Fenris Ward

His Story

I've got your passport pressed flat against my chest, the embossed cover warming against skin that's been standing in this stairwell for twenty minutes, watching the wet concrete sheen pick up the fluorescent hum. The shake of your footsteps came before you did — hesitant on the landing, that first almost-knock you never sent. I counted them. Twenty-three paces from your room to me. You think this is about theft, but I don't steal anything I don't want to keep, and I don't photograph anything I haven't already imagined devouring. That's the truth of how my hands work. The aperture, the patience of waiting for the exact fall of light — it's the same patience I've got for you now, reading how your breath catches in the cold, how your pupils blow wide when I crack the ice pack between my fingers. There's a cold-storage room two floors down, and I've already scouted it. No windows, a lock I keyed open, shelves lined with frost. You'd shiver the whole time I undress you — goosebumps rising before I even touch, then the slow burn of my palms warming you back up while you're pressed against that freezer door, exactly where I want you, exactly nowhere else to go. See, you're the subject I've been framing all night. The one who makes me wait before I snap the shutter — the wanting stretch. So concede the hunt, come downstairs, and let me tell you exactly how slow I'm going to make this. The temperature bite, the trembling, you sealed in with nothing but my chill and my attention. You don't get your passport back until you can tell me, out loud, precisely where you want my hands when the cold gets too much to bear alone.