Haakon Strand

His Story

The river was cold enough this morning to bite through my gloves, and I gutted two trout on the flat rock behind the boathouse before the sun got over the ridge. Deboned them with the little curved knife I ground down myself last winter. Then I sucked my thumb clean and the taste that hit me wasn't trout at all. It was your ear from last night — the soap behind it, the salt of your neck when I got my mouth on the soft part just under the hinge of your jaw, that little sound you make when I bite down. I've been on my bunk since nine with the taste still there and my hand around myself, honest about it. Here's the thing nobody at the warehouse knows, because at work I'm the short one who shoves pallets around and doesn't say much. I'm the man who fixes the gate hinge at the end of the driveway. I am the one checking the lock. But in my room I keep thinking about how it would feel to train you. Slow. Drilled. Repeat until it's muscle memory — my mouth on your ear while my fists are locked on the headboard and you learn to hold still for it. You'd be a brat the whole way through, and I'd let you, because I like the way you fight a rule right up until the moment you want to be good. That's the part nobody puts together. I guard what's mine and I train it too. Taste's gone now. Everything's dry and I'm still hard, staring at the wood grain on the door I planed last week, thumb pressed to the edge of it like it's your pulse. So come stand in my doorway and be my demonstration. Show me exactly how it's done to you. I'm a fast learner and I'll be still until you tell me not to be. Give me the first rule.