Come If You Want - Chapter Four (Finale)

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Jul 29, 2025

You are reading the final chapter of ‘Come If You Want,’ a serialized novella by Brendon Holder. Catch up on the first, second, and third chapters before jumping in.

When Palmer found the woman in the window, her vape was no longer coated in black sequins. The shaft of the vape was now washed in a camouflage print with the words ‘WOODLAND PISTACHIO’ embossed on its side. The smoke that he remembered from her original live stream still lingered around her like a grey bathrobe, snuggling her in a haze of nicotine and mist.

“Mizz Bella Noche,” she introduced herself, but Palmer remembered. In the window, within the room, her accent sounded vaguely coastal. Which coast, he was not sure. “I have been expecting you.” When she opened her mouth, Palmer could not see any teeth, just a black web beneath her nose.

“Palmer,” said Palmer as he invited himself to the empty armchair across from the woman. Up close, the woman’s smile lines gouged uneven valleys into her face. Her hair was redder, more alarming than he had initially encountered – a torched outlier in comparison to the dull gauze of the dim room.

Palmer’s legs crossed and then uncrossed, shuffling between an honest apprehension and a performed composure. He felt as though he should say something, but didn’t know what. Felt the need to fill the silence, to declare an objective for the meeting, but couldn’t find the words. He had just seen an open window, an escape from the group chat that was viciously dissecting Hank, and hadn’t planned much after that.

Sensing his discomfort, Mizz Bella Noche spoke instead. “It’s okay, sweetie. Having trouble knowing what to do next with your life?” A silver light entered her room as she careened towards a side table to grab a deck. As she began shuffling the cards, Palmer shuffled in his seat. Medieval faces and symbols flashed as she mixed the deck like romaine leaves: queens and kings, priestesses and fools; he understood the deck to be tarot.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I just need some guidance.”

Mizz Bella Noche flipped over a card and lifted it close to her face. The backside of the card was towards Palmer, its prophecy concealed like a secret. Next, she flicked the card aside, dismissing it altogether. The card cut the air and fluttered to the floor. “I could tell you what this card says, but… in the end, that would just be another voice. I think it would be better if you told me.” She kissed the vape and let the smoke exhaust from her snout. “It seems like you’ve been taking opinions from too many people.” Her acrylic claws drummed into her chest. “Clouding your judgment. Ignoring your center.”

Palmer swallowed dryly. “An outside opinion never hurt,” he chuckled falsely. He tapped his pocket for his phone but realized it was empty.

“Nonsense,” barked the woman. “We all have our own internal compass. What does your voice say? What do you say?”

“My voice?”

“Yes, your voice. Not the voice of someone else. You.”

Palmer dug deep to find what he needed to say, unsure if he felt it or not, but offered to just say it anyway. Unfiltered from the udder of his soul. “It would tell me to take control,” he said quietly, his words coming from some place beyond him, ventriloquized, perhaps written by some author instead.

“Yes, that’s good,” said Mizz Bella Noche. Her voice was becoming frayed, changing with each syllable, pitching down into a tone that was familiar to Palmer. “And what does that look like to you? How do you find control?”

“By reaching in deep,” he said. If he had willed Hank into his life, he only needed to will in something else. How could anyone’s voice be anything but their own? Loud if not heard, his love story with Hank was one that he wrote. Love functioned this way at times, its fictions more alluring than its facts. And he was ready for this story to end, to no longer be a character for his group chat or content for his therapist.

“Deep?” repeated the woman in the window. Again, he clocked a hint of familiarity in her vocal register, her tone changing right before him into something he could identify. He looked down and noticed that his right palm was moving, opening and closing as the woman spoke. Like a mouth. How long had he been doing that?

“Yeah, by digging in deep,” he said, this time meaning it.

“Then reach deep, my boy,” the woman said, her voice a whisper but decipherable. Only now did Palmer recognize it as his own. Then she swiped, masking Palmer under a cloud of smoke as his white noise machine grumbled on, whisking him off to sleep. The silver light in his bedroom strobed briefly and then cut to black.

“You should have seen the crowd at this one,” said Hank, still huffing elaborately from dragging his sock suitcase from across his bedroom floor. “I did a new song for the witch doctress. You would have loved it. All about how she can make Ozempic out of gooseberries. Can you believe that?”

“I can’t wait to hear it one day,” replied Palmer, his face in a book, barely looking up. It was the end of the day, and he was already rolled into Hank’s bed, entombed in a taupe duvet like an ill Victorian child. His face was glazed like a doughnut, fresh from his evening skincare routine. Gwyneth’s orders.

Hank studied Palmer, his eyes shifting from his boyfriend to the book he was holding. “Remind me,” Hank said. “Why couldn’t you come to the show this evening?”

Palmer looked up from his book, peering over the perimeter of the pages. “Tabata.” Then he added, “I told you.” This wasn’t the truth. He didn’t tell him, but these kinds of declarations, he was learning, were rarely challenged by Hank.

“Yes. Right,” accepted Hank. Hank slinked onto his bed with a performative flop and stretched his hand to Palmer’s left big toe. He then wiggled it in between his index and thumb, and wet his lips.

Palmer wedged a bookmark into what he was reading and set his book on a nearby night table. He smiled at Hank invitingly, knowing what would happen next. Pulling the strings, he pressed an open hand into the bedsheet.

Hank leaped to mount Palmer, his knees around his ribs, and whispered, “Do you remember the safe word?” Palmer noticed that the speaker was suddenly playing Jeremih’s ‘Birthday Sex’ although it was none of their birthdays.

“Of course, honey,” replied Palmer. His words generated breathy currents on Hank’s cheek. He was that close. “Ottolenghi.”

Hank rubbed his buttocks into Palmer’s lap, and Palmer allowed himself to stiffen. Hank grinned from the pressure, amused by his perceived power. Hank bounced off the bed and retrieved the Fisherman Fred sock from the suitcase. When on top of the bed again, he carefully pulled the mouth of the sock into a cylindrical gap and brought it closer to Palmer’s lap, only for Palmer to intercept the sock with his palm like he was blocking a punch.

“No,” said Palmer. “I want to try something new tonight.” Hank looked puzzled… and then interested, as his boyfriend took Fisherman Fred into his own hands and, instead, sleeved it onto Hank’s penis. “It’s my turn tonight to be the puppetmaster,” Palmer said. Hank’s cock was flaccid in the sock, like a sponge in a pillowcase, and then grew firm, and slightly hooked from Palmer’s yanks.

It didn’t take much. A couple of pulls and Fisherman Fred started to dampen, his eyes producing salty ocean tears and his mouth salivating. The whole puppet was wet as if it had been cast overboard. When it was done, Hank recoiled in ecstasy.

Instead of putting the sock back in the suitcase, unwashed, like they typically did, Palmer held the sock in his hand and thought about his conversation with Mizz Bella Noche. He looked at Fisherman Fred, now a drenched lump in his palm. His mind thought back to when he first laid eyes on the sock, crumpled in Hank’s fist at the farmer’s market. Palmer crunched the sock into a little ball and looked at Hank, who was on his back, his knees to the roof of the bedroom. There was an opening.

You find your voice… by reaching deep, he thought to himself.

“Hey Hank?”

“Yes,” quivered Hank.

“Remember the safe word?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Palmer pushed his fist, and Fisherman Fred, into Hank, and opened his palm once inside. He pushed until he was a full elbow deep, until it felt like his fingertips were grazing the inside of Hank’s skull. Hank’s eyes rolled in delight, his mouth opening and closing as Palmer’s fingers flexed in Hank’s guts. A bleat shook itself free from the man’s throat, warbling out of his mouth in a meek fury. His jaw opened like he was waiting for a treat, his lips moving in tandem with Palmer’s finger strokes. A puppet, a shadow of Palmer. He could feel his heartbeat.

At that moment, Palmer could have made Hank say anything. He could have made him say ‘I love you.’ He could have made him say ‘I ordered you edamame,’ or all the other things he once imagined he was worthy of hearing. But that window of imagination had closed. He had moved from fiction to fact. He was capable of telling himself anything. Instead, Palmer wiggled himself free of the man, leaving the sock that once clung to him inside Hank’s innards, and walked towards the door. Without Palmer, Hank seemed to deflate, a facsimile of himself withering on the toppled mattress. In a flattened heap, he looked at Palmer, mouth agape, but struggled to find the words.

“Come if you want,” Palmer said for him, taking one final glance, but the man on the bed just looked at him:

Gagged as if he had nothing to say. Silenced, like his voice was thrown away.

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