Submission

The doorbell rang at half past seven and I knew my marriage had just changed forever. She came down the stairs without a bra, looked at them, and smiled.

When I opened the door, he wasn’t alone: behind him, wearing that practiced rent-boy smile, he had brought a man I had never seen in the neighborhood in my life.

I went to the bathroom on a night with no electricity, convinced I was alone in the house. A phone light lit up the kitchen and I understood why the two of them had been acting so strange.

He came to the apartment of a stranger promising not to hold back. He still had no idea how big the cock was that would take his virginity, or how far that paddle could go.

I got off the plane knowing I’d have to look him in the eye. What I didn’t know was that that same night, through tears, I’d ask him for something I had never dared say aloud.

I met him online when I was sixteen. Two years later, one August morning, he texted me that he was traveling to the capital and that it was my only chance to see him again.

At seven on December 31 I didn’t want to go back to the hotel and be alone. I remembered the booth place three blocks away and pushed the door open without thinking twice.

At quarter to eleven I was already going down the stairs in my building. Before leaving I looked through the peephole, just in case I saw someone. The landing was empty. Better that way.

Sandra took the wine bottles, looked at me, and whispered: “It’s going to be needed, trust me.” Her smile was the kind that already knows how the night will end.

When she turned off the hallway lights and closed the door, I understood we weren’t going to talk about my record. Something had changed in the office.

I spent twenty minutes on my makeup, put on the chestnut wig, and opened the hotel door when he knocked. I had been waiting for that moment for years without knowing it.

Marcos signed the contract without reading it. By the time they locked him under the Club Ónix toilet, it was too late to turn back.

He spent the whole afternoon among other women’s feet he couldn’t touch. At home, Laura was waiting with hers dirty from asphalt and a smile that was an order.

That morning Rodrigo closed his office door and pulled out a small gold bag. Inside was something that would change the office mornings forever.

When I crossed the dungeon door, she held out her hand for me to kiss. Then she pointed to the floor. I knew at that instant the night would be long.

When I told him I could call someone to keep him company, he went out to buy cigarettes. Thirty minutes later, Sofía came down the stairs in heels.

She tied the ropes to her wrists and stepped toward the mud, unaware that someone was watching from the undergrowth, a sharpened knife in hand.

Opening the door that night was the hardest decision of my life. Behind it stood a tall, smiling man, ready to take what I could no longer give my wife.

We pulled down our pants in front of the other four and, when he bent over me, I knew I wasn’t leaving that classroom the same man.