White comes next. Dragged down the bridge of my nose, cut clean across my cheekbones. Precise. Symmetrical. Not decoration—correction. It strips expression from my face, flattens it into something unreadable. Something that doesn’t react. Last, I smear more black around my mouth, dragging it up the right side where the skin pulls tighter than it should. The texture is wrong there, paint filling it easily, like it remembers what it was made for.
At first, the paint was a switch. Now the line between the two doesn’t exist anymore. The black, the white, the blood. It’s not a mask. It’s just me.
I don’t look in the mirror when I’m finished. I never do. Mirrors invite questions I already know the answers to. I don’t need a face. I don’t need a history, or permission. I just need hands that don’t shake—and mine don’t.
The phone vibrates on the counter. Once. Then again. I let it buzz a third time before answering, because timing matters. Becauseshenotices.
“Yes,” I say.
Her voice comes through smooth, like she’s already settled in. Calm. Expectant. Possessive in a way that doesn’t need to announce itself. She doesn’t greet me. She never does. Names imply equality.
“He’s ready,” she says like a fact. As if the world has already complied.
“Yes.”
Silence stretches. I can hear her breathing—slow, measured—like she’s aligning herself with what’s about to happen.
“I want to see it.” Her words are quiet. Almost tender. “He owes me pain.”
I’ve reacted to that voice in every way a man can react to power. Fear. Hatred. Resistance. Submission. What’s left is absence. Now it doesn’t even reach me.
“Make it slow,” she adds, like an afterthought. Like she’s adjusting the temperature of a room.
I don’t speak. She doesn’t expect me to. This conversation doesn’t require confirmation. Her command is issued, and my obedience acknowledged. That’s all there is to our relationship—a voice, a task, a result.
The call ends without goodbye, leaving the distinct impression that whatever happens next is already catalogued, already consumed, already hers.
I collect the equipment without thinking. Camera. Tripod. Knife. The order never changes. Neither does the destination—an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city, gutted and forgotten, already stripped of anything that could witness what happens inside.
He’s waiting right where I left him. Tied to a chair, naked, mouth taped, and eyes wild with recognition the moment he sees me. He knows who I am. That’s the first mercy. He understands exactly what this is.
I set the camera right across from him. Tripod steady. Angle clean. Focus checked. The red light blinks once, then holds. She’s watching now.
I imagine her settled somewhere warm. Glass of wine. Legs crossed. Elegantly manicured fingers stroking absently across the supple leather of her armchair.
I step into frame, and he starts to shake. The recognition in his eyes doesn’t diminish his fear but rather amplifies it. The familiar dread of acceptance, of knowing there’s no way out.
I crouch in front of him, bringing us eye to eye. His pupils track my face paint, and he tries to speak through the tape, words pushing uselessly against it—apologies, maybe. Promises. Men always think language will save them.
“You shouldn’t have fucking talked,” I say calmly. “You knew better.” His head jerks in frantic denial.
I stand and circle him slowly. Let him hear my boots. Let him feel how trapped he is. Fear has a rhythm, and once you hear it, you can conduct it.
My hand comes down on the back of the chair, fingers curling around the wood, then lean in close enough that he can feel my breath at his ear.
“She’s watching.”
His breath turns ragged, chest heaving against the restraints. He knows exactly whosheis. Everyone does. That’s the part that breaks them fastest—not the pain, but the audience.
I step back into his line of sight and reach into my jacket. The knife is small, clean, practical. There’s nothing dramatic about it. I don’t brandish it. I don’t let it catch the light. I just hold it steady, like an extension of my hand. His eyes drop to it anyway. People always watch the wrong thing.
I set it down on the table beside him, just out of reach. Close enough to matter. Far enough to be useless. His gaze tracks it like a compass needle, breath hitching every time my hand moves near it.
I take a step back. Then another. Let the emptiness between us grow until he can feel it like a pressure. Empty air becomes the first cut—that hollow space where anticipation bleeds into terror. His eyes follow me, understanding dawning that the true pain lies in waiting for me to begin.
His breathing speeds up, his shoulders pulling tight against the restraints. The chair creaks as he tests it again, panic sharpeninginto something desperate. I can hear the calculation behind his eyes, the silent bargaining.If he hasn’t done it yet, maybe he won’t.
That hope is a mistake. I can see it dying in his eyes even as he clings to it.
