She ran a shower, and catching sight of her body in the mirror, she smiled and turned to show him the damage.  There was always a bit of damage.

The tops of her arms were covered in bruises where he had held her down, her wrists blazed with grazes and her back was a canvas of friction burns. If she had been dusted for prints, his would have covered every inch of her body. She was his plaything, at her request, and he loved the privilege implicit in destroying the efforts of her presentation.

‘Bunny ears’ she laughed, ‘should come with a health warning.’

He smirked, still lying in bed, watching as she showered.  The sticky sweaty salty smoky smell of sex, still on his hands, was now rinsing away from her body.  But the bruises remained. He liked to hurt her, he had to admit it, yet the thought of anyone harming this tiny fragile woman outside of this complicity made him feel angry and protective.  That was the problem with her.

He didn’t want to feel anything at all, but he did.  She wanted to feel everything. Vividly.  She wanted to feel the marks he left on her skin.  Some people may have said they were in love.

She was gathering her stuff together and, like a shape shifter, her appearance was different again from earlier.  She seemed at times kaleidoscopic, a million different images, versions, permutations, re-creations.

Her hair, usually beaten into submission by the hiss of the straightening irons, formerly glossed, smoothed and tightly bound, now fell loose in wet, platinum waves. ‘Got a shirt?’ she asked, rifling through his wardrobe, ‘White. Long sleeved’

‘Yeah, there’s one in there somewhere.  Why?’

‘I can’t be bothered with that suit, I’m in a hurry.’ She was already buttoning the shirt up, cinching it with a belt so that suddenly it was a dress, and slipping back into the black high-heeled mules.

‘What – you’re just wearing my shirt?’ He could never quite understand how she thought this stuff up.

‘Yes Siree’.  She flashed her eyes at him, smiled, and then kissed him full on the mouth before saying, ‘See ya – wouldn’t wanna be ya!’

‘Don’t forget these’.  He lifted the bunny ears from the bed knob where they had come to rest and handed them to her.

She got out onto the street, and lighting a cigarette, started off into the city.  In the early morning sunshine a dustcart pulled up on the pavement, she threw the Louis Vuitton bunny ears in and laughed.

She got out onto the street, and lighting a cigarette, started off into the city.   The bunny ears came to rest on a statue of Queen Victoria, she took a photo and texted it to him.  He received it and laughed, not knowing when he would see her again, but knowing he felt less alone.