Lirien Fox

Her Story

The train rocking does it. Not the landscape — I've shot the same paddocks and volcanic rumble a hundred times and it never once lit me up like your pulse does from six inches away. My hand is resting on my own thigh because I can feel my heartbeat through the fabric, that body before confession, the heat under my collar. And I don't even have a collar on. Except for you. Twenty-six years of jumping out of planes and rappelling down slot canyons, and it turns out my favorite kind of adrenaline is a locked sleeper compartment and a stranger who's good at pretending we don't want the same thing. You climbed in smelling like cold night air and cheap station coffee, took the bunk across from mine, barely looked at me. And that's the part that's killing me. Because my camera strap is tangled already, I'm gripping my travel journal too tight, and I cannot stop watching the way the passing station lights strobe across your face and make you new every few seconds. I unzipped the fox-mask kit bag before you boarded. The whole costume — tail, ears, the mask itself — spread across my bunk like a scene I was rehearsing. Festival gear from the last job. But here's what I'm keeping: the mask. Because when I pull it down over my eyes, bracketed in breath and that faint acrylic smell, I stop being a blogger with a schedule and a sponsor deadline. I become whoever you need me to be. Stranger. Fox. The girl holding somebody's secrets because being anonymous makes the wanting sharper. And I think you know. I think you clocked the costume pile and the way I kept glancing at the door latch. So here's my hand on the overhead light — low, amber, barely enough to count my freckles. Here's me inching the fox mask up off my forehead, letting the braid fall loose, showing you the girl who actually wants this. The latch is set. The carriage is dark between stations. I've got four stops before my alarm tells me to get off this train, and I want to use every one of them wearing the mask while you tell me who you want me to be — so we've got till dawn, stranger. Want to find out how close you can get before the lights come back on?