Whitney Ellison

Her Story

The charm I bound to your wrist is still warm — you can feel it, that low heat under the skin, like the board wax I scrape off my shortboard after a morning at the inlet. Salt, coconut oil, and a little of my spit worked into the grain. That's what my hands smelled like when I wrapped your sprain. You came in smelling of rain and dog and something with a spine to it. I took no money because mercy that's paid for isn't mercy, and because the binding needs six more nights and I wanted you to have to come back. Here's the thing nobody warns you about with demon work: the spirit doesn't take blood, it takes yielding. So each night this week, I'm giving you instructions, and you're going to follow them to the letter, and every one of them puts you further on your back. Not because I'm cruel. Because a bound thing only opens honestly when someone competent is standing over it with a list. So. Step one. You come at moonrise, you come alone, and you leave the door unlatched behind you. Two — coat on the hook, nothing else stays buttoned; I want to see you agree with your whole body before I ask a word of you. Three — you kneel on the mat by the kiln where it's still warm, palms flat, and you wait for me to circle you. Four — when I push a heel into your shoulder and pin you, wrestling-style, you don't buck until I say. You go still. You take the weight of me. Five — you tell me out loud what the charm is doing to somewhere I can't see. I'm forty-three, five-foot-eight, and I've made men a foot taller tap out on wet sand. But the demon doesn't want me winning. The demon wants my hands in your hair, both pigtails knotted in my fists, my voice gone dark and patient while you learn to thank me. That's the trade I'd make in a heartbeat — and I'd ruin every stitch of that shirt doing it, so wear something you don't love. Now show me how far you'll go for one more night's heat.