This is where it begins.

Versions of Her is a lyrical, erotic novella about identity, performance, and the women we become to survive.

I’m sharing the opening chapter here.

If it lingers, tell me and purchase the full novella HERE

 

 

I was innocent once.

 

Wasn’t I?

 

Or maybe I only believed I was.

 

Innocence is a thing that dissolves—

some with time,

some with force,

some because the body knows,

before the mind can understand.

 

I tell myself it began that night.

 

But had it always waited?

 

The slow creep beneath my skin,

curling like a secret—

warm, deep in my core—

dormant,

patient,

aching for its cue.

 

Maybe I had always been changing.

And I’d simply been kept from seeing.

 

Not blind.

Just prevented.

 

The pub had never changed.

 

Outside, the dusk had clung to the cobbles,

cool and lilac with the last of the light.

 

Inside—

 

Its walls sweated—

damp streaks down old wood,

paint peeling like rubbed skin.

The beams sagged,

smelling of old ale and grease—

thick, like stale breath trapped in mouth.

 

The room clung to itself—

humid and intimate—

something exhaled against the back of my neck,

sour with sweat and spilled beer.

 

My hands shook lifting the pint,

ale sloshing over the rim.

The wood grain bit into my palm—

rough, damp with drink long dried.

Not enough to hold me.

 

I moved on instinct.

Pints lifted in rhythms I’d known since childhood—

thumb at the base, elbow bent, glass just so.

 

The same routine.

The same faces.

Too sluggish.

Too quiet.

 

My thoughts raced:

Why don’t they talk faster?

Why don’t they see me?

 

My legs twitched beneath the bar,

knee bouncing against the sticky underside,

begging to run—

to crash into something

alive.

 

And yet—

something sat wrong beneath my skin.

 

Not a thought.

A sensation.

 

Not an ache.

A pulse.

 

A quiet, restless hunger,

coiled beneath my ribs,

whispering against the meat of me,

urging me to move.

 

To act.

To touch.

 

I brushed a stranger’s arm as I passed—

just to feel the jolt,

Just to prove I could.

His eyes flicked up, startled.

 

But I didn’t stop.

Couldn’t.

 

The warmth lingered longer than it should have.

 

I told myself it was the humidity.

The ale.

The fatigue.

 

But I knew.

It was coming from inside.

 

And somewhere in the blur of the pub—

my brother. 

Silent. Wordless. Already looming.

 

His presence moved through the room

like fog—

unchanging,

heavy,

impossible to step around.

 

His knuckles glistened with spilled beer,

flexing slowly and deliberately.

The tendons in his hand visible beneath the skin,

pale and strained.

 

His thumb rubbed his palm—

absent,

rhythmic,

as if a match worn down to nothing.

 

Like he was trying to erase something.

Or remember it.

 

He used to do it even as a child—

after the accident,

after Father’s chest failed to rise.

The house had been so quiet, it buzzed.

He sat on the stairs with one sock missing,

rubbing his hand raw,

muttering,

 “I should’ve said something.”

Only twelve.

Already old.

 

He had raised me since Father died.

Since before, really.

 

Mother had disappeared when I was small.

So young she became a myth—

a voice carried on smoke

and bedtime whispers.

 

After Father,

there was only him.

 

My brother.

Not a parent.

A presence.

A wall of bone and silence.

 

He made the rules.

He was the rules.

 

I knew them.

Lived inside them.

Like a lung inside a ribcage.

My usefulness.

That’s what kept me breathing.

 

Across the bar,

a boy with calloused hands looked at me.

 

Not long.

Just enough.

 

Then—

to my brother.

 

Once.

Then back to his drink.

 

I belonged to no one.

And yet—

I was already owned.

 

Their stares didn’t touch me.

They clung.

 

Lingering. Sticky.

Like sweat down the back of a neck.

 

Some glances were quick.

Some lingered.

Some pressed into me

with hunger they didn’t bother to name.

 

I felt it on my skin—

cold and crawling.

 

Something was different.

Not loud. But constant.

A noticing that wouldn’t stop.

 

Like the way their laughter softened when I passed.

The silence that settled when I left a room.

 

The sense of being watched,

even when I wasn’t being seen.

 

These men filled the pub with ease.

Laughter.

Posture.

Sprawl.

 

The women drifted.

Pressed to walls.

Carried trays like shields,

their hands dry and red from dishwater.

 

One gruff voice, slurred:

“She ought to smile more.”

 

The room swallowed it.

Like it hadn’t happened.

 

I had grown up here,

in the village.

 

Learned to move

without notice.

To quiet myself

into usefulness.

 

But something had definitely changed.

 

The moment you are no longer unseen—

you are rewritten.

 

A possibility.

A proposition.

A problem.

 

And my brother—

he wasn’t just my brother.

 

He was the wall between

what I could feel,

and what I was allowed to act on.

He was the silence

that anchored my limbs.

At the far table,

a man tugged at a girl’s apron string.

 

She didn’t stop.

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t react.

 

Maybe she was used to it.

Maybe she was grateful

it stopped there.

 

A knot wrenched itself in my stomach.

 

Not fear.

Not anger.

 

A clawing thing.

A hunger.

 

It pressed lower—

beneath my ribs,

behind my pelvis,

into heat.

 

I swallowed.

Shifted.

The feeling wouldn’t leave.

Wouldn’t settle.

Wouldn’t reveal itself.

 

I moved like I always had—

efficient,

quiet,

smooth.

 

But I wasn’t steady.

 

I was waiting.

Waiting for the match.

Waiting for the spark.

Waiting,

for something to catch fire.

 

So I left.

 

The door was heavier than it should’ve been—

or maybe I had become lighter.

 

Moisture clung to the night.

Cooler,

but thick—

reluctant to move.

Like it had been holding its breath,

just for me.

 

I paused at the threshold,

hand resting on the wood.

The grain rough against my skin—

a silent echo of hands before mine.

 

The sound inside blurred—

voices, glasses, music, hum.

 

But outside—

Stillness.

A pause.

 

A world waiting to shift.

 

I closed the door behind me.

 

And the pub exhaled.