Bait

You won’t know me, and you’ll pretend you don’t want to. You’ll tell me you don’t want it, and I’ll pretend I don’t care. It’ll be rough. Really rough. You’ll never know my name and you’ll never see me again. One wild night where anything goes.

I can hardly breathe, staring dumbly at the screen as another message sounds.

And then you’ll delete this profile and promise me you’ll never do this with a stranger again. You’ll stop running, you’ll pick your life up and make it mean something again.

Tears sting, threaten to spill.

And you? I type. What will you do?

He replies so quickly.

Maybe a little darkness will turn us both back toward the light.

I stare at his shadowy profile picture, trying to get a measure of the man. His features are strong. His hair looks dark and wild. His eyes too.

It’s at least partly an illusion of my own making – the photo gives very little away. I’m seeing what I want to see, and I know it.

I know it, but I like it.

A shiver dances along my spine. Maybe this man, this online stranger, really could be my monster. My saviour.

Maybe he’s really going to be the one to chase me down.

What do you want me to do? I ask.

Tell me your name, he says.

I consider giving him a fake one, but don’t.

Abigail, I type. What’s yours?

My clit flutters. I close my eyes in relief as I slip my hand down my knickers.

Another ping. You’ll never know.

The thought thrills me. His words thrill me.

He thrills me.

My fingers are circling hard when he messages again.

I’ll sign in tomorrow night, and by then you’ll have told me about your dreams.

The green circle next to his name disappears, just like that. Phoenix Burning offline.

The envelope at the top of the screen tells me I have twelve new messages, but I don’t give a shit about any of them. I close my laptop and hitch my legs up, my heart bursting with the dark thrill of a fantasy grappling for life.

It’ll be rough. Really rough, he said, and I believe him. Fuck knows why, but I believe every single word he said.

I’m riding on the wings of insanity, but I don’t care. I’m teetering on the edge of the precipice, but I don’t care about that either.

My belly is tight, but it’s wracked with something more than pain.

Excitement.

Relief.

A bit of both.

Fear.

Nerves.

Trepidation.

Need.

Fuck, how I need this.

I bite my knuckles as my fingers strum my clit, hips raised as I contemplate the unthinkable.

Two weeks and he’ll make this real.

Two weeks and he’ll be my monster. A monster of flesh and bone and breath. A monster who won’t disappear when I open my eyes.

He’ll chase me, and hurt me, and fuck me, and I’ll pretend I don’t want it. But I will.

Oh fuck, I will.

And then I’ll never see him again.

It’s been a long time since I’ve given myself an orgasm without seeing his face.

A long time since I’ve been able to give myself over to fantasy without his memory ruining everything.

But tonight it’s easy. Tonight I gasp and whimper and squirm under my own fingers. Tonight my toes curl and my breaths come out in hisses, and it feels so fucking good I hit the sky.

Tonight it’s just about the monster and me.

And tonight is the first time in an age I fall asleep without crying.FiveWhen you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Friedrich NietzschePhoenixThe very first night I chased Mariana, I swore it was one moment of madness.

And this is another, right here and now.

There’s that familiar wildness behind my eyes as I press my forehead to the glass of my bedroom window. It makes my temple pulse. My nostrils flare. And I feel it. I feel it right the way through me.

The rain is lashing outside, one of those freak passing storms as summer rolls in. Water bounces against the pool cover in the yard down below. I can hear it drumming. I can feel it drumming.

It was raining the first night I chased her. My boots squelched thick through the mud as I powered up the hillside after her. She was fast, even barefoot.

But I was faster.

She didn’t go down easy, Mariana.

Sometimes her nails drew blood. Sometimes she was feral enough that I became a beast for real, simply because I had to. Sometimes I even believed her screams.

Sometimes I didn’t fucking care.

My breath mists up the glass as I tug down the zip on my jeans. My fist curls around meat and metal, the barbells on my dick shooting sparks straight to my balls. Another of Mariana’s legacies.

But it’s not Mariana I’m thinking about tonight as I work my dick. It’s not Mariana’s eyes I imagine staring up at me wide and scared.

Excited.

I’m imagining a stranger. Creating a fantasy from nothing but one obscured online photo.