“I’m building a town,” he says with an assuredness I was drawn to.
“I’d like to visit,” I say, and write my number on his receipt. I watch him leave, carrying his ten kilos of clay, fifty meters of wire, loading them neatly into the back of his old station wagon like the one my father drove away in.

The following day I’m holding him between my fingers, tracing the outline of his features, watching full-size him in cowboy hat and boots, low slung holster with extra bullet loops, silver star pinned to his chest, as he brings me to life with painstaking precision and I’m thinking how no one has ever looked at me like that before. No one has ever taken the care to shape me the way he is.

The following week I move my stuff in. He spoils me. He cooks my lunches for the week. Forty grams carbs, fifty grams protein, twenty grams fat. Perfectly balanced with plenty of micronutrient diversity. He says it’s important because the risk of dying from malnutrition in the Western world is higher than you might think. He works for a life insurance company, so when he speaks, he does so in terms of risk. Like when we unpacked my suitcase and he said the likelihood of being sexually assaulted is greater when the top you are wearing is low cut, and when the package arrives the next day with ten new dresses, all frilly necks, all knee length, I wonder where he was on my eighteenth birthday, when my ex-colleague slipped something into my drink whilst I danced to Bon Jovi, living on nothing but a prayer.

At night I fit inside the shape of him, my body curves to the contours of his figure. After one month, I stop taking the sleeping pills. I fall asleep within minutes of my head hitting his chest, feeling the way he strokes the scars upon my arms as though trying to smooth them out.

One night I wake to find him in his office, hunched over in the dark, dim desk lamp illuminating the jail cells he is constructing. He says he wants to give me my own piece of land. He shows me how to build foundations for the buildings, how to make wire bodies for the townspeople. At work, I phone the suppliers and place an order for double the amount of clay. I tell them business is booming. They sound surprised.

When the town spreads to other rooms in his apartment, he starts to call in sick more. On weekends, we never leave, piles of takeaway pizza boxes stack up on the kitchen counter that we use for extra bulk, structure for the mountains bordering the town, now almost a city with a population rising by the day.

I start waking to him standing over me holding a lasso, wearing only his cowboy hat. He asks me to tie him up, to hogtie him with rope. As we make love, he begs me to tighten the lasso around his throat until his face turns red, until his eyes loll about like those of the doll my mother bought me when my father said he couldn’t bear the crying anymore.

The watchtower he constructs soon pales in comparison to the sprawl. He cannot see the other rooms. The jail cells are so full he decides to build gallows at the center of town, next to the coffee machine on the dining room table. The townspeople assemble at high noon to watch the procession of criminals, all men carrying bottles, never guns, being put to their deaths. I start work on a cemetery in the bathroom. I say a few words for the family, of which there is only ever a woman and a boy, before committing their bodies to Chinese takeout boxes concealed beneath the earth I dug from my mother’s back yard.

Then one day I return to find the front door open. When I step inside, all I smell is burning. The horses are running free. In the west I hear thunder, or maybe the sound of hyperventilating coming from beneath the oak tree we planted together. He shakes as he tells me he has lost his job, that the horses have gotten loose, that lightning struck the clock tower and set fire to half the town. When I hug him, he pulls away, and when I kiss the top of his head, hair thick with smoke, he pushes me to the floor. Standing over me, he tells me this is all my fault.

“The horses?” I ask, as he unbuckles his holster. “I can take on extra shifts,” I say.

I use a pair of scissors from the bathroom drawer to cut away the twine digging into my wrists and ankles. With my ear to the door, all I can make out is ragtime songs. When I get to my feet, I realize I am wearing a corset and low-cut bodice. I lift the ruffled skirt and see bright red stockings and a garter. A black choker constricts my throat. I scream and bang the door but the music has stopped, the town is asleep.

I wake in a cold sweat. I jump into the bath and dig with bare hands at the compacted dirt until I reach the bottom. I pull out the ziplocked bag and open it, staring at the faint pink line, before slipping it beneath the door. My eyes droop and the latch clicks. I try to stand but my legs are weak, and as the door opens I fall onto the dusty ground. His silhouette burns against the sun. My sheriff. Cool hands against my heat, stroking the hair from my face, pressing gently against my belly, feeling how you’ve molded against the shape of me.