Chapter 4 - The Public Smear Campaign
By eight o’clock the following morning, the war had moved from the private dining room of Prime 112 to the digital battlefield.
I was sitting in the makeup trailer on the set of Cloverfield Valley—an indie horror feature shooting in the Santa Clarita canyons—carefully applying a three-piece prosthetic neck wound to an actor playing a doomed park ranger.
The trailer smelled of spirit gum, witch hazel, and lukewarm catering coffee.
My assistant, a sharp-eyed twenty-four-year-old named Sam who could blend a silicone edge better than anyone in the local guild, walked in carrying two iced oat milk lattes and an iPad that was buzzing like an angry hornet.
“Boss,” Sam said, setting the coffee on my workstation and holding out the tablet. “Are you checking TikTok today, or should I just throw your router into the creek?”
I didn't stop stippling the prosthetic adhesive. “What did she do?”
“She went full martyr,” Sam replied, pulling up a video that had already crossed four hundred thousand views in six hours. “Three parts. Crying filter. Atmospheric acoustic guitar in the background.”
I paused, took a sip of my latte, and leaned in to look at the screen.
The video was framed inside Lauren’s Burbank living room.
The lighting was meticulously dim, save for a single soft key light that caught the delicate, quivering tears on her cheekbones. She was wearing an oversized oatmeal-colored knit cardigan—the kind designed to make the wearer look small, fragile, and utterly defenseless.
Sitting beside her on the sofa was Madison, wearing an unwashed hoodie, her face buried dramatically in a fleece throw blanket, her shoulders trembling with rhythmic precision.
“I never wanted to bring family business to the internet,” Lauren whispered into her microphone, her voice breaking on the third word. “As many of you know, I’m a single mother. I’ve worked fourteen-hour days building my research platform, trying to give my daughter a normal, safe life in an industry that constantly takes from women.”
She paused, dabbing her eye with a tissue that looked strategically frayed at the edges.
“Yesterday was Madison’s fourteenth birthday. My sister, Harriet... who works in high-budget film production and makes six figures... came to our mother’s home. She brought a broken, used electronic device as a deliberate insult to my child. When Madison quietly began to cry from the humiliation, my sister became physically aggressive.”
A photograph flashed on the screen: a close-up of Madison’s forearm, showing a faint, yellowish-green smudge that looked suspiciously like standard theatrical greasepaint from a Ben Nye bruise wheel.
“She threw the phone across the room,” Lauren sobbed, her voice rising into an operatic cadence. “She shattered it on the floor, cursed out our seventy-two-year-old mother, and stormed out. But that wasn't enough. Last night, while we were trying to salvage Madison’s birthday with a modest family dinner, Harriet remotely canceled our family communication lines. She froze our emergency cards. She left an elderly woman and a child stranded thirty miles from home with no way to call for help.”
The video cut to text overlay:
#NarcissisticAunt #FamilyAbuse #ChildTrauma #BoycottGorehoundFX
Beneath the video, the comment section was an unmoderated cesspool of algorithmic bloodlust:
“Call Child Protective Services on that aunt immediately!”
“Look up her studio! Gorehound FX in North Hollywood! Let her producers know who they’re hiring!”
“Leaving an elderly woman stranded? Absolute sociopath behavior. She needs to be de-platformed.”
“The way Madison is shaking... you can tell this isn't the first time. Protect that baby!”
I stared at the screen.
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of it would have been admirable if it weren't so profoundly stupid. Lauren had spent seven years existing inside a fringe internet echo chamber where crying into an iPhone camera instantly made you the moral victor. She had forgotten that in the commercial film industry, reputations aren't managed with emotional hashtags; they are managed with legally binding contracts and third-party liability insurance.
“Sam,” I said, turning back to my park ranger actor, who was watching me through the vanity mirror with wide, horrified eyes.
“Yeah, Harriet?”
“Call Thomas Caldwell’s office. Tell him to pull the raw security footage from Prime 112 before the restaurant overwrites their digital drive.”
“Already called them at seven a.m.,” Sam grinned, tapping his phone. “The manager at Prime 112 was so furious about Lauren’s card declining that he personally backed up the surveillance file to an external drive. He said Lauren threw an absolute fit, screamed at the busboy, and Ruth tried to pay for forty-dollar crab cakes with an expired Macy’s rewards voucher.”
“And the party at Ruth’s house?”
“That’s the best part,” Sam whispered, leaning in. “You remember Chloe? The girl by the balloon arch whose mom runs the Glendale school board?”
“What about her?”
“Chloe was live-streaming to her private Instagram story when Madison threw the phone at your head,” Sam said, pulling up a secondary video link. “She had the camera propped inside a faux-ivy planter to record a TikTok dance. The whole thing is on high-def video, Harriet. The sound of the phone hitting your cheekbone. Lauren yelling ‘Throw it at her.’ The blood on your face. Everything.”
I set my stippling sponge down on the stainless steel tray.
I looked at my own reflection in the mirror: the purple contusion over my zygomatic arch had deepened into an angry, violet shadow, framed by a neat line of black surgical butterfly strips.
“Save the raw file, Sam,” I said softly. “Make four backups. Send one to Caldwell, one to my personal drive, and keep one on an encrypted thumb drive in the shop safe.”
“Are we going to post it?” Sam asked, his eyes gleaming with the feral joy of a Gen-Z digital native ready to wage total internet warfare. “We could ruin her channel in thirty minutes. We could drop the unedited video under her hashtag and watch her follower count crater to zero.”
“No,” I replied, picking up my airbrush gun. “We don't fight pigs in the mud, Sam. The pig likes it, and you just get covered in filth. We take this to the only room where crying on camera gets you fined for contempt.”
May you like
“The courthouse?”
“The courthouse,” I smiled, testing the airflow of the compressor. “Let Lauren have her twenty-four hours of internet fame. Because by Monday morning, every view on that video is going to cost her five thousand dollars.”
