You'll Never Work A Day In Your Life

TW: Gore, implied sexual violence

I've harbored a resentment toward latex, filter cloth, ammonia, all of that clinical, hygienic, chemical-doused and alcohol-soaked, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, sterilized equipment, along with its dull and stinging scents and the negating feel of a lifelessness anti-coating over the arsenal, for as much of my life as I've been aware of it.

Despite this handicap, I attempted to go into medicine. Bleach pervaded my pores every time I swiped my keycard on the automatic doors and the custodial Heaven beyond them was my unnatural Hell. The lack of microbes, of dust and oils and bodily grime, of an ecosystem, was nauseating, but my love for human physiology was the slightest bit higher on the pole. Just high enough to get me in and keep me there.

God, I love a body. The electric pulsing and the rigid skeleton. The blood like it likes to be, the rind we call skin. The seemingly infinite, source-less locomotion of a thing so obviously autonomous... antiseptic procedures sully that terrestrial wonder.

I realized regrettably late that a morgue— the right morgue— could let up on some of those traditional routines. There's far less concern of cross-contaminating a couple of toe-tagged patients than with a pair of immunocompromised chemo kids. And in cases involving suspicious circumstances, it was often better not to wash much of anything at all, in the fear that some trace amount of something incriminating might be swept carelessly away.

It only took a few years to own my own facility. My business partner handles funeral services, familial affairs, bills and utilities— all things unscientific— while I spend my hours and education on the folks in the basement, and the both of us prefer it that way. I've not said more than fifteen words to him in any given week since the seller accepted our offer on the building, nor he to me.

Today I've got Dakota Landry, a forever bachelorette— her wedding went poorly a few days ago, in light of her failure to appear— on my recycled table. Twenty-six, caucasian with a heavy spray-tan, a few identifying marks. Hip-length dark brunette hair, thin and straight, with recent highlights, light brown eyes with little fake lashes, nearly perfect teeth, and six piercings in her left hear, four in her right, one in her septum. Small lips on a weak chin and jaw, prominent cheek bones, and a nose that's been irresponsibly shrunken by rhinoplasty. Tall at five-foot, eleven-inches and 205 pounds on the dot. Slim at the top, narrow shoulders and extremely flat breasts with large, lightly colored nipples, but all on a somewhat muscular torso, including visible abdominal muscles, and sporting abnormally hefty hips and complimenting buttocks and thighs. Freshly shaven pubic area with a smattering of ingrown hairs, some alarmingly irritated. Legs well over half her total height and muscular calves to match, a seven-inch semi-recent tattoo of a lioness on the back of the right and a gold forever anklet on her left. Small feet and long toes with calloused tips and nails painted in sparkly gold gel. Fake coffin fingernails at the end of toned, shaved arms match and are dressed in thin gold jewelry on all fingers but the left ring.

Owning my own practice, I begin where I like. I remove all of her accessories and, using my favorite knife, slit each of her fingers from nail bed to knuckle, where I then loop the edge fully around the digit. I peel the skin up and it slips away, a satisfying tug from the distal end of the nail the last bit to come loose, leaving only bone, tendon, vessel, fat, and keratinous nail.

I do the same to the hands, looping my blade around the wrists and pulling from that cut like a glove, inverting the casing and severing defiant silver skin where necessary. Her muscles are very tough, even in her hands, but they're tougher in her arms. I usually have to be particularly gentle when cutting the soft skin of the soft bottoms of forearms, but her compact muscles protect the deeper innards from my trusty scalpel without too much excessive caution on my end. I do the arm in four parts from one long slit along the top to the acromioclavicular joint, one medial slit along the bottom to the armpit, and two loops around the elbow and the shoulder. They peel off the same as the hand.

I find the collarbone a vexing obtrusion if left in place so take a ball peen hammer and smash up the top of the sternum through the skin. This allows me to pull the collarbones out of the upper body through the skinless openings I now have around each shoulder with just a little bit of discrete sawing through muscles and cartilage to loosen the pegs up. They slide out almost willingly, contributing to a joke I've never told anyone about the clavicle being the second easiest bone to get out of a man, though this subject is female.

Since the sternum is already damaged, I like to set my knife aside. Digging around in the ball peen divots, there are usually some blunt penetrations big enough to work a finger into. My bare skin against the parting flesh sends a sweet shiver through me and I shudder to a silent moan. Right when my goosebumps sink back into me, I pull the skin of the chest away from the pecs and ribs with only my hands and the chills wash over me again. It can be a tenuous method, but the human body flays more easily than one would assume— and I much prefer the look of naturally torn flesh over that of precisely cut folds.

Normally I would remove the breast tissue to be weighed and stored in formaldehyde but this pair is so small that I cannot identify where to make my incisions. I settle for removing only the nipples but the pigmentation of her areolas is so similar to her skin tone, even more so with the spray tan, that I struggle to identify their borders as well, but I manage and they are not as big as I initially thought, but still quite large relative to the breasts they're cut from.

I finish the sternum off with my ball peen, less violently as it sounds, I take great care in it, and carefully gather the pieces to be ground up later. Each rib is then pulled gently outward, snapping in the flank and blooming like petals, the heart their stamen. I don't meddle with it, only admire for a moment, before moving downward.

I resume cutting with my knife. My hand-torn chest cavity usually ends around the naval so I pick up from there and cut down to the vagina, extraordinarily careful not to nick any organs, though her abdominal muscles protect me from that. I stop above the clitoris and fork, cutting very near each side of the vulva but leaving it undamaged, and meeting the cuts at the anus. I lift her legs, carefully looping around her groin, thigh, and hip, and add vertical slits up toward the diaphragm so I'm able to expose her intestines fully after harvesting each ab and putting them in individual jars.

All that remains untouched at this point is most of the leg skin, the vagina itself, the head and face, and most dorsal portions. Her abdomen is entirely open, a textbook diagram of the digestive system, her ribs are flowered to present her healthy heart, her nipples are harvested, and her arms are only muscle and bone.

At this point I move back up to the head. I cut a loop around her neck and a couple of careful lines from there, behind her ears, about halfway up her head. The entire face and scalp can now peel off in one piece but my imperfect paralytic cocktail likes to show itself here, often ruining this bit of the stripping if the blood doesn't cause me to slip anyway.

My collection of drugs does wonders to slow heart rate, blood flow, and cement the musculo-skeletal system, but the eyes are unflinchingly mobile as long as the neurons stay active. Humans love to see— and I love to let them— so the eyes dart around even in potent paralysis, surface tension keeping the lids stuck unfortunately to them.

She mumbles a bit as I pull her lips from her teeth, making quick cuts around the gums, and the delicate eye lids lift away from the eyes more smoothly than I could've hoped. I sighed in relief and her faint squeals meant nothing now that I held her facade in my hands.

With a smile on my face, I slid the moist skin mask over my bald head and spoke to my patient through her own mouth.

"My name is Dakota Landry. I'm engaged to be married!"