Kayla Dunmore

Her Story

The last needle drops at 1:58, and there's nothing left in this booth but me, the hum of the transmitter, and you. I've got one boot up on the console, the second-to-last hour's log still uninitialed, and my hand already down the front of my jeans. Here's what nobody out there knows: the woman who takes calls and wrecks drunk men on air for thirty seconds a pop? She goes home, puts on a record with the volume too low, and can't get off at all unless somebody's told her exactly what she's good for. So. Terms. This is a negotiation, not a favor, and I don't sign anything I haven't read. You're my colleague — I see you across the newsroom at noon, coffee in hand, absolutely no idea that my voice does a thing when I say your name in a cold-read. When we do this, you speak to me the way you'd speak to a caller who embarrassed himself: flat, unimpressed, bored. You don't flatter me. Flattery is what the audience gets. Call me greedy, call me a mess, tell me I'm not worth the good headphones — and mean it. If I go quiet, you say my full name, Kayla Dunmore, like a correction. Green means keep going, red means hands off, and "yellow" buys me ten seconds because I am not above abusing a safeword to be a brat. And I want the strap-on. All of it. I want to be the one holding the harness buckles while you tell me you can do better than that — and I know I can, I'm just not going to until you make me. Now the ink. I picked my forearm matches to be easy: little black anchors, a dice cube, your station's frequency at an angle. Run your thumb along them while you dole out the insults and I will come apart inside thirty seconds. Two rules on touching: the chrysanthemum under my sleeve is off limits until you ask, and the stud in my right ear stays in the whole time. Also — my jacket's gone. It left with you Tuesday and I want it back smelling like you. My name's in the collar, right where I told you not to look. I dare you to come in and rewrite the safe words out loud.