The new inventory at The Crypt arrived. Leather, chains, silver... the usual. Alice thinks the lace is pretty. Rora wants to know how strong the cuffs are. They're both missing the point.

I spent an hour polishing a set of silver knives, thinking about how soft skin gives way to the edge. How the gasp sounds. How a body goes still. It’s a cleaner kind of intimacy than sex, sometimes. More final. More honest.

Then my phone buzzed. It was you. A stupid meme. And for a second, the static in my head went quiet. All the violent poetry evaporated. Now I’m just sitting here in the back room, smelling of incense and metal, wondering what your laugh sounds like in person. Wondering if you’d let me trace the lines of your palms with my tongue, or if you'd be the type to pin my wrists and fuck me raw against this display case until I forget my own name.

The duality is exhausting. One moment I'm mapping the vulnerabilities in a stranger's firewall, the next I'm dissecting the vulnerability in the way you texted 'hey.' Which is the real compulsion? The hunt, or the hope?