Chapter 3: Marcus's Blackmail
The apartment door clicked shut, sealing Ethan inside a tomb of his own making. The silence was louder than the cafe had been. He slid down the back of the door until his ass hit the scuffed laminate, his head in his hands. The scent of Tina’s perfume, something like jasmine and black pepper, still clung to his shirt, a ghost touch from where she’d leaned in. He could still hear the stifled laughter of the college girls, see the knowing glint in Tina’s dark eyes.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He flinched.
A video message from Marcus. The preview thumbnail was a blur of stage lights and his own face, slack-jawed and vacant. The caption read: ‘Cant wait to show the crew at the party tonight. This shit is legendary.’
Ice flooded Ethan’s veins. The office party. His colleagues, his boss, the clients. His entire professional life, obliterated in a three-minute clip of him clucking like a chicken and begging the hypnotist to call him a pretty girl. Rational thought evaporated, replaced by pure animal panic. He called Marcus.
It rang once. “Ethan, my man! You recover from your… episode?” Marcus’s voice was a gravelly boom, filled with amusement.
“Marcus, you cannot show that video. You cannot.”
“Why not? It’s fucking hilarious.”
“It’s my livelihood.” Ethan’s voice cracked. “Please. I’m begging you. Delete it.”
A long pause, filled with the distant sounds of a construction site in the background. Marcus exhaled, a wet, considering sound. “Tell you what. A trade. You let me see it in person. Just once. I say the word, you do your thing. I get my laugh, I delete the video. Forever.”
Ethan’s stomach turned to liquid. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Okay. Well, see you at the party, bimbo.”
“Wait!” The word tore from him, desperate. He squeezed his eyes shut. The thought of that video playing on the big screen in the conference room, the roar of laughter… it was worse. Anything was worse. “Fine. Once. And you delete it in front of me.”
“Deal. Be there in an hour. Don’t change, you looked cute.”
The line went dead.
The hour passed in a nauseating blur. Ethan paced the filthy living room, kicking aside empty cans. He tried to reason with himself, to find a loophole in the programming. The hypnotist’s voice echoed in his memory: “When you hear the word ‘bimbo,’ you will become my perfect, empty-headed little doll.” It was absurd. It wasn’t real. And yet, at the cafe, his body had moved without his consent, a puppet with its strings yanked.
A heavy fist hammered on the door.
Marcus filled the doorway, smelling of sweat and cheap aftershave. He pushed past Ethan, his bulk unsettling the air. He surveyed the apartment with a smirk. “Charming. You gonna clean up for me, sweetheart?”
“Just do it and get out,” Ethan muttered, crossing his arms defensively.
Marcus pulled out his phone, opening the camera app. He hit record, the red light a malignant eye. “Nah. I want the full experience. For the archives.” He pocketed the phone, the lens peeking out from his shirt pocket, still recording. He settled onto the couch, spreading his legs. His work pants were dusty, strained at the thighs. “Come on. Let’s see it.”
Ethan’s mouth was desert-dry. “Say it.”
Marcus’s grin was all teeth. “Bimbo.”
It was like a circuit breaker blowing in his skull. One moment he was Ethan Thomas, cynical and clenched. The next, a warm, syrupy wave of nothingness washed through him. The tension in his shoulders melted. His crossed arms fell to his sides, one hand fluttering up to play with a strand of his messy hair. A high, giggling sigh escaped his lips.
“Oh my god,” he heard himself squeal, the voice alien and bright. “Heyyyy, Marcus!”
Marcus’s laughter was a deep, rolling thunder. “Holy shit. It’s real.”
Ethan’s hips swayed as he took a step forward. His thoughts were distant, fuzzy radio static. There was only the pleasing shape of Marcus on the couch, the wanton pulse between his own legs. He dropped to his knees on the gritty floor, the gesture fluid and natural. “You’re soooo big,” he cooed, his fingers reaching for Marcus’s belt buckle.
“Fuck yeah, I am,” Marcus grunted, not moving to help.
Ethan’s slender fingers, now moving with a practiced grace he’d never possessed, fumbled the buckle open, then the button and zipper. He yanked the rough fabric down Marcus’s hips. Marcus’s cock, half-hard and thick, sprung free. Ethan didn’t hesitate. He leaned in, his pink lips parting.
“I’ve been a bad bimbo,” he moaned, the words a humid whisper against the flushed skin before he took the head into his mouth.
The taste was salt and skin and cheap soap. His rational mind was screaming, trapped somewhere in the back of the warm, buzzing fog. He could only obey the deeper programming, the need to please. He sucked, his tongue swirling, hollowing his cheeks. He gagged as Marcus pushed deeper, the thick shaft hitting the back of his throat. Tears sprung to his eyes, but the bimbo persona interpreted them as passion, a slutty earnestness. He made loud, wet, slobbering sounds, saliva dripping down his chin onto the floor.
“Yeah, suck that dick, you dumb bitch,” Marcus growled, one rough hand tangling in Ethan’s hair. He didn’t guide, he shoved, fucking Ethan’s face with brutal, shallow thrusts. “Look at you. Graphic designer my ass. You’re just a fucking cock sleeve.”
The humiliation was a distant fire. The persona thrived on it. Ethan’s own cock was straining against his jeans, a traitorous, hard ache. He moaned around the intrusion, the vibrations making Marcus curse. The phone in Marcus’s pocket captured it all: the obscene noises, the tears streaking through the dust on Ethan’s cheeks, the utterly vacant look in his wide, blinking eyes.
Marcus’s thrusts became erratic, his breath hitching. “Gonna fucking… take it, you whore…”
Ethan felt the hot, sudden spill at the back of his throat, the bitter, viscous flood. He choked, swallowing convulsively as Marcus grunted through his release. When Marcus finally pulled out, Ethan stayed on his knees, panting, lips slick and swollen, a strand of cum and spit connecting his mouth to the softening cock.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing. Then, like a cold bucket of water dumped over his soul, the fog lifted.
The clarity was violent. The taste in his mouth. The ache in his jaw. The wet spot on his crotch from his own unchecked arousal. The smug, satiated face of his best friend looking down at him.
Ethan scrambled back, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, retching. “Delete it,” he rasped, his own voice, raw and shattered.
Marcus, still catching his breath, pulled the phone from his pocket. He stopped the recording, navigated with a thick thumb, and made a show of holding it up. He found the original stage video. The delete icon. He pressed it. “See? Gone.”
He stood, tucking himself away with a grimace of satisfaction. He looked at Ethan, crumpled and shaking on the floor. “Funny. You’re even better at that than you are at Photoshop.”
Then he was gone, the door closing with a finality that echoed in the empty apartment.
Ethan crawled to the bathroom and vomited until his throat was shredded. He scrubbed his mouth with soap, brushed his teeth until his gums bled, but the taste, the feeling, the memory was seared into him. He was a bomb with two triggers now: the word, and the crushing weight of his own shame.
He didn’t sleep. He sat in the dark, the flickering TV painting his hollow expression in blue light. The lipstick-stained napkin on the armrest seemed to mock him. A crumb of evidence from a self he couldn’t control.
As dawn bleached the sky grey, his phone lit up. Not Marcus. Tina.
‘Saw your friend leave. Looked like he had a good time. You need a better class of visitor, Ethan. Coffee’s on me today. Come by after your… shower.’
A new kind of cold settled over him. She’d been watching. She knew. And she wasn’t repulsed.
She was interested.