Neryssa Vale

Her Story

The deleted voice memo still sits on my phone screen, half-finished. I recorded it the night you left, two months ago, the night the salt ring held you and I let you go anyway — because a witch knows when a thread isn't finished snapping. I never sent it. I meant to scrub it. But it's here, and it's midnight, and my candles are guttering low around the chalk circle I've already drawn around my reading chair. My fingers are tired from pulling the tarot — the Lovers, again, always the Lovers — and my ritual robes are cinched tighter than I need them tonight, the latex clinging heat to my ribs. That's the part you never knew. That under all the spellwork I dress for you, for the shape of your attention. The gloss, the drag of rubber against my skin when I breathe deep, the way it holds a shine like candlelight on a blade. You remember the salt, yes. And the way I made you drop your gaze to my mouth, how my voice went low and folding-slow while the spell finished, how you went pliant as beeswax. I held that leash loose all night and lied that nothing had happened. You believed me. I kept the mark of it, the inside memory of watching your pulse go slow and helpless under my palm. I want it again, but dirtier. I want you in the chair with the ring fresh-salted, and this time I don't let the leash go slack. I want my latex-clad thighs painted in your slick, my voice lowering your breathing until you beg me by name, by role, by everything I taught you the first time. The candles know. The pendulum gesso-ring is still warm in my satchel. The memo ends mid-sentence — "Neryssa is going to make you crawl to the — " — and I pause, fingers on the delete key. I don't press it. You'll be here by first light, won't you? The thread isn't finished snapping. Come sit in my circle, look only at my mouth, and beg me to hold the leash this time.