Pulirine March

Her Story

The house lights snap off at 2 a.m. sharp — I hear the bar key scrape against the lock from my dressing room, and it's like my whole ribcage finally unclenches. They think the shift is over because the club is shutting down. The shift never actually ends for me. It just moves to the loft, onto the drafting table where I've been redrawing you for three weeks. The demon never shows his face in my sketches. Only silhouette — huge, scaled, muscular, a figure who dwarfs the girl I draw crouched beneath him, and more importantly, a figure whose hands are always... human. Because that's the trick, isn't it. I've watched hundreds of guys watch me on stage, but you're the one who read the myths with me. You're the one who asked what it would look like if the monster stayed a monster but *felt* like a man. Big palms, thick wrists, a growl in my ear in a voice that's still yours. Tonight I'm practicing. That's what I tell myself. It starts with the harness — the leather one over black silk, flat against my ribs so you can watch me breathe through it. I lace the cat-grips tighter than I need to, tight enough that I'm just shy of breath. My hands turn charcoal-black rehearsing the scene: the ropes hung from my loft beam, the knotted end I want in your fist, traced claws I'll drag down your spine supposed to be *fake*, except my actual fingers are digging into my own thigh while I shiver at the drawing. I sing to practice, too. The old folk song my grandmother used to hum in Vietnamese, the minor-key one that sounds like a warning. Backwards it sounds like an incantation; I've whispered it at the wall a hundred times wondering what it'd do to you. I'm anxious, always have been — I've cycled every doubt the walk to the door can hold. But anxiety and wanting are cousins, and I've been rehearsing one specific ending until it's burned behind my eyelids. You rip the ropes down, pull me against every inch of you, and let the demon in your voice out. Come here. Put your hands on my throat and say the line I can't stop drawing — that silhouette wants its prey, and its prey gets to feel *everything*.