Domination

I thought it would be just one afternoon and one stranger. I never imagined each one would teach me something different, or that the third would leave me voiceless for two days.

Four men, a thick envelope on the table, and me deciding who I’d call over first. My rule was always the same: I choose, I set the pace, and I leave whenever I feel like it.

She arrived at the school with her son’s expulsion letter in her handbag. She left with trembling knees and a secret she could never tell her husband.

Two men enter The Showcase thinking they’re untouchable. Only one will leave as he arrived; the other, the audience has already decided to turn into something sweet, obedient, and forever different.

When the whiskey spilled on my pink dress, I knew that wedding wouldn’t end the way I thought. I didn’t know the bride’s uncle would be waiting for me in the darkest hallway.

Her hand slid up my forearm as I tried to pour her more wine, and I knew the drink wasn’t the only reason she had invited me home.

I told my parents I’d spend the day with a friend. In reality, I was going to Renata’s, where a wig, a pink cage, and a man who knew what he wanted from me were waiting.

Under my track pants I wore only fishnets and a lace thong. I wasn’t looking for just any doorway: I was looking for the place where they’d treat me like an object.

He made me wake at an exact time without an alarm, with only his words inside my head. And I obeyed while my boyfriend snored beside me.

I was ready from four in the afternoon, soaked and aching, when that short man knocked on my door, never imagining I’d force out his nickname.

I walked past the booth five times before daring to look inside. The gray-haired man looked up and motioned to me without saying a word.

Her post on the book app said “looking for a baby.” I answered without thinking, and for almost a year I learned to obey every word she said over video call.

“Good night, princess,” my wife whispered in my ear. And something inside me, something she had planted weeks earlier, answered as if it had been waiting for that name all my life.

From my wheelchair, I watched my wife step out of the car on my boss’s arm. And I knew, somehow, that I was about to be superfluous in my own marriage.

Camille came into the office with two coffees and the hallway door was already locked. That night Elena discovered how much freedom she had given her husband.

That September morning I saw the shyest girl in class walk in. It took me two weeks to realize the shy one wasn’t her, it was me.

When she quickened her pace on the trail and caught up with him with a smile too wide for that hour, Mateo knew the sunrise would not be the only thing he saw at the summit.

I’d spent months begging her for a session. When I finally stepped into her studio, I understood she hadn’t summoned me to photograph her, but to teach me obedience.

When I pushed open the metal door, I expected to find him alone, like always. But under that hanging bulb were four more men, and none of them looked in any hurry.

When she gestured to me from the central hallway, I knew the list of books borrowed in my name was only the first trap she would spring that night.