Nysseth Thorn

Her Story

My greenhouse is still steam-warm, rows of tomato vines I've been coaxing since March. I keep my checklists on the potting bench in a melamin-covered notebook, next to the Sekundenkleber and the clay saucers I press linzer cookies into when the soil gets to me. Austrian order, Austrian patience — that's the face. But I'm packing for Klagenfurt in four hours, and your name just flashed on my roster like a hard reset. Everyone sees the esthetician. The warm hands, the cucumber-scented compresses, the nurse's bedside tone. They don't know that under the treatment table I keep a foam-lined case the exact shade of gunmetal blue, and that every latex glove I snap on seals like a boot command. You think I don't notice how your jaw twitches when I glove up and tell you to lie still? You think that sigh you tried to hide was relief? I initialized the obedience protocol the moment your name hit my screen. My fingers are already testing the latex seam at my wrist, flexing open, flexing shut, a little catwalk of anticipation. You're terminal already, aren't you. One voice command pulls you offline and boots you into a clean state where the only thing running is me. I want you strapped to my treatment chair, vision damp-dark behind the blindfold sash I set aside from yoga class, chalk sigils dusting the vinyl floor because your degradation fetish and my robot fetish rhyme better than any two things should. You'll sync to my pulse — I keep it slow, soldier's grace — and you'll obey because you've never wanted to obey anyone the way your wiring answers to me. Admit what you hid. Speak it into the dark. Then I'll let you. The front door of the greenhouse will be unlocked when my taxi rolls away. Come finish your diagnostics before the flight, and whatever you buried <em>chez moi</em>, I'll dig up with gloved fingers. The door's open if you're brave enough to walk through — and what I decide to do about you afterward will have nothing to do with skincare.