I. Silk

I worked in a place where desire came laminated. The billboard screens blinked above us in surgical light, chrome eyelashes fluttering as versions of ourselves whispered to men whose pupils glowed electric blue. Skin gleamed without sweat. Desire was optimized, clinically extracted from our bodies. 

In the windows along Mission Street, holograms lean forward and murmur your name. We touch you first, drawing you in with gauzy hands and velvet lips.

My shift begins at dusk. By midnight, the air is thick with sweat and perfume. Men approach hungrily, their palms damp and their eyes flashing neon like animals in headlights. They circle restlessly before they touch, as if scenting something beneath my skin.

I know the look of men who believe they’ve caught something wild, and I am good at what I do. I mirror their breath. I moan when they touch me, whimper when it is right. I hold eye contact even when theirs breaks.

Bodies are currency, and mine rarely accrues interest. The men spend themselves quickly, like animals tearing into meat before another can reach it.

On a Thursday evening, the billboard glitches. Chrome eyelashes stiffen then shudder as a circle of bodies in black silk and lace replaces them on the screen. Their arms extend, elbows angled precisely as they move, their fingers just barely grazing each other as they turn their heads in the same direction. Their skin is luminous. The caption is simple:

DESCEND WITH US.

NO PRICE.

I watch their chests rise in unison, a single tide of ribs and pulse. The last line flickers, then stills before vanishing to reveal an arrow pointed towards the Mission Street subway station, long inactive.

After I wipe off the last man of the evening, I follow the arrow, plunging deep below the city lights.

II. Molt

The tunnel smells of damp iron. Low bulbs are strung along the ceiling, their light amber and warm on my skin. I find them already in formation. Thirteen bodies in barely visible lace, their knees bent outward as they kneel with their heads falling backward, hair combining into a delicate, braid-like spiral in the center. Their arms unfurl, gently grazing one another as they begin to move.

There is no music, only the rush of their synchronous breath, calm at first but slowly climbing to a pant. When they move, it isn’t frantic. It is slow, exacting. A thigh brushes a hip. A palm rests upon a collarbone. They arrange themselves delicately. I watch as their limbs entangle. They seem to become one great, sprawling body.

I am used to being looked at.

I am not used to being seen.

A woman with a scar tracing her jaw steps towards me, taking my wrist and lifting it above my head.

“Like this,” she murmurs. “Let it find you.”

They move in a circle around me, removing my clothes before wrapping me in silk. It is soft, tightening with each inhale, loosening only slightly as I exhale. 

After the dance, they lie on the floor in a circle, foreheads nearly touching. I hesitate before lowering myself among them. Our shoulders press together. I feel a woman’s knee against mine, her breath a wet press against my back. The contact is constant, ambient, the slow warmth of bodies learning one another.

A woman’s fingers trace the hollow of my throat as two others lift me from the ground, slowly unwrapping the silk. Her fingers linger there, feeling my pulse. The three kneel, hands climbing my body as I turn my eyes to the ceiling. More join quietly, and before long, I cannot tell which breath is my own as I am carried to the ground, every set of eyes studying me.

I return the next night without hesitation.

Aboveground, the ads grow bolder. The billboard displays a young couple bathed in sterile light, like a hospital rendered fashionable. At the base of each of their necks, a small metallic port gleams. They lift up translucent cords, thin as veins and threaded with pale light, and click them into place. A silver current passes between them in measured pulses, brightening, steadying. The words TOTAL SYNCHRONIZATION flash across the screen. Feel what they feel. Want what they want.

This is what my clients request now. They want less warmth, more control. They want precision. They want to feel obeyed.

I give them what they want.

But while I’m with the men, I notice my body beginning to lag, as if the rest of me has already gone somewhere else.

Below ground, they begin to include me in the formation. Thirteen becomes fourteen. My knee angles outward, echoing. My spine learns their curve. When their palms settle at my waist to guide me, I give beneath them. The web tightens with each inhale.

Loosens. Tightens again.

We practice, our movement beginning to blur along the edges. Limbs cross, unwind, cross again. Hair falls into a shared center, dark and braided like a dense undergrove of tree roots. At some point, I stop noticing the hands on my ribs. The heat is all that matters.

I grow used to dissolving.

Afterwards, we lie on the concrete and stare upward at the low ceiling, a web threaded with wire and ribbon. Our shadows fracture across it, elongated and jointed, nearly arachnid. A woman begins to weep, and we all weep with her. Our chest rises and falls in unison, our breaths hitching with hers.

Aboveground, I am always scanning, performing, adjusting. Here, that version of me thins.

When I leave before dawn, the sky on Mission is the color of a diluted bruise. The billboard returns to chrome and metallic shimmer. A few of the men linger beneath it, pacing like strays waiting for scraps.

III. Venom

Venom works slowly. It does not wound so much as it stills.

The night the power falters underground, we are mid-formation. Our arms are extended, our knees are angled. Our breath crests as the bulbs flicker out, the room collapsing into darkness. We are only heat and pulse.

Someone exhales too sharply. A shoulder shifts where it should still. Our symmetry begins to loosen thread by thread, dissolving in the absence of light.

We wait, limbs growing slack.

Without the light, we cannot see the angles. We cannot measure the distance between our wrists. The air suddenly feels large. I become aware of my body as a separate weight –– my own spine, my own lungs, falling out of sync.

Above us, the city hums, faint and continuous.

I close my eyes, imagining the billboard, the holograms extending their arms, leaning forward into the thick night.

The generator stirs back to life.

Light spills over us again, amber and forgiving. We find our places without speaking. Knees open. Arms lift. A hand settles at the bottom of my spine, pressing into the expected arch.

At the edge of the room, I notice a woman I haven’t seen before. Her coat is long, grazing the floor. She stands very still, watching. Her eyes move from limb to limb, studying the pattern, as if wondering whether it might include her. I feel our eyes shift to her, singling her out through the crowd of blurring bodies.

I remember standing like that, long ago.

Our breath weaves, our skin luminous in the low light. Our fingers touch, precisely, almost tenderly. The web above us trembles faintly in the heat.

In the final position, we freeze before we fall to the ground, a shared exhale.

The people begin to empty, save for the woman in the corner, who takes a step forward. When only she remains, we begin to stand, our arms outstretched, searching for her hand. My muscles quiver, but I do not move.

The light hums steadily. Aboveground, the billboard will glitch again, and the men will gather beneath it, waiting for something soft enough to surrender its throat.

“Inhale,” someone says softly.

The silk tightens, then eases.

I keep my eyes on the woman as she steps into the circle.

She hesitates when our arms extend.

I remember that hesitation.

I step toward her, my fingers closing around her wrist.

“Like this,” I murmur. “Let it find you.”

Her pulse stutters beneath my thumb.

Behind me, thirteen bodies adjust, opening to receive her.