"The Performance"
The Teacher:
She walks into the lecture hall like a storm premeditated
not violent, no
but the kind that comes with perfume-thick air,
with thunder tucked behind her tongue
and a voice that could hypnotize the guilt from sinners.
The room dims when she speaks,
not because the lights falter
but because every gaze tilts toward her,
spellbound by the sheen of her intellect,
the symmetry of her cruelty.
She doesn't teach.
She performs.
Her words are measured like wine poured slowly into a crystal glass
and she watches the girl in the third row
watch her mouth.
She knows that look.
Curiosity dressed in innocence.
A mind trying to stay afloat
while its body drowns willingly.
Every question she asks the class is a trick.
Not academic
but personal.
Especially when she directs it to her.
"You," she says,
and the girl sits straighter.
"What do you think desire does to reason?"
There's no right answer.
There's only the tension.
The silence that stretches long enough to see her blush.
And the teacher smiles
not kindly,
but with the quiet satisfaction of a predator
who has laid every thread of this web
in advance.
After class,
she lingers at her desk.
Not because she has work to do
but because she knows the girl will hover.
And she does.
"You wanted to ask something?"
The teacher's voice is low.
Intimate.
As if it was always just the two of them in this room.
"I… I liked your lecture."
She stumbles over words like stepping on her own feet.
And the teacher loves it.
"Did you?" she asks,
eyes narrowing just enough to make it dangerous.
"What part did you like best?"
There's a pause.
A blush.
And then a whisper: "The part about desire."
That's all she needs.
A whisper is enough.
A whisper is consent.
Not for touch
but for the beginning of manipulation.
Of subtle chaos.
Of pleasure layered like poison
in sweet fruit.
And when the girl leaves,
eyes still wide,
breath still caught in her chest
the teacher licks her thumb,
presses it to a page corner,
and turns the next chapter in her mind.