You'd planned for months, but had been waiting for three agonizing weeks. You went to the same coffee shop as always, at the same time as always. Medium, hot, oat milk, 2 sugars. Turned the same way exiting, tracing the same route to the same library you visited every weekend.
She was the first girl to really get it. Your last ex left you because you wanted to do a safeword ignoring scene. Well, they said it was for other reasons. But you knew. You knew you really understood kink, and needed people who really understood kink in your life.
So when she steps out from the side alley, knife in hand, you play out the scene as planned. You don't have to work as hard you thought to make the trembling convincing. She's brusque, in person, and the knife is much bigger than you thought. Your heart races as she ratchets the zip cuffs around your wrists, and places the bag over your head. You wrinkle your nose, it stinks.
"Zoe, can you-"
"No talking. Move." She kicks at your calf, and you have to stumble forward, catching yourself by half steps, landing face first in what must be the open trunk. Musty blankets and itchy trunk liner. Hands, groping in your pockets for wallet, phone, keys. Zoe grabs your thighs, and lifts. Grunts. You dolphin a bit, folding yourself into the trunk. Its not accurate, but you don't want the scene to get stuck here.
The trunk slams shut. You're left in hot, scratchy silence. Short breaths. Musky might be the right word for the smell.
The car kicks to life. Your knees press uncomfortably against the trunk edge as Zoe accelerates. A sharp turn - your head smacks into the side wall. She's not a very good driver. You try to count the turns, the time between jerks of acceleration. How you would if this was real. But your focus is drawn away by what comes next, and it all blends into an uneven gait beneath you.
This is what your idiot former partners never understood. Light bondage here and there, oh, yea, indulge the idiot pervert girl in her damsel fantasies. None of them had been willing to do this for you. Zoe had never failed. She texted every morning, and remembered every detail.
Finally, the car rolls to full stop, and rumbles off. And you wait. And wait. This is it. The climactic scene where she stops "on the side of the road" and forces you to service her at gunpoint. Really, her backyard. With takeout after.
The trunk clicks open.
"Out."
You unfold sore limbs, helped not too kindly by Zoe's yanking. You stumble, catching the ground, and let her lead you by the wrists. She stops.
"There's three steps down in front of you. Right foot first."
There were no steps, in the plan. Your heart races. Zoe added something extra, just for you. You tentatively reach down, and hear the hollow metal clank of a steel stair. Two. Three. She has her hand on your neck, and ducks you through what must be a inner short door of a bulkhead entrance. Shuffle forward on stone.
A metal clasp bites around your exposed ankle. The hood comes off, and even the gloom is blinding for a moment.
Every post you've ever written. Some you didn't write, where you added long and rambling tags. DMs to her. Messages in public servers. Posts from accounts you never told her about, Instagram and LinkedIn. Photos rendered in flat, laser-printer color. Taped together in a sprawling mosaic across the concrete wall of a small room of her basement. You turn back to see the stairwell you'd descended. Heavy interior door, open to the stairs up to the storm door.
And the shackle, unplanned, padlocked onto your leg, a thick, short chain anchored to the corner, where a dog bed sat.
"Zoe, uh. Wow, this is amazing. You really added to the scene. Can. Can I get a check in before we keep going?"
Zoe looked at you with a pitying stare, and a lazy grin. She turns back to the stairs.
"I've got to go tie up some loose ends. Quit your job, send some mean texts to the friends you have left, dump your phone at a bus station. Hard to wait when I'm so close but, it's just a few more hours. I'll be back to talk about our new life together, sweetheart."
She closes the inner door of the storm stairs with a solid thump, plunging you into true darkness.
