Amla looked around furtively as she entered the tiny internet café. She did not want to be seen by anyone, least of all Rocky, the arrogant leader of the neighborhood gang. Rocky had been trying to get her attention for the past year. In a small town like Shimla, gangs like his had great power and Amla feared at the recklessness this power might infuse in him. Yet these were tiny botherations compared to what was about to happen today. Today, S was going to send her a picture. 'S' was what Amla used to refer to the man she had been chatting with for the past five months. He had not told her anything about himself, yet he knew all of her deepest, darkest secrets. Her fears, likes and dislikes. Her proclivity towards the dark world of bondage and pain. All of her past sexual experience (or lack of it). The only two things Amla had managed to keep privy were her name and her location. Or so she thought.
It had started so innocently. At the café working on a college project, Amla had stumbled upon a chat site. He found her. He spoke to her. Everyday. She was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. He asked questions. So many questions! And always, he would avoid answering hers. Slowly, very slowly, he introduced her to it. BDSM, he said, was a lifestyle. At first, Amla was terrified. She ran to her one bedroom apartment and slammed the door closed, heart beating wildly. Yet she found herself thinking about it. The ropes and the chains. The metal and the leather. She dreamt of submission that night.
Every day after that was an adventure. S would give her a new topic to read every night, and she would have to send him an email with her thoughts on it the next morning. Amla secretly loved reading what he gave her. She would devour the articles, eyeing the pictures of the graciously sprawled, naked women with averted eyes and bent heads, and she would imagine herself in their place. What would it be like, to submit like that? What emotions could a person in that position possibly feel? Shame or embarrassment was understandable. But pleasure? Amla scoffed, even as the twinge between her legs gave her nonchalance away. It took her two months of reading, watching videos and learning about BDSM from S to admit to herself that it excited her. For a long time, Amla deterred admitting it to herself, held prisoner by the threads of shame and stigma society had attached to the topic. But when she came one night with a throaty cry, her fingers moving frantically in the wet folds of her pussy, her head filled with images of her body stretched into bizarre positions and held in place with thick cords, Amla realized there was no denying it. She wanted to be a submissive.
S did not seem surprised. He explained to Amla that she was 'naturally submissive', and he had discovered that tendency within a week of talking to her. Although this frightened her, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of thrill: he cared, after all! In the past months, she had developed a strange addiction to this man. This man who came into her dark fantasies every night. This faceless, yet somehow beautiful man who awakened something deep within her: a part she did not herself understand. Maybe it was time to explore. She would be done with college in a few weeks, and had no plans thereafter. S had asked if she wanted to come to his city. He would find her a job, and they could give their relationship a shot. It was a terrifying, tantalizing offer. Yet in these months of self discovery, she had shed the skin of the timid, shy girl she used to be. Amla felt newer, braver somehow. And so she had agreed, upon one condition: he would send her a picture of himself. Not the body, she did not care for the size of his penis or the shape of his muscles. She wanted to look at his eyes.
