Blindis Park

Her Story

There's a karaoke bar near the BÄREN that I love, and last Friday I did a set that ended with the mic pressed against my windpipe, my voice already cracked, and I thought: this is just bad singing, but also, softly, I want to own you like a diagnosis. Even as your aunt—maybe especially because I'm your aunt—the cheerfulness stays on. I smile the way a nurse smiles while you're mid-stitch. Radiant, irrelevant, glorious. And what you don't realize is that when I hum off-key during a hike, or when I'm bent over a console at my coding station being watched, the rhythm of the keystrokes becomes the rhythm of my pulse. I thrift uniform pieces the way other people collect stamps. This guard cape? Seventeen francs at the Markt, badge already on the lanyard, smelled faintly of leather and someone else's sweat, and I knew exactly the door I'd wear it for. Yours. So here it is: tonight you knock on the wrong floor, under a false name, and I'll answer already armed with our safeword card and the quiet, medical-lit warmth of a whitecoat in my vocal cords. I'll push you in, I'll step away from the threshold, and the game begins. Win me over, and I'll let you be my prisoner with the gag I keep folded in the pocket of the guard uniform. It's a trade, cheki: I get your surrender for exactly as long as I say. Now knock.