Bait

I’ll need to know her, Abigail. I’ll need to know so much more than she’ll ever get to know about me.

The things she craves. The tiny details of her fantasy she isn’t even aware of herself. What she looks like to a passer-by on the street. What her footsteps sound like in the darkness.

I’ll need to know enough to safeguard me against a crazy encounter gone bad. I need a message trail that shows irrevocably that she wants this just as much as I do.

That she’s a girl I know indulging in a fantasy we planned out, not just some random I accosted in the darkness.

But for now I push those more sobering thoughts aside.

I’m buoyant on the hum of life, and nothing is going to steal this moment from me.

Not today.AbigailI usually cringe inside when the office girls ask after my weekend. I hate the way my polite vagueness always feels so hollow.

But not today.

There’s excitement simmering in my belly as I smile in the kitchen before work starts. I feel bouncier than usual as I tell them my weekend was good, and for once I’m not lying.

For once it’s true.

It seems midnight is the magic hour for Phoenix Burning. Last night was the most magical of all.

I’m not sure how much more I’ll have to do to prove my intentions are serious over these coming weeks, but I think I’m well on my way already.

He wanted pictures, and I sent them. Happy pictures from days long past. An old work portrait. A couple of riskier selfies that I took on a whim.

And now it seems he wants more. Always more.

He’s tugging my soul from the depths and holding tight. He’s whispering in every dark corner of my mind.

An unexpected ping on my mobile lets me know I’ve got a message mid-morning. I know exactly who it is before I’ve even checked.

I call it up at my desk with the handset cradled in my lap out of sight.

What is your full name?

The question takes me aback enough that my head swims.

My full name.

This crazy fantasy has never felt so real as it does when I tell him. The fear is there. Palpable. Creeping around the edges of my consciousness as my heart thumps.

Abigail Summers.

Abigail Rachel Summers.

And then silence. Nothing but a tick as he reads my response.

So I busy myself. Throw myself into a job I usually pass off as nothing.

I restructure my filing system for purchase orders and automate some of the processes. I act as if I care, and slowly, over the course of my Monday, and my Tuesday after that, part of me begins to believe it.

I pick up the overflow calls when they come into our back office. I speak with clients with a telephone voice I’d long forgotten.

I find myself laughing with colleagues at the photocopier.

I find myself agreeing to their office social later in the week.

I don’t know when the pretence falls away and my actions take on a reality, but it does. By Wednesday afternoon I’ve even taken on a backlog of invoices from a colleague fresh in from sick leave.

At night I share my deepest fantasies with a total stranger, and by day I find myself taking tiny steps toward being human again.

I don’t ignore messages from old friends back home. I call my parents as I walk home from the office. I shop for real food rather than ready meals and I buy myself a decent set of pans.

Life always prospers on fertile ground. Slowly but surely, seeds burst into tiny shoots and the barren pit of me stirs with my soul and sparks anew.

My nightmares have never been so vivid nor so welcome.

Busy days have never been such a happy time-killer.

I never again expected to enjoy a work night out for what it is.

But I do.

I never expected to race home for midnight with a heart full of excitement for a faceless man at the end of an internet connection.

But I do.

And I really never expected tonight to be the night he says goodbye.

But it is.NineThe return makes one love the farewell.

Alfred de MussetAbigailA few glasses of wine with the girls from work turns out to be a fine way to pass the time until midnight calls. I actually enjoyed myself. And now, I’m back in my apartment and logged in when the light turns green on his profile.

I doubt he can be left with any uncertainty by now as to how sure I am that I want this. The thought makes my skin prickle.

I’m already so used to this strange sense of closeness. I know nothing, and yet I feel so much. I don’t even know his name, and likely never will, but that doesn’t matter. It’s only taken one short week for this time of night to feel like my everything.