The moment my feet touch campus property I feel a tension hit me and tighten every movement I make. The streets up until now had been mostly empty, filled with quiet houses and people preoccupied with their own lives but on campus it was different. On campus there was so much downtime that you could people watch, seeing other students rushing from building to building on their way to class.

I couldn’t pass through here unnoticed.

I noticed them too, the men whose gaze followed lazily over me as I passed. I noticed the hunger in their gazes and felt their stares linger a bit too long, wondering at what was beneath the heavy and baggy fabric I was wearing and undressing me mentally.

Anger, dismay, disgust should have been at the forefront of my mind. Instead all I do is smile slightly, knowing that even their best imaginings were only a fraction of the reality. Knowing that there was no possible way they could anticipate the present beneath the wrapping paper.

And the more I noticed their looks, the more I wanted to see what would happen if I showed them everything.

My steps started to falter and slow as I pressed back against the voice inside of me telling me to grip my sweater and tug it up. Telling me that I could grab any of these men and drag him into a bathroom nearby. That no one could resist me if I turned on the charms. That no one would be able to speak if they witnessed the me that they saw in the mirror.

Perfection.

I swallowed hard, pressing on and repeating negatives to every urge and desire that my animal brain screamed at me. Denying and denying and denying the truth that I knew was overwhelming, that I knew would only last so long.

I needed this.

My brain kept bringing things up, little bits and memories and quiet little moments that I’d dismissed. It told me of times that I’d had lingering glances in the locker room. The times that I’d loaded up the wrong video online but finished anyways. The times that I’d seen men and hadn’t been able to look away.

A picture started to paint in my brain. A collection of disparate images that fit together like a perfect puzzle and at the center of it all a truth that I couldn’t deny.

I’d built the machine to bring out the perfect version of myself.

Maybe she was the perfect vision of myself.

By the time I reached the building on campus where Jack had his office my hand was shaking as I pulled the door open. I rushed down the quiet halls and hoped beyond hope that he hadn’t moved his office.

He was still here, I knew that. I’d kept tabs on him over the years in anticipation of the grand reveal of my successful life. He was still here, I just had to hope that he was still in the same place.

He was.

The hallway leading down to his office had those familiar nameplates posted there and his was listed alongside a dozen others that I vaguely recognized. I pushed on quickly, turning down familiar corridors until I stopped at the door that was his.

It was closed. I took a deep breath. I tugged the hood down off my head and I slammed my fist down onto the door.

My willpower wasn’t there. Fear, not anger, was in charge. All that came out was a polite knock, a bit too quiet to be heard.

I stood there waiting for countless seconds and then tried again, whispering his name under my breath over and over and over again.

“Please Jack,” I begged, “Please. Please.”

My thighs were squeezing tight together and my gaze was burning a hole in the door and I was on the verge of pounding on it frantically when a voice behind me pulled me out of it, making me jump and squeal a little with a simple, “Hello?”