Blood on the Signal

She lit three candles, each one positioned around the chair at center frame, bathing the scene in gold and shadow. On the walls behind her, she pinned cryptic notes, torn diary entries, coordinates. A conspiracy that looked real because it was.

At exactly midnight, she hit “Go Live.”

The screen flickered. Chat exploded.

Mistress is back.

Did we displease you?

Say the word, I’ll crawl.

Dommy Mommy 😭 please punish me.

Her voice cut through the frenzy, low and chilling. “Silence.”

A thousand lines of chat stopped instantly.

“I’m not here to play. I’m here to hunt.”

Her eyes bored into the camera lens.

“You’ve been watching me. You’ve been following me. You’ve left gifts… and threats. I liked the photo, by the way. Bold.”

She smiled, a slow curl of satisfaction. “So here’s what we’re going to do, darling Fox.”

That name caused the chat to spasm.

“Tonight, I give you a stage. The question is—will you step into the light?”

She reached for the leather folder on the table beside her, opening it to reveal a carefully prepared set of encrypted chat logs, digital traces, and notes scrawled in Domica’s looping cursive. Then she held up a flash drive.

“Inside here are the identities of six anonymous users who messaged me... all with the same phrase.”

“Velvet looks good soaked in blood.”

“I’m going to stream for one hour. If you have a confession, a message, or something to show me, now’s your time.”

She leaned in close, whispering, “Or else I’ll drop all six names. One by one. Starting with the IP that logged in from your sister’s work computer.”

The threat hung like smoke.

In the next ten minutes, three anonymous tips rolled into her backchannel.

None were from the Fox.

But one included an old screenshot: her younger self, age thirteen, in ballet class. She hadn’t posted that image anywhere. Ever.

Her pulse quickened. That wasn’t just obsession.

That was someone who had known her life before Domica.

Thirty minutes in, the chat grew unhinged. Some begged. Some warned her to stop. Others delighted in the tension. The number of live viewers ticked past 2,000—more than she'd ever had.

And then came a ping.

Private message. Anonymous handle.

FoxTail: “I see your signal. I raise you a truth.”

Attached was a video.

Shaky. Filmed in low light. It showed her walking into WREC two nights ago. Alone. Unmasked. The video paused mid-frame.

Over it, a voice—digitally scrambled—spoke.

“You don’t hunt me. You become me.”

The screen went black.

Her chat went berserk.

Dominique stared, heart hammering. She ended the stream without a word.

Then she walked straight to her closet, pulled out a second whip—unused, still wrapped in cellophane.

This one wasn’t for show.

Her breath fogged the mirror as she peeled off the velvet harness, the cool air licking the sweat that clung to her skin. Her pulse still raced, not from arousal—but from something far colder. The air in her room felt thicker now. Compressed. Like the walls were listening. Like the Fox was here.

The video of her walking into WREC—unmasked, vulnerable—kept replaying in her mind. That image… it wasn’t stolen from social media. It was filmed. Recently. By someone close.

She hadn’t told anyone she was going that night. Not even Wolf.

She sank into the leather chair, letting her weight fold into it, legs curled, eyes fixed on the screen’s faint glow. The live chat had long ended, but unread DMs still flooded in. One after another. Some desperate. Some vulgar. Some incoherent.

But only one mattered now.

FoxTail.

“You don’t hunt me. You become me.”

Dominique whispered it aloud, testing how it tasted on her tongue.

Her control, her dominance—he wasn’t just threatening to take it. He was trying to replicate it. Invert it. As if she were a symbol he could hijack. As if Domica was just another skin he could wear better than her.

Her jaw clenched.

No one wore her skin.

She pulled the drawer beneath her desk and grabbed her backup burner phone. The one Marco had modified. It still had Wolf’s number saved—under a fake name, of course. She stared at it, thumb hovering. He might have answers. He would know what to do.

But she wasn’t ready to admit weakness.

Not yet.

Instead, she powered up her secondary laptop and opened a dark net portal Marco had shown her long ago. A crawler. One that burrowed through underground pages—abandoned servers, corrupt forums, and decaying chatrooms.

In the search bar, she typed:

Velvet looks good soaked in blood.

She pressed enter.

The screen flashed, then lit up with dozens of broken links, closed portals… and one active video.

Title: “Mother May I?”

No description. No date stamp. Password protected.

But uploaded… tonight.

Her throat went dry.

She tried three passwords before stopping herself. No—this was bait. Meant for her. The title alone was a jab at her past. Her real past.

Only one person called her that.

Mother.

Dominique rose and paced the room, arms folded tightly. The Fox had been in her home once—before she’d ever called herself Domica. Before whips and names and collars.

This wasn’t just obsession anymore.

It was war.

She sat back down, cracked her knuckles, and whispered to herself, “You want me to become you? Careful. I don’t just imitate. I devour.”

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to dig deeper, to claw her way into the predator’s den. But first—

She clicked the lights off.

Let the night see her true face.