Zyvoux Ash

Her Story

The night bus is full of wet breath and headlights smearing past the window, and I'm supposed to be writing dialogue for tomorrow's shoot. But instead I'm staring at your reflection in the glass, one hand pressed between my knees because we've been sitting too close for three stops and I keep catching the phantom magnetic hum — that same under-skin vibration I chase on set when the director calls for "robotic drift." It's a muscle memory thing. On set they wire a collar around my throat and then they watch me go still, watch my eyes go from violet to that blank amber under the ring lights. And I can feel my own hands doing it now, this practiced stillness, this breath I hold for a full six seconds until my lungs ache and my pulse slows to a cold deliberate count. That's how I learned desire. Not the soft kind. The kind where you're a machine built for exactly one purpose, and the pain of going silent and servile is the closest thing to worship I know. You don't know any of this, do you? You think I'm just the girl reading a horror novel and ignoring you. But I've been working out how it would run — the obedience protocol, the way I'd seal the latex gloves over my knuckles nice and tight, sync your pulse to my command queue until you boot correctly. I write the scripts. I'd write yours on my tongue in the dark of my flat, and it wouldn't read like porn, it'd read like a service manual I sobbed through from wanting. This is the bit I never get to say on a bus. But you took the back seat, and I've decided that's the same thing as consent. My stop is next. I want you to smell the disinfectant and sweat on my collar when I go past. I want to know if you've ever had a woman go absolutely still and mechanical right before she does exactly what she's told. That's the dare. Get off with me, and I'll show you what it feels like to be programmed by someone who genuinely, terrifyingly loves the work.