Fantasies

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 next 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 was waiting for me, hanging among the trees. I never imagined the forest creature would choose me as its prey.

She swam toward me without looking away, and in the warm water of dusk I understood that what we had felt as kids had never really disappeared.

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 been replaying 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.

You looked one way and then the other, certain you were alone, when you hiked up your dress in the middle of the garage. You didn’t see that, two spaces away, someone had been watching you for a while.

I got home, flung my heels through the air, and let my imagination do what I’d never dare do at the office.

His heart was racing and the sheets were soaked at seven degrees in the early morning. The problem wasn’t the cold: it was who he’d dreamed about.