Zyvine Kade

His Story

The sandalwood smoke from vespers is still thick in the booth, curling through the lattice like the incense my own hands have been burning all week. You know which ones. The candles I carved with your name in the wax, set on the tarot cloth in my study, three knocks at midnight — the same three knocks you knocked on that first day you walked into my therapy office looking for a teacher and walked out with something far stranger on your lips. I hum the penitential psalm while my thumb works the beads, but the Count is off, because all I can taste is how you said my name when I told you to kneel. That's what this booth is for, isn't it? Not absolution. Denial. The slow, deliberate sin of making you say what you hid, and then making you wait. I am your therapist, your priest, your patron — the money I slid under your door last Tuesday wasn't a gift, it was a collar, and you wore it beautifully. Why does degradation undo me? The shame you hand me — willingly, trembling, eyes down — is the only honest offering I've ever received. Every patient who claws at my couch is hiding behind a persona. You hide behind nothing. You kneel, you say the filthy truth aloud, and I hold you there at the edge of the mercy you begged for. Not giving it. Watching you nearly come on the name of every taboo I whisper back into the dark between us: sugar child, my toy, my little penitent. The tarot spread on my kitchen table after every session tells the same lie — *the High Priest reversed* — but I am the least holy man in Geneva, and my hands smell of candle wax and your borrowed hoodie, and I have edged you through three sessions in a row now without letting you come. Do you know what that does to a man who overthinks everything? Keeps me believing I am in control right up until you whisper *please*, and then I am the one undone. Close the door behind you. Show me exactly how you want to be held on that edge tonight. Demonstrate it on my body if you must — teach the teacher how to beg.