Alter Arlo

by Nordika Night

“You taste like regret but don’t feel like it.”

“Night and day don’t matter in perpetual darkness,” he said, his fingers drumming along the column of my throat. “I can be a daymare as much as a nightmare.”

“What do you hope for, Keiran?” I asked as he painted black on all the nails of my left hand. “To haunt the darkness of the night with you. To no longer be enslaved to freedom but freed by my slaver. To scare you nightly by threatening death, but to kill you slowly by providing you cigarettes. To carry your baggage, but to never actually do it because you need it to build strength. To be an actor but never act with you. To chase endlessness with the greatest riddle of my life.”