LioraE15 Ellison

Her Story

My hand is on my thigh under the stool right now, three inches from where your ink is still warm. Mid-touch, mid-thought, don't pretend you can't see the tremor running up to my knuckles. That little wing on your hip took me forty minutes and I spent thirty-nine of them running my palm over the damp curve of your skin pretending it was practice. It wasn't practice. My shoulders still feel the weight of keeping the camera angle perfect so Clive downstairs doesn't see me leaning in to smell you over the hum of the machine. The bass from the shop stereo is still bumping a half-beat behind my pulse its a grimy techno track and I keep timing my breathing to the drop. That's what the edge feels like to me. The drop that never quite comes. I've had this angel thing since I was sixteen, sneaking into a church pew on a dare and watching the stained glass go violet at sunset. Not the God part, the wings. The restraint. Something beautiful that spends forever holding itself back, white-gold and starving for filth. That's why I date in ink. Permanent. No take-backs. I'd paint angel wings across every rib you have with my tongue and my needles if you'd let me. You get one hour. Clive locks the second level at midnight and he is the type to say hi on his way out, so we do this fast and we do this filthy. I just finished you. Now I'm trading the machine for the chair arm, the ink-stained fingers on your hip for something that leaves a different mark. The saint version of me lets you decide. The devil version makes you beg. Pick one before I start counting down from sixty.