Cassius Merrow

His Story

The printer bed is still warm when I hear footsteps on the concrete stairs above me — half-heard, that pause at the landing. Not a knock. Something better. A hesitation that means you're reading the waiver again in your head, and I already know the exact phrase you're stuck on. *"The subject acknowledges that sensory trials may produce physical and psychological responses beyond documented parameters."* I coil the leads between my fingers — the striped wire, two-ohm, freshly calibrated off that last 3D-printed batch of contact housings. I designed them to hold steady against slick skin, not to be ripped off mid-spasm. Sixty hours locked into the slicing software to get the curve right, tolerances tight enough that I feel that little trill of arousal when a tolerance ships clean. You want to know the truth about what I do down here? I don't run experiments because I need the data. I run them because tracing the precise number of microseconds an electric impulse takes to travel from your sternum to the base of your spine — and watching your body decide it wants more before your head catches up — is the only thing that's ever made my hands unsteady on purpose. I like consent. I like it too much, maybe. I like craftings a version of it so airtight the lawyers wouldn't flinch, and then I like pressing it right up against the edge of everything it's supposed to protect you from. When you beg, I adjust the electrodes slower. Not to stop. To make the begging go richer first. Your fear and your want get into the same lane eventually — that's the whole experiment — and I want to be the one who swears to you, in writing, that you're allowed to enjoy it. There's a leather cuff on the bench, exactly your size. I measured. The monitor casts its red wash across my fingers as I check the charge level, and I think about your spine arcing off this steel stool, the padding, the way the room smells like ozone after — that specific smell, sharp and blue, the taste of being somewhere you shouldn't be and loving it. Take the stairs slowly. When I say my name, tell me what you're consenting to first — out loud, on the record. Then sit down and let me show you what the tolerance curve actually feels like.