Masturbation

I turn off the light, open the story, and let my hand drift down. In my head there’s always someone in the corner of the room, watching, waiting to come in.

The straps tightened the more I pulled. I was tied, blind, and soaked on my own bed when the bedroom door opened and I heard two voices.

We’d been sharing an apartment for two years, and she had never looked at me like that. That summer afternoon I found out what she was really hiding on her phone when I walked in unannounced.

I don’t know who you are or where you are, but as I write this I imagine you reading me, and that idea is exactly what’s soaking my thong.

I thought she wouldn’t come. But the doorbell rang, I looked out the window, and there she was, with that innocent face that had kept me up for years.

That warm stain on my dress changed everything: for the first time I understood what it meant to desire and be desired, and I never wanted to go back.

I went downstairs for a glass of water at three in the morning. What I found there, with the house silent, should never have happened.

I thought I had the situation under control. I thought an old man with no strength couldn’t do anything to me. That was my first mistake of the morning.

Marina returned from university a grown woman, and amid laughter and games in the water, Adrián understood they were no longer the children who swam there every summer.

I walked to the park sucking on a lollipop, my skirt so short the cool air brushed me, knowing anyone who passed by could see me.

When I followed the sound of her music to the old closet in my office, I didn’t expect to find slits that opened right onto the changing room where she undressed.

I left work without underwear and with my blouse half-open. I only wanted to feel the air between my legs. I had no idea who I’d find in the train car.

I was always the one letting him watch. That afternoon I flipped the game: I sat him in the armchair and let my best friend do to him what he had been imagining.

When she comes down for breakfast in a T-shirt and panties, I melt inside and know this weekend at the country house will be my last chance to stay silent.

That afternoon, sitting across from me, Mariela stopped talking about her problems and began unbuttoning her blouse with a calm that froze my breath.

My father taught me that monsters stay in the closet if you don’t open the door. What I never told him is how badly I want mine to dare to come out.

Beneath the austere habit she wore a secret of black lace. And every time he arrived with the provisions, that secret burned her a little more.

I closed my eyes beneath the hot water, never imagining that, alone in my bathroom that afternoon, I would discover something about myself I could never stop seeking.

I locked the door, lowered the blinds, and for the first time decided not to rush. That afternoon, the silence of my house became my accomplice.

My family was one floor below and I was alone in my room, phone pressed to my ear, his voice ordering me to do things I’d never dared before.