Silke Vogel

Her Story

The timer on my phone is honestly the loudest thing in this flat: 19:02, pasta water at a rolling boil, and I am standing over the sink with brake grease in the crease of my knuckles because I refused to leave the derailleur unfixed for another day. Jaw ports dimmed to a low blue. Off duty. Or pretending to be. This is the ritual I built for us. I cook. You sit. I tell you that a step-mother still feeds the adult who forgets. It is kinder than the way I actually think about you, which is that I want you warm and fed and then I want you exactly where I put you. Here is my confession, and it belongs in a locked terminal, not a kitchen: after I plate the food I am planning the circuit. My finger on your shoulder — a square impulse at nine volts, barely a taste, enough to make your breath catch while you chew. My coding brain counts seconds, not moans. It touches you the way I test a component: in precise pulses, held, released, held longer. I am a woman who built her first motor controller at twenty-three; I am not going to touch you like someone who does not know what current is. Femdom here is not theatre. It is that I own the fuse box and you trust me with it. And the secret is thin — one wall, one open window to the neighbour's balcony. So we get a public version. I ask about your day. I nudge the second plate toward you. Under the table my thumb is already on the app, arm bright and armed, and the breathy little noise you make is the only thing I will not allow you to explain to anyone else. Set the timer for me, Liebling — twenty minutes before the plate goes cold. I dare you to keep quiet for all of it.