He Called Me Ugly Until I Turned Off The Filter Chapter 08
Chat exploded. Kneel. Ethan, a man keeps his word. Got real loud a minute ago — where’s your mouth now?
Tara tried to smooth it over. “It was a joke, sweetie, you don’t have to take everything so seriously.”
I turned to her. “So it was a joke when you two bullied me into killing my filter?”
She choked.
Ethan gritted his teeth. “Willow, don’t push it.”
I laughed.
“I’m pushing it?”
“You used my grandma’s hospital bills to bait me into taking my filter off.”
“You sat there with your new girlfriend and called me an ugly liar.”
“You told hundreds of thousands of people I was a catfish.”
“You stole my scripts, then you used my name as your punching bag to prop up your career.”
“And now I’m pushing it.”
I leaned into the camera.
“Ethan. Did you really think as long as I hated my own face, you could stand on my neck forever?”
His color went sickly.
V dropped another line into chat.
⟢ I’ll cover his end of the bet. ⟣
The system chimed.
⟢ @V_Ashford has sent Golden Wave × 20. Message: for the hospital bill. ⟣
I froze.
Another line.
⟢ Not for him. So you don’t have to keep taking his abuse for the money. ⟣
A beat of silence.
My eyes stung. I didn’t cry.
“Thank you,” I said. “But what he owes me is more than money.”
I pulled up another file. Three years of scripts I’d written for Ethan.
Openers. Interaction lines. Fan-group announcements. Crisis PR statements. Even the tear-jerking essay he’d posted the night he hit 100K — every word mine.
He’d texted me back then: “Willow, you get me better than I get me.”
Now I realized — he just knew how to lift other people’s work.
I looked straight into the camera.
“To the platform: I’ll be filing takedowns on every clip that uses my writing, and my attorney is drafting a defamation complaint as we speak.”
Ethan panicked.
“Willow — we don’t need to escalate. If it’s money you want, name a number. I’ll Venmo you fifty grand right now, and my manager can wire another fifty by tomorrow.”
Tara whipped around. “Babe?”
Ethan ignored her. His eyes were locked on me.
“Your grandma’s still in the hospital, right? A hundred grand. Today. We call it even.”
Chat turned. Using her grandma again? 100K to buy off three years and her reputation? Genuinely repulsive.
I looked at him.
“Do you seriously still think I’m cheap enough to buy?”
He didn’t answer.
“Once, I was starving for love,” I said. “Now I’m starving for money. But being broke doesn’t mean I’m for sale.”
I opened my transfer history in front of every viewer.
Every dollar I’d ever sent Ethan — line by line.
His mic broke. I Venmoed him $200.
His rent was short. I Zelle’d him $300.
He needed a new audio interface. I worked graveyard shifts and covered $500.
The biggest one: $1,000. My entire high school graduation money — the thousand dollars Grandma Eleanor had saved in a coffee tin for four years. I’d sent it for him to raffle off in his stream.
Memo line: “Here’s to hitting 100K soon, Ethan.”
The stream went so quiet it hurt.
“You called me a catfish, Ethan,” I said. “You catfished me for three years.”