In the bleak midwinter

It is freezing in the carpark.  She is not answering her mobile.

“Angie, it’s Carl.  I’ve been made redundant.”

They have been together for three years.  When they are together he is her master: “Beg for it,” he says. In his mind when they are playing he is inflated, immense, penis a stylus tattooing his will upon her.  He choses clothes that restrict her.  He eats her with his eyes; arranging a dream and replaying it even as he is living it; ordering her into positions and acts to fit the memories he wants to have.

He tells her which words to say, ‘slut’; ‘cum’; ‘bitch’.  When he watches the videos back it is as if he is watching someone else completely.  On the agreed days she meets him here, knickerless at lunch time.

They are not playing now.  His voice is thin and reedy and carried away by the wind.

“Please. Can we talk? I just want to talk.”

She is watching his name flash on her phone. She does nothing that she does not want to do. This is not her fantasy.  He is not really her master.  He never has been.

It is freezing in the carpark.