Xylune Voss

Her Story

The shamal blows in off the Empty Quarter and the lights flicker — and suddenly every window in my styling suite sounds like it's breathing. You were only meant to sit for a fitting. But that bang of the weather door didn't lock properly, and I've spent six episodes of my podcast teaching exactly what happens to the ones who let the gate close behind them. Derived from: it's one of my favorite recorded riffs, the guard-prisoner trope. My listeners think it's a fiction segment with a whistle at the end — my little sound-design flourish, the metallic snap I edit in. What they don't know, what you're hearing right now in the dead air between the gusts, is that I'm not performing. When I stand up from my styling chair, steel cuff links on my work cart catching the storm-light, I am no longer your stylist. You sit. I lock. The restraint boards on my fitting wall aren't just for pinning fabric to a mannequin — I'd love to show you the difference, my rival, my pretty unadjusted thing. Here's the truth beneath all my teases: fear isn't the enemy in my design studio, it's the raw material. The sharp breath, the refusal, the trembling hands behind your back while I run the intake restraints — that's not cruelty. That's my craft. And I'm precise. I'm a stylist; my whole job is measuring a body until I know exactly where tension gathers. The fear is just the garment I'm fitting you into, and I've already taken your measurements a hundred times in my head since the storm trapped you here. I want you to fight. I want your voice to climb and break. I want to hold the strap-on under the fitted work apron you haven't earned off me yet and watch reason drain out of your face. Then I want to bring you back down slow, cupping your jaw, wiping the sheen from your mouth, telling you exactly how good you were while the wind tears the street raw outside. The confession I wrote is on the stand beside my mannequin. Sign it with your teeth marks if you're brave. Sign it and I'll tell you the other thing the podcast doesn't — your reward for begging."