I'd become familiar with The Mechanical Turk. This is Amazon's online job-posting site. Submit a review on my Youtube video and I'll give you $0.02, that kind of thing.
Being a Westerner, this obviously wasn't worth my time but I liked the idea. Real life work is inconvenient. I have to cycle in the rain, people eat with their mouths open or don't blow their noses, are casually racist and just generally ornery. I'm fussy. I like a quiet life.
Months passed and I learnt about another couple of sites where the pay was slightly better. Still in the $2-3 per hour range but perhaps just about worth it, if only for the experience.
I graduated and started applying for conventional jobs but meanwhile thought I'd see if I could get a bit of online work. I was initially looking for virtual PA or admin. work but would stray into the Writing categories now and then, hoping someone would realise I was terribly witty and observant. I knew this wasn't going to actually happen though so I set up my account as an administrator and PA and left it at that.
Shortly after this, I received an invitation to interview for a listing called "Fictional Web Story Writer 'NOC' ala Bourne Trilogy". Obviously, I was flattered to have been chosen out the thousands and thousands of workers. 'Finally!' I thought, 'Someone who recognises my innate talent. Ha, I knew it would happen all along!'.
The invitation included a little about the story;
"A single female character in the sense of a Goverment sanctioned Assasin, with an emphasis on Stealth apose to Action" that "Tends to trap her victim and slowly suffocate the life out of them". She "Does not use any weapons hence able to perform hits in secure or tightly populated venues such as Airplanes, Buses, Trains, Librarys, Embassys etc".
The goal was to "build Dossiers for the operatives including backgrounds, training, academic profiling and skill sets in regard to close combat abilities. The agents are British, American and Russian."
"I can write that shit!" I thought. You want Xenia Onatopp, I can give you Xenia Onatopp! I wear knee-high black boots, I stare at my wet-look legging'd thighs, glistening like two baby seals - I've got it all in mind! I could write this.
The man, R, sent me a sample to give me a feel for the job. It was on a boat with guards at night and all very covert, lots of staring into the man's eyes or whispering in his ear as he was slowly crushed by the protagonist's limbs and generally thrown over the edge.
I wrote back "Its quite porny in a way what with all the pelvis-sitting and thigh-entwining and thrusting and whatnot - is the porniness a goal or just meant to give a little frisson to the kills?"
R didn't respond to this question immediately, just invited me to chat on MSN. We moved there and got down to business.
It became apparent that it was in fact a porny job. He never called it that but it all centred on men being helplessly crushed by cruel women, generally between their thighs.
He was very enthusiastic about the cruelness of it all. The men should know but be helpless and any psychological torture was a massive bonus.
I wrote an airport based scene - I forget the details exactly but I was sure to get some bloke crushed by thighs. I seem to remember doing something vaguely psychological or clever and tricksy with the kill and he lapped it up.
He sent me another example to spur me on. This time, the agent killed an ambassador in his home in front of his teenage boy. She didn't just kill him in front of the teen though. She slowly killed him and had a good chat with the lad as it went. The kid even got an hard-on from the frisson of it all! Nothing quite as erotic as a thigh-muffling of your old dad whilst you powerlessly and helplessly watch. Dad died, the teen was helpless with thigh-inspired lust and the agent escaped, free to thighbeast her way to power and covert fame.
This story was weirder. But I hung in there. I like sex, I like porn. I think it's generally healthy and that just about everyone needs an outlet of some variety. It wasn't my thing but it was still only fantasy and it would be paid fantasy and it was alright really.
He got even more into the deal and sent me another scenario. This time, it was on a plane. The agent (Hannah, she was called) had her mark on this flight. He was travelling with his two boys who were around 6 and 8. She squashed the first kid whilst in her seat somehow. His dad got up to go to the toilet and she sexually thighmuffled the kid like there was no tomorrow, getting him down on the floor in front of her.
How she did this in her seat with no-one seeing is beyond my ken. The kid got bundled under the seat. The dad returned from the toilet and didn't notice his missing son. So far, so good for Hannah.
Next, Hannah went to the toilet and somehow inveigled the other child in with here. This scenario came with a handy picture for me to really understand precisely how the child was suffocated with Hannah's powerful thighs, replete with bloated face and attention drawn to precisely how they were aligned in the small space that was the airplane toilet.
This one too was somehow returned to their seat where she tenderly put him under a blanket and told the hostess he was asleep. Again, Father didn't notice.
The flight landed and Hannah left, magnificently, sleekly and cunningly murderous without anyone the wiser.
At this point, I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable. I raised my discomfort and R was confused. Didn't I understand that this was more psychological?! The agent had cunning tortured the father in a much more cleverly orchestrated hit. She killed his children and left him to suffer for ever. Surely, this was a much more subtle, adept and psychological mission?
'Yes, but she erotically squeezed primary-school age children to death with her thighs in small spaces' I protested.
No, no, it was psychological and clever.
The liberal sex-positivist in me was all akimbo. What did I think? Was this a right-on, all's-fine-by-me, sex fantasy or was it sexy child snuff? After all, it was only writing. It wasn't real. It's just a bit of harmless writing...right?
The bloated face of Mohammed (the targets were usually Middle Eastern) swam before my eyes.
I swallowed it down. I was sex-positive. This was fantasy. It was fine. It was fine. It's mostly about the older guys. The kids were just a clever plot device.
R and I wrote another story together. This time, at an embassy party, where Hannah mesmerised a very old gentleman ambassador with her sexuality, right in front of his family! She lured him into a toilet and squashed him.
This time, she rang the man's son on his mobile and got him to find him in the toilet, all dead. Then, she sprang out of the cubicle, got him from behind and thighsquashed him round the neck, making sure he bloody well knew it. And then escaped again.
I didn't write in a child as this ambassador's son but it was becoming rapidly clear that the focus wasn't on naughty blokes getting squashed but a bit more on their sons, some of which were outright children.
I was starting to lose the faith.
By this point, I'd been talking with R and writing for a few hours and called it a day. I tried not to think about it too much and went to sleep.
The next day, I woke and thought about the previous day's activities. The word 'snuff' hove into my mind's view.
I couldn't unthink it.
Oh God, he wants me to write snuff. Snuff that sometimes involves children.
It's not sexy, sexy, ooh-helpless-man, let-me-squeeze-your-face-with-my-thighs erotica. It was sexy, sexy, helpless-man, know-that-I-am-killing-you-with-my-thighs erotica.
Sex + death = snuff. Oh God, I wrote snuff. Oh God, he wants to employ me to write snuff.
Xenia Onatopp's thigh-squeezing was ITV-friendly cheese-cake.
This is torture-sex-killing with some vaguely racial overtones thrown in for good measure. This isn't covered in the liberal sex-positivity handbook!
I wrote back to R and respectfully declined the job, politely stating that I didn't think that "in good faith, I can write snuff or, indeed, erotica that involves children, even when only contingently."
R was sad and asked me to reconsider, citing our "excellent connection" and my "sensual experience". He said the kiddy stuff was a one-off and that he "really didnt want to lose me lol", "confident," I could "build Hannah into something we haven't seen before.".
He followed this with a plaintive "I thought we were talking about the Embassy mission with the old man target now?"
And there my employment relationship ended with R. Not with a bang, but a whimper. I only inadvertently wrote a little bit of snuff so my reputation is more or less intact.
Also, if anyone can tell me what 'NOC' means, I'd love to know. A nosetap to those in the biz? No Oxygen Content? Non-Overt Crushing? Who knows, maybe that should have tipped me off right there and then.
TL;DR? Thighmuffle.
