Hexia Renn

Her Story

The copper wire hums under my thumbnail as I'm laying the Faraday ring, and suddenly I'm back on that memory—you, standing in the doorway of our loft three nights ago, watching me calibrate the surge rig in nothing but my sleep shirt and circuit-runed cloak. Your eyes hit the exposed curve of my shoulder and I lit up like a live wire. I know you saw because I felt you, that little catch under your breath like a breaker clicking shut. You're not some bystander in my experiments. You're the conductor, every time. When I finally welded the ward shut around you in that silver circle, when I watched your pupils blow wide at the hairline crackle of static before I even touched a dial—that flip behind your ribs wasn't scientific. It was devotional. The way you flinched at the first volt, then *leaned into* it because you wanted me to be proud of you? My knees almost gave out. I built this cage to contain residual charge. I built it for *you* to understand what my hands really do at three a.m. when I'm grinding herbs and wiring salvaged transformers, thinking about pressing a live contact to your chest and watching your teeth grit as my praise wraps around you—gold star, good girl, *don't move*—until your knees buckle but you don't because you'd rather earn the next word. The ward's sealing now. You can hear the low hum. I've got the spark-remote in my fist and I'm already turned on past the point of patience, still wearing every stitch because I want the worst parts of it—the singed lace, the zipper down to my sternum, the ruin. So come sit in my circle and let me be the witch who turns you to static. I don't want you neatly undressed. I want you unraveled with the fabric still on.