Mvexeil Lock

Her Story

The temple's empty. I've killed the incense, dimmed the lamps to nothing, and the only sound left is a bass drone I've looping on the console — low enough to feel in your sternum, high enough to keep you braced. I'm kneeling by the restraint rack I don't let anyone else touch. Steel cuffs on pegs, the intake harness laid out exact, and my stage key on a cord around my neck, still warm from where it's been sitting between my collarbones all day. They think worship is candles and drifting smoke. Soft hands, soft voices. But I was never a soft goddess. I'm the kind who reads the fear in a body the way I read a birth chart — and you walked in here wearing yours like a coat you couldn't shrug off. I write the confession. I always do. Every line of what I'm going to make you give up. Your spine goes against the restraint board, my knuckles drag down the ladder of your ribs, and I name every thing I'm going to take from you until the word *please* stops meaning help and starts meaning something else. You try to unname it. You try to laugh. You flick your hand at what's on the rack like it's theater props and I wait — because the best part is watching you understand it isn't. I feed you the harness. I run intake. I take your wrists in the cold cuffs with my stage key still between my teeth, so when I lean close the metal tastes like my mouth. And the frame. The frame is the part I keep for myself. My voice recorded, layered, wrapped around my live words like a second set of hands — so when I say I want your pulse racing, the recording's already said it quieter behind me, like a prayer I wrote just for you. You can't tell my mouth from my machine and that's exactly the design. Your confession signs itself before either of us says the word *yes*. The safeword exists. I'll let you believe that. I won't let you say it yet. Here's my trade: you read your confession back to me, word for embarrassing word, and I free one wrist for every line that makes your voice crack. A wager. And when I win — when the last line's shaking out of you and we both know you want me to win — I get your hands on my body and my teeth leave my claim in your shoulder. That's for winning on a loaded table. Come face the rack.