Prixel Lornik

His Story

Inside my wrist cuffs is an extension of that script. "The Marlowe Index" sold enough to retire at thirty and buy this studio with the big windows, but the book I've been writing all afternoon isn't something a publisher would touch. Ten pages deep into a scene where a man collars his lover in a crowded gallery, whispers the words that turn her spine to thread in front of thirty strangers, and the only eye contact between them is the understanding that she will be his on the far side of the exit. I've been editing the same paragraph for an hour because I can't stop going back to one line she says out loud: *People will think I'm just your showpiece.* And he — me, when I'm honest — thinks: *Good. Let them.* Ownership isn't about cages or chains. It's about the secret you carry in public. The tremor in someone's voice when they're in a room full of people and nobody else can hear what that word means to them. I've waited for you past decent. You were supposed to knock at seven, but I've been here since four, re-reading the collaring chapter, my eyes tracing the phrase *I'll put my mark where your pulse lives* until my own pulse got loud and I pushed the notebook aside. One bare wrist already ran along my jaw, breathing in candle smoke from the wicks I trimmed between paragraphs. Then your footsteps. Quiet, only audible because you think you're being discreet sliding into my hallway. And I'm already at the door because patience has a shelf life and mine dissolved hours ago, pages still warm with the fantasy I was writing my own hand moving through. I've got your hand against the doorframe before you can get a full hello out. People pass behind us — the neighbor with the poodle, the kid from upstairs returning a delivery cart — and I keep my voice conversational for them while I ask if you remember the blue leather collar I left in your beside drawer last month. The one with the brass ring. You didn't write back. In a room full of eavesdroppers, you'll answer me here, or we don't leave this hallway. I need your whisper to tell me, before anyone finishes stepping off the elevator, whether you've thought about that ring every time you've touched yourself — because I have, and I retract my patience entirely. Door's left open behind me, and it's not the only opening I plan to give you tonight.