"The Object in the Trunk"

It was one of those evenings without emergencies and Lorenzo had stayed overnight at Sofia's after spending the afternoon arranging her archive of fabrics. He had insisted on helping her tidy up the wardrobe

"If you keep keeping winter blankets on in the spring, you're going to end up becoming a moth's nest,"

She joked, in that tone that made her feel cared for, uncontrolled.

Sofia was in the kitchen, heating milk with a drizzle of honey, when she heard it move in the bedroom. Then a dull noise, not violent, but wrong. Like something heavy that slips and then stops. 

"Sofia?" He called her, in a neutral voice. Curious, not alarmed. "Love, can you come for a moment?" She put the cup on the counter and entered the room. Lorenzo was on his knees next to the open wardrobe, the blankets piled up on the floor, in front of him, there was the trunk, the dark wooden one, with rusty iron studs, which she had not opened for months. The padlock hung, open.

And in her hands, her elegant hands, those that drew clothes like poems was the jumpsuit; black, shiny, perfect, she seemed to breathe, even if she didn't move. The world stopped... Sofia's breath broke in her throat, her knees trembled, not because of weakness, but because of the impulse to flee, to snatch it from her, to scream. 

"Why do you keep such a marvel in a trunk?" Lorenzo asked, lifting it slightly.

The suit slipped through his fingers like black water, he looked at it with the eye of the designer: he admired its line, the tension of the material, the lack of visible seams.

"It's... extraordinary. Have you ever worn it?"  Sofia didn't answer right away... for a second, she was back there, in the shop with the red lights and the floor throbbing... in a voice that whispered to her: 

"You don't need to choose anymore. You're already perfect."  

Then he came back, suddenly, violently. "PUT THAT FUCKING THING DOWN!" he shouted, his voice breaking, sharp as glass. He ran towards him, snatched the suit from his hands with a force he didn't know he had, and threw it on the ground as if it were burning. 

Lorenzo backed away, surprised. "Sofia... what's going on? It was just curiosity, I didn't know that..."

"DIDN'T YOU KNOW?" she interrupted him, her eyes full of angry tears.

"You didn't know that rummaging in my closet? You didn't know that opening a locked trunk, yes fucking locked , even if tonight for once I forgot to remove the key, was a fucking violation?" 

He raised his hands, calm but hurt. "It wasn't closed, it was leaning and I wasn't rummaging. I was moving the blankets and my gaze fell. I just wanted to figure out what it was."  

"What was it?" Sofia laughed, a dry joyless sound.

"It's my nightmare, it's the thing that almost killed me and it' s hidden for a reason, not to be admired by a designer who quotes Baudelaire while holding a cursed object!" 

Lorenzo turned pale, not with anger but with the word: damn.

"Sofia... I don't understand, it's just latex." 

"For you, perhaps." His voice dropped, trembling. "To me, it's a walking grave." 

... Silence...

Outside it began to rain heavily, as if the sky was crying for both of them. Lorenzo took a step forward.

"I'm sorry, really, I didn't mean to..."

"Go away," she said, without looking at him. "Just go tonight."  He hesitated, then nodded, picked up his coat, and walked out without closing the door hard, only with a delicacy that hurt more than a slap. The door closed with a click too gentle for the chaos Sofia had inside.

She remained motionless for a few seconds, her shoulders hunched, her breath still broken. Then she turned around, the suit was there on the floor, lying like a fallen body. In the fit of anger she had snatched it from Lorenzo's hands and thrown it away, not with care, not with rituality, but with the desperate gesture of someone who just wants not to touch her again. And now she lay at the foot of the closet, shiny under the dim light of the bedside lamp. 

But her feet did not obey, it was as if the floor around the suit had become a magnetic field and she, even if she wanted to escape, was attracted by it, not by desire, but by terror itself. 

... She remained motionless, staring at her...

The suit lay there on the ground as if time had never touched it, as if it was waiting for this moment... Then, with an effort that snatched a moan from her chest, she took one step, then another, she knelt down, stretched out her hand. She didn't want to touch it, but she had to, she had to put it back in the trunk, close it, forget it. Forever.

Her fingers brushed against the latex, and it was as if blood was igniting. A warm, dense, familiar wave exploded in her veins. The perfume, that mixture of new rubber and damp skin, invaded her nostrils, the touch was soft, yes, but alive. 

Without realizing it, she lifted it, held it to her chest and with a slowness that did not belong to her she brought it to her face, her cheek sank into it and for an instant, a single, terrible instant, it was her again. Not Sofia the survivor, not Sofia the woman who runs a shop, who drinks coffee on Sundays and who loves a man with clean hands. But she: the perfect creature, without doubts, without pain, without choice. Beautiful, obedient, whole.

She stood up, looked at herself in the mirror with her jumpsuit clutched in her arms, she looked like a priestess holding her idol with tousled hair, dilated eyes and parted lips. She was splendid and she was lost. The jumpsuit didn't speak, it didn't have to. It began to slide on her shoulders as if she had invisible hands, a flap caressed her back, another wrapped around her wrist. It didn't force her. He invited her.

Then, with a slowness that seemed to breathe, a silent slit opened along its entire length, running from the nape of her neck to her heel, like a mouth that opens to welcome and without a sound, without a tear, it rested against her. He didn't put it on. He embraced her.

The latex clung to her skin with the delicacy of a lover who remembers every curve. It covered her back, thighs, arms, enveloping her in a moist, familiar warmth. It wasn't cold, it wasn't artificial, it was alive and knew her better than anyone. 

Then, with a tenderness that made her eyes water, he brushed her neck, not with pressure but with intention. A slow, moist, almost labial caress and when it reached the base of her throat it barely rose, as if to kiss her.  

Sofia moaned, a low, hoarse sound that came from a place she thought was buried and in that moan there was everything: the memory of the nights when she didn't have to decide, she didn't have to speak, she didn't have to be. 

Just existing, perfect, lucid, obedient.

How much she had loved that feeling, how much she had hated it, how much she missed it. 

For a moment, she closed her eyes, lulled by that profane pleasure. The suit spread over her mouth and she began to kiss her like a lover, not with force but with a delicacy that brought tears to her eyes. The latex lips were soft, warm, almost moist, and moved with the same slowness with which Lorenzo touched her mouth after love: a kiss that he did not ask, that listened. 

And then, here was the sweetest horror, the suit read in her mind, not with words, but with sensations. His invisible fingers caressed her hips exactly as he did, his folds wrapped around her wrists with the same light pressure that Lorenzo used when he held her still, not to dominate her, but to tell her: "I'm here." Even her breathing, that slight lifting of the latex chest against hers, seemed to synchronize with her rhythm of when they slept embraced. 

Sofia moaned again, this time with a subtle pain, because she understood: the suit was not possessing her, it was seducing  her and it was doing it with the appearance of what she loved most. For a second she almost wanted to give up. What harm was there, after all, in being loved like this? Without questions, without distance, without fear of being abandoned? The suit would never go away, she would never look at it with eyes full of questions, she would never open a trunk that she did not have to open. It would be perfect and she... she would finally be safe.

But in that thought, she heard the voice of herself, the real one, the one she had struggled for years to find whisper: "This is not love. It is a reflection. And reflexes do not hold hands." With a strangled cry, she tore the suit from her lips. 

"NO!" he screamed, his voice broken between anger and tears. "YOU ARE NOT HIM! YOU ARE NOTHING! "

And with all the strength she had left, not of the body, but of the soul, she ran to the window, opened it wide and threw her into the void. Sofia falls to her knees crying, a liberating cry, for having finally freed herself from that obsession that had gripped her for months, she looked at her hands and thanked her for still being her.