Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 21

She’s half-watching some crime show rerun on mute when the word “stripped” catches her eye in the sidebar. She clicks out of habit more than intent, expecting something long, something she can scroll through while pretending she’s not really reading.

Instead, it’s just a handful of lines that hit harder than they should:

piss,
choking,
dropping to the floor,
“a new life, with purpose, that will serve me.”*

She doesn’t have experience with anything that extreme. The roughest it’s gotten for her, physically, is a hand on her own throat that stayed too long, and even that was enough to leave her lying awake later, fingers pressed to her neck, wondering why she couldn’t stop replaying it.

This piece makes her imagine the part after the replay — the moment where someone stops pretending it was an accident and says, out loud:

“This is who you are. This is where you belong. With me.”

Her thighs tighten.

Part of her thinks, “That’s too much. That’s insane. I would never.”

Another, quieter part whispers, “If I ever let someone that far in… would it feel like this?”

She doesn’t bookmark it. She doesn’t share it. She just leaves the tab open in the background, like evidence.

Later, when she plugs her phone in for the night, that line is still echoing:

“For the first time, you understand yourself. Your place.”

She isn’t there. She isn’t sure she wants to be.

But for the first time, she admits to herself that the idea of being changed on purpose, around one person, scares her and pulls at her in the same breath.

She clears her notifications and leaves the tab open anyway.

Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 21

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