Whats next

The message came while she was still dripping wet.

Anonymous: “What happened at the club yesterday? Why are you doing all this?”

Max was stunned by what Silke had done yesterday. He was there. He saw everything. Almost everything. To him, it looked as if Silke was doing it willingly.

Silke stared at it until the letters blurred. She could have deleted it. She could have written *don’t know*. Instead, she sat down against the wall, knees drawn up, and typed, because the question had been inside her for weeks and someone just had to say it out loud. She’d enjoyed it. Even the part with the taxi driver. She tells Max what really happened.

Max was horrified. Then he asked cautiously, “Do you want to keep going?”

Silke: “YES”

Anonymous: “Why?”

“Because I can’t do it alone. Because I want to. And I don’t dare.”

She sent that and kept typing before she could change her mind.

Silke: “It starts with someone saying: ‘Take that off. Now. Not later.’

As soon as the choice is gone, I stop negotiating with myself. Then I’m just a body. And the body has long since gone further than I have.”

She paused. It was warm between her legs again—just from writing.

Silke: “It’s not just the cock that turns me on. What turns me on is that Jonas is standing two meters away and can’t see a thing. That a dress without panties is already a lie. That a stranger is holding up the hem while others watch. That I get wet while I’m ashamed. Shame is the core. Without it, it would just be sex.”

The screen remained dark. Then a period appeared.

Silke laughed silently, without joy: “I’d never go to a club on my own and say yes. Never spread my legs in a taxi. You don’t force me with your hands. You force me by ordering it. And by the fact that afterward I can’t pretend it was an accident.”

She slid a hand between her knees. Not to touch herself. To feel the pressure that was already there.

Silke: “It’s the aftermath that gets me hooked. When I’m lying next to him and I’m still wet. When I know there are videos out there. When I’m making coffee the next morning and my body still remembers. I hate how much I want this. I hate that I touched myself again anyway after the shower. I hate that your question makes me wetter than his kiss.”

A pause. A long one.

Anonymous: What exactly do you want if I force you?

Silke closed her eyes. The answer was already there. She’d just never put it into words.

Silke: “I want you to decide. I want the moment when I realize: now it’s too late to be decent.

I want to be seen without having to ask for it. I want someone to lift up my dress before I get too cowardly myself. I want the gaze of people who don’t love me. I want to feel afterward like I’ve been used. Not hurt. Used. As if my body had a job to do and it did it.”

Anonymous: “You want the coercion. You want the shame. You want me to keep going.”

Silke: “Yes. And I want you not to mistake that for permission to be nice. Being nice doesn’t get me hooked. Being nice makes me think. Thinking makes me cowardly.”

In the bedroom, Jonas turned over, muttered something that sounded like her name but wasn’t. Silke looked at him. Soft. Clueless. Warm.

Silke: “I love him. That’s part of it. If I didn’t love him, this would just be cheating. This way, it’s betrayal. And betrayal is what I cling to.”

She typed the last block more slowly.

Silke: “Force me to keep going. But don’t ask me every time if I want to.

I want to. I just don’t dare. That’s the whole reason. "

The phone remained silent for a while. Then just one sentence came through.

Anonymous: “Fine. Then I won’t ask anymore. And I won’t watch out for you, like in your role-playing game, with the movers, or yesterday at the club and in the taxi.”

Silke set the phone aside, finally slid her hand between her legs, and came quietly, quickly, with clenched teeth, while Jonas slept beside her.

Afterward, she lay there, wet, sore, honest.

And she knew that she had just sent him the only truth that was more dangerous than any photo.

Max stayed awake. This was a free pass. He could really do anything. But he did like Silke. And she wanted it. He’d have to think carefully about what to do next. He felt responsible.