The Best New Horror 7

by Stephen Jones

  The image quality was not especially good, and looked as if it had been taken with some small automatic camera. But the girl in the picture was Jeanette, without a shadow of a doubt. She was perched on the arm of an anonymous armchair, and with a lurch I realized it was probably taken in her flat. She was, as advertised, fully clothed, wearing a shortish skirt and a short-sleeved top which buttoned up at the front. She was looking in the general direction of the camera, and her expression was unreadable. She looked beautiful, as always, and somehow much, much more appealing than any of the buck-naked women who cavorted through the usual pictures to be found on the net.

  After I’d got over my jaw-dropped surprise, I found I was feeling something else. Annoyance, possibly. I know I’m biased, but I didn’t think it right that a picture of her was plastered up in cyberspace for everyone to gawk at, even if she was fully clothed. I realize that’s hypocritical in the face of all the other women up there, but I can’t help it. It was different.

  Because I knew her.

  I was also angry because I could only think of one way it could have got there. I’d mentioned a few net-related things in Jeanette’s presence at work, and she’d shown no sign of recognition. It was a hell of a coincidence that I’d seen the picture at all, and I wasn’t prepared to speculate about stray photos of her falling into unknown people’s hands. There was only one person who was likely to have uploaded it. Her boyfriend.

  The usual women (and men) in the pictures are getting paid for it. It’s their job. Jeanette wasn’t, and might not even know the picture was there.

  I quickly logged back onto the net and found the original file. I extricated the uploader information and pulled it onto the screen, and then swore.

  Remember a while back I said it was possible to hide yourself when posting up to the net? Well, that’s what he’d done. The e-mail address of the person who’d uploaded the picture was listed as “anon99989@penet.fi”. That meant that rather than posting it up in his real name, he’d routed the mail through an anonymity server in Finland called PENET. This server strips the journey information out of the posting and assigns a random address which is held on an encrypted database. I couldn’t tell anything from it at all. Feeling my lip curl with distaste, I quit out.

  By the time I got to work the next day I knew there wasn’t anything I could say about it. I could hardly pipe up with “Hey! Saw your pic on the Internet porn board last night!” And after all, it was only a picture, the kind that people have plastic folders stuffed full of. The question was whether Jeanette knew Ayer had posted it up. If she did then, well, it just went to show that you didn’t know much about people just because you worked with them. If she didn’t, then I think she had a right both to know, and to be annoyed.

  I dropped a few net-references into the conversations we had, but nothing came of them. I even mentioned the newsgroups, but got mild interest and nothing more. It was fairly clear she hadn’t heard of them. In the end I sort of mentally shrugged. So her unpleasant boyfriend had posted up a picture. There was nothing I could do about it, except bury still further any feelings I might have entertained for her. She already had a life with someone else, and I had no business interfering.

  In the evening I met up with Nick again, and we went and got quietly hammered in a small drinking club we frequented. I successfully fought off his ideas on going and getting some food, doubtless the cuisine of one particular village on the top of Kilimanjaro, and so by the end of the evening we were pretty far gone. I stumbled out of a cab, lolloped up the stairs and mainlined coffee for a while, in the hope of avoiding a hangover the next day. And it was as I sat, weaving slightly, on the sofa, that I conceived the idea of checking a certain newsgroup.

  Once the notion had taken hold I couldn’t seem to dislodge it. Most of my body and soul were engaged in remedial work, trying to save what brain cells they could from the onslaught of alcohol, and the idea was free to romp and run as it pleased. So I found myself slumped at my desk, listening to my hard disk doing its thing, and muttering quietly to myself. I don’t know what I was saying. I think it was probably a verbal equivalent of that letter I never gave to someone, an explanation of how much better off Jeanette would be with me. I can get very maudlin when I’m drunk.

  When the newsgroup appeared in front of me I blearily ran my eye over the list. The group had seen serious action in the last twenty-four hours, and there were over 300 titles to contend with. I was beginning to lose heart and interest when I saw something about two thirds of the way down the list.

  “j2.gif-{f}-‘Young–woman’ ”, one line said, and it was followed by “j3.gif-{f}- ‘Young–woman’ ”.

  These two titles started immediately to do what half a pint of coffee hadn’t: sober me up. At a glance I could tell that there were two differences from the description of the first picture of Jeanette I’d seen. The numerals after the “j” were different, implying they were not the same picture. Also, there were two words missing at the end of the title: the words “fully clothed”.

  I called the first few lines of the first file onto the screen, and saw that it too had come from anon99989@penet.fi. Then, reaching shakily for a cigarette, I downloaded the rest. When my connection was over I slowly stitched the text files together and then booted up the viewer.

  It was Jeanette, again. Wincing slightly, hating myself for having access to photos of her under these circumstances when I had no right to know what they might show, I looked briefly at first one and then the other.

  J2.gif looked as if it had been taken immediately after the first I’d seen. It showed Jeanette, still sitting on the arm of the chair. She was undoing the front of her top, and had got as far as the third button. Her head was down, and I couldn’t see her face. Trembling slightly from a combination of emotions, I looked at j3.gif. Her top was now off, showing a flat stomach and a dark blue lacy bra. She was steadying herself on the chair with one arm, and her position looked uncomfortable. She was looking off to one side, away from the camera, and when I saw her face I thought I had the answer to at least one question. She didn’t look very happy. She didn’t look as if she was having fun.

  She didn’t look as if she wanted to be doing this at all.

  I stood up suddenly and paced around the room, unsure of what to do. If she hadn’t been especially enthralled about having the photos taken in the first place, I couldn’t believe that Jeanette condoned or even knew about their presence on the net. Quite apart from anything else, she wasn’t that type of girl, if that type of girl indeed existed at all.

  This constituted some very clear kind of invasion by her boyfriend, something that negated any rights he may have felt he had over her. But what could I do about it?

  I copied the two files onto a floppy, along with j1.gif, and threw them off my hard disk. It may seem like a small distinction to you, but I didn’t want them on my main machine. It would have seemed like collusion.

  I got up the next morning with no more than a mild headache, and before I left for work decided to quickly log onto the net. There were no more pictures, but there was something that made me very angry indeed. Someone had posted up a message whose total text was the following.

  “Re: j-pictures {f}: EXCELLENT! More pleeze!”.

  In other words, the pictures had struck a chord with some nameless net-pervert, and they wanted to see some more.

  I spent the whole morning trying to work out what to do. The only way I could think of broaching the subject would involve mentioning the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica group itself, which would be a bit of a nasty moment. I hardly got a chance to talk to her all morning anyway, because she was busy on the phone. She also seemed a little tired, and little disposed to chat on the two occasions we found ourselves in the kitchen together.

  It felt as if parts of my mind were straining against each other, pulling in different directions. If she didn’t know about it, it was wrong, and she should be put in the picture. If I did so, however, she’d never th
ink the same of me again. There was a chance, of course, that the problem might go away: despite the net-loser’s request, the expression on Jeanette’s face in j3.gif made it seem unlikely there were any more pictures. And ultimately the whole situation probably wasn’t any of my business, however much it felt like it was.

  In the event, I missed the boat. About 4.30 I emerged from a long and vicious argument with the server software to discover that Jeanette had left for the day. “A doctor’s appointment.” In most of the places I’ve worked that phrase translates directly to “A couple of hours off from work, obviously not spent at the doctors”, but that didn’t seem to be the general impression at the VCA. She’d probably just gone to the doctor’s. Either way she was no longer in the office, and I was slightly ashamed to find myself relaxing now that I could no longer talk to her.

  At 8.30 that evening, after my second salad of the week, I logged on and checked the group again. There was nothing there. I fretted and fidgeted around the apartment for a few hours, and then tried again at 11.00. This time I found something. Two things: j4.gif, and j5.gif, both from the anonymous address.

  In the first picture Jeanette was standing. She was no longer wearing her skirt, and her long legs led up to underwear that matched the bra I’d already seen. She wasn’t posing for the picture. Her hands were on her hips, and she looked angry. In j5 she was leaning back against the arm of the chair, and no longer wearing her bra. Her face was blank.

  I stared at the second picture for a long time, mind completely split in two. If you ignored the expression on her face, she looked gorgeous. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, exactly in proportion to her long, slender body. It was, undeniably, an erotic picture. Except for her face, and the fact that she obviously didn’t want to be photographed, and the fact that someone was doing it anyway. Not only that, but broadcasting it to the planet.

  I decided that enough was enough, and that I had to do something. After a while I came up with the best that I could. I loaded up my e-mail package, and sent a message to anon99989@penet.fi. The double-blind principle the server operated on meant that the recipient wouldn’t know where it had come from, and that was fine by me. The message was this:

  “I know who you are.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was something. The idea that someone out there on the information superhighway could know his identity might be enough to stop him. It was only a stop-gap measure, anyway. I now knew I had to do something about the situation. It simply wasn’t on.

  And I had to do it soon. When I checked the next morning there were no more pictures, but two messages from people who’d downloaded them. “Keep ’em cumming!” one wit from Japan had written. Some slob from Texas had posted in similar vein, but added a small request: “Great, but pick up the pace a little. I want to see more FLESH!”

  All the way to work I geared myself up to talking to Jeanette, and I nearly punched the wall when I heard she was out at a venue meeting for the whole morning and half the afternoon. I got rid of the morning by concentrating hard on one of her databases, wanting to bring at least something positive into her life. I know it’s not much, but all I know is computers, and that’s the best that I could do.

  At last 3 o’clock rolled round, and Jeanette reappeared in the office. She seemed tired and a little preoccupied, and sat straight down at her desk to work. I loitered in the main office area, willing people to fuck off out of it so hard my head started to ache. I couldn’t get anywhere near the topic if there were other people around. It would be hard enough if we were alone.

  Finally, bloody finally, she got up from her desk and went into the kitchen. I got up and followed her in. She smiled faintly and vaguely on seeing me, and, seeing that she had a bandage on her right forearm, I used that to start a conversation. A small mole, apparently, hence the visit to the doctor. I let her finish that topic, keeping half an eye out to make sure that no one was approaching the kitchen.

  “I bought a camera today,” I blurted, as cheerily as I could. It wasn’t great, but I wanted to start slowly. She didn’t respond for a moment, and then looked up, her face expressionless.

  “Oh yes?” she said, eventually. “What are you going to photograph?”

  “Oh, you know, buildings, landscape. Black-and-white, that kind of thing.” She nodded distantly, and I ran out of things to say.

  I ran out because in retrospect the topic didn’t lead anywhere, but I stopped for another reason too. I stopped because as she turned to pick up the kettle, the look on her face knocked the wind out of me. The combination of unhappiness and loneliness, the sense of helplessness. It struck me again that despite the anger in her face in j4, in j5 she had not only taken her bra off but looked resigned and defeated. Suddenly I didn’t care how it looked, didn’t care what she thought of me.

  “Jeanette,” I said, firmly, and she turned to look at me again. “I saw a pict – . . .”

  “Hello boys and girls. Having a little tea party are we?”

  At the sound of Whitehead’s voice I wanted to turn round and smash his face in. Jeanette laughed prettily at her employer’s sally, and moved out of the way to allow him access to the kettle. Whitehead asked me some balls-achingly dull questions about the computer system, obviously keen to sound as if he had the faintest conception of what it all meant. By the time I’d finished answering him Jeanette was back at her desk.

  The next hour was one of the longest of my life. I’d gone over, crossed the line. I knew I was going to talk to her about what I’d seen. More than that, I’d realized that it didn’t have to be as difficult as I’d assumed.

  The first picture, j1.gif, simply showed a pretty girl sitting on a chair. It wasn’t pornographic, and could have been posted up in any number of places on the net. All I had to do was say I’d seen that picture. It wouldn’t implicate me, and she would know what her boyfriend was up to.

  I hovered round the main office, ready to be after her the minute she looked like leaving, having decided that I’d walk with her to the tube and tell her then. So long as she didn’t leave with anyone else, it would be perfect. While I hovered I watched her work, her eyes blank and isolated. About quarter to five she got a phone call. She listened for a moment, said “Yes, all right” in a dull tone of voice, and then put the phone down. There was nothing else to distract me from the constant cycling of draft statements in my head.

  At five she started tidying her desk, and I slipped out and got my jacket. I waited in the hallway until I could hear her coming, and then went out and got in the lift. I walked through the lobby as slowly as I could, and then went and stood outside the building. My hands were sweating and I felt wired and frightened, but I knew I was going to go through with it. A moment later she came out.

  “Hi,” I said, and she smiled warily, surprised to see me, I suppose. “Look Jeanette, I need to talk to you about something.”

  She stared at me, looked around, and then asked what.

  “I’ve seen pictures of you.” In my nervousness I blew it, and used the plural rather than singular.

  “Where?” she said, immediately. She knew what I was talking about. From the speed with which she latched on I realized that whatever fun and games were going on between her and Ayer were at the forefront of her mind.

  “The Internet. It’s . . .”

  “I know what it is,” she said. “What have you seen?”

  “Five so far,” I said. “Look, if there’s anything I can do . . .”

  “Like what?” she said, and laughed harshly, her eyes begin to blur. “Like what?”

  “Well, anything. Look, let’s go talk about it. I could . . .”

  “There’s no use,” she said hurriedly, and started to pull away. I followed her, bewildered. How could she not want to do anything about it? I mean, all right, I may not have been much of a prospect, but surely some help was better than none?

  “Jeanette . . .”

  “Let’s talk tomorrow,” she hissed, and suddenly I real
ized what was happening. Her boyfriend had come to pick her up. She walked towards the kerb where a white car was coming to a halt, and I rapidly about-faced and started striding the other way. It wasn’t fear, not purely. I also didn’t want to get her in trouble.

  As I walked up the road I felt as if the back of my neck was burning, and at the last moment I glanced to the side. The white car was just passing, and I could see Jeanette sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat. Her boyfriend was looking out of the side window. At me. Then he accelerated and the car sped away.

  That night brought another two photographs. J6 had Jeanette naked, sitting in the chair with her legs slightly apart. Her face was stony. In j7 she was on all fours, photographed from behind. As I sat in my chair, filled with impotent fury, I noticed something in both pictures, and blew them up with the magnifier tool. In j6 one side of her face looked a little red, and when I looked carefully at j7 I could see that there was a trickle of blood running from a small cut on her right forearm.

  And suddenly I realized, with help from memories of watching her hands and arms as she worked, that there had never been a mole on her arm. She hadn’t got the bandage because of the doctor.

  She had it because of him.

  I hardly slept that night. I stayed up till three, keeping an eye on the newsgroup. Its denizens were certainly becoming fans of the “j” pictures, and I saw five requests for some more. As far as they knew all this involved was a bit more scanning originals from some magazine. They didn’t realize that someone I knew was having them taken against her will. I considered trying to do something within the group, like posting a message telling what I knew. While its frequenters are a bit sad, they tend to have a strong moral stance about such things. It’s not like the alt.binaries.pictures.tasteless group – where anything goes, the sicker the better. If the a.b.p.erotica crowd were convinced the pictures were being taken under coercion, there was a strong chance they might mailbomb Ayer off the net. It would be a big war to start, however, and one with potentially damaging consequences. The mailbombing would have to go through the anonymity server, and would probably crash it. While I couldn’t give a fuck about that, it would draw the attention of all manner of people. In any event, because of the anonymity, nothing would happen directly to Ayer apart from some inconvenience.