Fantasies

I ran through the downpour to my door thinking I was safe. I didn’t realize he had come in behind me until I felt his hand on my back.

It was almost closing time when the bell rang. He and she came in, asked for black lace, and, without knowing it, offered me the afternoon I’d spent months fantasizing about alone.

I know I shouldn’t, but whenever I walk home alone after dark, I look for him: the stranger who will pin me against the wall without asking permission.

She crossed half the kingdom for a legendary relic; what she didn’t expect was to kneel before those guarding it, or to desire it with every fiber of her body.

“I live inside the lake,” she told him without blinking. Damián took her for an eccentric and followed her anyway. What he found at the bottom was no heaven.

When I opened my eyes I wasn’t at my desk: I was naked, tied to the teacher’s chair, and heels were beginning to circle me in the empty classroom.

I watched him from before his failure. He said I was too perfect to walk in the mud, not knowing that sentence condemned him never to leave it.

That night I went down for a glass of water and he was awake on the sofa. What happened after that in my bed, with my stepfather breathing on the other side of the door, still burns me.

I followed a trail of blood to a clearing where something waited for me, hanging between the trees. I never imagined the forest creature would choose me as its prey.

She swam toward me without taking her eyes off me, and in the warm evening water I understood that what we had felt as kids had never really gone away.

Clinging to the handrail in the car, all I could do was glance at him and imagine everything that would never happen between us.

When I opened the backpack he handed me in the lobby of that run-down hotel, I understood the meeting was nothing like I’d imagined. And it was already too late to turn back.

I walked onto the stage without thinking, in front of a room full of strangers and a man who no longer looked at me. That night I stopped begging and started feeling.

My whole life I believed I belonged only to him. The afternoon he walked into the dean’s office and found me on the desk, I discovered how much he liked seeing me with another man.

When I got the final dare of the night, I knew I could say no. What no one expected was for me to say yes with that smile on my lips.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

The moment I cast off I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end with a simple sail: she was already looking at me differently, with that half-smile promising much more.

For months, I’ve repeated the same scene in my head on the ride home. Today, when the seat beside me was taken, I almost stopped breathing.

I rode out on my bike without underwear, my phone buzzing with messages I should never have opened. The road was empty, but I felt watched by everyone.

I closed my eyes for a second and, when I opened them, a huge shadow was blocking the sun. What happened next only existed in my imagination… until that afternoon.