markab
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Post by markab on Jul 10, 2017 20:20:23 GMT -5
Lying with his arms twined between the trough's legs, gripping the wood as far up as he could reach, Keta watched Smiley approach with the scalpel. It was big enough that it probably could be one of his knives -- then, he didn't know what she was cutting at, presumably his chest. Something that size was likely required. He wriggled in place, tilting his head up as far as he could to watch as the fox's muzzle lowered to just above his torso, the scalpel settling inches away from his bloodstained fur.
"I'm going to make a Y-shaped incision on your chest and down the length of your abdomen. Do let me know if anything hurts."
Keta snorted. That wouldn't be necessary, but if she hadn't believed him about feeling no pain she'd figure it out soon enough. Especially as the scalpel came down, its bite only noticeable with the pressure it applied against his skin, and then the feel of sticky warmth as it carved its way from his shoulder to the middle of his chest. The thrum of his heartbeat picked up -- he could hear it in his ears as the adrenaline spiked it, as the scalpel switched sides and cut the other half of its v into the other side of his torso, then down the length of his abdomen just above the join of his legs.
And, as ever, there was still nothing -- beyond the warmth of blood oozing from the largest cut he'd ever received. Keta uncurled one paw from its grip on the trough leg and dabbed curiously at the wound where all three cuts joined, coming away with blood already soaking his leathery pads and fur.
"I'm now going to lift the flaps I've created, and observe your organs in setu through your ribcage. Unless you'd like me to remove a rib or two."
Keta laughed as the blood built and started to run, making its difficult way through his thick fur and down the slant of the table. Wouldn't hurt, but they were probably in place for a reason. "Thats alright. I've grown --" another snicker, "attached to them." Kept laughing, all his teeth in his grin, as Smiley peeled his skin back from around them. The sound was sharp, like tearing paper, as the tissues separated, and the stream of blood thickened, built, starting to speckle against the table.
Being able to see everything under his own cage of skin and fur -- heart and lungs and ribs -- was an interesting experience, curious enough to quiet him. Everything glistened wetly in the dim light, like a hundred other bodies had done when he pulled them open -- being his, though, it felt different. Watching his lungs expand and contract under his ribcage, the rabbit-fast beat of his heart pushing blood through his body that trickled out through the surgical cuts across his torso, and the paw that settled atop them, centimeters away from actually touching his heart.
"Now, which organ should I handle first?"
Keta's grin widened, paws moving to idly wipe some of the blood away from where it was tickling his neck. "I don't know. Pick your favorite!"
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Django
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Post by Django on Jul 10, 2017 20:45:40 GMT -5
"I don't know. Pick your favorite!"
What a charming and frightfully durable beast! He hadn't even cried out, yet. Truly, his pain receptors, nerve endings, whatever it was that handled pain simply weren't working. Thoroughly interesting! Smiley drummed her claws on his sternum, considering the mass of organs arrayed before her.
Still drawn to that little heartbeat, she set the scalpel down and reached under his ribs. His lungs squished her glove against the underside of his ribs, a place no paws should have any business being, and then her fingers closed around the pulsing muscle. She pulled, gently, watched the valves lengthen as she drew it from under his ribs. She held it just above his chest so he could see it.
With both paws, she caressed it. She was literally holding his life in her hands. One stab, one mishandling, and he'd be dead, whether he felt the pain or not. She sniffed it, the source of all blood movements in the body. So metallic, so fresh. She tightened her grip around it just a little, not enough to damage it.
"Do you feel that?" she asked. "Not pain, but my touch. Or is even the inside of your body invulnerable?" She giggled as she went about carefully replacing it in its spot between his lungs. Then, she moved one paw to the tangle of his intestines, feeling the thickness of the organ ropes. Really, she was considering what she could cut open and sew back together again, just to see if he'd feel it. What wouldn't damage him enough to be fatal, but enough to be painful?
"Have you eaten recently?" Smiley's eyes were drawn to the J-shaped stomach. It would probably be fine with a little nick. It being like a pouch, it'd be easy to suture it. Of course, he'd be living with suture stitches in his body for the rest of his life, but that wouldn't be her problem after closing his body again.
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markab
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Post by markab on Jul 10, 2017 21:47:04 GMT -5
Claws tapped against his sternum in answer. The clicking noise of nail against bone was sharp enough to cut through the confusing roar in his ears; he watched, still silent, curious to see what she'd go for first. Most of the interesting stuff was tough to get to under the protective cover of his ribs, and the only way he'd ever bothered to get that kind of stuff out was by cracking them open. Which he presumed she wasn't going to do.
And indeed, she didn't. But the feel of a paw -- of something squishing against his lungs that shouldn't be there was almost unnerving, though it didn't stop the breathless laugh that cut off when the fingers curled around his heart and pulled.
He shuddered, his body, despite the complete lack of pain, protesting the wrongness of the situation. He could feel the pressure around his heart, making the beats different than they were supposed to be, which only increased as she wiggled it out from under his ribs and held it up before him, so he could see the slick muscle -- his own -- oozing blood that dripped down into the mess of his chest as it continued to pulse. But the curiosity won out over self-preservation, as it always seemed to do, and he giggled instead as her grip tightened. It felt a bit like -- the beat he could feel in his finger if he tightened his grip around it hard enough, except magnified, centered directly on his heart.
"Do you feel that? Not pain, but my touch. Or is even the inside of your body invulnerable?"
Still laughing. He could see his lungs expanding and contracting with the influx of air, but finally he stopped enough to speak. "Oh, I can feel the pressure. Nothing else."
The heart was tucked carefully back under his ribcage, but he could still almost feel the phantom grip around it, distracting enough that he barely noticed her paws moving to his intestines, dipping in between the thick ropes. The blood was really starting to run now; he could hear some of it dripping into the metal bucket under his head. He tapped at the edges of his peeled skin, refocusing to watch her paws leave their position, drift slightly upwards. Keta craned his head but still couldn't quite see what she was going after.
"Have you eaten recently?"
Ah. Stomach? He took a brief moment to think -- he'd woken up, snacked on a bit of bread, and then the day had spiraled out into finding the bird and the rat and then his way into the barn and now. This. Probably...over ten hours, give or take. Whoops. "Nope!"
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Django
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Post by Django on Jul 12, 2017 21:15:36 GMT -5
"Nope!"
"Marvelous!" Smiley exclaimed. She moved to thread her suture needle, and set it within reach. She then selected a small scalpel, and noticed the blood pinging in the bottom of the bucket. She should probably make this the last 'experiment' for the evening. Blood loss would still kill him. "Feeling lightheaded yet?" she asked the nervously chuckling sable. He couldn't help the fear, even if the pain was blocked to his brain.
"Brace yourself," she rumbled. With one paw, she reached for the little pouch of his stomach. She held it up so the acid wouldn't spill when she made the incision just below the base of the esophagus. Her scalpel flashed in the burst of lightning from outside. "Scream if it hurts!"
She sliced a one-inch-long cut into the stomach lining, set her scalpel down, and grabbed her suture, watching her patient's response.
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markab
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Post by markab on Jul 15, 2017 19:47:03 GMT -5
"Marvelous!"
He could guess what that meant, but unlike when she was putting her paws all over his heart -- the most vital thing to keep him alive at the moment -- he didn't much care. Or perhaps that could be attributed to the dizzy, light-headed feeling slowly creeping into the edges of his brain, accompanied by the steadily-faster plink of blood into the metal bucket, and the way he could feel the fur on his arms and sides growing soggy with rapidly-cooling blood. He hummed and tilted his head further backwards, feeling the thrum of his pulse in his ears as he blinked out at the gathering darkness beyond the barn's old walls.
"Feeling lightheaded yet?"
"Oh, yes." He drummed his footpaws gently on the trough and dabbed at the blood gently dripping from the makeshift table with his fingers. Didn't do much to stop the persistent flow, which built up against his pawpads in no time at all.
"Brace yourself. Scream if it hurts!"
Keta was feeling quite comfortable with his head where it was at, not bothering to lift it while she cut into...his stomach, from the sounds of it. It was confirmed only seconds later when the weird pressure returned, only odd because it was on the inside of his body, on his organs which should...not be dealing with that, supposed to be hidden behind his skin. Of course, there was nothing else besides that, and Keta simply redirected his gaze up to the ceiling instead.
"I don't feel pain," he reminded her. "Not even that. Stomach, right?"
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Django
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Post by Django on Aug 1, 2017 12:52:03 GMT -5
"I don't feel pain. Not even that. Stomach, right?"
Smiley was already suturing the small incision back up. She nodded, letting out a sigh. Even she would've screamed at this. She shouldn't really be disappointed, she supposed. But she did like to hear her patients scream. She was at least content that Keta was so nervous. His anxious chuckles were still a sign of fear, and fear was what she lived for.
Her hypothesis had been proven wrong. That the body parts that should never be exposed to pain could feel pain in a creature like Keta. Well, nothing to do but sew him back up now. She had learned something new, regardless of the outcome. Her deft paws finished the stitches on his stomach, replaced the little organ, and then reached for the skin flaps over his torso. She pulled them back into place, wiped away excess blood, and got out the needle again.
"How long have you been this way?" Smiley inquired. "As long as you can remember?"
The needle flew in and out of his thick fur in a precise rhythm, starting at the base of the incision above his hips and moving up his chest. Such a fascinating creature. He couldn't feel someone dissecting him. Couldn't feel a needle sewing him up. Just the fact that she'd moved his organs a bit and was pulling his skin a little with the thread. Her other victims had passed out from fear by the time she opened them, or were still screaming. She would have to remember this encounter.
Thunder boomed overhead. The storm hadn't moved much in the time they'd been in the barn.
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markab
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Post by markab on Aug 21, 2017 22:07:52 GMT -5
The barn ceiling swam as he stared up at it, pinpricks of light dancing in his vision to the sound of a sigh that sounded far more distant than it should. Felt kind of like the time he'd lost his tail and had completely failed to notice -- losing blood, right. It pattered into the bucket like the rain on the roof and he giggled breathlessly as something pressed into his stomach again, still unwilling to lift his head and vaguely aware of the fact that if he tried he'd probably find some way to fall directly off the overturned trough being used as his operating table. Wasn't moving and he already felt dizzy. That was good.
The pulling of the two separate flaps that should have been covering his chest brought with it a startled twitch, if only because it was profoundly disconcerting to feel something that should have been attached cut into separate parts. Familiar needle-pressure pricked into the side of one flap, and the rhythmic stitching back and forth was familiar; he sighed, nose twitching uselessly as the pull and the blood-loss steadily lured him closer towards sleep, not quite cognizant enough to realize how much of an awful idea dozing off at this point would be.
"How long have you been this way? As long as you can remember?"
Keta's eyes flickered unwillingly back open and he huffed a shallow laugh. "Yes, yes." The laugh sputtered out as his focus shifted to tracing idle swirls on the blood-wet table with the point of a claw. "They were all so scared to fight me. Especially when they got the sword in my ribs -- and it would get stuck --" In bone or flesh, whichever. He remembered the look on the weasel's face when it had bit into his side -- he was little, then, no more than a kid, but just as vicious as they said vermin were, and while the other had been paralyzed in confusion or fear or whatever it had been Keta had cut his throat. Watched him scrabble on the grass with his paws to the gash, bleeding red onto the snow, and like a wolf circling its prey Keta had watched, eyes gleaming-bright as the weasel's friends fled and his struggles grew weaker and weaker into nothing at all.
And he'd pulled the sword out, and, well. It still held its place at his side.
"I cut his throat." He blinked, eyelashes fluttering. "The screaming isn't necessary."
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Django
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Post by Django on Sept 12, 2017 23:34:12 GMT -5
"They were all so scared to fight me. Especially when they got the sword in my ribs -- and it would get stuck --"
Smiley giggled hoarsely. She would've loved to see that. It put a small thought in her mind as she worked the needle up one branch of the Y cut on his chest. A thought that was... very interesting. She dared not attempt it. One experiment with this creature was enough for this evening. The darling thing's head must be swimming from the blood loss by now.
"I cut his throat. The screaming isn't necessary."
"Mm, to each his own," Smiley said. "I'm terribly sorry I couldn't make you scream, love. Though I do wonder what would happen if someone were to stab that little unfeeling heart of yours. Would death be painful? Or would you just fall into it like your childhood bed?"
Then, she laughed, cutting the knotted suture with a precise snip. She sashayed around the trough, blood sticking to her feet as she moved to his other side and sewed up the second Y branch. Dark red paw prints stained the old barn floorboards with her movements.
"Now, you'll be mighty dizzy coming up on your own," she said. "Allow me."
With the strength of her big frame, she lifted Keta's body out of the trough and carried him over to a pile of old hay, laying him down as gently as a mother with a babe. She knew the hay might help soak up some of the blood still left on him, although he didn't seem too bothered by dried blood in his fur, as she'd noticed.
"Right," she nodded to herself, removing her gloves one finger at a time. She then walked to the door of the barn and set her gloves out in the rain to be washed. Red spilled from the leather into the wet grass as she watched. "A pity to waste this," she said over her shoulder to Keta, "but one must have clean gloves, you know."
She then came back to the trough and lifted one end, spilling the rest of the blood into the bucket with a thick, viscous splash. And what a splash! She giggled again, relishing in the sound of her favorite liquid. There was a dark pool of blood that had gathered in a dip in the wood, and around it was more blood that had soaked in. The radius of the red mess was about the size of a blanket, and was likely to turn the stomach of any sensible beast who might stumble upon it. She turned the trough right-side up with a grunt of effort and shoved it into a corner, watching the excess blood leave a trail from the old wooden legs.
"What a mess you've made," she said, utterly delighted.
She stomped all around with her blood-stained back feet, squealing (or, what might have been a squeal) at the feel of it, making macabre art on the floor. She then knelt by the bucket, which was a goodly amount filled, and sniffed long and languidly.
"Nothing better than that," she told the dizzy Keta.
She dipped a paw in and sloshed it around, happy as a kit with a new toy. She splashed it, made more paw prints on the floor, on the bucket, on herself, all the while laughing her unholy laugh. It was... quite a sight.
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