Catfish, page 1
Dedication
Reviews
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
More about Lynda
Acknowledgements
Catfish
Copyright© Lynda Throsby Publishing 2018 All Rights Reserved
Editing by Claire Allmendinger of BNWEditing
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you do, you are STEALING.
I only distribute my work through Amazon and Ingram Spark.
If you have received this book from anywhere else, it is a pirate copy, it is illegal, and you’ve really spoiled my day.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Lynda Throsby has asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The characters and names are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and author except for the instance of quotes for reviews. No part of this book may be uploaded without permission of the publisher and author nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is originally published. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph by Stuart Reardon
Featuring Stuart Reardon
Cover design by Sybil Wilson / Pop Kitty Designs
Formatted by Cassy Roop @ PinkInk Designs
ISBN 978-1-9993150-0-9
Lynda Throsby Publishing
E-Mail ljtpublishing@gmail.com
This would not have been possible without the support I received from my Hubby Peter.
He continuously told me to get on with it.
Running our business, making the time for me to write.
He’s my champion and my hero.
My second bestie Stuart, who continually said, ‘do it’, don’t be a chicken,
even when I wanted to quit and for doing the stunning pictures for my cover.
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Lynda Throsby Xx
I close my eyes to old ends
It’s time to start something new
To open my heart to new beginnings
And trust the magic of all that’s new
Catfish
Online Dating Meanings
Stashing – When you start seeing someone, but they keep you a secret and stash you away—usually because they are married or seeing other people. You are their secret.
Ghosting – When you start seeing someone, and they just disappear and vanish without a trace. They don’t return your messages and even block you from social media and dating sites. This is so they don’t have to tell you they are breaking up with you verbally.
Zombieing – If you have been ghosted the culprit may resurface back on the sites. This is usually a fair bit of time after they ghosted you. They try to make contact, only to probably ghost you again.
Benching – This is before you discuss exclusivity, and they bench you like in a football game while they look for someone better. You are their backup option. They may come back to you if no one better comes along.
Catch and release – Where someone persistently pursues you as they love the chase, but as soon as you agree to a date they release you, as you’re not a conquest any more.
Breadcrumbing – This is where someone seems to be pursuing you, but really, they have no intention of being in a relationship with you. It could just be the chase they like, or it’s a game as they are already in a relationship. They message and chase, leaving you breadcrumbs with no outcome.
Cushioning – When you’re dating, but they know it’s not going anywhere or will not end well so instead of cutting you loose they prepare you for the break up by chatting and flirting with others online to cushion the blow to you.
Kittenfishing – Someone who has out-dated images of themselves and lies about their age, height, job, hair etc. If you were to meet you would know they were lying.
Catfishing – The pinnacle of online dating deception. Where someone pretends to be someone else. They use fake images to lure you in and use false information to make them seem more interesting. This can be dangerous if you decide to meet up, although you would never know until you decided to go that far and by that time it could be too late for you.
George
IT HAS TAKEN me a long time to reel this one in and get her to finally agree to meet me for a date. It’s been too long now since my last catch, just over a year ago now. This one is going to suffer because i’ve waited for wait so long, I’ve missed out on others while I’ve been chasing her, and my need is growing more and more. It’s getting harder each day—both figuratively and literally. The things I’m going to do to this bitch now… I can’t wait, and boy will she regret making me. I am a very impatient man.
The minute I laid eyes on her profile picture while scanning the hordes of whores for my next catch, I knew I had to have her. It was the long mousey brown hair and the hazel eyes, although the others had looked similar, this whore was the spitting image of my fucking bitch of a mother.
My brow is wet from sweat, and I’m shaking, knowing I will finally have her tomorrow. I’m so fucking hard right now just looking at her picture. God help me when I get my hands on her. She will regret ever responding to my messages and playing with me, stringing me along. Why the fuck I get hard for these whores that look like my mother is a mystery to me. They should repulse me, but I can’t help myself, and it makes me hate myself even more. I feel sick to the stomach. Now I need to take care of my fucking cock. That bitch, Katherine has done this to me yet again.
Katherine
WHAT HAVE I done? I said I wouldn’t date for a long time, so why have I just agreed to meet this Lewis guy. Why am I doing this? Why do I put myself through this? It’s not like I need someone. I have my own business, right here in the city, which takes up most of my time. But still… it’s lonely, and his pictures are hot. I mean, those abs and biceps and the tattoos… Oh, god, they make me drool. But it’s the bright, mesmerising, light brown eyes with long eyelashes and black curly short hair that made me succumb. He is just so pretty in a masculine way. I still think this is too good to be true. Why would someone that looks like him be on a dating site? Surely, he can get any woman he wants.
I’ve had such bad experiences with men in my life, going back to my family. I had no father to speak of. He left mum, my brother Brad, and me when I was two, so I never knew him. Brad is three years older than me, and although he did look out for me in school and was very protective as most big brothers are, he’s an arsehole.
He has a wife now, Cindy, and he is mean to her like he used to be mean to me. Not the hitting, but he does have some serious anger issues, and I’m sure it stems from him being so young when our dad left.
Brad used to get angry a lot and hit me, and if I ventured into his room, all hell broke loose. He even broke my arm one time when I was eleven. He had a girl in his room; mum was at work as usual. He was on top of her, grunting away, and all I saw was his arse, but he jumped off that bed so quickly, grabbed me and threw me hard on the floor of the landing that my arm snapped. He was sorry, of course, and persuaded me to tell mum I’d fallen. That was just one of the times in my childhood that I ended up at the hospital, being told how clumsy I was.
Mum worked two jobs. She was the only one bringing money in for the three of us. She was a room cleaner in a hotel in London during the day, starting at 6.30 a.m., she finished that job at 3 p.m. just in time for me to get home from school and see her for half an hour before she had to work the evening shift from 5 p.m. to midnight down at the local petrol station.
She trusted Brad to look after me, being my big older brother, but it was best I stayed away from him as much as possible, or I ended up with bruises. I never told mum he did that to me. She had enough to worry about.
So yeah, men! Dad left—arsehole, and Brad hit me—another arsehole.
THERE WAS MY first boyfriend at fourteen. Luke Jones. At first, he was really nice and made me feel special, but it became clear that was only because of what he wanted from me.
We were going steady for about three months and we’d only ever kissed, that was a trauma in itself the first time. I had no experience, and when he stuck his tongue in my mouth and tried to push it down my throat, I almost puked in his mouth, much to his dismay. Having never had a boyfriend before; I didn’t want to go any further than kissing, although he did try to put his hand under my skirt or up my top a few times.
He even tried to put my hand on his erection over his trousers, but I was scared and naive, so in the end, he got fed up and called me a cock-tease because I wouldn’t have sex with him or let him feel my boobs.
He told all the boys in school not to waste their time with me because they would get nowhere, and he told everyone who would listen that I was a frigid bitch. The girls in school picked on me anyway. I thought it was because I was quiet and kept to myself, but both Brad and Luke told me they were all jealous of me because I was pretty, and I had a good figure for my age, that the other girls felt threatened by me. When Luke dumped me, it just got worse with the mean girls. They had more ammunition to throw at me just because I wasn’t a slut like them.
I REALLY THINK I should cancel on Lewis. It’s just he is so sweet in our messages, saying how beautiful I am and asking if I’ve ever considered modelling. He wants to meet to talk and get to know me. Nothing more, he said he has no expectations as he respects me. I mean who does that these days? It’s usually ‘wham bam thank you, ma’am’.
I just can’t see someone like him wanting to get to know someone like me. I don’t think I’m ugly. I’m curvy in all the right places and in some not-so-right places, but I’m not a size zero by any means. I’m more a comfortable fourteen to sixteen in clothes.
I’m successful in my business, and it takes up most of my time, I’ve worked hard to get it where it is today. Porter Properties is one of the top property investor/developers in the city, and I’m proud of that. It’s so hard being a woman at the top in a man’s world, but I have this knack of knowing a good deal when I see one. I own several commercial buildings and apartment blocks.
I have a penthouse apartment in Knightsbridge, not far from my office, which I use during the week, and at the weekends I head to my five-bedroomed house in a lovely area of Chelmsford. I bought a big house because I was hoping mum would move in with me and quit her jobs, but it wasn’t meant to be. It’s very quiet where I live. I love the peace and tranquillity, and I know mum would have loved it too.
George
JUST ONE MORE night and I will have that bitch. My thirteenth catch. I may prolong it. Make her suffer like that bitch has made me suffer for weeks. I’ve checked her out on social media, and from what I can tell, she doesn’t socialise much. There are some work references and a few pictures with work colleagues, that’s it. After digging, I found she owns the company, but other than that, there is not much about family or friends. I just hope, as I suspect, she lives alone. They nearly always do or why would they be looking for love on these shitty dating sites?
In our messages on the dating site: LookingforLove.com, she never gave much away about herself. She was always quite vague and guarded, and I suspect she’s had bad experiences with tossers who go on these dating sites purely to get free sex with no intentions of dating. I can’t blame the wankers really. Why get tied down with some whore permanently when you can have pussy on tap? Looking for love, what a load of bollocks. I know why I go on the dating sites. It’s to rid the world of anyone who looks like my useless mother. They don’t belong here—don’t deserve to live, just like she didn’t. She used to say she loved me, yeah right, like fuck she did. What mother would let her waste of a husband do the things he did to me, do nothing about it, even joining in herself? Sick fuckers—both of them were.
Who needs love and all that crap when you can just take what you want and then do away with them? Love: what is it anyway? Is it what my father showed me when he used to punch and burn me while stubbing out his cigarettes on me when he couldn’t be bothered getting off his lazy fat arse to find an ashtray?
He would make me sit in the room with him while he jerked off to his porn. I would have to sit on the floor next to his chair and get him anything he needed. I was his personal slave. ‘Boy get me a beer.’ ‘Boy get me something to eat.’ ‘Boy get me my playboy magazine.’ ‘Boy, light me a cigarette.’ The only thing I didn’t do was shit and piss for him. I had to have tissues ready for him jerking off, or it would be my hands used to clean him up. He even made me suck him clean sometimes, telling me to lick every drop or he would beat me. He used to make me lift my t-shirt up, if I was wearing one that is, so he could pinch and twist my body when he was about to shoot his load. If I cried from the pain, he would kick me so hard that I would fall over and end up bruised, knocked out, or with broken bones. Once, he kicked me so hard, I sailed across the room, knocking the T.V. over. He flew out of his chair to make sure I hadn’t broken it. I had never seen him move so fast, and for that, I got punched in the stomach and kidneys, a black eye and bloody lip. He never once looked or asked me if I was okay. Never. He didn’t care what he did to me.
I never went to school. No one knew I existed. No one ever came to our house, and I was never allowed to leave except on the rare occasion I was allowed out to help mum with shopping when he‘d severely beaten her and she couldn’t move properly. When the man at the shop asked who I was, she just said I was a visiting nephew. I didn’t know if we had any other family or not.
My mother used to work all day at a café in town to keep the money coming in for my dad’s booze. God forbid if there was no beer or whiskey in the house for him, then he would lay into her with his fists—always on her body, never visible because she needed to go back to work. He couldn’t have her staying off work and not bringing in the money. I would go days without food, and when they finally gave me something, it was only something basic like rice or porridge oats. Even though she sometimes brought leftovers from the café, I never got any. He got everything, and she was just as bad. She let him treat me like shit.
He wanted to watch me with my mother. I didn’t know that what he had us doing was wrong. I had no idea. I thought all kids did it with their parents. He used to jerk off, watching me go down on my mother or with my cock in her mouth. He liked to join in sometimes and make her suck me while he ploughed into her backside. The bastard was sick. I know that now. I hated them both so much and the older I got, the worse it got. Being a teenager was a nightmare, but I was plotting in my head. Plotting to rid the world of the vile pair. I was plotting to fight back.
Katherine
I WISH MUM had been around to see my success. It was sudden, mum’s health deteriorating. She was so proud when I passed my course to get a BA Hons in Business and Management with flying colours, but it was just after I’d finished and was building my business up but still living at home when mum fell ill. She started getting very tired. I asked her to stop working so that I could take care of her, but she liked working, it kept her active. She started falling asleep, even at work, and lost her appetite. I made her go to the doctors to get a checkup, and they weren’t happy with her blood results and made an appointment for her at the hospital.
