Total Exposure

by JA Huss

  Granted, the families I interacted with growing up weren’t typical in any way. They were celebrities. Royalty. High-powered political officials and blue-blood old money.

  Their lives were nothing like mine.

  So almost all of what I witnessed wasn’t anything close to a normal family. And it put a lot of ideas in my head.

  My father’s words. Which was why I was not allowed to play with other children.

  Maybe if I had played with children things would been different?

  The first time I heard the word ‘vacation’ I was seven. Vacation. It baffled me that people didn’t get up and work every single day. I asked my mother about it and she grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and marched me over to my father and said, “Your child wants to know what a vacation is.”

  Whenever I did something that made my mother unhappy, she always called me Your Child. Your Child Rolaine. The first time I ever stepped into a school classroom I was ten. It was in the Philippines because we’d been living there for several months and the local authorities started coming around, asking questions. My father said they were looking for bribes, but I didn’t know what that meant back then and have no idea if it was true. But I went to school so my father didn’t have to pay hush money, as he called it, and when I was told to write my name on the top of a worksheet, I put Your Child Rolaine.

  My father looked at me after my mother told him I wanted to know what vacation was. The same look he always gave me, one I assumed was fatherly well into my teens, but wasn’t. And he said, “A vacation is something we can’t afford.”

  I remember being confused because I didn’t know what the word “afford” meant. So whenever people asked me things like, “Why don’t you have a home?” Or, “Why don’t you go to school?” I would reply, “Because we can’t afford one.” Even after I knew what “afford” meant, I still said that. It really pissed my mother off. Because of course we could afford one. Whatever “one” was, we could afford it. That’s why the word “vacation” didn’t exist in my family vocabulary.

  I have no siblings. No cousins or aunts and uncles. I had grandparents once, on my mother’s side, but they both died when I was very young and I hardly remember them.

  So it didn’t matter that the families I saw weren’t typical. They were more than what I had. They were something elusive and distant from my own life.

  Something to wish for in a coveting way.

  Wandering the garden on the intricately laid stone pathway, I look for cameras. The trees are all bare, which should make them easy to spot, but I find none and feel disappointed.

  Can’t he see me out here?

  A wave of panic washes over me. Irrational, I realize, since the panic I’m feeling is akin to that which overtakes me when strangers are watching, not when they’re not.

  But he’s not just any stranger.

  He’s my stranger.

  I smile at that, hoping he can see my smile, wanting him to understand what it means. Just how long I’ve gone between smiles before this day.

  How did this happen? Not seemingly overnight. But literally overnight.

  Yesterday when I came here I was terrified of his incessant invisible gaze.

  Today I’m craving it.

  What does that say about me, I wonder?

  Lucinda would analyze it. Overanalyze it, probably. It would be some clinical explanation about lack of true affection growing up. Feeling used and having no power to change that, so I crave attention, but punish myself at the same time, so my mind mentally breaks down with the paradox.

  But maybe I’m just in need of a good, hard fuck with a stranger?

  The first boyfriend I ever had was in Phoenix. We’d just come back to the States and we were living with a family near Camelback Mountain for a summer. Huge fucking mansion on several acres. We stayed in the guest house. They had a son a couple years older than me. He was leaving for college in the fall and I was just starting to have… issues. I was there to play at a few parties they were throwing over the summer. My career was winding down. I had tits after all. The child prodigy thing was over. I think they were important people, but I paid no attention to who they were or what they did.

  His name was Austin. He fucked me in every room of that mansion. Like… every room.

  God, my clit is throbbing just picturing how he took me from chaste to insatiable in the span of a few weeks. His cock never got soft. Or so it seemed.

  That was a long time ago. And there’s been no one since.

  I didn’t love him. Nothing of the sort. I just liked what he did to me.

  I come upon a tree swing in the corner of the yard. Ropes hang down from a thick limb jutting out of a massive tree that must be quite impressive in the summer. The swing is long enough to fit a family. This family. The older boy, and the middle girl, and the infant girl in the mother’s lap. The father in the center, surrounded by the people who make up his life, his arm around his wife on one side and his middle daughter on the other, letting them know they’re cherished.

  I picture this perfect family for a moment. Imagine all the times they’ve sat out here on this swing and just… swung together.

  I sit in the middle and feel the loss. The understanding of what I don’t have sinks all my easy thoughts in an instant, the empty space on either side of me glaring proof that I’m very much alone in this world.

  It’s not a husband I want. Not really. A husband isn’t enough for me.

  Nothing’s enough for you, Evangeline.

  That might be true.

  It’s the sense of belonging I crave.

  I just want to fit in somewhere. The way the older boy fits into the space on this family swing. The way the infant daughter fits into the lap of her mother. The way the mother and middle daughter fit into the embrace of the father.

  I glance at the perfect house that holds the perfect family in this unobtainable embrace. The tall, slender, arched windows that might actually be original from the look of the threads of lead separating the glass panes into smaller rectangles. The aged, but still beautiful, smudged look of the moss-green stucco that looks more like an Italian plaster wall than the typical exterior stucco you see these days.

  And this garden. It’s so perfect, I ache just thinking about the mother and her daughter as they wander through, pruning dead petals in the summer and…

  They must be somewhere else, I decide. For the winter. This house is half what it can be in the winter, surely. They are somewhere warm. The south of France. Or the Fiji Islands. Or maybe somewhere more exotic like the Maldives. Regardless, they are on a beach right now.

  I sigh as my feet push off from the stone pebbles beneath them and the ropes creak with the effort of swinging.

  I can’t even imagine going to a beach. Not during the day. Not unless it was some uninhabited island, far from the spying eyes of watchers.

  The cold wind hits me suddenly and I wonder how long I’m supposed to sit out here reflecting on all the things my life is lacking.

  Does he even care? Is he even watching?

  The sun is mostly shaded with cloud cover. Just a pale yellow blob filtering through gray, high overhead. It must be noon already. I’ve been out here for hours. Lost in the lives of the perfect family and feeling more morose and melancholy by the second.

  This is stupid, I decide, getting up off the swing. I’m going back inside. Nothing about this exercise is helping me. There’s no point to it. Just another excuse for Evangeline to throw her own personal pity party.

  My feet crunch into the still air as I walk along the stone pathway towards the house.

  I should leave. This is crazy. Playing stupid games with a stranger. Imagining him watching me walking around my room, naked. What the fuck was I thinking?

  I’m sick. Depraved. And this craziness is perverting my thoughts and making me wish…

  I see it as soon as I enter the ballroom. On a console table, propped up against a lamp, is a notebook. Written on
the cover, in the same boxy print as the other letters he’s left, is a title.

  It doesn’t say my name. It says, Jordan’s Game: Total Exposure.

  I pick it up, open the front cover, and read the now-familiar handwriting.

  Chapter Sixteen - Ixion

  I grew up in a house bigger than this one. Twice the size, if you can imagine that. It was me, my mom, my dad, and my sister.

  At least… that’s how it started.

  I was a precocious child. A name like mine is a lot to live up to, but I did my best. Might’ve fallen a little short. But all in all, my parents were happy with their rambunctious male progeny.

  I don’t know how I first became interested in cameras. Taking stupid pictures on vacation like most budding photographers, I suppose. Palm trees and sunsets. Maybe seals on the rocks off the coast of Monterey. Or the white-capped peaks while we were snowboarding in the Alps.

  But I do remember the first time I realized the power of video.

  I left my camera in my parents’ bedroom one morning before school. Forgot to turn it off—which is the important part. So it kept recording until it ran out of battery.

  When I got home from school I found it. I was twelve. That’s when I discovered my father didn’t love my mother.

  It was a conversation about nothing, really. But it said so much. Their argumentative back-and-forth wasn’t playful or sarcastic. It was dull and without flavor. It was bland and tired. It was just words between two people who had other things on their minds and better ways to waste their time.

  But when my father said, “I’m taking Jillian to the summer house this year. So you can do what you want as well,” my whole life changed.

  I played that one sentence over and over like a million times, trying to make sure I heard it correctly.

  I didn’t know who Jillian was, but taking a woman who is not my mother to our summer house wasn’t normal marriage behavior.

  Jordan was my best friend back then. He’s a mind fuck kinda guy. So when I showed him the video he got this wild gleam in his eye that I mistook for mischief.

  “Let’s play a game,” he said.

  It’s a lot like the game you’re playing right now, Evangeline.

  No.

  I take that back.

  It’s the very same game.

  Total Exposure, it’s called.

  He’s gonna help you. Whatever your doctor has sold you, it’s a lie. This is Jordan, through and through. Every bit of this is him. I know him better than anyone. I know him better than myself. He wants something from you. And if you give it to him, you’ll get what you came for, whatever that is. And he’ll take what he wants and leave you behind, because that’s what he does.

  That probably confuses you, doesn’t it? Because if you had something to give people, you probably wouldn’t be playing his game right now.

  Allow me to explain.

  He craves something he can only get through others. He wants your secrets. He wants your soul. He feeds off the lives of others. Like a fucking vampire… or hey, let’s just call him what he is.

  A parasite.

  And if you stay here in this house with me, you’re gonna give him every bit of you. You can shake your head all you want, but it’s the truth. He always wins.

  I know this better than anyone because he played his first game with me and my family.

  I had access to money. We both did. So we bought cameras. Lots and lots of cameras. Little secret cameras you hide in stuffed animals. Or the ones that plug into outlets and look like phone charger adapters. Or just the cheap kind people buy for vacation in case they get stolen.

  We hid them all over. We got hundreds of hours of video. We caught my father in the act on my mother’s custom couch in the living room.

  I didn’t know why Jordan wanted all this footage or what he planned on doing with it. That part still baffles me a little. Because he never said anything about showing it to my mother. And I really don’t think he did that. Why? My mother knew. It was an… arrangement, after all.

  It’s like that part didn’t matter to Jordan. What he wanted… the only thing he wanted… was the exposure.

  To see people for what they really are. To flay open their souls and uncover the sins underneath.

  It makes him hard. His cock throbs for hidden things. He comes on the face of your privacy.

  That’s his price and everyone pays it.

  Looking back, I have to say, I got nothing out of that game. Not a single win. Yeah, I knew the truth. That’s what Jordan kept telling me. “You’re getting to the bottom of things. Solving the mystery of your family.”

  But since when is that a victory? Don’t all families have secrets? Shouldn’t most of those stay in that dark closet where we put them?

  I lost a part of myself getting to the bottom of things. And the sad part is… I don’t care anymore. I’m like him now. I want it. I crave it. He knows this. He paired us up for a reason and your doctor, good intentions notwithstanding, has nothing to do with what’s happening right now.

  I want to own those things inside you. All those sick, bloody fears that make you afraid to leave your house. I want your memories. I want your stories. I want your secrets.

  If you stay here with me and we play his game together, we’re gonna take them, Evangeline. We’re gonna take everything you’ve got bottled up in that messed-up head and shake it out of you. And if you think that little tease of a show you put on for me this morning can compete with the mind fuck we’ll be subjecting you to… think again.

  His game is my game.

  His rules are my rules.

  I am Jordan’s sick obsession.

  So stay and play if your prize is so precious.

  We’ll deliver what you need, we always do.

  I’ll go one step further and give you me in return.

  Take me. I’m yours.

  But know going in… you’re mine right back. And you will never be the same.

  If your answer is yes, then start writing. I want to know why you’re here and I want the truth.

  And yes. I’ll know if it’s a lie.

  That story had better be good or I’ll walk out. Leave you here. And you’ll be right back where you started. Alone. Afraid. The loser.

  So write for me, Evangeline. Leave it on the kitchen counter, go outside, wait thirty minutes, and then come back inside for your next command.

  X

  Chapter Seventeen - Evangeline

  Stunned silence is my reaction to what he just wrote. In fact, I have to read it several times over to make sure I’m getting this right.

  But I am, in fact, getting this right.

  He’s an asshole.

  No. He’s a psychopath.

  I look up at the nearest camera and shake my head. “Total exposure,” I whisper. “Well, you’re not getting that. I’m getting exactly what I need from you and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna tell you anything. I don’t even know you. And what kind of name is X anyway?” I huff out some air. “X.” I toss the notebook on the counter. It goes sliding across the smooth stone surface, stopping just short of falling off the edge.

  I turn away, walk into another hallway and follow it to the ballroom. There’s a nice view of the tree with the swing. I sit on the couch facing the window and imagine him in here, watching me out there.

  “Are you sure that’s how you want this to go?”

  The voice is gruff and crackly, coming through an intercom positioned on the wall that looks like it’s decades old. Masculine behind the static. Hard-edged and deep underneath the distortion.

  “Not knowing might kill you,” the voice continues. At least that’s what I think he said. One or two words are half missing from the bad connection.

  “I don’t think so,” I say back to the empty room. “I think… I think I’m gonna walk out of here today and go home. Because I’m pretty sure my doctor never authorized this sick game you’re playing.”

  “How sure a
re you?”

  “One hundred percent,” I say.

  She didn’t, right? I ask myself. Lucinda didn’t set me up with this… this fucking psychopath. Did she?

  “You can call her and find out,” he offers.

  “I broke my phone. As you well know because I asked you to get me another one.”

  “There’s shops a few blocks down. Go out and get one yourself.” The crackle in the speaker makes his words skip. So what I hear is, “Go… and… yourself.”

  But I get his meaning. His threat. Because that’s what that was. “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll just walk out, get a phone, and never bother her or you again?”

  “Maybe you’ll die alone.”

  “Fuck you,” I say. “You don’t even know me.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not ever. I don’t know who this Jordan guy is, but I do know neither of you are getting anything from me other than the peephole you’re being paid to look through.”

  He grunts a laugh. Which is very clear. And I have to admit—reluctantly—that I like his laugh.

  “That peek doesn’t include talking,” I add. “You’re not supposed to talk to me. Not supposed to contact me in any way. You’re supposed to shut up and watch. So why don’t you go back to doing that and let me worry about my future.”

  “You talked first, Evangeline.”

  A shiver runs up my spine when he says my name. Even if it is missing the first syllable because of the intercom.

  “You wanted to play earlier. When you were naked in the room. You did that for me and only me. To give me pleasure. Were you masturbating? Or just pretending?”

  My face flushes hot with embarrassment. But I rally. “What do you think?”

  “Coward,” he sneers. “I think you’re afraid of everything. I think—”

  “Well, I think you’re an asshole.”

  “So leave.”

  “No.”

  “Then do what you’re told.”

  “I’ll do what I want.”

  “Why are you here?”