Page 13 of Soft Erasure

The front door had the deadbolt, which was loud, and the quiet lock, which was not.

Someone had come in on the quiet one, set it down, and gone in the few minutes I had been behind the only door they could not watch.

They had not waited for me to sleep. He had already decided I would not be sleeping.

They needed me somewhere without a camera, and I had handed them that myself.

I added two lines to the inventory behind my face.

They can come in while I believe I am alone.

And: I know which lock they use now, the quiet one, the one not keyed to me.

At three the band buzzed. The face lit.

CHECK-IN. How are you sleeping, Amber? GREAT / GOOD / OKAY / NOT GREAT / I NEED MATTHEW.

The fifth option was longer than the others. It was the only one with a name in it.

My thumb sat nearer to it than to the rest of the row.

I didn’t press anything. Not pressing cost me something I logged and didn’t name.

At three-oh-six it buzzed again.

No response logged. Logging GOOD.

The night’s stillness had carried the number to ninety-six.

Adherence: 96.

I had earned a point for saying nothing. The system rewards silence. It rewards being held. It rewards being known.

I kept that with the rest.

The light under the door went amber to white again at six. The hallway woke. Someone passed in shoes chosen for silence.

Someone passed in shoes that announced every step.

The building was breathing, and the women in it were getting ready to surrender to whatever the day asked.

I stood. My knees made a sound I didn’t know I owned. I was twenty-eight.

When I reached for the woman I had been on Guerrero, the one who never asked permission before she opened her hand, what came back was a stock photograph. A life that shipped in a folder with someone else’s logo on it.

I went back into the bathroom and looked at the band. It had been reading me since the discharge room. I hadn’t thought to read it back.

I took it off.

The clasp was a magnetic seam, green-tinged, the same green as the seam on his ring.

I set the two greens side by side in my head and didn’t like the shape they made.

The same green on the leash and on the hand that held it.

I filed the question and didn’t answer it: whether a man wears his own color by choice, or because the thing that marked me had marked him first.

REMOVE EVENT LOGGED. Replace within 60 seconds for continuous-wear bonus.