The Live Vivisection of Family

This contains mentions of surgery and gore and stuff. Why? I don't know, it felt right.

The room was silent. Even the clinking of glasses and silverware were slim to none. The lights paralleled the silence with its own under-utilized light and singularly lit candle in the middle of the table.  No one really meant to begin the terribly awkward silence. Well, that may not have been true. As of late, Colorado and Maryi had been determined to cause as much turmoil and terror as their little bodies and minds could inhabit and bear. Even little Sunn had a few hands in the destruction of one of Verrin’s projects—leading him to the vehement and terrible silent treatment of his siblings. Though, everyone else’s silence was a feat and an omen.

“So,” their father chirps, cracking the thick, glass-like tension that circled them. “Verrin, I heard from one of your teachers that you’re excelling in your studies. What of those have you been working on?”

Instead of a statement, Verrin pulls a small, white rat from his pocket and holds it towards his father. The rat squeaks in a code-like repetition and wiggles in his hand. He places the rat upon the table and watches carefully as it crawls atop the tablecloth towards a smirking Colorado. The rat stops and looks up to stare at his achromatic eyes.

Colorado takes his fork in hand, facing the prongs at the little rodent, and begins to slam his hand downward. Though, the rat is faster—taking the opportunity to jump up and at the boy’s face. He screams and tilts his chair back—falling to the ground while attempting to tear the rat off his face. A chorus of cackles and giggles from Maryi and Sunn fills the room. The lights brighten slightly as they grow louder.

“What was that, dude?!” Colorado exclaims. His hair vividly changing in color as he uprights himself.

The rat scampered back into an apathetic-looking Verrin’s hand. He gives the little creature affectionate and careful pats, a small bit of fruit as a reward, and puts it into his blazer’s pocket.

“You ruined my earlier experiment,” the older boy states, his squarish sunglasses reflecting the sputtering flame.

Colorado sputters and folds his arms over his chest, “Make better experiments then.”

“Perhaps I’ll experiment on you,” Verrin glares, the room dimming justly.

“Oooh, so scary,” Colorado taunts, “science boy’s gonna sic his rats on me!”

“Boys—,” their father attempts to interject, content with cutting his sub-par steak into bite-sized pieces.

“Can we watch?” Maryi pipes up, reaching over the table to steal from Colorado’s plate. The boy’s immediate reaction was to bite at his hand. Maryi recoiled with a sound of disgust.

“It’ll be like a vivisection!” Sunn clapped with piqued interest.

Colorado stood atop his chair, “I am no animal!” He waved his arms about, “I have rights! If anything, it should be a perfect dissection!”

“Voyeuristic science with a dash of fratricide. How properly macabre,” Verrin adjusts his glasses, pulling the rat out of his pocket once again and laying it carefully upon his hair before taking his blazer off and laying it on the back of his chair. He looks back to his family expectantly. “Well? Dinner over? Grand time for science, exuberant?”

Their father sighs, “Fine. Away with you, spawn of hell, I’ll clean your horrid mess.” He smiles and waves them away happily, “Have fun!”

The children—minus Verrin—laugh and giggle as they jump out of their seats and go to enter a makeshift room built specifically as the imagination’s perfect playhouse. Obviously, for today, the room shifts itself to create a small amphitheater; the bright, foreboding lights all focus on a small, child-sized embalming table. There lay a few tools nearby the table—sat simply on a rolling medline bed tray.

 As quickly as the room changed, so did the outfits of the children—all perfectly matched to the mid 20th century’s lobotomists they deemed so fit to mirror. 

“Welcome!” Verrin begins, the lights spotlighting him as he runs down the stairs, coat flapping wildly as he lands himself near the table. “Friends, family, subordinates, et cetera, et cetera.”

Colorado joyously follows suit—essentially throwing himself down the stairs—giving an unbridled cackle when his body produces a large puff of dust and debris when he lands. Maryi leads Sunn to two front row seats, the others filling up with faceless, nameless, lab coat-wearing, mannequin-esque beings.

Colorado jumps upon the table while Verrin carefully hands off his rat companion to Sunn for partial safekeeping.

“Washed hands or gloves?” Verrin queries as he adjusts his newly adjourned scrubs.

Colorado quickly sits up, letting the blood rush through his body like a biblical flood, “Third option: wash my organs!”

Verrin slaps clear goggles onto his face, “I refuse to do that.” He pulls ugly medical gloves over his hands with the strange pizzazz his siblings have in almost every other occasion.

“Sigh,” Colorado sighs, laying back down, and letting his hospital gown fall around his body and the table beneath him.

Verrin shushed him as the lights dim—holding their simple focus only on the two boys—he carefully picks up a pair of scissors from the tray and goes about cutting the hospital gown—just above and around Colorado’s stomach. He laid the scissors back on the tray and took a scalpel in tow. With steady hand and mind, he gestured to his other two siblings to come closer.

They approached with haste, watching intensely as Verrin took the scalpel to his brother’s stomach. Colorado groaned, Maryi shushing him while still keeping his eyes intently on the sharp tool. Blood seeped meticulously from the newly made wound. Verrin made a calculated cut down the middle of Colorado’s belly, knowing it wouldn’t open in the way he wanted, he made two other perfectly straight and harboring cuts along the top and bottom of his brother’s abdomen.

Colorado sat up to stare at Verrin heedfully opening his insides, revealing his poorly organs to his other siblings.

“You gonna pin ‘em?” Colorado asked, reaching to touch his small intestines—leading to the immediate recoil of his hand when a little slap came from Sunn’s own tiny appendages.

Verrin placed the scalpel back down. “Eh, if you could hold it open, then there’s no reason to,” he replies with the smallest flash of a smile. 

Sunn stands on the tips of her toes to look into her brother’s anatomy. The albino rat followed suit. Maryi noticed this and picks her up with the small amount of strength he had and proudly huffed:

“For the learning experience.”

Verrin looked up to his sister, “Soon enough, you’ll be doing this as well.” He prods at the regrowing liver of his brother. “Just don’t do rats.”

Sunn nods with an intense seriousness and attempts at touching the spleen of an increasingly paling boy. She’s quickly stopped by both of her non-patient brothers.

She’s placed down so she can walk around the table towards her other older brother. 

“Gloves, Sunn,” Verrin says simply, handing her a small pair of similarly ugly, aqua-colored gloves. He removes his own to take his rat off her shoulder and places it on his own. He looks to the other boy, “Maryi?”

“I’m good,” the younger twin sneers. “He looks... unsanitary.”

Colorado sticks his tongue out at the darker boy, “You’re just jealous I’m cooler than you!”

“Nuh-uh! That holds no bounds here!”

Verrin rolls his eyes, placing a smaller pair of goggles carefully upon Sunn’s eyes, and putting an unbloodied pair of gloves upon his own hands, “Shut up.”

“You shut up, Verrin!” The twins shout. “You’re not a part of this!”

“You are—quite literally—open for the public to see.”

“Your mom’s open to the public,” Colorado snarks.

“I will rip out your lung, ‘Rado,” he states. “Don’t test me.”

Maryi pokes at Colorado’s face, tapping his forehead and dodging the teeth that attempt to pierce his skin. “Move it on, Ratman’s Notebooks, he might just deconstruct himself.” 

Verrin grunts and hovers his hands above his brother’s open abdomen, “What do you want to look at first?”

Maryi holds his chin in thought, Sunn bounces on her toes in anticipation, and Colorado sighs loudly.

“Just rip stuff out!” Colorado exclaims, reaching into his stomach to pull out his liver.

The liver pulses slightly as the pale boy’s blood bubbles and flows out of him like a rose-colored waterfall. Maryi laughs and grabs the organ from Colorado’s hand, squeezing it like a stress ball. Verrin hums and grabs a notebook from the tray, writing his observations while repeating them under his breath.

“What do you see?” the older boy asks his sister. 

Her bottom lip pouts slightly as her eyes squint to analyze the situation. She stands on the tips of her toes to better see her laughing brothers throw the liver around like a football.

“Blood clotting?” 

“Very good!” Sunn beams at his statement. “I saw that too,” he taps his pen’s end against his lip. “What would happen if we exposed him to certain bacterias and fungi without his liver?”

Sunn bounces on her toes when she hears the question, “Fewer defenses! He won’t be able to protect his immune system as well!”

“Yes! You’re getting good at this,” he praises as he presents the notebook and pen to her. “Write your other observations while I do something.”

She nods and takes the items from him, a look of determination on her face as she looks to the liver and her paling brother.

Colorado catches the liver from his twin’s throw, “Up the stairs, Maryi!” He prepares his throw, aiming and honing his strength—his hand feeling significantly lighter, and throws to his brother.

When nothing flies through the air, he looks at his hand suspiciously. 

“Did you catch it?” Colorado yells up.

“Behind you, dude,” Maryi’s voice echoes from the top of the stairs.

He turns his head to see Verrin holding Colorado’s liver in his hand. The highlighter-esque blond pouts his lip and crosses his arms. “Unfair. Super unfair, actually.”

Verrin shrugs and shows it off to Sunn, indicating the damaged sections, asking and informing what could happen, and congratulating her notes.

“You play favorites, Verrin,” Colorado says as Maryi jumps his way down the stairs. He turns onto his side, “I think me and Maryi deserve some 2-on-1 time with our favorite older brother.”

“Who said he was our favorite?” Maryi snarks as Verrin says a simple,

“Maryi and I,” Verrin throws the liver up and catches it again, walking over to his table-ridded brother. “Your organs will fall out if you keep that position.”

“No, they won’t,” Colorado argues while holding his organs inside his body with one arm.

Verrin holds the liver up, “Liver: in or out?”

“When’s Dad gonna send us to bed?”

“Soon, probably.”

Colorado sighs, “Stick it in.”

“Ew,” Maryi laughs, approaching the table to flick Colorado in the forehead—earning him a slap on the hand from the former. 

Verrin ignores them once again and lifts one of the flaps of skin laying haphazardly on Colorado’s open abdomen. He sees the damage from the rapid, rough ripping of organ and connective tissue that Colorado had done earlier and sighs.

He looks up, “Quickly: A or B.”

“C.”

“B? Great,” Verrin says and grabs a nearby miniature blowtorch. “I’m going to fuse you together like you’re a makeshift Frankenstein’s Monster.”

“Isn’t he already makeshift?”

“Semantics,” he answers simply and smiles. “Hold still.”

“Wha–” Colorado begins, but never finishes—seeing as Verrin has already begun burning the inside of his skin to destroy the nerves for no apparent reason.

He flails and screeches while Maryi and Sunn gaze on in ambiguous amazement as their evil-scientist-esque brother prepares an unorthodox surgery. Verrin stuffs the liver into the body with a vague, controlled accuracy. 

“Body! Pain! Body!” Colorado screams as Verrin starts to connect damaged tissues, tubes, and unrelated veins. 

“You’re fine, I’m almost done,” he attempts at comforting, while finishing up the inside of the stomach lining. 

He picks up a thick, miniscule thread and shining, silver needle. Verrin holds the flaps of Colorado’s stomach down as he starts to sew them together. It’s a carefully done halsted suture; not because he preferred it—in fact, he much preferred the vertical mattress sutures, purely based on looks, of course—but because it was the first on his mind. 

He finished just in time for their father to enter the room; it shifted back to its original, monotonous off-white—the children given their original outfits as well. 

“Did you all have fun?” Their father asks as he leads them to their bedrooms.

“I think I’m gonna die, Dad,” Colorado whines as he dramatically clutches his stomach.

“Aw, I’m sure it will get better, bud. What about you three? Was it enjoyable? A proper dream come true?”

Maryi gave a vague affirmation, contrasting Sunn’s enthusiastic and detailed speech of her findings and joy. Verrin held his notebook close, letting his dear rat circle and cuddle his neck.

He sighs, “I wish I could’ve done more.”

Colorado smiles and wraps his arms around Verrin as they reach their designated rooms, “Tomorrow! Then I get to choose our activity.”

Verrin gives a small smile and ends the night with, “Perfect. Tomorrow.”