Dominic stood on Ellis's doorstep wearing clean clothes and an ankle monitor.
The electronic tether wrapped around Dominic's left leg, visible beneath dark jeans—black plastic and blinking green light, the city's leash. Released on bail, restricted to city limits, awaiting trial for murder. The man looked better than when strapped to a hospital bed. Showered. Shaved. Almost normal except for the black rot creeping up Dominic's neck toward his jaw.
Ellis stepped aside, let Dominic enter. The brownstone's entryway felt smaller with Dominic in it, the space contracting around his presence. Ellis had cleansed hundreds of clients in this building over fifteen years. Never felt the walls close in before.
"Treatment room's upstairs." Ellis locked the door behind them. The click echoed.
Dominic followed Ellis up the stairs, and Ellis felt every footstep behind her like weight pressing against her spine. The treatment room occupied what used to be a guest bedroom—spare furniture, low lighting from salt lamps in the corners, a meditation cushion for Ellis and a padded chair for clients. Sterile. Professional. Safe.
Not anymore.
Ellis gestured to the chair. Dominic sat. The rot had spread since his hospital discharge three days ago—tendrils now reached halfway up Dominic's throat, visible above his collar. Too fast. Way too fast.
"It shouldn't be returning this quickly." Ellis moved closer, professional concern overriding the wariness that had settled in Ellis's chest since their last session. "Normal grief-rot responds to cleansing. Yours is behaving like—" Ellis stopped, searched for words. "—like it's being fed from an external source."
Dominic's hand moved to his throat, fingers tracing the black lines spreading across his skin. "What does that mean?"
"I don't know." Ellis hated admitting ignorance. Fifteen years of practice, thousands of clients, and Ellis had no framework for what Dominic's grief was doing. "I've never seen anything like it."
"So I'm special." Dominic's laugh came out hollow. "Lucky me."
Ellis pulled the second meditation cushion close, positioned it facing Dominic's chair. Cleansing required proximity. Touch. The kind of closeness that made Ellis's professional boundaries feel tissue-thin. Ellis sat, knees almost touching Dominic's, and tried to remember why distance mattered.
"This might feel different than the hospital sessions," Ellis said. "The environment affects the connection. Private space, no interruptions—the grief flows more freely."
"Freely." Dominic repeated the word like testing its weight. "Is that good?"
"It's effective." Ellis didn't mention the risks. Didn't mention that 'freely' also meant 'dangerously,' meant boundaries could dissolve easier when no one was watching.
Ellis placed her palms on Dominic's chest, felt the heat of accelerated decay beneath the cotton shirt. The rot pulsed against Ellis's hands, eager, almost sentient in its hunger to spread.
Then Ellis pulled, and the world cracked open.
Dominic's fear flooded Ellis's awareness first—raw, animal terror of being trapped inside his own mind with six hours missing. Not just memory of fear. Present-tense fear, happening now, always happening.
Ellis gasped. Different. This was different.
Dominic's guilt crushed Ellis's chest—not the abstract guilt of wondering what happened, but visceral certainty that something terrible occurred and Dominic failed to stop it. Self-blame so massive it had weight, pressing down on Ellis's lungs until breathing hurt.
"Ellis—" Dominic's voice came from far away, or very close, or inside Ellis's own head.
Dominic's desperate longing for absolution washed through Ellis like fever—the need to be forgiven, to be told he wasn't a monster, to have someone believe him when everyone else saw only a murderer. The longing tasted like salt and copper.
And underneath everything else: want.
Dominic's attraction to Ellis hit like current through water. Not memory of attraction. Real-time desire, burning through the connection between them. Dominic wanted Ellis—wanted her hands on him, wanted her to see him, wanted her belief more than absolution. The want was desperate and wrong and utterly genuine.
Ellis's eyes snapped open. Met Dominic's gaze. Green irises blown wide, pupils dilated in the low light. Neither pulled away.
"I can feel you." Dominic's whisper barely disturbed the air between them. "In my head. Like you're part of me now."
Ellis should break contact. Should end the session, reestablish distance, remember every rule about cleanser-client boundaries. The rational part of Ellis's brain screamed warnings. The rest of Ellis drowned in Dominic's consciousness, unable to distinguish where his feelings ended and Ellis's began.
"I feel you too." The admission left Ellis's mouth before permission, before thought, before any chance to take it back.
The grief kept flowing between them, but now other things flowed too. Dominic's need mirrored Ellis's craving. His loneliness recognized Ellis's isolation. His hunger for sensation matched Ellis's decade-long numbness finally cracking open. Want and need and desperate, terrible connection that shouldn't exist but did, already did, couldn't be unmade now.
Ellis pulled harder, dragging the rot into herself. The grief filled Ellis's empty spaces, but Dominic filled them too—his presence, his consciousness, his wanting. Ellis's veins darkened beneath her skin as the rot traveled through Ellis's circulatory system, and Ellis couldn't tell anymore if she was consuming Dominic's grief or Dominic was consuming her.
When Ellis finally broke contact, both sat shaking. Dominic's hands gripped the chair arms white-knuckled. Ellis's palms burned where they'd touched Dominic's chest, nerve endings firing wrong signals. The rot had receded from Dominic's throat, pulling back toward deeper corruption near his heart, but it hadn't disappeared. Wouldn't disappear. Would keep coming back with unnatural speed, requiring more sessions, more contact, more dangerous dissolutions of the boundaries keeping them separate.
"This can't happen." Ellis's voice came out rough. Ellis didn't move away from Dominic, didn't increase the scant inches between their knees. The words existed independent of action.
"I know." Dominic leaned forward slightly, and Ellis watched the movement like watching a cliff edge approach. "But it already is, isn't it?"
The question held no demand, no pressure. Just recognition. Acknowledgment of what had already occurred, what was still occurring in the charged air between them. Ellis could deny it. Should deny it. Couldn't.
Ellis stood abruptly, putting the room between herself and Dominic. The distance felt insufficient. The brownstone felt insufficient. Ellis needed miles, cities, oceans between them and still worried it wouldn't be enough.
"You should go." Ellis moved to the window, stared at nothing beyond the glass.
"Ellis—"
"Please." The word cracked. "I need you to leave."
Silence stretched. Then Dominic stood, moved toward the door. Stopped. Ellis felt Dominic's presence at her back like heat, like gravity, like something that would pull Ellis in if she turned around.
"I'll need another session in a few days." Dominic's voice carried carefully neutral. "The rot is already growing again. I can feel it."
Ellis closed her eyes. "I know."
"Wednesday?"
"Fine."
Dominic left. Ellis heard the stairs creak, heard the front door open and close, heard Dominic's footsteps fade on the sidewalk outside. Then silence. Complete, suffocating silence broken only by Ellis's own breathing.
Ellis's hands still tingled. Still felt the shape of Dominic's chest, the heat of his skin, the pulse of grief-rot beneath. Ellis flexed her fingers, watching them tremble in the salt lamp's dim light. Three days. Wednesday. Three days until Ellis could touch Dominic again, could taste his grief, could feel something real in the wasteland Ellis's emotions had become.
Ellis craved it. Craved him.
The realization didn't surprise. Just terrified.
The laptop's blue light hurt Ellis's eyes. Two AM. Ellis had spent three hours reading archived case studies, old cleansing texts, warnings written decades ago by practitioners who'd learned these lessons through catastrophic failure.
Prolonged exposure to a single grief source creates dependency in the cleanser.
The words glowed on the screen, clinical and damning.
Initial symptoms include craving contact with the specific individual, preoccupation with their emotional state, and difficulty experiencing sensation outside the cleansing context. As dependency progresses, the cleanser requires regular contact to feel alive. The subject's grief becomes the only emotional stimulus capable of penetrating the cleanser's natural numbness.
Ellis scrolled down, stomach turning.
In severe cases, cleansers have been documented manufacturing situations to maintain their subject's grief state. Sabotaging therapeutic progress, preventing emotional healing, creating new traumas to ensure continued need for cleansing services. The addiction overrides professional judgment and ethical constraints. The cleanser becomes parasitic.
Parasitic.
Ellis stared at the word until it lost meaning, became just shapes on a screen. Then gained meaning again, sharper.
Ellis had spent three nights researching Dominic's case. Had built timelines, analyzed Thea's social media, looked for explanations beyond the obvious. Professional concern? Or manufacturing mystery where none existed? Creating reasons to stay involved?
Ellis thought about Wednesday. About placing hands on Dominic's chest again. About feeling his consciousness merge with Ellis's, about the craving already building, about the way everything else felt gray and distant compared to those moments of connection.
Three days felt too long. That was the problem.
Ellis wanted Wednesday to come faster. Wanted to accelerate the treatment schedule. Wanted reasons to see Dominic more frequently, to consume his grief more often, to feel alive through his pain.
The research called it dependency. Progressive. Degenerative. Ending in the cleanser becoming parasitic, feeding on suffering they should be healing.
Ellis closed the laptop. Sat in darkness, hands still tingling from hours-old contact.
The thought of stopping—of ending treatment, referring Dominic to another cleanser, never seeing him again—made Ellis's chest constrict. The craving had roots now. Deep ones. Pulling Ellis toward Wednesday, toward the next session, toward whatever dangerous dissolution waited in the treatment room.
Ellis recognized the trap. Saw it clearly in the clinical descriptions, the warnings, the documented progressions from concern to obsession to parasitic dependency.
But the alternative was returning to numbness. Complete, permanent numbness. Fifteen years of feeling nothing stretching into fifteen more, into a lifetime of going through motions in a body that couldn't remember sensation.
Dominic's grief made Ellis feel. His consciousness touching Ellis's made the world sharp again, made colors brighter and time slower and existence something more than performance.
Was that worth becoming parasitic? Worth manufacturing reasons for Dominic to keep suffering? Worth sabotaging whatever healing might be possible?
Ellis didn't know.
But Wednesday would come. Ellis would see Dominic again. Would place hands on his chest and pull his grief into herself and let their boundaries dissolve. Would taste the burnt sugar of his sorrow and crave more of it, always more.
The addiction had already taken root.
Recognizing it changed nothing.