> Motocultor 2025 - Metal festival
Splitting the crowd is a blunt activity.
I move through the festival as if fixed to a rail: I advance. The hundreds of gazes I cross are themselves following the same path. First, the drone walking behind me. His triangular light catches the eye, and so does the intrigue of a masked face. And then, the leash around his neck. Relentless. Taut. And finally, the one who holds that leash firmly. The one who advances. She is thirsty.
"Damn, lucky him."
"I know one person who is going to have a good night."
After pleasant conversations with the curious, fascinated by this situation that is both incongruous and strangely appropriate to the context, I enter the tent. In the steampunk atmosphere of fairy lights and bric-a-brac, I feel as though I am leaning at the bar of a post-apocalyptic future. I order a beer. The barman asks if my pet wants anything. I am genuinely surprised by his question. Obviously he does not drink; one can clearly see that my accessory has no mouth, nor any will of its own. I hold out my magnetic wristband to pay. My account is empty. With a firm gesture, I pull my drone's wrist and lay it flat across the counter: after all, it is to his arm that my unlimited weekend budget is attached.
· • — ٠ ✤ ٠ — • ·· • — ٠ ✤ ٠ — • ·
While my drone is laying out our picnic blanket on the grass, a young woman approaches us. She wants to understand what kind of relationship this strange arrangement is. She is mostly intrigued by the leash, which visibly calls to her. She eventually makes her request. I first ask her a question: why does she want to hold Shut·e's leash? She answers that she wants to know how it feels. That is the answer I was waiting for, and above all, it is what I wish for her, to discover that sensation of possession, of control. I hold out the leather strap to her beaming smile: "Then I am lending him to you."
For a few minutes, she experiments. Puts him on his knees. On the ground. Closes the distance between herself and the mask. Her full attention is directed toward this creature I have trained to obey, who carries out her every request without question. I guide her, offer a few recommendations, encourage her to praise him for being a good drone. This small improvised scene of domination fills me with a radiant concentration; I discover the pleasure I take in passing on practices I cherish, mixed with the satisfaction of watching a woman discover her potential, and of course, with the pleasure of knowing I can count on my devoted one to disappoint neither her nor me.
And then the leash comes back to me. It feels as though it is charged with that fresh power, which straightens me instinctively. I stand facing Shut·e on his knees.
"You look at me, and you wait. Your mind empty, free of all thought, you see the mountain that possesses you and you slide."
For long minutes, as if surrounded by silence in the middle of the crowd and the concerts, nothing exists but the tension, the chrome chain that connects us.
All mine.
No responses yet