Part of the Stories series. Like shorts, these are generally done by request and have some personification of the requester in the story. Unlike shorts, these are longer (6k+ words) and move descriptive and world building.
Felix Marin had been a professional massage therapist for over a decade. His hands were legendary, strong, intuitive, and impossibly skilled. His clients, from burned-out CEOs to movie stars trying to hide their stress under muscle, swore by him. The man could find a knot buried under layers of tension like a bloodhound on a scent, and melt it away with a practiced press and stroke. Bookings filled up months in advance. No one blinked at the premium price tag. If you wanted the best, you paid for Felix. But behind the reputation, behind the calm voice and essential oils and linen sheets, was something much darker. Something Felix kept buried beneath the lavender scent and smooth jazz playlists of his massage studio.
Felix was a gut puncher.
Not in the bar-fight, rage-fueled way. No, his obsession was more… refined. Methodical. Artistic. There was something deeply satisfying to him about the feel of muscle under his fist, the resistance of hard abs bracing, or the give of a softer belly yielding to his knuckles. He didn’t discriminate either. Six packs, dad bods, gym rats, even the lean and lanky. The large, the hairy, the smooth. All of it fascinated him. He didn’t just crave the physical thrill, he loved testing them. Finding the line between pleasure and pain, strength and collapse.
To indulge his craving without destroying his reputation, Felix developed a method. His hands were skilled, steady, the hands of a healer. To his clients, he was the picture of serenity: a massage therapist with a gift for touch and a gentle, professional manner. But behind the calm smile and soothing tone was a hunger... strange, primal, and secret. He began with the oils. At first, ordinary blends: lavender for relaxation, peppermint for tension, sandalwood for grounding. But ordinary oils could not serve his private desire. He studied and experimented in silence, late at night when his neighbors slept. Ancient texts on herbal sedation, obscure pharmacology journals, and online forums for fringe chemistry filled his shelves and bookmarks. Piece by piece, he refined something new.
The lotion he created was not meant for mere relaxation. It was an alchemy of rare herbs and synthesized compounds, balanced in ratios so precise that even a drop too much could tip it into poison. The scent alone was disarming, warm and faintly sweet, like wood smoke mixed with honey. A client breathing deeply would already feel their chest loosen, their guard drop. But it was when the lotion seeped into the skin, absorbed by the very muscles he kneaded, that the true effect took hold.
It did not render them unconscious. Felix was careful. He did not want unconsciousness; unconsciousness was silence. What he craved was the twilight space between sleep and waking. The lotion drew his clients down into that state: their minds heavy and drifting, their bodies unresponsive, as though weighed down by leaden blankets. They were not gone, not truly. They could dream. They could feel. But their bodies betrayed them, unable to move, unable to resist. Felix perfected the timing. At first, he’d wait, thirty minutes, forty-five, depending on the man’s build and metabolism. He knew the signs intimately: the slowed breathing, the slack in the shoulders, the glassy flicker behind the eyelids as the dreamstate began. He would murmur words of reassurance, as if coaxing them deeper, a guide across the river of waking into that strange half world. And then, when he was sure, when the man was pinned inside his own flesh, floating in paralysis, Felix let the mask slip. His eyes hardened, his mouth curved into a smile that no client ever saw when awake. His hand, still slick with the special lotion, would press against the man’s abdomen, testing, feeling the warmth of muscle under skin. Then, without hesitation, he would draw back his fist and drive it deep into the gut. The reaction was always the same, and yet always new. The body buckled instinctively, straining against the immovable weight of paralysis. Muscles tried to seize, lungs tried to suck in air, but only a ragged half breath escaped. The man would twitch faintly, as though in a nightmare, his face tightening in a pained grimace. Felix’s ears would ring with the soundless scream locked behind clenched teeth.
