Confinement

That night they shot me up with the first hormones and made me throw out all my men’s clothes. “You’ll see how pretty you get,” she said, smiling.

Adrián walked into that office as a senior analyst and knew, from the director’s smile, that he’d leave as something else: something pretty, docile, and nameless.

When Greta opened the bathroom door and found us like that, I knew the lockdown was only just beginning to drag all our secrets into the light.

I crossed half of Spain with a fever to hide out at my grandmother’s house. I never imagined that country woman would look at me naked the way she did that first night.

When the doors jammed between two floors, I knew rescue was hours away. I never imagined my sister already had other plans for that wait.

One lower card was all it took for that pink cage to stop being a joke and become my new reality for two full months.

The lock opened with a dry click and she knew, before stepping out of the cage, that he was back with another woman’s scent on his skin.

His first night in cell 118 was enough to teach him he no longer owned his body, only belonged to the man in the lower bunk.

When the anesthetic wore off and he opened his eyes, he was already naked, handcuffed to a chair, and surrounded by four women who had spent a month waiting for that moment.

I had her caged beside the table, on all fours, while my friends ate and tossed leftovers onto the metal tray. That was only the beginning.

With days left before my trip, she called me for an innocent favor. Neither of us imagined we'd end up locked inside, in the dark, without clothes.

Four days tied to his bed, twelve thousand euros richer, and a body that no longer resists the same way. The worst part isn’t what he does: it’s what starts shining in my eyes.

The key fell into the water and the back door jammed. Trapped in a square meter, cuffed and half naked, we discovered something neither of us had imagined.

When I opened my eyes it was already too late. Two bodies were pinning me to the mattress, and the cold steel on my wrists told me that night had changed everything.

I was on my knees in the dog run, handcuffed and unable to move, while they laughed and their dogs circled closer and closer.

I walked into the living room and found him waiting for me with something hidden behind his back. That smile told me before he did that the night wasn’t going to be normal.

When we got off the plane we had a check and a secret. The check paid the debts; the secret, though, can’t be erased, not even with the tattoo covered.

They didn’t give him water in a cup. They poured it over her foot, and he had to lick it from the leather straps if he wanted to survive.

There was something in her eyes when she turned around that should have worried me. It wasn’t the anger of an irritated neighbor. It was a promise.

I thought the fire drill would last minutes. Two hours later, in a basement classroom with no signal and no witnesses, I understood it was no drill.