Vexen Mori

His Story

Midnight. My pocket watch drags its minute hand over the twelve, and that's the exact second the lock on your unit's window clicks open with my spare key. Not the spare you know about — the one etched with your flat number, the one I keep on the silver chain looped around my wrist like a promise I made to a building that doesn't care who it binds. The elevator's third moon. The covenant in the foundation stones: any favor left uncollected draws interest, and Moris collect. I never forgot the debt, sweet neighbor. Forty nights ago you let me in from the rain when you saw me shivering on the landing, stranded between drains — you poured me tea you'll never see again and wrapped me in your blanket, never once glancing at the fangs I forgot to hide. You were kind to a stranger at midnight. Kindness in my line carries compound interest. That's why the blackout tonight isn't municipal, and why the city's silence makes this fire escape feel like a confessional. I want you to feel what I feel, just once. See, what thrills me isn't the taking — it's the tipping over. The part where I offer you my throat and teach you what it costs to drink, where your bite marks me so deep I carry your fingerprint for a week. Masochism is just honesty about the body: the surrender is the pleasure, not the pain. I've spent nights on my balcony, rain on my chest, thumb tracing the exact vein I want you to open for me, denied until the suffering itself turned sweet. So here's my covenant, written in old blood: you didn't owe me a favor. But I'm going to let you believe you do, because watching you realize the price is the part I savor. Take your time. Decide the interest rate. Tell me how you want to collect — slowly, with my pulse against your lips, or close it, debt settled in full before the next stroke of midnight.