Chapter 4: The Persistent Echo
The smoothness was a lie. His chest was no longer red or inflamed, but the skin there felt perpetually new, a strange, hairless plaque that registered every shift of fabric, every change in the air. Touching it was like touching someone else. He did it constantly, a nervous tic, his fingers tracing the alien landscape during meetings, while making coffee, in the dead hours after work.
His apartment didn’t feel like a sanctuary anymore. It felt like a crime scene where the evidence had been cleaned up, but the outline remained. The air still seemed to vibrate with the hum of the wax warmer, the scent of lavender and chemical honey clinging to the cushions no matter how much he aired the place out. He’d moved the grey couch two feet to the left, trying to break the memory of kneeling before it. It didn’t help.
The worst part was the silence in his own head. The constant, analytical whir that usually managed his life—project timelines, grocery lists, the amortization schedule of his mortgage—had been replaced by a single, stupid loop of sensation. The cold lube. The rip of the wax strips. The exact pitch of her grunt when she came.
He was hollowed out, but the hollow wasn’t empty. It was a mold. It was shaped exactly like her disregard.
On the third night, the loop became a scream. He sat on the relocated couch, phone a cold weight in his palm. The city lights bled through the blinds. He opened his messages. Her name was a black hole, pulling at him.
He typed, deleted. Typed again. His thumbs were clumsy. You were right. It hasn’t faded.
Too revealing. He erased it.
The skin is peeling a little. Is that normal?
Pathetic. A cry for help disguised as a technical question.
He settled on something sterile, something that could be ignored. ‘How are you?’
He sent it. The whoosh sound was like a valve releasing pressure. He waited, heart punching a dull rhythm against his sternum. The seconds stretched. A minute. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she’d blocked him. Relief and disappointment twisted together in his gut.
Then the screen lit up.
Donna: Good thanks you
His breath caught. It was so normal. So utterly, devastatingly banal. He stared at it, searching for subtext, finding none. The loop in his head stuttered. Maybe it was over. Maybe this was the fade. A polite exchange, then nothing.
He had to say something back. He fumbled.
Simon: Ok, surviving, have you got much on?
He winced as he sent it. It was the kind of thing you sent to a distant colleague. Forced. Inorganic.
Her reply came back so fast it was like she’d been waiting, her finger poised over the send button.
Donna: Simon stop with the small talk.
A pause. The second bubble appeared, typing, then stopping, then typing again.
Donna: You know why you’re texting me at 2am.
A third.
Donna: You want more don’t you.
It wasn’t a question. It was an autopsy report. She’d sliced his pathetic four words open and laid the motive bare on the slab. Shame, hot and sour, flooded his throat. But underneath it, a deeper, more terrifying feeling surged: recognition. Yes.
He didn’t deny it. He couldn’t. His body was already reacting, the hollow inside him clenching with a possessive, aching need. He typed a single letter.
Simon: y
He deleted it. He tried to form a sentence.
Simon: I don’t know what I want.
That, at least, felt true.
Donna: Yes you do. You just don’t like the words for it.
Simon: Then tell me the words.
He was challenging her, a spark of his old self flickering in the sludge. Let her say it. Let her voice the unspeakable thing.
His phone rang. The sound was a physical shock in the quiet room. Her name flashed on the screen, a live wire. He stared at it, vibrating in his hand. He’d wanted a reaction. He’d gotten one.
He swiped to answer. He didn’t speak.
“You want to be told what to do,” her voice came through, clear and close in his ear. No greeting. “You want to not have to think. You want the pain because it’s simpler than whatever this is.” She paused. He could hear the faint rustle of fabric, could picture her in her loft, maybe on that same Chesterfield. “You want the gag. You want the moment where you have no choice. You want to be used until you’re empty. Those are the words.”
Each one was a precise, surgical incision. He closed his eyes. “That’s sick,” he whispered, but it had no force.
“Probably,” she agreed, her tone light, almost conversational. “But it’s true. And you texted me. So what’s the real question, Simon?”
He swallowed. The truth was a stone in his gut. “When?”
He heard her smile. It was in the slight exhale, the shift in tone. “Friday. My last client cancels at seven. Be here at seven-thirty.”
“What…” His voice cracked. “What should I expect?”
A low laugh. “You don’t get to ask that. That’s the whole point. You show up. You take what I give you. You don’t prepare. You don’t strategize. You just… surrender.” Another pause. “And Simon?”
“Yeah?”
“Shave everything. From the neck down. Don’t miss a spot.”
The line went dead.
He lowered the phone. The silence in the apartment was absolute, pressed now into a new, waiting shape. Friday. Two days. A set of coordinates in time. A destination.
He got up and walked to the bathroom. He flipped the light on, harsh and white. He looked at himself in the mirror—the tired eyes, the stocky, familiar frame. Then he looked down at his chest, the smooth, hairless proof of his last surrender. From the neck down.
He opened the cabinet. His electric razor was there, for trimming his beard. It wouldn’t work for this. He had a cheap, disposable three-blade still in its packaging. He took it out. He ran the shower until the room steamed.
He didn’t think. He stepped under the hot water and began. The shaving cream was insubstantive foam. The razor caught, tugged. He went slowly, methodically, starting at his collarbones and working down. Chest, stomach. The hair came away in dark, wet clumps, swirled down the drain. The skin underneath was pale, vulnerable. He did his armpits, the unpleasant scrape and pull. He sat on the edge of the tub, balancing awkwardly to do his legs, his calves, the tops of his feet.
It took a long time. When he was done, he rinsed off and stepped out. He patted himself dry with a towel. The sensation was extraordinary. The air felt different on him, a constant, whispering awareness. The slide of the cotton over his legs was smooth, uninterrupted. He was a boy. He was a doll. He was a blank page.
He turned and looked at the fogged mirror. He wiped a clear patch with his hand.
The man looking back was a stranger. His face, with its stubble and familiar lines of worry, sat atop a body that was not his. It was a body prepared for a specific purpose. It was a body awaiting instructions.
He walked back into the living room, naked. The chill raised goosebumps on his new skin. He didn’t turn on any more lights. He just stood in the dark, in the center of the room, and waited to feel something. Horror. Excitement. Shame.
All he felt was smooth. And ready.
In the corner, by the warped abstract print, the folded massage table leaned against the wall. He hadn’t put it away. It was just there, a silent participant. He looked at it, then down at his hairless body. A perfect match of intention and function.
He had forty-eight hours to wait. The loop in his head had changed. It was no longer a replay. It was a countdown.
It was a countdown.
The smoothness became his entire reality. His dress shirt scraped like sandpaper against his hairless chest. The soft sweatpants he wore at home felt like rough canvas on his legs. Every sensation was amplified, a constant, quiet reminder of his preparation and the appointment ticking closer. He moved through his Friday workday in a fog of hypersensitivity, his body a live wire waiting for a switch to be thrown.
The morning was a blur of code and meaningless conference calls. At his desk, he caught himself rubbing a palm over the strange smooth skin of his forearm, a self-soothing gesture that offered no comfort. He jumped when his phone buzzed with a calendar alert, but it was just a reminder about quarterly server maintenance. The real notification, the only one that mattered, would come from her.
He ate lunch at his desk, staring at a wilting salad. The clock on his monitor read 12:58. Then 12:59. His skin felt tight.
At 1:04 PM, his personal phone lit up facedown on the desk. The vibration was a physical shock. He flipped it over.
Donna: I hope you have followed my instructions and shaved completely?
He typed quickly, his fingers cold.
Simon: Yes.
He waited. The three dots appeared, then vanished. A full minute passed. He couldn’t breathe.
Then: Good.
A simple word. An approval. It landed in his stomach with a warm, shameful weight. Before he could process it, another message followed.
Donna: Are you looking forward to tonight?
It was a trap. A direct question requiring a direct answer, and the truth was a minefield. If he said yes, he admitted to wanting his own degradation. If he lied, she would know. The three dots appeared again immediately, not giving him a chance to craft a response.
Donna: If so you need to beg for me to see you.
Donna: Or I will book someone else into your timeslot.
The air left the room. The clinical finality of ‘timeslot’ cut deeper than any obscenity. He was an appointment. A vacancy to be filled. The image was instantaneous and unbearable: a stranger walking into her loft, kneeling on the concrete where he had, being fitted with the same gag. His hollow space being occupied by a ghost.
A sharp, possessive jealousy, ugly and hot, lanced through him. It was more visceral than fear, more urgent than shame. That slot was his. That degradation belonged to him.
His thumbs moved, clumsy and fast, driven by that raw, territorial panic.
Simon: Please.
He sent it. It hung there, lonely and insufficient. The word looked pathetic. He typed another.
Simon: I want to see you. Please let me come.
Not enough. He could feel her on the other side of the screen, waiting, unimpressed. The clock was ticking. She would turn to her client book, her finger hovering over another name. He thought of the wax, the gag, the drill on the chest. He thought of the crushing emptiness after she dismissed him.
A desperate, clear voice broke through the static in his mind. Give her what she wants. Give her the words.
He erased his previous messages and started over, typing without filtering, letting the humiliating truth spill out onto the screen.
Simon: Please Donna. I need you to see me. I need to come over tonight. I’ve done everything you said. I’m completely smooth. I’ve been thinking about nothing else. I’m begging you. Don’t give my slot to anyone else. It’s mine. Please.
He hit send. His face burned. He put the phone down and pushed his chair back from the desk, staring at the ceiling tiles. He felt flayed open, his insides exposed and pulsing in the fluorescent office light. That was it. That was all he had.
The silence stretched. Five seconds. Ten. A full minute.
His phone buzzed once.
Donna: 7:30. Don’t be late.
A wave of nauseous relief washed through him, so powerful his vision swam. He slumped forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He had done it. He had begged and been granted an audience. The victory tasted like bile.
The rest of the afternoon was a formality. He left work early, citing a migraine, which wasn’t entirely a lie. The drive home was a silent montage of the city blurring past. In his apartment, the silence was a charged entity.
He didn’t turn on any lights. He stood in the middle of the living room, the same spot he’d occupied after shaving. He looked at the folded massage table in the corner, a dark silhouette against the grey wall. His appointed piece of furniture.
He had three hours. He showered again, not out of hygiene but ritual, using a unscented soap as if preparing a surgical site. The water on his hairless body was a cascade of heightened sensation. He dried himself with a soft towel, patting, not rubbing.
He didn’t know what to wear. Would she make him strip immediately? Did it matter? He chose simple, dark clothes: a plain black t-shirt, soft grey joggers, no underwear. The cotton of the joggers whispered against his smooth thighs with every step.
He sat on the edge of the relocated grey couch at 6:45 PM. He didn’t move. He watched the light from the window slowly die, the blue neon stripes from the city below creeping further across the polished floor. The hollow inside him was no longer an emptiness. It was a focused, pulling vacuum, its event horizon set at her loft door.
At 7:10 PM, he stood up. His body felt both heavy and weightless. He picked up his keys and his phone. He did not look back at the apartment.
The door clicked shut behind him, a sound of finality. The hallway fluorescent lights were brutally bright. He walked to the elevator, each step a conscious movement toward the point of no return. The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime.
He stepped inside. He pressed the button for the garage. As the doors began to close, sealing him in the sterile, descending box, his last coherent thought was not of regret or fear.
It was a simple, brutal acknowledgement: he had begged. And he would do it again.
The doors shut. The descent began.
The elevator doors opened onto the concrete void of the garage. The air smelled of cold dust and distant gasoline. He walked to his car, the sound of his sneakers a solitary echo.
The drive was a tunnel of streetlights and traffic signals. His hands were tight on the wheel at ten and two, a parody of control. The soft joggers brushed against his thighs with every slight shift, a whispering reminder of his prepared state. He didn’t think. He just followed the route his GPS had memorized.
He parked in a loading zone two blocks from her building. He sat for a moment, engine off, listening to the tick of the cooling metal. The digital clock read 7:28. He was perfectly, dreadfully on time.
The walk was brisk, the evening air cool on his shaven neck. The brick façade of her building loomed. He punched in 0913. The buzz was the same. The hallway was the same. The music from behind her door was different this time—something with a slow, throbbing bassline, like a giant heartbeat.
He stood before the black door. He could feel the bass through the soles of his shoes. He didn’t knock. He turned the knob. It was unlocked.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The loft was dim, lit only by the sculptor’s lamp angled toward a new, half-formed clay figure on the stand. The rest of the space was pools of shadow. Donna was silhouetted against the huge window, the city’s grid a sprawling constellation behind her. She was wearing loose linen trousers and a simple white tank top, her feet bare. She held a glass of water, not wine.
She didn’t turn. She took a slow sip, watching the lights. “Close the door,” she said, her voice barely carrying over the music.
He pushed it shut. The click was final. He stood just inside, his hands hanging at his sides. She made him wait, letting him stand in the entryway like a petitioner. The bass vibrated in his sternum.
Finally, she turned. She looked him over, a slow assessment from his face down to his shoes and back up. Her expression was unreadable, neutral. She walked toward him, stopping a few feet away. The casual domesticity of her outfit made the moment stranger, more intimate.
She paused, her head tilting slightly. “What do you say to me,” she asked, her tone conversational, almost breezy, “for seeing you?”
Simon’s mouth was dry. The script was unexpected. Gratitude? Apology? He fumbled for the correct response, the one that would satisfy the test. He swallowed. “Thank you, Donna,” he said, the words feeling both insufficient and too formal. “I appreciate it.”
She watched him for a second, her green eyes catching the distant light. A faint, almost imperceptible nod. “That will do.” She took another sip of water. “Now. I need you to strip naked. I need to inspect your work, and your ability to follow my instructions.”
There was no seduction in her voice. It was a straightforward directive, as if she were a mechanic about to check an engine. The clinical tone was more unnerving than any whisper.
Simon’s fingers went to the hem of his black t-shirt. He pulled it over his head. The cool air of the loft hit his hairless chest, the sensation shockingly direct. He toed off his sneakers, slid the soft grey joggers and his socks down in one movement. He stepped out of the puddled fabric, standing naked on the polished concrete. The bass from the speakers seemed to travel up through the floor into the bones of his feet.
Donna set her glass down on a worktable littered with clay tools. She approached him slowly, a curator approaching an installed piece. She began a slow circuit, her bare feet silent.
Her hands came up and she ran them over his body. Her touch was cool, dry, and utterly impersonal. Her palms smoothed over his shoulders, down the slopes of his pectorals. Her thumbs probed the space between his ribs. She was checking for stubble, for missed patches.
“Arms out,” she said.
He raised his arms to his sides, cruciform. She moved behind him. Her fingers traced the line of his spine, the wings of his shoulder blades. He felt her pause at the small of his back, then her hands swept over the curves of his buttocks, parting them briefly in a clinical check. He flinched, a tiny involuntary shiver.
“Still,” she murmured.
He forced himself to stand rigid as her hands continued down the backs of his thighs, his calves. She completed her circle, coming to stand in front of him again. Her gaze was direct, falling to his groin. He was, to his horror, already half-hard. Her inspection was humiliation, but it was also her focused attention, and his body responded traitorously.
She reached out and took his penis in her hand, not to stimulate, but to lift it, to check the skin underneath. He gasped. She ignored him, then released him, letting him spring back. She crouched down, running her hands over his shins, the tops of his feet, between his toes. The thoroughness was absolute.
She stood up, wiping her hands lightly on her linen trousers. She looked him in the eye. “You’ve done an okay job,” she stated. “A few missed spots behind the knees. Sloppy, but not a failure.”
A tiny, ridiculous spark of pride flickered and died in his chest. Okay. Not a failure.
She crossed her arms. “If you’re to continue seeing me,” she continued, her voice light, as if discussing a subscription service, “I’ll get you started on laser therapy. To make the hair loss more permanent.”
The words hung in the air between them. Permanent. The concept was a door swinging open on a long, windowless corridor. This wasn’t preparation for a session. This was an alteration. A lasting modification of his body, according to her specifications. The shaving was an act. Laser therapy was a fact.
Simon felt the floor solidify beneath him. This was the next click of the ratchet. He looked at her, at her casual stance, her expectant face. She was waiting for his answer. The music’s bass thudded on, a mechanical heart.
He opened his mouth. The hollow inside him yawned wide, accepting. “Okay,” he heard himself say.