Cedar leaned into the client’s back, her palms pressing firmly into the dense, unyielding tissue beneath her.
“Can you go deeper?” the client sighed, impatience laced in her tone.
Cedar had barely started the massage. The muscles were still stiff and cold, the tissue far from warmed. She knew from experience that diving straight into deep pressure would only backfire—the muscles would seize up, locking her out and making her work twice as hard to undo the tension.
But Cedar also knew that most clients didn’t understand this. Few truly grasped the process of relaxation or trusted it to work. The energy radiating off this client was exasperated and hurried. Cedar could tell she wasn’t interested in easing into anything; she didn’t want to waste a second of her massage on what she likely thought of as “fluffing and buffing.”
“Yes, I’ll go deeper,” Cedar said evenly.
She shifted her body weight onto her hands, scrolling them down the client’s back in long, sweeping motions, then circling up and over her shoulders. As she worked, Cedar positioned her elbow and pressed firmly into a knot on the client’s upper trapezius.
Before she could apply much pressure, the client cried out, “Ouch! That hurts!”
Cedar recoiled, startled. She blinked in confusion—she hadn’t used anywhere near enough force to break a cracker in half.
“Oh… kay,” she murmured, hesitating. For the first time in a long while, she felt unsure of how to approach a client. Suppressing a sigh, she resumed the massage, kneading the same area more gently with her hands.
“I don’t like it when you people use elbows,” the client said sharply. “Fingers are fine. You can press as hard as you want with your fingers, but no elbows, please.”
Cedar swallowed the irritation rising in her chest. She bit back the instinct to retort, forcing her voice to stay calm. “We use elbows because it hurts our fingers to work like that,” she explained, choosing her words carefully.
The response was measured, but inside, Cedar’s anger churned, restrained by years of practice.
“Should I request a different therapist, then?” the client asked, her voice dripping with impatience.
Cedar rolled her eyes, her composure finally cracking. She folded her arms and stared at the client. “Let me get this straight—you want me to intentionally hurt myself for your benefit?”
“I’d like another therapist,” the client said flatly, propping herself up on her elbows without a hint of modesty, her cleavage unapologetically on display. She turned her head to glare at Cedar. “Get someone else.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Cedar replied, her tone sharper now. “You’d have to get up, get dressed, and speak to the front desk yourself. And I can’t promise you there will be another therapist available.”
The client huffed, then begrudgingly nestled her face back into the cradle. “Fine. Keep going, but no elbows.”
“No,” Cedar said, shaking her head. “I’d like a different client.”
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Cedar lounged on the break room couch, her laptop balanced on her legs, typing furiously. Blogging had become her sanctuary—a place to unload her frustrations into the void, where anyone—or no one—might hear them. It was her ritual, a moment of calm before the next client arrived.
The girls at the front desk liked Cedar. They always had her back, especially when dealing with the occasional client who stormed out mid-session. Even Linda, the manager, supported her, often brushing off complaints from those rare clients Cedar didn’t click with.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The door to the break room swung open with a bang, and Sistine, the Head Therapist, strode in, her expression tight. Without a word, she marched to the sink and turned on the water, the sound of it filling the silence.
Sistine had never been a fan of Cedar, though the animosity seemed one-sided. Cedar had once been offered the position of Head Therapist but declined it—a choice that seemed to sting Sistine deeply. Adding to the tension, Cedar had bluntly turned down a massage exchange, saying, “No thanks.” Sistine hadn’t taken it well.
Now that Sistine held the coveted title of Head Therapist, she seemed determined to wield it against Cedar at every opportunity. She treated Cedar like an underling, nitpicking her work and making pointed remarks. Just last week, she’d insisted Cedar enroll in additional training, claiming, “you’re not cutting it.”
Cedar sighed, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. It was just another day in paradise.
“I just had to massage your client,” Sistine said, angrily flicking water from her hands. “They called me back when I was about to eat lunch, and now I don’t get to eat.”
“That lady was a nutcase. Sorry about that,” Cedar said, not looking up from her screen. “You know you can refuse to do things you don’t want to do, right? Did she make you dig into her with your fingertips?” A sly smile played on her lips as her mind wandered to alternative interpretations of the phrase.
Sistine’s lips pressed into a thin line as she pushed her glasses up her nose. “Some people don’t like elbows. It’s their preference,” she said curtly, drying her cracked, reddened hands on a towel. She hung it on her assigned hook with exaggerated precision. “Linda is very upset with you, by the way. You’re on thin ice with her. You’re lucky I was here to smooth everything over, or you wouldn’t have a job right now.”
Cedar’s fingers paused briefly over her keyboard. Linda hadn’t mentioned any of this. In fact, Linda often treated Cedar like a confidante. They occasionally went out for lunch, and just last week, Cedar had attended Linda’s daughter’s birthday party—an event Sistine hadn’t been invited to.
“Thanks,” Cedar said flatly, resuming her typing.
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Cedar’s next five clients passed in a blur, each one seeking nothing more than quiet relaxation. The silence was a gift—it gave her time to think about the events of the night before.
The stranger in her apartment.
The figure that looked exactly like her. Her replica.
The words her duplicate had spoken echoed in her mind, each one tinged with surreal clarity: The police will arrest me at 10 tonight. I’ll be placed into virtual rehabilitation. I’ll meet someone else who looks like me. I must trust them.
She replayed the encounter over and over, trying to make sense of it. The whole thing felt like a dream, some strange fabrication of her overworked mind.
It couldn’t have been real.
She remembered feeling oddly calm throughout it all. Too calm. Even happy. That feeling was the most unnerving part of the entire experience—it was so unnatural, so unlike her.
Even if it was real, Cedar thought, whatever was coming couldn’t possibly be worse than the life she was already living.
She often imagined what hell might look like. In her version, it wasn’t fire and brimstone—it was an endless line of clients to massage. Each one as insufferable as the first client she’d had that day: demanding, unyielding, impossible to please. She would be forced to work on an empty stomach, the relentless gnaw of hunger a constant companion. The massage room would be freezing—too cold for her hands to warm up, too cold for her clients’ muscles to relax, turning every session into an uphill battle.
At 38 years old, this was her reality. She lived alone in a cramped 600-square-foot apartment, barely scraping by. She had no retirement savings, was $50,000 in debt, and drove a car that broke down more often than it ran—hence the debt. All her friends were married with kids, their lives bustling with purpose and connection. Cedar’s was silent, hungry, and lonely.
Returning to her parents’ home wasn’t an option—not with her OCD-stricken cousin entrenched there like a parasite. He refused help, refused to improve, and drained the life out of anyone who dared show him kindness. Cedar remembered bitterly how he would monopolize the hot water on the coldest winter mornings, the shower upstairs running endlessly. Meanwhile, her own shower below his sputtered frigid droplets onto her skin, each icy sting a reminder that she wasn’t welcome.
He contributed nothing, only imposed. He made outlandish demands, like insisting her mother stand outside the bathroom holding a towel for him during his hours-long showers. He was 55 years old, rail-thin, with long, unkempt hair and a beard that gave him the look of a wild prophet. But there was nothing wise or kind in his eyes—only hostility, especially when he looked at Cedar. She was an enemy in her own house.
After countless, fruitless pleas for her parents to throw him out, Cedar left. He had won.
People always said the best revenge was to live your best life—to thrive, to find joy—but she couldn’t even manage that. Her life felt like a string of compromises and quiet defeats, one after another.
Let the cops arrest me. I don’t care. I give up.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the angrier she felt at the possibility that last night had only been a dream. At least if it were real, it meant something in her life was about to change.