Domination

I had buried it under years of exams and routine, but all it took was hearing him say my name from across the bar for my body to remember what my mind wanted to forget.

I never answer the phone at three in the morning, but that night I knew it was him, and what he had to confess about my wife and the old man upstairs could not wait until morning.

When he went down to the supermarket for beer, his uncle cornered me against the freshly painted wall and I knew my boyfriend wouldn’t be the one breaking in the bed.

Adrián fell asleep ten minutes after takeoff. The man by the window waited until he heard his steady breathing before leaning toward Marina and whispering in her ear.

I didn’t shower before going back home. I wanted my boyfriend to feel the gym sweat on my skin and the trace of another man, and not have the courage to ask whose it was.

When the engine died in the middle of nowhere, Daniela knew that night would depend entirely on the two men sleeping in those trucks.

I took off my ring before getting into the water. I didn’t want any souvenir photo to give me away, or for him to get ideas that weren’t his to have.

He thought that night was just a night out with his friends. He never imagined the masked woman onstage had spent weeks planning his downfall.

I hissed in the kitchen that she’d pay for her deception. I never imagined she’d end up kneeling in my room, begging me like she never begged him.

The drive to the gym didn’t account for eighty extra kilometers every Thursday. That number was the first thread of a truth that would end up exciting me more than destroying me.

For two years she gave her body every Friday to keep her husband alive. Now he’s coming home, and she won’t give up the cell that set her free.

When that stranger’s punch knocked my boyfriend flat on the canvas, I knew that night I would do something I’d never fully regret.

Marina thought he was just a harmless boy. That afternoon, she discovered that beneath his shyness was someone ready to take control of everything.

She went downstairs for water and found them laughing in the garden. That night, on her knees in the hallway, I decided to remind my husband who she belonged to.

I opened the door expecting the smell of damp and abandonment. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee and of a man. And there he was, pouring himself a cup as if he owned the place.

Everyone at the clinic thought he was crazy. In the dark hallway, he grabbed my arm and told me I was the queen his kingdom needed.

No one had touched her in months. That January afternoon, with the locker room empty and the three guys still sweaty, she stopped thinking and gave in to what came next.

I wasn’t wearing anything under my skirt when I knocked on that rusted railcar door. I only wanted one man. I had no idea the foreman would show up to lay down his rules.

Daniel slept in the front seat while, a meter away, his uncle and his girlfriend shared the truck’s narrow bunk. And Noelia no longer wanted to sleep.

They used me as a mule and I ended up locked up over a suitcase I didn’t even know I was carrying. Inside, I learned the only currency that mattered was my own body.