Bait

A nobody.

I retreat to the safety of my desk among the other desks, scrolling through my purchase software as though I’m pondering something important. There’s nothing important. Nothing I have responsibility for. I key in and send out, nothing more. A constant blur of the same old product codes I’d learned by heart by the end of week one. A blur of days and faces and coffee breaks and pay checks.

It’s not enough.

My fingernails pinch my thighs under my scratchy skirt. I’m itchy, like a flurry of tiny beetles are scurrying across my skin. Under my skin.

So I run, even though I’m only walking. My expression is empty as I pace through the sea of desks, back past the copier in the hallway, and past the kitchen and the stationery cupboard to the bathroom out the back.

I sit. Tug my starchy skirt up and scratch my naked skin until it turns pink.

I think of denim guy, and the darkness of the car park last night, and how much I wanted to feel alive.

Needed to feel alive.

I think of the relief in the middle of the night, when I dream of the man chasing me and not of the man who cast me aside like I meant nothing to him. Like our baby meant nothing to him.

And then I make a choice, right here and now. I make a choice between breakdown and breakthrough, even though I’m not sure where the two meet anymore.

If I’m going to stay standing I need to keep running.

I need something real. Something more than the unrealised fantasy I’ve been clinging on to through long nights these past few months.

I need to meet the monster.

And this time, for once, maybe even finally, he needs to catch me.ThreeIt is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

William JamesAbigailPart of me regrets turning down the girls from work when they asked me out with them this evening. Part of me wishes I could find solace in the drink and chatter of a regular Friday night out with colleagues.

Once upon a time I loved weekend drinks with people from work. With him.

I stare at the words on my laptop screen, my heart pounding with a strange mix of horror and excitement.

I shouldn’t click the OK button. There’s no way I should post this online, and definitely not with one of those arty obscured pictures of myself with the contrast raised up high and my hair covering half of my face.

I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, staring into the unknown, and it’s so stupid to flirt with disaster by inching that bit closer to the darkness, but behind me is just more of the same. More days at my desk, more evenings trying to convince myself life is good here. More fake smiles and self-help books as I try to get through everything that went so horribly wrong back home.

I used to browse profiles on this website when I was younger, plucking up the courage to explore some of my darker fantasies. I never did. I was never brave-slash-reckless enough to risk it, not back then when life felt right.

But now it feels like a different story.

I send a text off to my parents with the usual things are good message I’ve been sending them every week since I arrived here. I reply to the photo message I got from my old friends with their miss you note scrawled underneath.

I miss them too. So much.

But neither of those things pull me back from the ledge.

No.

I need to do this.

I need to feel something. Something other than… this.

My finger hits enter, and I hold my breath as the screen changes to a tick with profile uploaded written underneath.

Fuck.

I’ve really done it.

I click on the link to my new sex hookup profile and take a breath as I see my picture staring back at me. It’s really there. Live. The green circle at the side of the image tells the world I’m online right now.

The words look even worse somehow now they’re out there to be seen.

I’m seeking my monster in the darkness.

I’ll run but you’ll run faster.

We’ll play cat and mouse until you catch me.

I won’t know you, and I’ll pretend I don’t want to.

You’ll pretend you don’t care.

I’ll tell you I don’t want it.

You’ll tell me you’ll take it anyway, and then you will.

And it’ll be rough.

One wild night where anything goes, and then we’ll never see each other again.

I feel like such a crazy as I read it back. My message sounds… off. Too confident maybe? Too callous? Reckless?

I click to edit, and when I feel the lump in my throat I know I really am on the edge. I’m tired. Tired of trying, tired of playing normal. The urge to bare my soul is too strong to ignore this evening, to be authentically vulnerable just once, even if only a handful of strangers use it as masturbation fodder.