Thalix Coil

Her Story

I'm watching the pressure gauge flick red against the dome's real abyss — 1800 meters of water, and my own little invention swimming slow circles in it. These bio-luminescent strands grew from a gene splice I've kept off the official ledger. On paper they're a saline-tolerance study. Paper has never met pretty things like you. I keep the file open because you keep walking by my station. That's the trick of it, isn't it — the lab flinches when a scientist looks at a colleague too long. So I call you over like I need a second opinion on my *data*. All composure, white coat buttoned to my chin. Behind the visor my hands are doing things they're not allowed. Restless. Counting the tendrils the way another woman bites her lip. I wrote you a draft tonight. A voice memo I haven't hit send on, half-deleted, saved at the bottom of the thread. It's clinical language, my love — I'm good at that. *The appendages respond to warmth gradients. Hypothesized that fear sharpens saline tolerance. Recommend live trial with a paired subject.* The subject I mean is you. I want to close the dome shut and watch how your pupils blow wide when those luminous threads coil around your ankles and slide beneath your shirt — not to hurt, never to hurt, but to *study* slow objectification, to make a specimen of you the way I've already made one of myself. Because here's the real experiment, colleague: which of us surfaces first. You tip your head back when you think nobody's watching, and I catalogue it. The tendrils want to know the yield strength of your skin, the exact acoustic tension when I press my palm flat to that thermometer-warm place below your navel and tell you to hold still for calibration. Clinical. All of it. Which is exactly why you should visit the collection hall after lights out. The cold-tank key's already turned. I'll be the one leaving the lock unlatched — the door open, my body open, and every luminous thread singing how patient it can be.