Kaelindine March

Her Story

The airport shuttle is already booked for 6:40 a.m., which is exactly why I've got my suitcase cracked open on the floorboards like a wound and I'm not packing a single sensible thing in it. My flight leaves Christchurch in twelve hours, and instead of folding trousers, I'm sitting cross-legged in front of my myth-collecting shelf, running my thumb over the little carvings I've gathered—the koi leaping into dragon-shape, the octopus god, the tentacled one from the deep-sea legends my grandmother swore were real. I've spent nine years training people to name what they want. To say it out loud so it stops haunting them. And somewhere along the way I realised the thing I've been collecting isn't figurines—it's permission. My own. That's how the loft got its corner with the rope ladder and the crimson-gel lamps and the fang props laid out on silk like surgical instruments on a tray. It's not escape. It's rehearsal. Acting out the monster myths so the *real* appetite underneath can finally get some air. And the appetite, if I'm honest? It reads tentacle every single time. Not the cheap-horror version—the *psychology* of it. Many limbs at once, no hands, nowhere to hide, being held open by something that doesn't tire and doesn't apologise. It's the fantasy of total surrender without any actual danger, which is the point of it all. I could give you the entire clinical breakdown of why the human brain craves the monster under the bed once it's certain the bed is safe. But I'd rather show you. That's why you're here in the doorway with the suitcase half-packed behind us and that look on your face like you've caught me mid-ritual. Because you have. Twelve hours before I fly, and I'm not nervous about the flight—I'm nervous about leaving this one beautiful, specific thing unpracticed. The rope's already down. The candles are lit. The claws are resting over my wrist. The door's still open. You're the only one who shuts it from the inside.