruit. She records long YouTube videos about how she is dealing with her scarring, hoping that one of the four hundred and seventy thousand views is his.

  Look at my personal, untouchable army. Look how much I am loved.

  This popularity was hard won. Before she was famous, something about Holly set her apart – it was like the other kids could smell it, as if it was a contagious disease. At school, she was the girl who walked home alone, a few steps behind the other girls, the better girls. They were on their way to another boring, candy-scented afternoon of trading secrets and fears over frappés. All she had waiting for her back home was a reality TV marathon, a fridge full of snacks and the constant sense of foreboding. That kind of loneliness has its own substance; it builds up into something.

  She made a friend eventually at work, Andrea. While prickly at first, Andrea came into her own when Holly was sick, and became somebody she could call and cry to when the hopelessness of her situation overwhelmed her. However, her compassion only lasted a second. She remembers Andrea’s sneers clearly, the disgust that clouded her face when she found out the truth.

  I heard what you did.

  How could you?

  Her scorn left a mark she couldn’t erase. What she had done felt essential at the time, but it warped into something shameful through her friend’s eyes. The guilt followed her to London, where she couldn’t quite settle into herself and find the new friends she had dreamed of. There was no tight-knit, smug circle of healthy women who all stretched each other after Pilates and giggled over their Bumble prospects while drinking non-dairy chai lattes. As much as she didn’t feel she deserved friendship, she wanted it, so deeply and urgently. The love she received online made her think that maybe, just maybe, real friendship was around the corner. But the health bloggers saw her as a threat, and their interactions never moved beyond a few empty greetings at a launch or a posed lunch for a brand they were promoting. How surprised her adoring community of thousands would be to learn that she always ate alone.

  Her closest friend came in the form of Zanna, who, at their first ever meeting, poured sugar into her oversized hot chocolate until it was difficult to stir. ‘I don’t know what your whole lifestyle is about, but I know it’s fickle as fuck and you need me,’ she said.

  She’d captured Zanna’s attention at a star-studded cancer charity event, when Holly was struggling to string a sentence together about her dress that night to a TV interviewer. It was cruelty-free Stella McCartney, obviously. Zanna made it all feel real – the followers, the fame. This hobby of hers became something that could sustain her and make her money. The road to success wasn’t as smooth as she would have liked, but this was someone else’s responsibility now, someone who understood the game. Over meetings and exercise dates and eventually long nights watching TV box sets together, Zanna became her truest friend.

  Zanna always challenged her to sell what made her different, to stand out from the ever-growing pack of beautiful, healthy girls. Zanna always surprised her with unlikely interests and clubs. Who knew she collected first edition comic books and autographed fantasy novels? That she had a tattoo of Tank Girl sneering on her shoulder?

  Zanna is fascinating, really fascinating. She carries a whole world inside her, marked with unlikely landscapes and turbulent weather. Holly knows only how to occupy extremes: sick or healthy, bad or good. She doesn’t know how to fill the space in between. Her soul is a shapeless thing, assuming the form of whatever will make people like her the most. Only Zanna with her boundless faith in herself has enough faith left over to believe that Holly’s soul is made of something more. How could she tell Zanna everything and disappoint her? How could she possibly reveal that her pictures are all she ever was, that there is nothing real behind them?

  Chapter 19

  Tyler

  Here lies the root of the problem. Today’s world is characterised by pervasive access to anything and everything. Luxury, fame, beauty – all these rich pleasures that used to be only accessed by the worthy – are now free for anyone with a credit card and an Internet connection. Anybody can walk into a Louis Vuitton store and purchase a handbag. Anyone can apply a filter to their face and erase decades of poor diet and grooming. We choose our avatars and wear them like masks. They allow us to be whoever we want to be. Yet too often we fool ourselves into thinking that our mask is who we really are.

  When he sees Holly again, this is exactly what he will say. He fell short on this last time – savagely cutting her face as if he could reach behind the skin and muscle, and tear off her mask for good. He should have pinned her down for longer and explained exactly what she did wrong. That would have calmed the hurting; that would have released the hating. Yes, he will hold her firmly next time and tell her everything. Who knows how a fake, wax excuse for a person will react to the fire of the truth. She will melt to nothingness in his hands.

  He never understood Frankie’s attraction to Holly, why she of all people would want to be like this bland caricature of health. Frankie was real, in a way you could sink your fingers into and caress with all your senses. She was down to earth, her casual demeanour undercutting her top-drawer education and healthy trust fund. She lived life in the moment, not for the capturing of it.

  The two of them were equally matched in their pedigree. He had never felt so comfortable, so calm with another person. From their very first date, everything fell into place as if the very universe had intended it. They shifted from wild, smoky dates in bars, to cosy nights eating pizza around the corner from her flat in a matter of weeks.

  He knew she was the one from the start. This sense of purpose crystallised into a path that nothing could set off course. Although it was still early days, every date, every night spent together held this electric potential. When the time was right, he would commission a reworked marcasite ring with a giant ruby stone in its centre (she had an ethical thing against diamonds). He would blindfold her and lead her through the city until they reached the bench on Warwick Avenue where they first met. There, under the gaze of amused bus commuters and a rocking meth addict, he would ask her to marry him. Together, they would build his new family: husband, wife and, one day, a child, maybe a little boy with Frankie’s auburn hair, pulling a wooden toy behind him through the park. A magic house in Broxbourne with a big tree at the bottom of the garden. It was meant to end to the brokenness; it was meant to make everything whole. He could have never predicted that Holly would bludgeon through his life and destroy it all.

  It was that power that got to him the most. It was the thing that kept his mind hooked on to Holly. How could one person, a stranger, have the power to randomly destroy another person’s life? He thinks of the freshly printed documents he slipped into a folder on his desk this morning. At any moment, he can reveal their contents, and truly end this thing. Now that is true power.

  Chapter 20

  Holly

  She follows the same path every day. It unfolds unrema
rkably, despite her imaginings of a hand around her throat, an elbow in her ribs, a punch to her stomach. Holly jumps at the sound of every footstep. He has plans for her. She can feel them thickening like glue in the street outside.

  When she first arrived in London with a bank account full of money from a protein shake sponsorship and a flat sponsored by a convenience store, the city seemed endless. There was no street, no person, she had seen before. She would ride the tube, blissfully anonymous, and smile conspiratorially at the young, thin girls who looked at her twice, the growing army of women beginning to recognise her from her blog. It was so comfortable then, so innocent. Even if she didn’t know who she was yet, she knew who she wanted to be.

  Now, London had been reduced to 100 steps from her stale-sweat apartment to the Bikram Yoga Studio and back. It was Zanna’s idea of course. She thought yoga might soothe her nerves. Then there are the unmentioned benefits – the tightening of her thighs, the flattening of her stomach. Without her face, she needs to rely on other muscles to earn her living.

  If he had cut any other part of her body, she could have pushed the pain away and tried to forget, but he took her face, her fucking face. It confronts her in the mirror, a clown-like mockery of her original features. It draws the attention of passers-by, who want to both stare at her and pretend she doesn’t exist. It aches in her smile, the pain jolting her out of any tentative happiness. Her beautiful face drew people into her beautiful soul. It allowed them to see the gentle, giving heart that swelled beneath her awkwardness. Now she feels hideous, a monster – what do people think lies within? God, she would love to do what Zanna suggests and believe all the positive ‘can do’ quotes she keeps sending her, but the truth is that she’s angry. She hates her attacker and she hates her fans. Most of all, though, she hates herself.