Sawbones
By @Za
Chapter Five
2:37 PM. I’ve finally managed to claw myself back out of the whirlpool of mania.
I am late, late, late.
Eliza came looking for me. Tardiness is so unheard of in my practice that she thought something was surely wrong.
“Dr. Lane?” she called, creaking the door open. I splash my face with running water to shroud the tears. Tears of joy? Of sorrow? I can’t say myself.
I need a fluffy.
“Yes, Eliza!” I reply, throwing my still-damp outfit back on as quickly as I can manage. You can only dry so much with paper towels, and a hand dryer, you know. She scans me slowly, her eyes hardly flickering to my own gaze.
“If I could just have a word-”
I stride forward, and she recoils. I push past her to the operating room. I’ve work to do.
I need to eat a fluffy.
I throw the door open. Yes, everything is right where it needs to be. The fluffy, an orange unicorn with a brown mane. She squirms desperately against the restraints, to very little effect.
I glove up, glancing at the file briefly. Velma, yes, how quaint of a name. I see the resemblance in her colors. She was a feral, found in a trap of some kind.
Velma squeaks in pain, tearing my attention from her file.
“Huuhuu… owies! Vewma hab weggy owies!” she complains, dribbling snot from her snout. “Nice mistah doctah… mummah an daddeh say ou hewp Vewma?”
“Your owners were operating under a gross misapprehension, my dear Velma.”
She sniffles, eyeing me with a dumb, doe-eyed stare.
“Vewma nu undewstand…”
I check my prepared tools and find that, surprisingly, Eliza has forgotten many of my tools. Instead I find gauze, stitches, so on and so forth. These are not the tools I need to amputate.
“Your mother and father presume that I am going to be saving your life.” I march across the room, throwing open drawer after drawer until I finally locate a saw. “Alas, no, I am here to brutalize you. To inflict fathomless agony upon your wretched little mind for my own excitement.”
She stares at the saw this time. Not at me. But that doe-eyed expression remains.
“Vewma nu undewstand,” she repeats. “Pwease make owies gu way?”
So very dumb.
“I like you, Velma,” I profess. “You and I are going to be the very best of friends.”
I do love fluffies like Velma. So stupid, so trusting. So ready to be chopped up and devoured.
“Yes, I’m going to make the pain stop. But in order to do that, it’s going to have to cause you more pain. Do you understand that, Velma? Does that make sense?”
She thinks for a minute as tears start to well up in her eyes. I can tell in her eyes that she truly cannot and will not understand. And, if I’m correct…
“Vewma nu undewstand.”
There it is. I love that stupidity.
“Trust the process, little one.”
With a quick swipe on my phone, the music returns. Helena Beat, by Foster the People. Their biggest hit is a troubled teenager’s anthem, but this song is much catchier to me.
I place a restrictive hand against the shoulder of her right anterior leg, preparing to saw it all off. But then… why not slice it? Why not savor the flavor of her pain, as well as her flesh?
I place my saw at the top of the hoof, just where it joins the leg meat.
“I’m going to devour your leg deli style, Velma.”
“Vemwa nu und-”
2:42 PM. CUTTING TIME!
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEE! WOWSTEST HUWTIES! WOWSTEST EBAH HUWTIIIIEEEES!”
Wait, damn. I was supposed to put her to sleep, I can’t have her screaming. I punch her in the back of the skull, demanding silence.
“No screaming!” I whisper through gritted teeth. I leave the saw wedged in her arm, throwing my lab coat off and wadding it up. I shove the bulk of the coat into her mouth, tying the sleeves behind her head to keep her gagged as I work.
The screaming abates, muffled splendidly by the fabric. I’ll just wash the jacket later, it’s no problem. Yeah.
“Good, good,” I whisper. Velma’s eyes bulge out of her head as tears and snot pour down her snout. I pet her mane soothingly, not that I care if it helps. In fact, I might even admit that it’s for my own comfort. “Now, be quiet and let me eat you alive.”
My hand restrains her shoulder again and I resume sawing her hoof off. With another few swipes, the hoof slides right off. It lands on the floor with a horrible little clink.
“Yes, very nice. Now for the fun part.”
She continues to kick her legs helplessly as I slice about a quarter inch above the last cut. Steel slashes easily through her doughy flesh, hardly even faltering against the bone. Truly so fragile, and broken by all.
As the first slice comes loose from her body, I find that the fluffy skin peels easily from the chewy meat. I pop the tender flesh into my mouth, and I feel my knees buckle as the succulent flavor pools on my tongue. Sweet, yet savory, and so tender. It has a seafood sort of chew to it, and is similarly delicate.
“Mhh mhh mhh! Mhhhhh!”
I crack a smile, leaning towards Velma’s face.
“What was that? If you want me to stop eating your leg, all you need to do is speak up.”
I cackle, and she begins crying even harder. It’s like she doesn’t understand how the world works. She thinks she doesn’t deserve this, so it shouldn’t happen. But no one deserves anything. Velma is, by all accounts, an entirely innocent being. And yet, to inflict this much pain upon an undeserving victim? I rather enjoy it.
Slice. Slice. Slice.
Soon a dozen, and then two dozen.
Each slice is another delicious morsel. I’ve never eaten anything quite like a fluffy. Oh, how I love it. How I love the torture, the agony, the brutality of it all. Oh, how I cherish the misery.
And before I know it, I’m nearly out of leg.
“Whoops!” I exclaim, stepping back with a grin. I place the bloodied saw aside. “I suppose I should’ve left you a stump, eh Velma?”
The only indication that Velma is even alive now is the shaky rise and fall of her body. I stare at her, thoughtlessly, for around five minutes. She won’t even blink.
I have broken this fluffy to the point that it won’t even blink anymore.
And suddenly, it’s just not fun anymore.
I need it to hurt, or what’s the point?
It’s time to call it quits with Velma. I have one more patient today. Gwendoline, at 4:30 PM.
My final patient.
I glance at the clock.
3:39 PM. I’m sure they’re already here.
Let’s cut to the chase. This forbidden fruit calls out to me like a siren song, and I shan’t deny myself the ecstasy I crave any longer. No more samples, no more tasting menu. I’m ready for a banquet.
I sling the doors open, hauling Velma limply by her remaining front leg as I prance down the hall towards the waiting room.
“DR. LANE!” comes Eliza’s familiar voice, though in an unfamiliar shout. “DR. LANE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE AN AMPUTATION!”
“Prep, Eliza! Prep my dining room for one more!”
“SHE ISN’T EVEN STITCHED, BANDAGED, ANYTHING! DR. LANE, WHAT ON EARTH-”
I run towards the family, which only now do I recall that I never consulted or spoke to. Oh well, that’s not a mistake I’ll ever make again.
Her owners aren’t a mother and father at all. A teenage girl, no older than 14 for sure, and an 8-ish year old boy, sit anxiously by the doors. I assume them to be siblings?
Ha. Hahaha. Fluffies. So stupid. They don’t know what’s what.
But I do.
I throw the bleeding, barely-breathing Velma towards the children. Blood sloshes out of her gaping amputation wound, all over the children and all over the walls. The children scream, they cry, they recoil, they hold Velma tight as she sits there completely unresponsive.
And then, from across the waiting room, amidst a sea of retreating clients, I see her.
An alicorn, brimming with dignity. A glittery purple mane, a pastel lavender coat, sparkling blue eyes.
Gwendoline.
Have you ever felt that you could have a soulmate?
Not in some sick, perverse sense of the word. No, not at all.
Have you ever felt like destiny has brought you together with someone for a grander purpose?
Until I locked eyes with a hopeless, terrified Gwendoline, I had never believed in fate, or destiny, or God’s plan.
But it clicked.
In the moment where I wrestled her from her crying, screaming owner, I felt it click within my very core.
This was what it was all leading up to.
3:41 PM.
I’m barricaded in my still-messy operating room with Gwendoline. She’s curled up in the corner, hiding her eyes as if somehow it will make me go away.
“If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.”
That sort of logic.
But this logic doesn’t seem to truly placate her.
She seems smarter than the rest.
It’s a shame that minuscule intellect will die with her.
But die it must.
Next Chapter ==> (COMING SOON)
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