What did Tashi do?
Anangsha Alammyan
Ukiyoto Publishing
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All global publishing rights are held by
Ukiyoto Publishing
Published in 2019
Content Copyright © Anangsha Alammyan
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
A spine-chilling tale of how a single mistake can pull you down the abyss of cybercrime
To all those who believe crime only happens in the movies: what if its next target is you?
This book is dedicated to the most talented person I know – the one who ideated this book with me and helped me get the technical details right -
Sai Krishna Kothapalli
CONTENTS
Prologue1
Chapter One3
You have five minutes. Tick tock.
Chapter Two12
One click and you’re done
Chapter Three23
I am right beside you
Chapter Four32
The gods must have been laughing
Chapter Five44
But he was my best friend
Chapter Six52
The only way out of this mess
Chapter Seven72
Tashi, you crazy woman
Chapter Eight84
It is a dead end
Chapter Nine101
Just some drunk men
Chapter Ten120
Blackcurrant or chocolate?
Epilogue: And After125
About the Author130
Note From The Author131
Prologue
The man scrolled through the photographs he had saved in his protected folder. It disappointed him slightly; he had seen them all and used them to his heart’s content.
He needed more, and he needed them soon.
He remembered the woman’s name well. All he had to do was check her Instagram profile. He typed her name in the search bar and pressed enter. When he saw the first thumbnail among the search results, a primal excitement spread in his loins.
It was her. And her profile was public.
Greed and anticipation making his heart beat faster, he went through the selfies, sunsets, and quotes till he came across a photograph she had uploaded seven weeks back. It was a no-make-up selfie of the woman with her mother. “Chilling at home with mom,” the caption read.
What interested the man the most was the location along with the caption. He clicked on the map link and opened a photographic view of her street: he noted she lived in a twelve-story apartment.
“Sweet,” he thought, as he cleared his search history and got ready to leave. He had had enough of playing the game on his computer.
Things were about to get real now.
Chapter One
You have five minutes. Tick tock.
It was eleven in the night.
A lone dog greeted the cab that stopped in front of a twelve-storeyed apartment with a low howl. A slender young woman got down, glancing at the deserted street for a moment before turning to pay the driver. Heels rapping smartly on the concrete, she looked at her watch and waited for him to return the change.
She was a little over five feet tall, dressed in fitted black trousers and a matching blazer. A large shoulder bag was slung to her right, blocking half her body from vision, failing, however, to hide the alluring shape of her chest. Her thick black hair highlighted with a bold auburn shade fell to her shoulders in cascades, casting shadows on her pale face. Her full lips were painted red and the epicanthic folds in her eyes were rimmed in black kohl. The woman’s name was Tashi Chotten and today had been her first work anniversary as a graduate trainee engineer at a reputed EPC firm in New Delhi.
Tashi walked inside the building and pressed the button on the elevator for the tenth floor. When the doors slid open in front of her flat, she noted that the lights were out. Her mother must have fallen asleep, she realised. With a twinge of guilt, Tashi remembered that her mother had been insisting for over a week that the two of them should have at least one meal in the day together. But with the current project going on in full swing and a purported promotion around the corner, she had been unable to find time for that.
Holding her own as a woman from Arunachal Pradesh amid the cut-throat competition in the country’s capital hadn’t been a cakewalk, and Tashi had been alone through most of her journey. Only recently, she had saved enough to bring her mother to stay with her from their village back in Bomdila. Her mother was the only family Tashi had, and it brightened her days after they lived together. Her little apartment felt more like home. Tashi turned the key in the lock and said to herself for the fourth time that week – ‘Tomorrow I’m coming home early.’
She entered the house and fumbled on the adjacent wall to turn on the lights. In the darkness, her right knee caught against a table below the switches. “Fuck,” she exclaimed in frustration. She bent to rub her knee with her right hand as she turned on the lights with her left. The familiar living room and the kitchen came into view. She straightened and walked towards her bedroom.
Tashi entered the comfort of her room and hung her blazer neatly by the door. She then took out her laptop and tossed her bag on the couch. She let out a soft moan as she took off her shoes after a long day of walking in heels. She turned to her wardrobe and hummed as she undressed and changed into her nightgown. It was a silk negligee that fell to her knees: black, with silver flowers printed all over - a lavish present to herself she had purchased on a whim a few days back. She took a moment to revel in the comfort of the soft fabric hugging her skin and then walked back into the kitchen to see what her mother had prepared for dinner.
She uncovered the plastic bowls inside the refrigerator and saw it was rice and chicken stew. Tashi put the chicken inside the microwave oven to heat it up and walked over to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. As she worked up a lather, she bit her lips, lost in thought, trying to remember the lyrics of the song that had been playing in her cab while returning home. The tune was stuck in her head, but she couldn’t quite place the words. The ping of the microwave oven brought her back to reality, and she turned around, wiping her hands on a paper towel. She laid out her dinner carefully on a dish and carried it back to her bedroom. Then she lay on her tummy, with the plate beside her laptop and put a chunky chicken piece in her mouth with a fork. Tashi couldn’t help smiling when she thought about how mad her mother would have been, had she seen her having her meal in bed. “How many times should I tell you to only have meals on the dining table?” she would have scolded, an adorable look of exasperation on her face.
Tashi turned on her computer and opened a Facebook tab. Her feed was filled with photographs of her friends either getting married, going on honeymoons and throwing baby showers, or getting promotions, switching to higher-paying jobs and moving abroad for further studies. It seemed as if all of them had their entire lives planned out while here she was, not
sure if she could squeeze in a few hours during the weekend to spend time with her mother.
Sighing, she opened another tab to look through her emails. Ignoring the updates from work and a couple of advertisements promising dirt-cheap weekend getaways, an email from an unfamiliar sender caught her attention. “Important,” the subject read. It had a photo attached.
Curious, she clicked on the attachment.
When the image loaded onto the screen, Tashi’s mouth hung open in shock – it was her own photograph: pouting with full lips at the camera, dressed in nothing but a lacy black bra and matching panties.
She gaped at the screen, eyes wide with disbelief. No, this can’t be happening, she thought furiously. Her heart was pounding, her mouth suddenly dry.
At a loss for what to do, she refreshed the page, hoping that somehow it would disappear and she would realise she had been daydreaming.
The page loaded. The image on the screen stayed resolutely the same.
Head reeling with disbelief, Tashi read frantically through the accompanying text. There were only three lines, but she read them over and over again till her brain fuddled up and stopped trying to make sense of the words.
I have access to all your pictures.
I’ll keep this a secret between us if you do whatever I tell you to.
I’ll start simple: Send me a picture of what you’re wearing right now.
It was not possible. Her brain went into overdrive trying to connect the dots as to who might be behind this.
Akash is the only person whom I’d sent that photograph – that too four years back, she thought. Is he trying to get back at me?
A million emotions raced in her head; confusion and denial flaring the brightest, obscuring all else. With trembling fingers, she searched anxiously through her contacts and dialled Akash’s number. It rang for a full minute but he didn’t pick up. She slammed the phone on the bed and instinctively bit her nails.
Tashi was terrified. She didn’t know what else to do, so she called her ex-boyfriend up again. This time, a voice groggy with sleep answered. “Hello?”
She was trying hard not to hyperventilate. “Akash, it’s me.” The surprised intake of breath on the other end told her he still recognized her voice.
She started off without preamble – “How dare you send me that email?”
“Wait, what? What email?” his voice registered confusion.
“Those pictures of mine I had sent when we were together,” she almost sobbed.
“Why would I send you pictures?” he asked, his voice raised in anger at her accusing tone.
“I got an email with a – an explicit picture from our time together – and the mail. Oh God, Akash, it is threatening horrible stuff,” she cried.
“What? Am I there in the picture too?”
“No, it is one of those selfies I clicked for you in front of the mirror.”
“This is bad,” he said, thinking fast. “Did they ask for money?”
“No. But they asked me to share more pictures.”
His sigh of relief was almost audible. “Whatever you do, do not share any more pictures. We don’t know what is going on.”
“Tell me Akash,” she continued. “What the fuck did you do? If you claim you’re not the one behind this, then did you share those pictures with anyone else?”
“Tashi, I have no clue what you are talking about,” he said.
“How do I believe it when you’re the only person who had access to them?” she shouted.
“If what you’re saying is true, then either your account has been hacked or somebody else has had access to your computer. You should get in touch with the police at once.”
She got distracted by the notification for a new email flashing on her computer screen. It was from the same sender.
The police might find me, but they will take at least a week. Imagine the damage I can do in that time. For starters, I will upload this picture on Facebook and tag you - so that all your friends and family members can see it. I think you look smoking hot. Sexy, wouldn’t you say?
If you don’t want that to happen, do as I tell you. You have five minutes to send a picture of what you are wearing. Tick tock.
Her heart thumping against her chest, she hung up on Akash and stared at the screen. She felt helpless- with no clue what to do next.
Her dinner lay forgotten on the bed – the microwaved chicken gone cold.
A fresh bout of tears blurred her vision. It made her mascara run down her deathly white face in black rivulets of fear and shame.
Chapter Two
One click and you’re done
A ray of sunlight broke through the mullioned window and cast a checkerboard of brilliant morning light across Tashi’s bed. She raised a hand to cover her face, eyelids fluttering for a while, then opening. She sat up and stretched her arms, taking in the familiar sounds of the cooing pigeons nesting above her window. For a moment, she couldn’t quite place the strange heaviness in her heart. She blinked several times to clear the veil of slumber from her eyes. Slowly, bits and pieces of the happenings of the previous night came back.
She had gone to bed late last night, and in her sleep-deprived state, she allowed herself a small hope that maybe all of last night was a bad dream, the product of her paranoia.
She held her breath and checked her phone. The last email on it was “If you don’t listen to what I tell you, I’ll mail your naked pictures to everyone who is even remotely connected to you professionally. I’ll destroy your career.”
The world around her faded to that tiny rectangle of her screen, alive with the gleaming reflection of the inferno of fear blazing in her eyes. The walls of the room felt like they were closing in – blurring her vision, leaving her no room to breathe.
In a gush, all the terrible memories came back. She sobbed, arms wrapped tightly around her shivering body.
There was nowhere to go — no place to hide her shame. She curled up in bed and faced the wall.
What was happening to her? How could she make it stop?
She took a breath. “Who the fuck are you?” she typed, pulling out the faintest wisps of courage and weaving them around her conscience like a shield. “I am not letting you blackmail me; do you get it? Do whatever you wish, but I swear I’m going to see you behind bars.”
She sent the message on an impulse, but the words sounded braver than she felt.
She took her phone and desperately looked up ways online to see if there was something she could do to ask for help in a situation like this without compromising her dignity.
Within seconds of sending her reply, she had another new email waiting. “If you try to contact the Police, I will bring you down with me. I might be behind bars, but the entire world would know what a shameless slut the innocent-looking Tashi Chotten is.”
She felt disgusted by his choice of words. Who was he to make comments about her body, about the choices she had made in the past? What gave him the right to call her a slut when he himself hid conveniently behind the mask of anonymity? Anger bubbling on the surface of her emotions, she typed. “Fuck you. You can’t do anything so extreme with just one picture. You’re bluffing – I know you have nothing more on me.”
His reply made her shiver. “If you want to take chances, first see how high the stakes are.”
Attached to the message, was a screenshot showing the thumbnails of several pictures of herself in different phases of her life – half-dressed or naked, always throwing a lusty look at the camera. There was a thumbnail of a video where she had two fingers between her legs. Tashi gulped. She remembered how the video ended – her masturbating furiously to an intense orgasm, moaning Akash’s name out loud. The other thumbnail was of a video of Akash fucking her while she lay on the bed, legs spread wide. She remembered this one too – how she had moaned and begged for him to go harder; and how, after an intense session of panting and grunting, he had pulled out and spilled his load on her belly. Akash’s face wasn’
t visible as he was the one holding the camera while recording the video. But Tashi’s flushed face, her bouncing breasts and the curve of her waist and belly could be seen clearly throughout.
It was a screenshot of all the raunchy footage she had recorded when she was young, naïve, and blindly in love with Akash.
Something happened inside her mind. It was physical. She could feel as if large glass windows were shattering in the centre of her brain, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop the pain.
The thought that someone else had seen something so personal made her feel sick to the stomach. Her body felt like it was on fire and drenched in ice-cold water at the same time.
She screamed out in rage.
Just then, there was a sharp rap on her door.
She sat up, her heart beating fast.
It was only her mother. “Ashi dear, you woke up late today. I am happy that after so long we can have breakfast together. I have prepared duck-egg omelettes – for you. Get dressed and come out so we can eat before you leave for office.”
She took a few breaths to calm herself. “Mom,” she called out. “I’m working from home today – there is a lot of stuff for me to get done, so I’ll be busy all day. Don’t disturb me, I’m not hungry.”
Her mother sounded hurt when she said, “But dear, at least have some milk? It is bad for your health to work on an empty stomach.”
“Mom, leave me alone,” she said, exasperated. “I have lots of work.”
She heard a sharp intake of breath from outside and the sound of sandalled feet walking away. Tashi felt bad as she realised she had lost patience and shouted at her mother for no fault of hers. In her attempt to hide her trauma from the world, she had hurt the one person who considered having a meal with her daughter the highlight of her day.
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