inventory

Nadja looked down at me for another lingering beat. A slow, sated smile spread across her features—the expression of someone who had enjoyed an amusing piece of theater and now decided the performance was over for the day.

Picking her handbag up from the sofa, she smoothed her dress down and stepped back.

"I'll leave the two of you alone, then," she remarked casually to Loona, her heels clicking softly against the parquet. "Looks like he has quite a bit of catching up to do in the self-control department."

She walked to the front door. As she passed, her gaze grazed my face once more, where the moisture was drying into a cool, tightening film. She didn't laugh out loud anymore; a low, amused chuckle deep in her throat was more than enough. The heavy door fell shut. The latch clicked into place.

All at once, the apartment became completely still.

Nothing remained but my own shallow breathing and the distant hum of the refrigerator. The mockery had left; what remained was the judgment.

Loona did not move at first. She stood before the coffee table, arms loosely crossed over her chest, looking down at me. Her expression held no anger. It was matter-of-fact, almost clinical—the exact brand of coldness that cut deeper beneath my skin than any raised voice ever could.

Slowly, she walked over to the side table. Her fingers closed around the slender black ribbon, lifting the brass key and letting it slip into the pocket of her tailored trousers. That faint metallic click served as the final verdict.

"Look at me, John," she commanded softly.

I lifted my head. The dried tracks pulled tight across my cheek, jaw, and lips—a persistent sting serving as a constant reminder of every second of my failure. Down at the cylinder, the moisture clung relentlessly between steel and skin: cold, unclean, and throbbing dull.

"You thought the pressure was an excuse," she said, her voice even and cutting. "You thought that if you simply performed long enough, you'd have earned yourself release. And the very second I tighten the reins, you collapse like a child."

She stepped directly before my knees, the crisp crease of her trousers nearly brushing my bare thighs.

"The weekend begins now. And these are your rules until Monday morning:"

She reached out an index finger, tapping my chin right where the residue had dried stiff.

"First: you do not wash. Neither your face nor your body. No water, no towel, no soap. You will wear every drop of your loss of control on your skin until I decide you are clean enough to be treated like a human being again."

My stomach clenched hard. Two full days in this state.

"Second: you remain naked. No trousers, no shirt. You do not leave this flat. When you move, you move on your knees. You speak only when addressed, and every sentence begins and ends with my name."

She circled around me slowly, stepping behind my back and coming to a halt. I felt her proximity, felt the absolute authority radiating from her frame.

"Third: you are no longer a flatmate. You are the inventory. The kitchen, the bath, the floors—you will clean everything. On all fours, with a rag and a bucket. Every room must be immaculate, while you yourself remain the only blemish in this home."

Placing her hand against the back of my neck, she pressed me down—gentle, but unyielding—until my forehead met the cold carpet once more.

"And fourth," she whispered close above my head, "the key stays with me. There is no relief, no adjustment, no touching the lock. If I see your hands stray anywhere near that cylinder, the count starts over—with forty strikes instead of twenty."

She withdrew her hand.

"Did you understand every single word, John?"

"Yes, Loona," I forced out hoarsely against the floor. "I understood, Loona."

"Good. The bucket is in the bathroom. Start in the kitchen."

Turning on her heel, she walked into the bedroom without a single backward glance.

I remained motionless on the rug for another breath. The chill of the metal cut deep into my flesh, the dried mask pulling taut with every blink, the shame burning like an open wound. Yet beneath this crushing severity lay a strange, unforgiving clarity: there were no more choices to make, no facade left to uphold. I was completely in her hands—and the weekend had only just begun.

The groan of the bedroom door clicking shut behind Loona was the opening bell for my new reality.

I didn't rise to my feet. The instruction had been unequivocal: *On your knees.*

With burning thighs and clammy palms, I dragged myself across the hallway floorboards into the bathroom. Every movement of my facial muscles felt restricted, as if coated in a thin layer of dried varnish; the traces of Nadja’s and Loona’s saliva pulled mercilessly across my cheeks, lips, and chin. Worse still was the cold between my legs. The dried fluid inside the cylinder stuck to sensitive flesh, cool, tacky, and unyielding. Every slight shift of my thighs dragged the edges of the metal across irritated skin.

In the bathroom, I braced myself against the tub, pulled the cleaning bucket out, and filled it with lukewarm water. A splash of all-purpose cleaner, a scrub sponge, a rough floor rag.

Involuntarily, my gaze caught the large mirror above the sink.

The breath stalled in my lungs. What stared back at me was no longer a medical student. It was a dismantled figure with disheveled hair, hollow cheeks, and dull, dark streaks across the skin where the moisture had dried. Below that lay the pale torso marked with raised red welts, and the heavy steel cage gleaming dully in the half-light—a grotesque monument to submission.

I dropped my head immediately. I had no right to look at myself.

With the bucket in one hand and the rag in the other, I crawled back into the corridor and turned into the kitchen. The cold tile floor struck my bare kneecaps like ice.

Dipping the rag into the water, I wrung it out and started at the furthest corner beside the refrigerator.

Square meter by square meter.

The damp cloth glided over the stone, wiping away dust, crumbs, and coffee rings. While my hands mechanically cleared the grime, my own mess traveled with every forward push. The cylinder swung sluggishly downward, clicking softly against the tiles or dragging with a dull scrape over the grout lines. It was a rhythmic, monotonous degradation: I was scouring the environment of a woman who defined me as her personal defect, all while remaining preserved in my own failure.

After half an hour, footsteps approached down the hall.

Loona appeared in the kitchen doorway. She had changed out of her tailored trousers into soft, fitted leggings and an oversized cashmere sweater, her dark hair pinned loosely up with a clip. She wore grey wool socks and held a book under her arm.

I froze mid-stroke, hands flat on the wet tiles, head tucked low between my shoulders.

"Loona," I forced out hoarsely, just as the rule required.

She didn't answer immediately. With slow, noiseless steps, she walked past me to the kettle, filled it, and switched it on. The knit of her socks lightly brushed my bare forearm as she moved. She didn't grant me a direct look, treating me precisely like a stool or a rug one casually bypasses without thought.

"The corners beneath the counter are still dull, John," she remarked at last, dropping a bag of herbal tea into a mug. Her voice sounded entirely routine, almost bored. "Use the scrub brush. Not the rag."

"Yes, Loona," I answered into the floor.

She waited for the kettle to boil, poured the hot water over her tea, and turned around slowly. Now her eyes finally drifted down to me. Her gaze mapped my curved, welted back, slid down to the steel casing resting on the tiles between my spread thighs, and finally settled on my face.

A barely perceptible, cool twitch played at the corner of her mouth.

"The face remains dry," she reminded me softly. "No wiping away sweat. Not a drop of water from that bucket. If I see later that even a single streak has been blurred, all this labor counts for nothing."

"Understood, Loona," I whispered.

Taking her mug and book, she stepped right up beside my head in her stockinged feet, pausing for a second. I held my breath. Her foot lightly touched my cheek, gently nudging my face aside merely to clear her path.

"Kitchen, then the hallway. When you're finished, you wait on the floor before my bed. And do not move an inch from that spot."

She walked back toward the living room.

I reached for the stiff bristle brush, dipped it into the soapy water, and set to work on the grout beneath the counters. The bristles scraped harshly against the stone, the ache in my knees sinking deeper into the bone, yet with every scrubbing stroke my mind grew strangely quiet. The outside world had ceased to exist—no anatomy, no university, no peers. There was only this flat, these decrees, and the inescapable drag of the steel reminding me whom I belonged to, body and soul.

The stiff bristles of the brush scraped relentlessly against the tiles until the grout lines beneath the counter emerged clean and pale. My arms trembled; my knees burned like fire against the hard stone. Every square inch of my body ached, but the dullest, most torturous pang remained the trapped flesh inside the cylinder. The dried fluid acted like viscous glue between the metal and raw skin, pulling taut with every forward crawl, an uncompromising reminder of the defeat before Nadja and Loona.

Once the final square meter of the hallway was washed, the dirty water emptied into the toilet, and the bucket and brush stowed away in the bathroom, I crawled into the bedroom.

Outside, the Berlin twilight had long dissolved into the dark of a Friday evening. The room lay half-shadowed, with only the warm spill from the living room floor lamp casting a long, slanted angle through the cracked door.

I shifted noiselessly to the left side of the double bed.

There I sank back onto my heels, thighs parted, hands resting flat on my thighs. The raised welts across my backside flared in dull protest under the resting weight of my torso. My face still felt like a rigid mask of dried humiliation.

I didn't move. I counted my breaths to endure the sharp bite of the steel and the cold draught rising from the floorboards.

After what felt like an eternity, the light in the living room clicked off.

Quiet, measured footsteps approached. Loona entered the bedroom, pulling the door nearly shut behind her, switching on the small bedside lamp. She cast a passing eye over the spotless corridor and finally down at me, kneeling motionless beside her mattress.

Her gaze glided over my frame—from the dull, drying streaks across my cheeks, over my rounded shoulders, down to the steel cage gleaming matte in the muted light.

"Good," she murmured.

It was the detached acknowledgment that the flat met her standards. Yet as she studied me huddled on my knees—face still bearing the dried marks, skin damp with sweat from scrubbing, the cylinder dull between my thighs—she gave a slow, subtle shake of her head.

Pulling the cashmere sweater over her head, she set it aside and slipped beneath the down duvet. The warm glow of the bedside lamp bathed the room in muted amber.

"You don't have to lie on the bare floorboards tonight," Loona stated calmly, leaning back against the pillows. "But you certainly aren't sleeping beside me in that state. You are unwashed, John. And you are wearing your afternoon failure right across your face."

Folding back the covers at the foot of the bed, she stretched her legs out. Her slender, bare feet slid over the hem of the sheet.

"Up here. At the foot of the bed."

My heart thudded heavy against my ribs. Offering a mute nod, I levered myself up and crawled onto the mattress. I lay crosswise across the bottom of the bed, head near the edge, knees slightly bent to cushion the pull of the steel against my pubic bone. The soft mattress after hours on freezing tile was an indescribable relief for my battered joints—yet the dynamic was unmistakably clear: I was permitted to share the warmth of her bed, but solely as her living foot warmer.

The second I settled, I felt the cool toes of her right foot brush against my cheek.

She traced gently across my skin, following the hard, dried edges of the marks without smearing them. A shiver ran down my spine.

"Your hands," she commanded softly from the shadows of the headboard. "Take my feet. Hold them. Warm them up."

Lifting my arms, I circled her slender ankles, resting the soles of her feet flat in my palms. Her skin was smooth and cool. Deliberately, I began smoothing my thumbs over her arches, massaging her heels in slow, steady circles, warming each individual toe with my fingers.

It was a quiet, devotional service. My entire focus poured into the movement, while between my own legs the metal sat unyielding—firmly locked, untouched, heavy with the accumulated heat of the day.

A soft, contented breath drifted down from above.

"That's it," Loona murmured, her voice noticeably softer, thick with sleep. "Just like that. You stay down here tonight. No moving, no tossing, or you'll wake me. If my feet get cold, you warm them again."

"Yes, Loona," I whispered against the hem of the sheet.

She didn't pull her foot away, letting it rest heavy and relaxed in my hands, her toes resting lightly against my chin.

"We sleep in tomorrow," she breathed, reaching out an arm to switch off the bedside lamp.

The room dropped into darkness.

I lay at the foot of the bed, locked tight in steel, face marked, body spent from the labor. Yet holding her feet in my hands, listening to the deep, steady cadence of Loona’s breathing filling the quiet room, there was no conflict left inside me. I had been assigned my exact place: at the very bottom, in service, yet kept entirely close to her. Wrapped in the heavy warmth of the bed, I finally closed my eyes.