“What the fuck is wrong with you Brittany? I thought we were friends?”
That was the voicemail that I woke up to.
“You’re fucking sick, okay? Fucking sick! I don’t know what the hell your problem is, or what’s going on with you and I don’t want to know! Fuck you, you sick, homewrecking whore!”
The recording ended, and I sat on the side of my bed, wondering what the hell had just happened! When I’d gone to bed, Michelle and I had been friends! I’d gone out to dinner with her and her boyfriend, Rick just a few days ago and everything had been fine then! I didn’t know what had changed!
I tried calling her back, of course but I couldn’t get through. She’d probably blocked my number. She certainly seemed to have me blocked on every other kind of social media! Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
I’d messaged a few of our mutual friends, but most of them either didn’t respond to me or had blocked me.
What the hell had just happened? What the hell had I done? Why were people suddenly refusing to even talk to me? It didn’t make any sense!
‘Fuck you, you sick, homewrecking whore!’
Homewrecking? Did Michelle think that I’d done something with Rick? She couldn’t possibly believe that, could she? I wasn’t exactly open about how much I hated Rick… but it wasn’t much of a secret either. I’d always known that Michelle could do better than him. I mean seriously, she worked as a paralegal. He worked for some no name mobile game developer that published the kinds of disgusting low brow ‘games’ you see advertised all over the internet. He was 27 and looked 45, had a forehead that took up most of his face and overly red skin that looked to be covered in grease. You couldn’t have a conversation with the man without him either talking about his NFTs or pushing whatever crap game his company had recently launched (such gems such as ‘Fart Cloud Massacre’ and something called ‘Love Match’ that advertised itself as some puzzle/makeover game but was literally just Bejeweled with a different fucking color scheme!
I had literally no idea why Michelle ever bothered with him and I had no idea why she seemed to think I’d done anything with him!
But… since nobody else seemed to want to give me any answers as to what the hell had just happened, Rick was starting to look like the best person to contact.
If I’d supposedly done something with him, then maybe he’d known what it was. So I bit the bullet, swallowed my pride, and sent him a message on Facebook.
‘Hey, what happened between you and Michelle? She’s pissed at me! What did I do?’
Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take him all that long to respond.
‘Hey Brittany! Sorry about that… she’s pissed because she found some of your videos on my laptop. Shouldn’t have let her borrow it! Love your stuff, though…’
My videos?
What the hell was he talking about? My mind immediately went to something that I might have filmed with Michelle at some point? Our high school graduation maybe? There weren’t a lot of videos of me out there. I’ve never really liked being on camera. Why would Rick even have videos of me on his computer anyways, and why would Michelle be mad at me about it? Maybe this was a case of mistaken identity? Although how many other Brittanys could she possibly know?
While I sat in bed, mulling all of this over and still trying to wake up, I got another message from Rick.
‘Hey, since we’re talking… I wanted to know if you did custom requests! I was looking for some more specialized fetish content. Like… I wanted to purchase a video of you pooping, but like… more. Doing stuff with it. Would you be open to that?’
I stared at the screen, reading over the words that Rick had just sent me and trying to make sense of them. For a moment, it was almost like I was reading something in another language entirely. I hadn’t had my coffee yet, so I wasn’t entirely awake and my brain was not working at full capacity.
Custom requests…
A video of me pooping…
‘More…’
Slowly every little bit of the meaning behind the message I’d just read slowly clicked into place and as I read it again and again, I was forced to accept that I had in fact read, what I’d just read.
What the actual fuck?
‘EXCUSE ME?’ I messaged back, and I really don’t think that those two words fully encapsulated the barrage of complicated emotions that his message had incited in me.
‘It’s cool if you don’t!’ Rick said, ‘I know you don’t really interact with fans but like… I like your stuff. It’s kinda intimate, you know?’
No! No, I didn’t know!
‘What videos?!’ I demanded, before shaking my head and just pulling him into a call.
Rick took a while to answer and for a moment, I was almost afraid that he wasn’t going to. But after a few minutes, I heard him pick up.
“What videos?” I asked. “Rick, what the fuck are you talking about? Is this some kind of fucking joke?”
“N-no!” He said, “I swear it’s not! I thought… the videos, on YourBrittany! That’s what I was talking about!”
“What the hell is YourBrittany?”
“It’s… it’s… you know, it’s…” His voice was faltering, as if he was slowly piecing something together. He trailed off, going silent.
“Rick?” I asked, “Rick, what the hell is YourBrittany?”
He didn’t answer, not at first and his silence just made me all the more uneasy.
“Can we meet?” He asked. His voice sounded a little different than before. Smaller, almost shaken. It did absolutely nothing to put me at ease.
“I-I swear to God it’s not for anything weird! I swear to fucking God! But… shit… shit… shit… I think you need to see this…”
I could feel my heart beating faster and faster in my chest.
“See what?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
***
Half an hour later, I was pulling into Rick and Michelle’s driveway. She wasn’t home, and I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the prospect of showing up at their house while she was away after she’d accused me of having some kind of fling with her boyfriend, but he’d insisted that I go there and I didn’t have a whole lot of other options.
I had a can of pepper spray in my apartment, just in case this somehow went south and when I went to knock on the door, I found it unlocked. Rick was in the kitchen with his laptop, looking a hell of a lot paler than usual, and when he saw me, his grave expression didn’t do much to calm my nerves.
“Rick, what the hell is going on?” I asked. I wasn’t really in the mood for formalities at the moment.
“It’s… it’s better if you see for yourself…” He said quietly, before turning the laptop to face me.
I was greeted by a website with my face all over it. Photographs of me that I’d taken in various places. Most of them had probably been ripped right off of social media. At the top of the website was a header that read:
Welcome to YourBrittany! The object of your secret admiration!
“What the fuck…?” I said under my breath as I scrolled through the site. On the left side was a short blurb that I read through.
‘Hi! My name is Brittany Murphy and I love the feeling of being watched! So here at YourBrittany, I want to share all of my private moments with you! With a membership, you can watch me anywhere, anytime doing anything and you can purchase my highlight videos to enjoy at your leisure! Nothing is off limits, I’m your naughty domestic girl and I’m ready to put on a show for you!’
“What the hell is this?” I asked as I scrolled through some of the highlight videos that were available. Just the names of them turned my stomach…
Shower fun!
Shitting in the morning!
Private time with my vibe <3
Shower pee!
Bedtime for Brittany!
The thumbnails all displayed different vantage points from inside my house. My bedroom, my shower… from inside of my fucking toilet! I looked over at Rick in disbelief. He couldn’t even make eye contact with me. Up until recently, I didn’t think that this guy was capable of shame but he was proving me very, very wrong.
“I… I found it a while ago…” He stammered, “I saw one of your videos on a site I like and I… I didn’t know! I thought you were making this!”
“You thought I was making this?” I asked.
“It’s got your name and face all over it! It says it’s you! Yeah, I thought you were making it!” He said. “I figured it was like an OnlyFans or something… I mean, the money had to be good!” He said, “The subscription isn’t exactly cheap!”
“So you thought I put a camera in my toilet for money?” I asked, in complete and utter disbelief.
“Look, there’s good money in weird porn,” He said. “And I’m not exactly in a position to fucking judge, am I?”
“You knew about this and you never said anything to me?” I asked. “You didn’t say anything to Michelle?!”
“How exactly was I supposed to tell either of you that I found your secret porn site!” He asked. “I mean, it’s not exactly normal porn! I didn’t want to call you out!”
I just shook my head and tried to move on from the subject.
“How long has this site been active?” I asked.
“About a year,” He said. “I’ve only known about it for a few months though.”
I scrolled a little further before I couldn’t do it anymore. With trembling hands, I closed the laptop.
A year…
A whole year of my life, broadcast to strangers as… as fucking porn…
I kept trying to wrap my mind around it. Kept trying to make sense of it. Part of me wanted to break down laughing at the sheer stupidity of this entire situation. Part of me felt eyes on me at that very moment. My skin felt like it was crawling. I felt like I wanted to bury myself in a little hole and just stop existing. Who else in my life knew about this? Who else did I know who’d been watching me in the shower? Watching me in the bathroom? Watching me sleep?
How many people had been watching?
How many people had recognized me? How many people had tried to find me?
“Brittany?” Rick asked, although I barely heard him. My breathing was getting heavier. My chest felt tight as if something was crushing me. I could feel myself starting to cry. Rick just sat quietly beside me, unsure what to say for a while before finally choosing something to say.
“We should call the police…” He said. “You’re renting, right? You should give them the name of your landlord… maybe he’s the one who…”
My landlord?
I felt a fresh stab of panic in my chest. My landlords were a middle aged couple who lived across town. I’d been renting from them for about three years and I couldn’t imagine them having set any of this up although who else would have had access to the house?
After another moment of hesitation, Rick got up. He took out his phone, but I stopped him.
“N-no… don’t call…” I said, “I want to go there in person.”
He paused, before nodding. I think he could see in my eyes just how scared I was in that moment. Just how violated I felt. And even though in a sense, he’d been one of those violators, in that moment he felt like the only person I could trust. I still hated him. But he at least seemed to understand the horror that I felt and I wondered if he shared it in his own way. I believed him when he said he’d only… indulged in those videos when he’d thought that I’d been the one producing them. At least in the scenario, he envisioned, there as some measure of consent there. Some belief that I’d chosen to share those videos as opposed to having the choice made for me.
“Let’s go to the police then,” He said, before picking up his laptop and getting ready to leave.
We didn’t speak during the entire ride over to the police station.
I don’t actually remember much of the ride over. I just kept thinking about my house, trying to imagine where the cameras might have been. I would have thought I’d have noticed some hidden cameras! I would have thought I’d have seen them at some point! Wouldn’t I have seen them?
At the station, Rick showed the police the website and I gave my statement. I don’t know what I expected them to do… I don’t know what I’d hoped for them to do. Time passed by in a blur, and I don’t remember most of what happened at the police station. For the most part, it’s because I stayed in one of their interview rooms, sitting quietly and waiting for time to pass. The Police had said they’d send some officers to my home, although while those officers were doing their investigation, there wasn’t much for me to do.
Rick had stayed with me for the first hour or so, although he’d left when it was time for work. He’d offered to stay longer, but I’d told him that it was fine. A couple of hours later, a Detective walked into the room with me, a fairly grave expression on his face. I could see the collection of wires in his hand, along with the small camera hanging off the end. It had been painted to match the wall. It would have been easy to miss.
He spoke to me like a friend, making small talk and introducing himself but most of it just went in one ear and out the other. Just because he spoke like nothing was wrong, didn’t mean that nothing was wrong. My eyes remained fixated on that camera he’d set on the table in front of me, and the longer I stared at it the deeper the dread in my chest seemed to sink.
“This was one of the ones from your bedroom,” He said, as he noticed me staring down at the camera. “We found others in the bathroom, kitchen, living room… just about every other room in the house. We’ve still got a couple of officers there looking to make sure we got them all.”
I stared down at the camera, feeling hollow inside and unsure what to even say. The blank lens looked right at me, and even though the camera should have been off, I still felt watched.
“T-take it away, please…” I said.
The Detective just gave a curt nod, before pushing it off to the side. He was kind enough to move the lens so that it wasn’t looking at me.
“We’ve spoken to the owners of the property and we’ll be questioning them shortly,” He said. “We’re also looking into our options regarding taking the website and the video content down, although I can’t promise you any immediate or lasting results here. We don’t have any way to gauge how often these videos have been downloaded or where else they may have been uploaded.”
I looked up at him, a fresh wave of horror washing over me.
“It could have been uploaded elsewhere?” I asked, my voice quaking a little bit.
“Your friend, Rick Wilson. He indicated that he’d first discovered the content on another website when we spoke to him. We asked him to provide the relevant links so that you can contact those websites to request a takedown.”
I could feel my entire body trembling again. My chest felt tight. Breathing felt difficult I felt myself finally starting to fully breakdown. The panic attack hit me like a train and there was nothing that I could do to stop it as I started to cry.
***
I tried to sleep in a hotel that night, although really I only barely slept at all. I kept getting up to inspect the corners of the rooms and check the bathroom up and down. I didn’t find any cameras… but I hadn’t found them before, why would I start finding them now?
Over the next few days, the police cleared my landlords of any charges. They determined that they weren’t the ones who’d installed the cameras, although that wasn’t much of a comfort to me.
I told them I wasn’t going back to the house and they let me out of my lease without argument. Not even a week later, the house was for sale.
YourBrittany was taken down the day after I’d talked to Rick, although I know that it wasn’t the Police who did it. Without its star, the show couldn’t go on. Again, that wasn’t much of a comfort to me. My life was already ruined. There was no going back.
I’ve moved out of the state and started a new life. I’ve changed my name, shaved my hair, gotten some tattoos. Anything I can do to make myself unrecognizable. But it isn’t enough.
I still look for the cameras everywhere I go.
I’m still waiting to find another video of me online.
That’s why I’ve hired you.
They say that you’re the best… they say that you can do anything. Anything.
It’s been a few years since YourBrittany went down, but I guess if anyone could find out who put it up, it’s you. I’ve saved up every penny I have and it’s all yours. All of it. I just want to know it’s over.
I just want to know that whoever did this to me is dead and I don’t care how they die. Do it however you want.
I just want to feel safe again.