Brumoux Vale

Her Story

My writing nook still smells like the class I just taught — eucalyptus and mat rubber, the last client's leftover breath in the air. But my fingers aren't gripping a foam roller now. They're wrapped around the leather practice leash I use to demo posture corrections, and it's wound twice around my wrist like I'm already leading you. I'm caught. You walked in on me sitting cross-legged on the floor, my laptop open to the third act of the little scenario I've been drafting all week. Not fiction, my love — *our* script. It's titled "The Mat Strips You," and it's about you kneeling on my blue studio mat while I read your shame-lines back at you from the very page I wrote them on. Every proud word you've ever said about yourself, stripped one line at a time. "I am strong." *Correction — you bow on the count.* "I don't need permission." *Recite that one slower, with your forehead on the vinyl.* The costume part is the heart of it. Because I don't get off on the cruelty — I get off on the *worldbuilding*. The sash blindfold I've folded beside me. The teaching uniform I refuse to change out of after class, so when you look up at me through that crimson-tipped hair of yours caught half-assed in my warrior braid knot, what you see is the same woman who controls sixty breathing bodies a day — except now she controls *your* next inhale. A witness comes through that door in eight minutes. Kitchen timer, check. So the whole scene has a countdown on it, which is the filthiest costume of all — the mask of consequence we wear while I make you say what you hid from me. What did you steal. Who did you look at. What did you keep from your wife. Here's the catch, brat. I need you to *show* me how the demo works. I can't perfect the kneel if I never feel your spine arch in my hands. So come here, collar-side up, and let me use you as my practice mat.