Hourglass Aesthetics Novels & Stories

This is where the female classes are held. Gone is the cold marble and echoing emptiness. Here, the floor is covered in plush, dark red carpet. Warm lights flicker along the walls like soft candlelight. Paintings of sensual women with bowed heads and parted lips line the corridor. The aesthetic is designed to soothe us. To coax us into submission. To lull us into forgetting the truth: This hallway is a cage dressed in lace. I pass a marble statue of a goddess—tall, serene, naked. Water drips down her stone breasts, cascading like tears. I don’t stop to look. I don’t have time.