The Secret Tribunal

She looked at the photo of the man who had followed her saved on the phone, his cold eyes, his big hands, the mouth that had said:

"You know what I want, And I know you can give it to me,"  No, Sofia thought, You don't know what awaits you.

She took a note, put it in an anonymous envelope and left it outside her hotel with only her name on it. Days passed, others arrived, others asked, others made her feel small, exposed, violated with her gaze and every time one of them crossed a line, made a joke that was too cruel, touched a saleswoman without permission, looked at her as if she were already hers, Sofia took another note and delivered it, sometimes in a café, sometimes slipped into a bag in the store, sometimes sent by mail with a simple message:

"You are looking for what I cannot give you, but there is a place that will,"

Soon, Sofia developed a system and she didn't give the ticket to everyone, only to the evil ones, those who used fetish as a weapon, those who enjoyed power, not pleasure, those who hurt to feel alive. She observed them, listened to them, judged them and when she decided, she acted. She felt no remorse, she felt justice, but every time she sent a note, she seemed to feel something moving in the closet, as if the suit approved, as if she had finally found a way to return... through others.

One night, as she was walking home, she saw something that froze her... Across the street, at the dark corner between two buildings, there was a shop window, black, shiny, without a sign, just a pulsating red light and she gasped. On the sidewalk in front, a man staggered, half naked, covered in liquid latex, then fell to his knees, his lips sealed, his eyes closed; From the store, two figures came out, black, shiny, perfect. Maya and Lara without looking at her dragged the man inside and when the door closed, Sofia backed away.

She wanted to run, she wanted to scream, but instead she stood there staring at the shop and after a while she took another note out of her bag, held it between her fingers, stared at it for a long time and put it back in the bag, thinking that, perhaps, she was no longer sure she was on the right side.

The Last Decision

Weeks passed and the "Second Skin" store continued to thrive, Sofia was now a well-known figure and worthy of a certain fame in the fetish environment, she was invited to fashion shows, she was courted by designers but she always politely refused saying that

"passions must be cultivated but you must not let yourself be conquered"

But her eyes when she has had a heavy day are emptier, more tired and in those moments the nights seem longer to her, her dreams full of whispering voices:

"You're still ours, and you're serving us well," and she wakes up with a start, staring worriedly at the closet, approaching it to make sure it's closed, and then going back to bed.

One evening, he received an email, a young man in his twenties, wrote to him that he had suffered abuse and that he was looking for something to protect him, to keep him together.

He asked, "Is there a suit that locks you completely? That no one can take you off? Please I need to be no longer vulnerable."

Sofia read, reread, cried, and thought: This boy is not evil, he is broken, like I was. Her hand automatically went to the bag, to the packet of notes, but she stopped, closed her eyes and for the first time, she heard a cry in the silence of her soul: "NO!" She tore up the note and threw away the rest.

But the cycle continues,

because the evil is not in the notes given,

It is in the desire to use them,

and Sofia, by now, no longer knows,

 If he's fighting the monster,

or has become its accomplice

"The Black Scarf"

It had been raining for three days when Lorenzo entered Sofia's shop. Not with the air of someone looking for a costume, nor with the furtive gaze of the curious. No: he entered like someone who crosses the threshold of a secular temple, with clean hands and an open gaze. He was wearing a coarse wool coat, dull gray, and not a synthetic thread on him, nothing that glitters without a soul. Sofia noticed it immediately, it was rare, in that neighborhood of leather, latex and oblique glances, to find someone who did not like artificial leather.

"I'm looking for inspiration," he said, taking off his gloves, "and you'll surely be able to help me."

Sofia, from behind the black glass counter, looked at him with her usual caution, there was something in him, perhaps the way his fingers brush a silk whip without really touching it, as if he was afraid of contaminating what he touched. They began to talk about fabrics, about how the human skin is the only material that can never really be covered, only transfigured. He quoted Baudelaire:

"Beauty is always bizarre." She replied with a silence that tasted of broken chains.

They saw each other again. First for a coffee, then for a conceptual art exhibition where mannequins wore transparent overalls, then for dinner, in a Japanese restaurant where the walls were made of rice paper and the knives were as sharp as promises. It was there, between a sip of sake and a bite of tuna tartare, that Lorenzo said to her:

“Have you ever thought that your shop could be a way to hide from something that torments you?"

Sofia heard the ice in the glass crackle, as if the sound came from inside her bones, no one had ever called her shop a hiding place, no one had ever seen the cage behind the velvet bars.

"It's not a hiding place," he said, in a firmer voice than he heard. "It's a memorial."

He smiled, not with irony, but with a tenderness so precise that it hurt,

"Memorials, Sofia, are made to be visited, not to lock the living inside."

That night, for the first time in a long time, she didn't check the lock of the casket before sleeping and didn't have nightmares. A week later, he gave her a scarf. A meter of fuchsia silk, hand-woven in a Kyoto workshop.

"Because not everything that surrounds you has to suffocate," he told her, wrapping it around her neck with a very delicate gesture; Her fingers brushed against her collarbone and Sofia held her breath.

She wore the scarf for days, it was soft, yes, but every time she held it around her neck, she felt an echo, that feeling of finally being contained, of no longer having to hold anything because something outside did it for her. It was comfort and it was dangerous. For the first time since she had fled the shop with mirrored walls and the scent of burnt rubber, Sofia began to sleep without dreams.

It wasn't that the past had vanished. It was just... put aside, like a book too painful to reread, because no one opens it anymore. Lorenzo slept at her place two nights out of three. He left a pair of felt slippers next to the bed, a cashmere sweater hanging on the bathroom door, a glass of water on the bedside table that was never too full, never too empty. He was a man who loved balance and Sofia without realizing it began to imitate him. She stopped checking the lock of the chest every night, stopped staring at the wardrobe like a superstitious ritual and even stopped thinking about the suit. She was not forgotten, she was absent, and absence is sometimes the first step towards surrender.

They had breakfast together on Sundays. He made coffee with a silver mocha that he had inherited from his grandmother; she toasted the bread until it was crunchy as a bone. They talked about fabrics, about cities they had never visited, about that French film in which no one ever really kisses. They laughed, touched, slept embraced with their knees stuck, as if their bodies had finally found the right shape to be together.

One evening, while Sofia was arranging her clothes in the laundry basket, Lorenzo passed behind her and kissed the back of her neck.

"Do you know what I like about you?" he asked. "That you don't need to dress up to be sensual."

She smiled, she didn't tell him that  she had once  been disguised, that the disguise had possessed her, that the power was not hers then, it was of the suit, of the shop, of the silence that had sewn another soul on her. Instead she said: "And I like you not to be afraid of my shadow."

He laughed, softly. "Shadows are just light that has taken a break."

That night, they made love with the curtains open. The moon entered the room like a discreet guest, and for a moment Sofia thought: Is this happiness, then?