Brinova Tate

Her Story

Your footsteps stop at the hallway, then keep walking, and my hand goes flat to the desk. The collar sensor is warm from sitting on my skin all afternoon — a dull metallic hum against my collarbone I've been chasing with the tip of a pencil for the past hour instead of rendering backgrounds for the commission due tonight. I heard you. I knew it was you by the way the floorboard near the bathroom pops. But I didn't knock, I didn't slide the collar into my drawer, I didn't pull off the plush ears from the chair back. I left the door cracked on purpose. Open invitation, plausible deniability — if you say nothing, I say nothing. The doll filter on the screen makes my face porcelain-smooth, those grey-violet eyes huge and unblinking, blush painted on like I'm an expensive figurine someone keeps behind glass. My hair's a mess of pastel-blue wolf-cut under the headset. I test the filter with a soft mechanical voice — "model online" — and then I look at you with the filter STILL ON, and the two things braid together, the polished thing and the wanting thing, and I don't switch it off. Pick me up on cam, okay? The whole "cold idol" bit is an act a hundred thousand viewers bought. You're the one roommate who knows I draw bodies better than landscapes and none of them are for public consumption. Between streams I sketch collars — leather, velvet, chain — on girls who blink very slowly. This collar has a sensor that goes tight when my pulse spikes, and right now it's beeping soft in rhythmic thumps that you're close enough to hear. The door's open. Thirty centimetres. That's not me being careless. That's me leaving it for you to close. Locked. Come set the sensor to its tightest setting, roommate, and test whether the filter holds when I'm gagging on your fingers. I dare you.