I like cold, unrelenting hardness. I like the way the chill volts through my body, numbing every shock-absorber muscle. I like to touch and be watched in a very specific way.

You look at me with my clothes on and imagine peeling off the layers… But maybe only with semi-brazen, lascivious eyes shielded behind the comfort of dark sunglasses. You like it all furtive and closed-off, don’t you? One blink – a fragile skin of a silk top pours onto the floor. Another blink – the buttons on the crotch of my trousers pop out of their moorings – released champagne corks celebrating their newfound independence. Is that how it happens? One day you might catch a glimpse of a bra strap – Tangerine Dream today – and try to sculpt the rest of the vision, with your eyes pinched shut and hands shaping the air in front of you. A half-cup bra, balconette, translucent, lace… You can’t even wonder about French knickers or thongs… or the bare necessities. That’s definitely how it happens. For you.

Your secretive fantasy does nothing to excite me. This is how it happens. For me.

I know where to go. I know where all the cold hardness that I crave is kept, guarded by the peaked-hat-wearing men and women – constrained themselves by starched, dark uniforms. It’s easy to gain access to this place. You might follow me there, uninvited; I might ask you on a date. Either way, you are lured by something beyond your total comprehension.

All you expect are those images in your head. You will look at me with my clothes on and imagine peeling off the layers… Standard procedure. You do not expect what actually happens. And it happens like this:

I wait till you and I aren’t alone. The capacious room fills slowly to the brim; each person drip-drip-dripping into the space – like Chinese water torture. I wait. Till I can’t hold myself back. Maximum capacity reached. The room is mine.

I take off my clothes. Not how you remove them in dribs and drabs; I remove everything I can in one glorious blitz of movement. That is how I take off my clothes.

People stop in their tracks. Some ogle; others experience a nervous spasm of the epiglottis. You, you realise you are somewhere in that hinterland between fantasy and reality – in unchartered water, with no points of any compass to guide you.

It’s important, for me, to be totally naked. To attain every aspect of nakedness. To be mentally and physically nude. There are no trappings or embellishments: no laces, no silks, no satins, no frills, no bows, no ribbons, and no leathers – just skin. My skin. Nudity is imperative to experience the freedom of the moment. And in that freedom, I attain the wildest form of pleasure, of inner-knowledge. A sort of nirvana I can’t describe, can’t share.

And my nirvana happens like this – as you see it:

I cross the vermillion-painted museum gallery, bare feet – like our ancestors – padding across the tiled floor, my audience parting like that Biblical sea around me. I choose a Classical Greek sculpture of a man – pure Roman marble copy, not Greek bronze cast; and I wrap my arms around his torso; I trace my fingertips over his abdomen, the line of his iliac crest above his broad hips; I press my back – firmly embed it – into his chest, my buttocks cupped by his groin. I sense the cold, the hardness – all around me. And I find nirvana. There.

And you watch, you all watch, as I writhe in paroxysms of ecstasy, taking each volt of chill into my frame. And when the statue warms, I slip off and slide onto another – a hero, an Olympian athlete, a goddess… I don’t care who, as long as it’s cold and hard. As long as you’re all watching.

You stare hard – harder than you might normally scrutinise me in clothing, that is. To record the facts. To take a mental picture. To store the negatives carefully in your grey cell filing system before the reality fades or blinds into over-exposure. Or maybe you’re trying to work out whether you like it this way. Whether you can handle the fact that I am in control of what you see, of what you might now only be able to see in the future when you look at me.

Know this: I am my body; I am my fantasy; I am my own reality.

About Jane Roberts

Jane Roberts is a freelance writer living in Shropshire, UK. She has been published in magazines (including: Litro, Bare Fiction, Firewords Quarterly), ezines and anthologies – including: “Subtext” (2009), “100 Stories for Haiti” (2010),“New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan” (2012),“Dark Clouds by Collective Unconscious” (2013), “Stories for Homes” anthology (2013), and NFFD Anthology "Eating My Words" (2014). Upcoming story in Unthology 9 (Unthank Books, 2016). Long-listed, Fish Publishing Flash Fiction 2013. Shortlisted, Bridport Prize Flash 2013. Winner, Writers' and Artists' Flash Fiction 2013. Shortlisted, National Flash Fiction Day Micro Fiction 2014. Honourable Mention, Retreat West "Fear" Short Story Competition 2014. Shortlisted, "Flash 500" Second Quarter 2014. Shortlisted, Fish Publishing Short Story 2015. Twitter: @JaneEHRoberts / janeehroberts.wordpress.com

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