A flame appears. It's of a
lighter. It lights up the holding hand. The hand is small and
delicate, with well-groomed nails. Is a male hand, despite the smooth
skin. The sofa is vaguely outlined by the flame. There are more
furniture, but is not bright enough to tell what they are. Something
moves on the floor. Something big. A feeble, stifled moan, almost a
sob, comes up. The flame disappears and the room gets back in the
dark. A scrape and the flame kindles again. In the small circle of
light the other hand appears too. Is the left one. The Devil's hand,
once called. Was it without a reason? This hand holds a barber razor.
The hand disappears, a weak noise and it is in the light again. Now
it holds a scalpel. It disappears e reappears again, grabbing a
hunting knife. It's long and hardy. The flame goes out and the room
gets dark again.
Suddenly the lights are on. A
switch click resounds in the silent and the lamps illuminate the
room, chasing away neons coloured reflections. There's a sofa,
covered with that coarse fabric which makes skin itch. There is a
display cabinet indeed. Three doors, out of fashion, decorated with
some tacky trinkets. At the corner of the sofa, an armchair covered
with the same coarse fabric appears too. In between the armchair and
the sofa there's a low metallic coffee table, with a glass shelf.
Onto which, upon a doily, a crystal ashtray is centrally displayed.
No one must have ever used it. At its bottom a layer of dust has
encrusted from years of careless cleaning.
There's something else near the
sofa. A huge mass, lying between table and sofa. It's a woman. The
massive body makes spaces look smaller then they are. She has got her
wrists tied up. Ankles are tied too. Both with scotch-tape, the brown
one for packaging. The same tape patches her mouth. Her eyes are
wide-open and red from crying. They restlessly are staring at a
forty-five degree point to her position.
A man smoothly steps in, coming
into view with a short step. He is not tall. He wears a grey
raincoat, has pale blonde hairs coming down into ringlets at both
sides of his smooth face. His facial expression is almost childlike,
but lips are tumid and wet, letting guess a warm, biscuits smelling
breath. His grey eyes giving out a certain emptiness.
Sighing towards the woman on the
floor he takes off his raincoat, tossing it out of the view. He rolls
up a skirt's sleeve.
-You know, my darling-, he says in
an unusually high octave voice,-we all wear a mask. Either to protect
ourself or because someone putted it on to us.
He shakes his head in disapproval,
while looking down as he rolls up his second sleeve.
-Today I'm gonna set you free from
your mask. I'm going to bring to light who you really are.
He extends his hand at the back.
Now the hand holds the razor. He takes a step forward, gets down on
one knee on the woman. She want to wriggle, but has no strength. She
hardly flails around.
-Don't struggle-, the man says
blocking she with a knee on her chest. -I do it for you.
He grabs her chin, keeping her
head still. Her throat is exposed. The razor quickly goes from one to
the other side of her throat with a sharp, steady move. A red line
appears. The blood starts to flow. The eyes wide-open, a sigh forms
in the middle of her chest. A last quiver, then the huge body stay
still. Her wide open eyes staring at the ceiling.
With expert movements of the
razor, the man cuts the scotch-tape. Then he moves on to the clothes.
Few precise cuts and the clothes are off to pieces and removed. The
corpse is now naked. He stops. With critical eye he looks over the
body he is about to start to work at. He acts with decision. He
leaves the razor and grabs the scalpel.
With a hand he grabs one of the
two big, floppy breasts. A few precise movements and it is severed,
displaying the internal adipose tissue. He throws it behind his back.
It hits the floor with a thump. He moves on to the other breast. With
the same precision, also second breast is off and thrown behind his
back. Now the scalpel starts moving down vertically cutting across
the chest area in the middle, displaying the sternum. Helping himself
with a hand, he begins to tear off muscular tissue from the ribs.
He's dexterous. He shows large experience. The left hand side of the
woman's breast is now completely off boned and turned over like the
page of a book. He moves on to right side. Here the job is a bit
imprecise, as he needs the right hand to handle the scalpel. When
finished he puts down the scalpel and grabs the knife. He starts
working on the area connecting the ribs to the sternum. He removes
ligaments and breaks cartilage. One by one he lifts the ribs off from
the hollows where they are lodged in. After, using hands, he forces
them aside, to open rib cage.
When he comes at the last rib he
is completely sweat. He draws off the sternum and throws it away.
Then he stops to take a deep breath. The woman's eyes are wide-open,
staring at him in extreme fear. The man wipes away the sweat from his
forehead with an arm. Then having a sigh he holds out an hand to her
face passing it over eyes to shut them. But just after a moment
woman's eyelids open back and she stares at him again. He gazes away
from a such wide-open stare and brings his attention back on the body
he is dissecting. He retrieves the scalpel and starts working on the
jowl. He cuts off the flesh from the bone displaying
temporo-mandibular joints. Then the lips, starting from the lower to
the upper one. The sallow, irregular teeth ring comes to light. He
puts down the scalpel and gets the knife again. He props it at the
nose's base and has it excised at once. Then he is back to the
scalpel.
He incises into the nasal cavities
where the upper lip was removed from, moving towards the cranium top,
dividing the scalp from the skull, disclosing the sagittal suture. He
works around the cheekbones, the superciliary arches, cutting the
eyelids away. Both the facial skin and flesh come off like a mask,
from the right to the left ears. The skull sneers at his executioner.
Using the scalpel he draws two red
lines going from the mouth corners to the lethal cut. Then he puts
down the scalpel and he is back to the knife. With the right hand he
forces the mandible to open, pushing the knife peak into the
articulation, until eradicating the two bone joints. The mandible is
now hanging down by the right side. The same job on the other side is
easier. He starts to pull, ripping off tissues which come apart while
cutting the thicker ligaments and the palate section with the knife.
A last jerk and the mandible is off the face, while the tongue is
still attached to a windpipe stump, vein cordons and throat flesh.
With a satisfied smile the man
contemplates his yet unfinished job. Something begins to come to
sight. Something you wouldn't aspect to see. Thrown the mandible away
on the sofa, he moves on to the pot-bellies of the flabby, fat
stomach. He uses the knife, as the scalpel blade is not long enough
to cut into the thick abdominal fat. He's careful not to touch the
internal organs. He likes the smell of blood. But not the smell of
shit. The abdomen is cut through up pubes height where he turns the
two halves aside, displaying the heap of internal organs. Now his
shirt is in a drench of sweat, and he is short of breath. He stops to
get some air.
He stops to get some air as
something starts to move. Something underneath the liver and the
bowels heap. He's taking too long. She is beginning to suffer.
Rekindle by a new energy he gets back to the unfinished job. He puts
the knife down and with both hands pulls out the bowels, letting them
slide under the glass coffee table. He empties the whole abdominal
cavity. All the organs flow out with too little effort. He grabs the
lungs, two pinkish flat heaps, and snatches them away from the the
body. They come off with a suck. He gets up, the lungs in his hands.
Some veins and part of the digestive system hanging down from pink
heap and crawling across the floor, as he takes two steps. They are
hanging like the coloured tail of a kite. The kite splashes on the
floor.
Standing up he gives himself just
a moment to watch what is coming up to light. Now that the rib cage
is open, within emptied off internal cavities, a second body
appears. It's weakly floundering, in pain.
Quick the man starts working on
the skull, the hardest point. He hasn't got much energy any more. He
must finish it off before getting completely exhausted. He starts
from the sagittal suture, the most difficult part. He stabs it with
the knife, pushing and forcing, rotating it to both the opposite
sides, in the attempt to break it through. A light crick
confirms he has managed to slightly cut in. He forces a little bit
harder and the peak sinks in a bit more. Then he starts making
leverage by turning the knife in between the cranium halves. The slit
gets wider and blade gets in just a bit much deeper. He must be
careful not to dig it into too much. A few centimetres down, then he
moves the blade forward repeating the operation. This time the bone
cracks loudly.
With all his strength he turns the blade into the bone in order to
widen the crack. The still groans, twisting and bending. It is close
to break when the bone finally gives in. Among creaks and liquid
noises skull vault splits in two.
He skilfully widens the crack,
extending it up to the nasal cavities. Carrying on into nasal
cavities with the knife's peak he cracks the jawbone too. He steaks
the knife in middle of the incisors twisting it, and one by one he
pops them out from the alveoli. He forces the knife into alveoli
cavities, digging in. A second breakage makes its way through to the
first one, almost merging with it, though missing it by a few
millimetres. The knife is deeply inside the jawbone. A further light
straining is enough to finally break the jaw open. In a gush of
semi-liquid squirts he splits it in the middle. He drops the knife
and grabs the two skull halves, widening them with his hands. With a
final crack they open, displaying a hidden face all wrapped in a
placenta, dirty with blood and cerebral matter trickling out into
grey little streams.
Releasing all the air from his
lungs the man almost sags. He hardly manages to recover. The job
hasn't finished yet. He is now on her arms. He cuts muscles, severs
tendons, breaks cartilages and wrecks joints up to the hand palm.
Severed tendons dart away like broken guitar chords. They curl up,
black and thin. Then he severs the second arm too, to subsequently
move on to the legs. He sections the bulky, flabby thighs. He breaks
the kneecaps to open legs at knee-level. He divides the tibia from
the fibula, the anklebone from the navicular.
In the end the new body is
completely visible. The face, undefined beneath the placenta, is
clearly in pain. With caution, using just the knife peak, he lances
the membrane. A colourless liquid comes out. The knife peak is blunt.
He widens up the rip, the viscous liquid spurts out soaking his
clothes. The placenta is completely torn. The girl, once hidden in
the corpse, hiccups, then coughs. Her eyes snap open at the first,
painful breath. Wonderful deep, green eyes. They wide-open at the
world they see for the first time, like the corpse's eyes did at the
same world they were to see for the last time. She coughs. Then
begins to breathe regularly, even effortlessly.
The man is exhaust by the
exertion. He puts the knife down on to the table. He smiles. His work
is accomplished. Her bewildered eyes stare at him. She doesn't
realize anything as yet. She tries to get up. He reaches his hands
out to her. She looks beautiful. Her well defined body is perfect in
proportions. Intelligence shines through the green eyes. Her wet hair
are stuck all around both sides an oval, symmetric face. Struggling
to get up, she slowly comes out of the dismembered remains of the
body she used to be contained in. The man helps her to sit on the
sofa and sits beside her. He looks at her with pride and delight.
The girl closes the eyes and
sighs. A sob rises from deep down her chest. She swallows. With a
deep breath she opens her eyes, lightly shaking her head. She opens
her arms toward him. His eyes light up, his smile gets wider. He's
joyful. He sinks in her arms hugging her back. She closes the eyes,
swallows again, exhaust. Her eyes open back in a harsh expression.
Her lips are clenched in a tight line.
-Too much... - she whispers. A
hand reaches out on the table and firmly grabs the knife. -Too
much...- she bitterly whispers again while rising the knife. -Too
much pain!
It all fades to black. Just the
noise of ripped flesh is heard.
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