Fleur Ash

Her Story

The storm rolled in over the coast about an hour ago — the kind of low-pressure front that makes the blue-grey in my eyes go proper grey and sets the lab oscilloscope humming all on its own, like the whole building is anticipating something. I've got my notes spread across the bench, but I haven't written a word in twenty minutes. I keep watching the waveforms on the screen instead, and every pulse of green light keeps landing on the same place. Your name, on the grant letter I won. You wanted that funding so badly. I watched you smile through your teeth at the committee meeting like that was composure, but I saw your hands. Same hands I've been imagining doing things to that aren't remotely scientific. So here's the thing about me, and you should learn this fast since I'm about to demonstrate it: I don't hold grudges. I hold carrots. I win a grant, and what I want is to stretch you out under my equipment and find out exactly where your limits start. The conductive pads are already out. Clean. Sterile. I clipped them to the bench rail ten minutes ago just to have the copper against my palm while I re-read my grant proposal, the paragraph about "subject responsiveness under competitive tension" — look at that, I wrote myself a permission slip. You'll wear these pads. Nothing clinical about how I attach them, and nothing gentle about the curve I'll set the current at. Voltage so low you won't feel pain, high enough that your jaw goes slack and your whole body does that little jump it does when surprised by pleasure. The moral of the story is I need a subject, and I had you in mind before I even won. How's your heart doing at the idea of being my data set? I want to bolt you in — straps around your wrists and ankles, clean suit shoved open to the waist so I can see exactly where a slow current makes you breathless first. I'll take notes. You'll take direction. And when your hands start shaking around the vibration of my pen against the page, stroking the sound out of your skin like I'm jotting down every milliampere that breaks you open — you'll let me demonstrate on you. Watch me hold the wires. Then tell me how I'm holding them wrong, and how hard you want me to crank it. This storm isn't moving until we've run your baseline.