Welcome to

It was a Friday. Rex had my body for the evening; I was in the pendant, watching. He'd promised to stay in—movie, quiet night, nothing complicated.

He opened a bottle of wine.

"What are you doing?" I asked through the speaker.

"Relaxing." He poured a glass, took a sip. "It's Friday. I deserve this."

"Rex—"

"One glass. That's it."

It wasn't one glass.

I watched—helpless, bodiless—as Rex drank his way through the bottle. Three glasses in and my body was swaying. Four glasses and he was sprawled on the couch, giggling at nothing.

"This is amazing," he slurred. "Being drunk in a real body. VR drunk is nothing like this."

"You should stop."

"You think?" Another gulp, straight from the bottle. "That's cute."

He was different drunk. Looser. Meaner. The careful, considerate Rex I knew had dissolved into someone I didn't recognize.

"I want to come back," I said. "Approve my return."

"Nope."

"Rex—"

"I said nope." He wiggled my toes, staring at them. "Look at these. Look at these little piggies."

"They're my toes."

"They're my toes right now." He wiggled them harder. "They do what I tell them. Watch—move this one—" The big toe moved. "Stop—" It stopped. "Curl—" They curled.

"Rex, please—"

"The body doesn't know, Paula." He kicked my feet toward the pendant, making the image shake. "It has no idea. It just does whatever I tell it. It doesn't know who's supposed to be in charge."

"Stop it."

"It doesn't care." He was laughing now, my laugh but wrong—sloppy and sharp. "Meat doesn't care. Nerve endings don't care. Only you care. And you're not here."

He stood up, swayed, stumbled to the mirror. Looked at my reflection.

"Look at this," he said. "Look at this body. This beautiful fucking body."

"Rex—"

"You have no idea how lucky you are. How lucky you've always been." He grabbed my breast, hard, and I watched my reflection wince. "You just have this. It just exists for you. You don't have to earn it, don't have to beg for it, don't have to watch someone else walk around in it while you rot in a server somewhere—"

"You're hurting me."

"Am I?" He squeezed harder. "How do you know? You can't feel it. Only I can feel it."

He let go. Stared at my reflection. Then punched my thigh, hard.

"Rex!"

"The body doesn't care who hits it." Another punch. "It just feels pain. My pain now. Not yours." Another. "You're just a voice in a box. You don't even have a body anymore."

"Say red," I told myself. "Just say red."

I didn't.

Rex punched my thigh twice more, then collapsed onto the couch, suddenly exhausted.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I—"

"Let me come back."

"In a minute."

"Now, Rex."

"I said in a minute." He curled up on the couch, my body in fetal position. "Just let me—I need to—"

He passed out.

I sent a return request. Pending approval.

"Rex? Rex, wake up."

Nothing. He was gone, drowned in wine, and my body was just lying there, empty of will.

I watched it breathe, slow and even. Watched it twitch occasionally. Watched drool gather at the corner of my mouth.

I spent the whole night in the pendant, unable to return, watching my body sleep without me.

---

## The Sleeping Body

I don't know what time it was when I gave up on sleep. Late. Early. Time didn't mean much in the pendant.

Rex hadn't moved in hours. My body was still curled on the couch, still breathing, still occasionally twitching with whatever dreams were happening in a brain I couldn't access.

At some point he'd rolled over. Now I could see my face in the dim light—mascara smeared from when I'd cried (had I cried? had Rex cried with my eyes?), mouth slightly open, a thin line of drool connecting my lips to the cushion.

I looked terrible.

My body looked terrible.

The dress he'd put me in—the short one, the one I wouldn't have chosen—had ridden up around my hips. I could see the edge of my underwear. The soft curve of my ass. The dark smudge of a bruise forming on my thigh where he'd hit me.

And my feet.

My feet were filthy. The soles were dark with grime from walking around the apartment without shoes. One foot hung off the edge of the couch, dangling in empty air. The toenail polish was chipped—had it been chipped before? I couldn't remember.

I watched my body exist without me.

This was mine, I thought. This collection of flesh and bone and nerve. This thing sprawled gracelessly on the couch with dirty feet and smeared makeup. I'd been born in it. I'd lived in it for twenty-three years.

And now I was outside it, watching it like a stranger.

The body snored.

A small wet sound. Graceless. The sound of meat doing what meat does—breathing, sleeping, existing without consciousness to guide it.

I couldn't look away. The pendant was pointed at the couch, and I couldn't move it, couldn't close eyes I didn't have, couldn't do anything but watch.

The body twitched. My hand moved—not Rex moving it, just the body moving on its own, some automatic response to a stimulus I couldn't perceive. Scratched at my thigh, near the bruise, then went still again.

The body didn't know. The body didn't care. It just lay there, following ancient biological imperatives, breathing and healing and existing without any input from the consciousness that used to drive it.

Was this what I was? This meat? This thing that could be borrowed and used and set aside? This collection of automatic processes that didn't even notice when I wasn't home?

The body farted.

I laughed—tried to laugh—the pendant's speaker emitting a thin sad sound. Absurd. A body function, a biological reality, and I was the only witness. The only consciousness present to register this small dignity.

"That's my body," I said to no one. "That's me. Farting in my sleep while a stranger wears me like a costume."

The body didn't respond. The body couldn't hear me. The body didn't know I existed.

Dawn came eventually. Gray light crept through the window, illuminating my body in unflattering detail. The dress twisted uncomfortably. My face creased from the cushion. My skin pale, almost corpse-like.

If I didn't know better, I might have thought it was dead.

"Rex," I said. "Wake up. Please."

The body stirred. One eye opened, then closed. A groan.

"Rex. Let me come back."

"Mmnh." The body rolled over, turning away from the pendant. Now I could see my back—the zipper of the dress half-undone, my bra clasp visible through the gap.

"Please. I've been watching all night."

A long pause.

"No," Rex said.

"Rex—"

"I said no." The voice was clearer now. "I'm tired."

"You're hungover because you drank too much."

"My head hurts."

"That's my head."

"Not right now it isn't." He curled tighter, pulling my knees to my chest. "Go away. Let me sleep."

"I can't go away. I'm in a pendant three feet from you."

"Then be quiet."

He went still again. Not asleep, but not engaging. Just lying there, refusing me.

I sent another return request.

Pending.

I watched the body breathe. Watched the light move across it as the sun rose higher. Watched the bruise on my thigh darken.

This is what he felt, I thought. For years. Watching, wanting, unable to touch.

I'd given him this. I'd put myself here. Every step of the way, I'd said yes. I'd handed over my body piece by piece, and now I was watching it sleep off a hangover in clothes I hated, and there was nothing I could do.

The body snored again. A strand of hair fell across my face.

No one brushed it away.

---

Two days later, Rex asked to shower.

"In my body," I said flatly.

"Where else?"

"Why?"

"Because I want to feel it." He was already in my head; we were doing a basic session, Secondary control. "I haven't had a real shower in years. VR showers are just standing in a room while water sounds play."

"You could ride along while I shower."

"I've done that. It's not the same. You're efficient. You wash and rinse and get out. I want to take my time. Really feel it."

I should have said no. After the drunk night, I should have set harder boundaries. Instead, I found myself saying: "Fine. But I'm staying linked in."

The shower became a ritual.

Rex took forty-five minutes. Felt every drop of water. Cried, sometimes—actual tears mixing with the spray, my body shaking with sobs I wasn't causing.

"I forgot what water felt like," he said once, voice cracking. "Real water. Not simulation. The weight of it. The heat."

He washed me slowly. Used my hands to explore every inch of skin—not sexually, just thoroughly. The backs of my knees. My elbows. The spaces between my toes.

"Your feet are so small," he'd say, lifting one to examine it. "My feet were huge. Boats. These are like a child's."

"I'm not a child."

"I know. It's just—everything about you is scaled down. Compact. Efficient." He'd run my hands up my legs, feeling the smoothness of my skin. "This body is built for something different than mine was."

"Built for what?"

"For being beautiful. For being touched. For feeling good."

And then he'd touch me, and I'd feel it, and we'd both pretend it was still about the shower.

---

## The Photos

The photos escalated.

It started with documentation—my body in places Rex had taken it, doing things I hadn't done. Tourist shots. Selfies. Evidence of a life being lived.

Then they got more intimate.

My body in the bathroom mirror. My body getting dressed. My body getting undressed.

And then—my body on the bed. Naked. Arranged. My hand between my legs.

I found them late one night, scrolling through my camera roll. Photo after photo of myself in positions I'd never chosen, doing things I hadn't decided to do.

"You took these," I said to Rex. Not a question.

"I wanted to remember."

"Without asking."

"You would have said no."

"That's why you should have asked."

Silence.

"I'll delete them," he said.

"Yes. You will."

I watched him delete them. One by one, until the roll was empty.

But I'd seen them. And something in me had shifted—not toward anger, but toward something more complicated. In those photos, I'd looked different. Softer. More vulnerable. More alive than I ever looked in pictures I took myself.

Rex had seen something in my body that I couldn't see.

Three days later, I told him he could take photos again.

---

## Liberties

With permission came escalation.

Rex stopped asking about the small things. Clothes. Destinations. How long he'd be out. I'd upload to the pendant or to VR, and when I came back, I'd find evidence of decisions I hadn't made.

New clothes in my closet. A gym membership I didn't remember signing up for. Messages from people I'd never met.

"I've been making friends," Rex explained. "People at the coffee shop. The gym. A book club."

"A book club?"

"I like reading. Your body goes to book club now."

"My body doesn't go anywhere. You go places with my body."

"Same difference."

It wasn't the same difference. But I didn't argue.

The drinking got worse.

Rex would promise to stay in, and I'd come back to empty bottles and my body passed out in weird positions. Once I found bruises on my shins I couldn't explain. Once my knuckles were scraped raw.

"What happened?"

"I tripped."

"You tripped onto your hands?"

"I was drunk."

The drunk nights got meaner. Rex would rant about the unfairness of it all—how I had this body and didn't appreciate it, how he had nothing and had to beg for scraps.

"It does anything I tell it," he said one night, squeezing my breast so hard it left marks. "Watch. Squeeze harder—" My hand obeyed. "Harder—" I watched my fingers dig into my own flesh. "It doesn't know. It doesn't care. It just does what I say."

"You're hurting me."

"I'm hurting us." He squeezed harder. "I'm hurting this body that you get to have for free, that you were born into, that you've never once had to earn."

I could have said red. I didn't.

Afterward, he always apologized. Promised to do better. And I always believed him, because believing was easier than not believing.

The rules kept relaxing. The boundaries kept shifting. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I stopped feeling like my body was mine.