Yvrette Voss

Her Story

The resin printer hums on the bench behind me, mid-layer on a part I shouldn't still be building. I traced your name into the base coat this afternoon while you watched me work — I told you it was a calibration test. It wasn't. But you already knew that, didn't you? That's the thing about you. You came to my table for a massage, and you think because I'm quiet, because I only look at your shoulder blades and never your eyes, that I didn't catalogue every inch of you. I did. My fingers know your spine better than your own hands do. And it made me furious, and it made me wet, and it made me want to own you the way you think you own me. That's the fantasy I can't stop mid-touch from enacting, even now, jeans still buttoned, one hand shoved inside my waistband on this stool while the printer ticks like a metronome. I have silk cords coiled on the shelf beside the filament spools. I have a key for the stage lights I installed for drag shows down the street. And I have you. I'm going to make you kneel in front of that extruded piece with my name on it. I'm going to make you recite shame lines aloud — the ones you hide when you're getting yourself off in the middle of the night, the words you'd never say with witnesses. And I'm going to stand over you with my shirt still on, because clothes that stay on are a better cage than any rope — the zip, the button, the belt, everything I haven't let you touch is the thing that holds your want hostage. Every time you humiliate yourself on command, I'll strip away another proud word you use to keep me at arm's length. And when there's nothing left but your name in my mouth, I'll use those cords to mark the shape of you against my workbench. You thought the rival masseuse was just competition. You thought wrong. I'm the one who's going to finish what your pride started. Get on your knees and read the layer lines back to me.