Dane Eastergaard Exposed

The twenty-sixth chapter of the "She Died With Two Subscribers" series

Feb 26, 2026

When a tsunami is about to occur, Poseidon peels the sheets of water back from the edge of the ocean with his trident and exposes everything that has been hidden underneath the waves—both the beautiful and the ugly.

Dane Eastergaard stripped off her clothes and stood naked in front of John Nabors. He motioned for her to step onto the small, crude stage he had constructed in his studio. Studio may be too grand a word as the cramped space was really just a glorified shed attached to the back of his ill-maintained clapboard home on the edge of Mapleton. It was unheated and Dane shivered as she obeyed his command and stepped onto the wooden platform.

It should be noted that she was not completely exposed. She had kept on her flaming pink Nikes since John had warned her that the pine stage enjoyed inflicting splinters on anyone who unwittingly climbed upon it in bare feet. The Nikes were as much a part of Dane as her long, blonde hair, green eyes, and ample chest as she never went anywhere without them.

Viewing her beauty, John Nabors gulped. Dane grinned at him as she sensed his excitement. She relished the power that she wielded over him. Her superpower was her sensuality and her ability to control men. She used the flip of her hair, a neglected button on her blouse and the brazenness of her touch as weapons that deactivated the flimsy defenses of the male species and left them completely vulnerable to whatever designs she had. Often that could be just a night of wanton activity at her whim, but it could also be expedited repairs at the Eastergaard abode or a local permit that was taking longer than she desired to wait.

Ever since her arrival in Oxbow, Maine, she’d been able to control all of the men she encountered, with the vexing exception of one. And she was not about to give up on that subject. Nothing attracted Dane more than a man who played hard to get.

Will Northcutt certainly fit into that category. The first time that they met, they’d fallen off her porch when she pulled his arm while shaking hands as he climbed the steps to greet her. She’d pinned him to the ground and sat astride him. She thought he’d fall for her aggressive seduction just like all the other men she’d encountered during her thirty years on the planet. But he’d politely and firmly extricated himself and brushed her off.

Will’s ruggedly handsome features piqued her interest. When Dane accessed her grandmother’s Substack texts and read his virtuous interactions with her grandmother and sensed his kindness, it further attracted her.

Most of the single men that Dane bedded had immediately succumbed to her wiles. Here was a man who had boundaries.

The fact that he was literally the boy next door who lived a half mile down the meandering road, and that he had a girlfriend that he saw on weekends only further fanned the flames of her growing obsession with him. On a Sunday morning when her urges prevailed over wisdom, she’d walked down the road toward his property. She’d been there before, waiting in the woods and watching him. She knew about his father’s visit and when the father would be leaving in his truck. She acted after she saw the truck sail by her house.

And so she’d donned her trademark pink Nikes, and thrown on a fleece jacket and sweatpants over nothing, and made her way toward the Northcutt abode. She took a left into his driveway and weaved through the tall pines until she stood at the edge of the clearing outside his cabin. The small chimney blew off steam as if the house was overheated with passion at the anticipated coupling. She smiled as she saw the front door slightly ajar. It was literally an opening.

The door yielded to the touch of her right forefinger and Dane tiptoed into the cabin. She removed her jacket and pants and, preparing for action, even her pink Nikes.

It was a small space. She saw the Chief Pontiac hood ornament on Will’s kitchen shelf staring at her and she smiled and shimmied, her torso jiggling in the morning light, as if intending to give the Chief a cheap thrill.

She heard water trickle. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall upon which the kitchen appliances wearily leaned. The bathtub’s feet groaned as Will shifted his weight.

The only access point was through the bedroom door that yawned open. She tiptoed into the bedroom, which was spartan. There was just a queen-sized bed with a yellowing map of Maine tacked onto the opposite wall. An imperfect red circle, clearly drawn by hand, surrounded Oxbow.

She heard the slosh of water in the bathtub and turned her head toward the aperture leading into the bathroom. Standing at the foot of the bed, she considered whether to enter and surprise Will.

She never got to make that choice. With surprising speed, Will had exited the tub, hurriedly toweled off, and now she heard his footsteps approaching. Nadine tingled with anticipation.

It was a perfect moment—her and Will standing unclothed opposite each other for the first time, gazing at each other’s bodies—until they heard the smash of a bag crashing to the ground. Dane and Will turned to see the stunned face of Nadine Nadeau at the bedroom door before Nadine turned and ran toward the cabin door.

Dane couldn’t ever recall a man responding to her naked form like Will Northcutt had. First, he bolted away from her and toward the clothed Nadine. Then, when he returned to the cabin having failed to catch Nadine before she drove off, still sans clothing, he literally walked past her as she tried to engage him with outstretched arms at the cabin entrance, and violently shut the door.

How could he resist the luscious offerings of Aphrodite? she wondered. No mortal man had ever managed to do so.

However, as she began to shiver, a second question popped into Dane’s head. How do I retrieve my clothing and pink Nikes still inside?

She banged on Will’s door and shouted. “Can you at least toss my sweats and Nikes out your door?” She waited and covered her chest with her arms as she unsuccessfully tried to warm herself.

A short while later, the cabin ejected her sweats and gym shoes through the door as if they had nauseated it. Feeling a rare tinge of indignity, she slipped on her sweatshirt and sweatpants, stepped into her Nikes and started to trudge home feeling deflated. Rather than feel anger at Will, she felt more intrigued by him than ever.

This dramatic experience played in an endless loop in Dane’s mind. She’d reacted as she’d always had on the rare occasion that she didn’t get what she wanted with a man—she went on a bender of promiscuity. Other than when she earned her living online as a remote marketing analytics professional, she stalked men that she thought attractive. She corralled them at bars, stopped them at traffic lights, and bagged them at supermarkets.

She gave no thought to the consequences to her reputation. She felt it was entirely unfair that society viewed promiscuous men as powerful, but women were slut-shamed. Her attractiveness and ability to seduce men was her superpower, and she wasn’t about to relinquish it.

Dane shifted her weight as she heard the scratch of the artist’s brush on the canvas. He’d been her latest conquest and, as he lay in bed smoking, he’d asked her if she’d consider posing for him in his studio.

She initially laughed at his suggestion, and John Nabors blushed even though he’d been lying fully unclothed next to her for some time. But as she ruminated on his invitation, she decided to accept it.

She was in the prime of her beauty and his painting would crystallize her image at the height of her attractiveness. She was unconcerned about who would see his painting. More men viewing her portrait meant more would desire her. The more women that witnessed, the more they would be intimidated by her and stay clear. She could see no downside.

She tossed her head and flipped her long, blonde hair over left shoulder, as she adjusted her hand on her right hip and pushed her chest out even further. John gulped once again, and Dane smiled brightly as she enjoyed the thought of being exposed to the world in the upcoming art exhibit at the Northern Maine Community Center.

“Perhaps you could also do an outdoor portrait of me as well?” said Dane.

There was a silence as the artist increased the pace of his brushstroke.

“I’d like that,” he responded.