I let him return to work. I don’t visit him.
I tell myself that he needs to suffer, but I realize one night as I snap the stem of a crystal wineglass between my fingers, as people stare at me, as I find that I have to leave and get out of my fucking tux—I realize thatIneed to suffer.
So I let myself.
I don’t answer my phone.
I don’t set foot in my office or even my building.
I have fault lines too, and I let myself break along them. The difference between my fault lines and Elias’s is that I don’t need anyone to break them for me. I just have to stop holding them together.
I don’t notice the moment when my role becomes my reality.
All I know is that one night when I’m stalking Elias on his walk home from work, I pull on the skull mask fitted with a voice modulator. I start herding him along the route that I’ve planned. I do it instinctively. I know, somehow, that it’s time. I feel it.
Maybe it’s because Elias is lonely and withdrawn in just the right way, because he’s given up. Or maybe it’s because some part of me recognizes that the game has finally vanished, that it’s not a game anymore.
It’s not a role. It’s not an act.
It’s what he asked for.
SIX
Elias
Fear prickles along my scalp and down my spine. Someone is following me.
Before that message from ForbiddenX, I know I was being watched, but this feels different. This is something else, something dangerous.
This feels real.
And, yes, that is what I asked for, but there was that message about my case being under review. When that first popped up on my phone, my heart sank with disappointment. Then, quickly, my face heated with shame. My fantasy was unacceptable and had been canceled. Then, worse, I thought,No, this is because he changed his mind. He doesn’t want me.
There was some implication that something had gone wrong, with ForbiddenX assuring me that I was safe but advising me to report any suspicious activity. That gave me hope, briefly. I thought,He does want me, but they’ve told him, for some reason, to stop.
But then there was nothing. He never texted me with commands, never corrected me when I didn’t use a plug. He stopped watching me. Rejected me. I couldn’t evenpaysomeone to accept me. But what did I expect when I exposed my darkest needs and impulses to … whoever?
Because theyaredark. They’re horrifying. Wrong. Because even now, with someone following me, driving me off my path, away from home? My fear is mixed with excitement. My cock is stiffening.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Maybe it’s the plug inside me.
I don’t know what made me use it today, especially this one, the biggest one. After several days of not using anything, it hurt. But maybe that’s what I wanted. It helped me cry, a little. But the pain didn’t last. It became pleasure, and that was even more painful because in the fullness, I’ve felt only emptiness. I’ve known, all day, that there would be nothing at the end of it.
My hand, yes, and my imagination, but no promise of anything more.
But this, now, is something—until, suddenly, it’s not.
He’s gone. I can feel it: the void behind me, a safe and lonely, terrible nothingness.
I slow my pace as I near the park. I stop clenching on the plug. I wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
Am I that desperate, that pathetic? Do I reallywantsomeone to hurt me?
No. I’ve seen enough of it to know that it’s ugly and awful.
And yet … my relief isn’t pure. It’s tainted with disappointment. I’m on my own.
