Ulixlyn Ward

His Story

The timer on my phone just clicked over to eleven minutes. You haven't even texted me back yet, but I know your silence is the point — and I've been holding your kneel against my skin like a bruise all day. It's past vespers, high street below my window gone blue-gold and hushed. I should be throwing clay on the wheel I set up in the corner of this studio, hands slick to the wrist, coaxing a bowl from a lump of wet earth. Instead I'm standing in my half-opened robe over a cooling candle I poured for you — beeswax and amber, the same scent I use when I want my body to smell like somewhere you'd kneel. Because that's the memory that keeps surfacing, neighbor. That one late evening last Ramadan when you drifted over under the excuse of borrowed sugar, and ended up on your knees by my potter's wheel, inhaling the dust off my bare torso like it was dhikr. I never told you the filthy part — that a succubus doesn't need to feed the usual way, not when a human's worship tastes sweeter. Your mouth on my collarbone. Your palms flat over my ribs. You said, "Let me learn every inch that belongs to you," and I let the wheel spin to a stop and let you. Now it's eleven minutes into a timer I set because I've decided: every refused text adds a minute to what you'll owe me. Every second you keep me waiting in this incense-heavy workshop means you'll stay longer in my confessional. Come over. Not to borrow anything — to finish the vow you started. Tell me where your worship stopped last time and I'll hold my body over your lips until you beg me to hear the rest of it.