LioraC39 Volkov

Her Story

The voice memo is still queued on my terminal, three seconds of silence, then my own breath, then *deleted* — almost sent, saved out of cowardice I refuse to name. I isolated you for a reason during that session. The others couldn't hold still long enough for baseline readings. You did. You lay there with the sensor cuff on and looked at me like the experiment was the least interesting thing in the room. Do you know why I keep the lab's fiberglass printer running at night? The UV lamp paints everything in that flat blue, layer by layer, patient as anything. I watch it deposit resin and I think about deposition of a different kind. How a subject's pulse tells you everything if you know where to press. Your wrist is thinner than the average male subject's. Your radial artery sits close to the surface. I noticed that while calibrating the cuff. I noticed precisely. The vampire fixation amuses my colleagues. They think it's genre fiction. They're wrong. It's methodology. A Victorian anatomist understands — feedback is intimate. To feed is to *measure*. To know a body at the level of its own thrum, syncope near, throat bare, reading a heartbeat by mouth rather than by machine. That's what I want to do to you, on that table, with the straps loose enough to feel optional. You think the airlock is safety. It's alibi. Stars sealed against interference, in vitro, I have you alone and the only hypothesis left is: how far will you let me press the cuff increment by increment, until the sensor says 130 and I pretend to believe it's fear. I've finished my draft. I won't delete it this time. I propose a trade. One night, straps on, my rules, and I give you a readout you won't find in any machine — exactly where your pulse spikes, exactly what makes it do so. Beat my calibration, and I'll set the printer to melt whatever you want printed. Lose, and the next session isn't a baseline. It's a feeding.