2023 August 29
Annabelle’s strange relationship with The Bully started at one of Seth’s all-night poker card games.
As Seth’s card dealer, she made it a point to know everything about everyone. Part of it was for Seth–he’d made it clear when he first interviewed her that he wanted to know exactly who everyone was at his Game Nights, what they did during the day, and most importantly, who they socialized with.
The other part was that she wanted the same information that Seth did for her own reasons.
Then, one night, The Bully started showing up well after everyone else had left.
Annabelle and The Bully
Little by little, Annabelle grew closer to The Bully by sharing a helpful observation here and there, all seemingly in an innocent way.
She also learned about The Bully’s interest in her math tic. It clearly enticed him. So, with carefully placed flirts, she fed him more. She started counting the steps that she took while walking past him. After each card game, she would take the deck of cards and place them in order while observing The Bully.
His intrigue in her was clearly growing.
After a few months, she boldly started following him after he left one of his late-night meetings with Seth. He knew she was following him and wondered how he could help her make another bold step. His motivation was simple: he wanted answers from her and knew only one way to extract them. He laid a careful trap for her by leading her randomly through the city during their late-night-cat-and-mouse game, trying to get her to a location where he knew he’d be left in peace with her.
But then he got thrown. Twice.
Annabelle walked up to him on a seemingly random evening, explaining what they were both doing for Seth and proposing a détente.
It’s amazing what you can achieve by telling the truth.
To his surprise, her disarming charm and boldness reignited an internal debate about the ethical implications of his own methods–a dilemma within himself that he thought he had successfully set aside a long time ago.
Miss Understood
Over time, The Bully concluded that he both loved and hated Annabelle–loving her because she was also playing a multilevel game with Seth, but hating her because he felt like he wasn’t entirely in control when she was around.
On the other hand, Annabelle hated The Bully because of his well-known methodologies for gaining information. She thought it was cut and dry with him. But since starting to work with him, she’d begun to wonder if she, along with most people, misunderstood his motivation. Or was this a a bizarre case of Stockholm Syndrome?
That’s where Annabelle’s song Miss Understood comes into play. What The Bully thought was an unintentional side effect of working with Annabelle, his internal debate about using psychological torture to gain information, was very intentional by Annabelle. While she needed his help, she also enjoyed giving him some pain.
And that, friends, is how Annabelle realized she had the same dilemma as The Bully. Were her methods of gaining information any more ethical than The Bully’s?
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