Trashley: Thirty-Six

Sweet Bobby, part three

I sent Ashley to Lake Arrowhead to charge my car so I could have the cabin to myself while I messaged Michelle back. Not only had Ashley denied knowing Michelle, but she also encouraged me to reply to her so I could get the info Ashley needed to have her lawyers send a cease and desist. This was all after Michelle sent me a message on Twitter saying that Ashley had catfished her and she had proof to back it up.

When I asked Ashley if what Michelle had said was true, instead of saying, “No,” like a normal liar, she became physically violent, tearing across the living room and shoving me against the wall. She had gripped my arm so hard, I worried it would ruin my career as a writer, and I didn’t have a backup plan. I wasn’t just scared for my safety, but also Perci’s.

Finally alone. Time to do a little digging.

Once Ashley left, I messaged Michelle and asked to see the evidence.

I had learned the value of keeping your receipts when I sued my former boss Alki David a few years earlier. As the plaintiff, I had to bear the burden of proof, I couldn’t just point him out to the jury and say, “This horrible man assaulted me, please believe me!” The good thing was, I had a mountain of proof, taller than even Denali. I had kept a detailed record of interactions, text messages, emails, phone records, photos, screenshots, Snapchats, and videos. Nothing was too big or too insignificant.

Unfortunately for him, he had fucked with the wrong person. He had fucked with a documenter who records everything, although I should note it’s not for anyone other than myself: I take photos after I ride my Peloton to know that I worked out that day. I take pictures of every meal, so I can remember what I ate last week. I take photos of my plants whenever a new leaf is born. I even take a selfie every time I cry to remember the last time I was so sad that it brought me to tears.

Does anyone else take a pic when they cry? Sound off in the comments.

I didn’t realize how important documenting my life was until I found myself in a horrible situation with my former boss. Bearing the burden of proof should be a course taught in every high school across America. And I volunteer as tribute to give the Ted Talk.

Within seconds of asking Michelle for proof, she sent me a folder with undeniable evidence that Ashley had indeed known who Michelle was because she did in fact catfish her by pretending to be a British man named Duncan.

I forget if I mentioned I keep a very detailed journal, documenting three pages a day. Every day of our relationship is already written.

The files Michelle sent included voice recordings of Ashley speaking in a mortifying British accent through a voice changer. The cadence, the pauses, the pitch, it was exactly how Ashley spoke, just a few octaves lower. 

Ashley had famously told me she didn’t have any social media, but there was another folder filled with screenshots of her Twitter, Facebook, Vine, and Instagram pages. She had them all. Why had Ashley lied about not having social media? Who gives a fuck? Even my plants have an instagram.

Then there was the folder filled with “work” activity, showing  she had posed as a marketing executive in San Francisco. Ashley had gone so far as to make up fake interactions with her “boss” and her “co-workers.” As Duncan, Ashley would forward Michelle emails from these people, praising “him” for “his” presentations and offering him promotions. She even created fake work pitches and presentations she sent to Michelle with words like, “Wish me luck. I'm about to present this to the bloody client!” Ashley wanted Michelle to know that Duncan was a real boy, and he had a real job and was a valuable asset to the big important company.

Meanwhile, this job didn’t exist, and neither did the company, which meant the emails between her boss and co-workers were all being sent to and from herself. 

I couldn’t imagine the effort it took to maintain this lie.

Did Ashley do this to me too?

When we first started talking we had so much in common. She even ordered an Oregon Trail pin, not knowing I wrote the official Oregon Trail book. Coincidence? Or premeditation?

I remembered when she opened her Nintendo Switch case and all those one hundred dollar bills fell out. Was that an accident, or did she plant them there?

I thought back to the first time Ashley stayed with me. I overheard her on the phone telling someone, “You’re the only person who knows about this, you can’t tell anyone.” And when I asked her if everything was okay, she said yes. But after learning about the fake emails she sent Michelle, I realized there was no one on the other end of the phone. She was talking to herself. Ashley wanted to sound intriguing, knowing I could hear her conversation.

I couldn’t help but feel like she targeted me. She probably googled me, found out about my lawsuit money, and acted like money meant nothing to her, so it wouldn’t look like she had a motive to date me.

I started to realize Ashley had orchestrated our entire relationship from the very first Facetime.

Dear diary, let me introduce you to Ashley.

“She was living in her parents’ basement in Ogden, Utah when she catfished me,” Michelle said., “She didn’t have a job, so she had all this free time to create these characters and make work presentations.”

“Did her family ever find out about you? And what she did to you?” I asked.

“Yes. Once I figured out Ashley was the person who catfished me, I tried every way I could to get a hold of her, but she refused to answer me. I was able to track down her brother and his wife, and I told them what happened. They told Ashley’s parents that Ashley had catfished me. At the time I considered going after her legally, and met with some lawyers. But I was young and too traumatized to really go after her. And her parents are enablers, so they didn’t do anything, other than block me.”

So that meant Ashley’s mom was in on it. And Cecelia was right: Ashley’s family would lie for her. I had sent Stacey screenshots of the messages I got from Michelle, and she immediately blamed Cecelia, saying she had some “weird online shit going on.”

The reality was, Stacey’s very own prized fake MIT Physicist Professor daughter was the one with the weird online shit going on, not Cecelia.

The apple, as they say, doesn’t fall far from the tree.

I wanted to know the story behind a folder labeled “Luca.”

“Who is Luca?” I asked.

“Luca was Duncan’s best friend,” Michelle said. “He talked about him all the time. They’d hang out a lot and were basically brothers. And then Luca was killed in a motorcycle accident, and Duncan/Ashley was devastated.”

“Holy fuck,” I said, “and Luca was not a real person?”

“Nope,” she said, “He didn’t die because he never existed.”

“She did something similar to me.” I said, “She pretended to be super close to her grandparents, and then they both suddenly died within a day of each other.”

“Was it early on in the relationship?” she asked.

“Yeah, in the first few weeks of talking.”

“Yeah, same with Luca’s death.” she said, “And, she told the woman she had an affair with right before you the same story, that her Grandparents died suddenly after spending every day together for sixty years, or something like that.”

“Wait– what do you mean the woman before me?” I asked.

“Oh, she had a full-on affair with a woman in LA in January when she was pretending to be a Physicist. So that must’ve been a month before you started talking? She told her wife she was flying to a co-worker's cabin in Michigan for a mental health retreat, but really she flew to LA to be with some woman she met on Hinge named Gina.”

Gina? What the fuck was happening.

I thought about Sweet Bobby and how JJ died early on in the catfishing scam, and Bobby swooped in to comfort Kirat. It was exactly what Ashley had done to Michelle, me, and now Gina?

“Ashley kills people off after establishing how important they are in her life so that she can create a bond and gain attention and empathy from her victim. Apparently they teach this in Catfishing: 101.”

“Where did she get the photos she used to pose as Duncan?” I asked.

“She found some poor guy on Youtube and posed as a Hollywood Producer, saying she wanted to cast him in a new show but needed photos and audition tapes.”

I felt dizzy. I even saw stars circling around my head like a cartoon character who just had an anvil dropped on him.

I wondered what went through her head when we were listening to Sweet Bobby. Probably, I’m a much better catfisher than this guy.

The lengths Ashley went through to catfish Michelle were evil genius level. What she did to her was more sophisticated and elaborate than any catfishing story I’d ever heard. I couldn’t imagine the mind-fuck Michelle experienced, especially being so young and so incredibly vulnerable.

Michelle’s story is not mine to tell, but goddamn, I hope one day it all comes out. It would make a mind-blowing prequel to Trashley- The Early Days.

There were so many similarities in what Ashley did to me and what she did to Michelle. The only difference was with me, Ashley didn’t hide her identity behind the internet. She lied about it in person, to my face. But the manipulation was the same. She chose a victim, an innocent woman on a dating app. Then, she lured them in under a fake persona, and as they were getting to know each other, she would kill off the closest person in her fake world.

Wild.

I looked at my Tesla app. Ashley was almost back at the cabin.

“She’ll be here in a few minutes,” I wrote to Michelle. “Can I share my location with you? Just in case?”

“Of course.” she said, “Stay safe, reach out if you need anything.”

The sisterhood of location sharing is a powerful bond.

“One more thing,” I said. “What’s your sign?”

“I’m a Gemini.”

Holy fuck. Of all the people in the world to fuck with, Ashley had picked a Gemini. She must be the dumbest person on planet Earth.

Gonna try this new thing called "trusting my instincts."