Chapter 5: Under the Knife

ROCKY, Status: DOCTOR. Log 005. SUBJECT 0601, Today is Subject 0601’s scheduled tubal ligation. She will receive a large dosage of EX-627 in order to keep still; however, she will remain conscious and fully aware throughout the procedure. 0601’s stress levels will be monitored for curiosity’s sake, and with the help of my associate, NURSE LUCY, Subject 0601 will be kept “distracted” throughout the procedure.

> I woke up with a start, my heart jerking upon the realization that I had willingly fallen asleep alongside my torturer. But when my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room, I found that I was back in my cell, dressed in rags once more. My sore, stretched-out cunt was back to normal, albeit a little sensitive. I pushed my fingers inside of myself to try and feel for tears, but there were none. I promptly rinsed my hand off in the sink, disgusted that I was capable of surrendering myself to the horrors Raven had put me through.

How long ago was that? A month? A year? I couldn’t believe that I had been asleep for any more than a few hours. My hair was the same length as before and still lightly crusted with both mine and Raven’s cum. I wasn’t developing joint ache or fatigue. It was like I had been cryogenically frozen, preserved in a limbo beyond time.

The only evidence I had to remind me of my torment was the palm-sized branding on my lower stomach. It was an orchid, framed in a circle. Like an eyeball, staring back at me. Two guards walked in on me tracing the design, marveling at how it felt almost fully healed. I tried to ask them how that was possible, but they grabbed me by my wrists and my mouth, snarling at me to keep quiet.

I was strapped to a wheelchair and swiftly whisked away to the medical wing, where I didn’t utter a single noise until the guards wheeled me into a surgical suite. It was in pristine condition from top to bottom, as was the case with all the medical rooms. Everything was spotless and polished, especially the stainless steel operating table that waited for me.

While I stripped my clothes, Rocky and Lucy began scrubbing up and dressing themselves for surgery. Lucy tried making pleasant small talk with her coworker, but Rocky hardly seemed to notice she was there.

The guards made me lie flat against the table with my head propped up on a curved block sculpted to hug my neck. It held me in place so that I could easily look down and see my naked body without having to strain the muscles in my face. This was, I suspected, no mistake, judging by the collection of surgical tools Lucy was preparing on the trays beside me. They weren’t the picks and drills that Rocky used on my mouth; these were much more gruesome.

Fear crept up inside of me until my lip began to tremble, and I had to fight not to lose any of the tears that glazed over my eyes. When I began to tense, Lucy swooped in beside me, mouthed the word “RELAX,” and plunged a fat needle deep into my neck. A gasp rang out from my chest as a shooting pain erupted from the puncture. Lucy smiled and shushed me, gently brushing the hair from my face as she cleaned the syringe’s belly out inside of my veins.

Just as quickly as my panic came, it washed away, leaving me oddly still. No ... this was something else. I could still feel a fearful jerk in my head—I just couldn’t move. Not a twitch. I was still breathing and blinking and pumping blood, of course, but everything else may as well have been stone. I was a prisoner inside of my own skin.

“Sorry, cutie,” Lucy said. I was surprised to see that she was fully dressed for once, wearing very official-looking surgical scrubs. She even had a face mask and everything. “We can’t have you moving around like a little wiggle worm today. Very important business.”

“It is a shame,” Rocky said quietly as he waved the guards out of the room. “You are a very fertile woman. Under different circumstances, I’d like to send you to the mill and have you bred. You have a healthy womb.”

I shuddered at his horrible voice. Rocky droned as he spoke, and his heavily black-lined eyes stared at me without blinking. Luckily, I didn’t have to stare back into his eyes for long, thanks to the unforgiving brightness of the surgical lights Lucy flipped on above me. My body cringed beneath their fluorescent glow, but I couldn’t raise my hand to shield my eyes.

“It’s a simple tubal ligation,” Lucy began, showing me a diagram of a uterus. She pointed to the fallopian tubes and slashed her gloved finger across them. “Your doc here will be severing your uterine tubes from your uterus so that you can’t get preggers no more.”

“It’s irreversible,” Rocky muttered.

I had never wanted kids before. I rarely thought about it. And when I did, it always stressed me out. They were so expensive and required more emotional attention than I think I was humanly capable of. But I had grown up knowing that it was my choice to not have them. And who knows? Maybe an accident might have happened with a man I really cared about, and I’d surprise myself by becoming a good mom. But I’d never know anymore. Even if I did manage to escape that wretched place some day. I wanted to cry, but my tear ducts were just as paralyzed as the rest of my body.

“Blink for me, sweetie,” Lucy said, leaning over the table to get a good look. I promptly obeyed, batting my eyelashes. “Fabulous. If the drug worked correctly, that will be your only form of communication with us. So blink once for yes and twice for no. I’ll be keeping an eye on you while the doctor works, not to worry.”

“Tell me, Zero-Six-Zero-One,” Rocky began. He grabbed a hypodermic needle from off a nearby tray and poked it into my hip. Instinctively, I went to squeal in pain, but my voice was missing. “Blink once if you can feel that.”

I blinked.

Even with his black surgical mask pulled up, I could see he was grinning. “Excellent. Physical receptors are all in order. Lucy, prep her.”

Lucy began sticking pasties onto my chest and ribs before snapping wires to their nodules. A clamp was put on my ring finger, and a monitor beside my head flipped on, displaying my heart rate at a somewhat quick pace.

“This procedure typically requires general anesthetic,” Lucy explained, pulling a tray of her own beside her. I couldn’t quite see what torments she had set out for me. “But that’s a luxury our subjects can’t afford. So I’ll be doing my best to distract you. The procedure is quick—only about thirty minutes. After, we’ll keep you for another thirty so your body can rest and ingest a post-op medication before you’ll be restrained in a medical cell for the night. Come morning, you’ll be feeling right as rain.”

Rocky made an odd sound of agreement under his breath, delicately dragging a latex-covered finger across my stomach.

Lucy grabbed a set of industrial metal forceps off her tray and waved them in front of my trembling eyes. “We good to go, doc?”

Rocky nodded but didn’t make a noise. He was already busy disinfecting my skin with an alcohol wipe. Lucy squealed with excitement before her gaze locked onto my nipples. The chill of the room left them hard and erect, giving her enough surface area to clamp the forceps around one of their heads so tightly that her hand began to shake. I would have shrieked until my lungs began to ache if I had the strength to, but I was helpless to fend off the agony with nothing more than a flutter of blinks. The pain radiated like waves of fire, made even worse when Lucy performed the same act on my other nipple, leaving the forceps to rest against my chest.

But Lucy was the least of my worries. I watched in terror as Rocky placed a bright blue mark right over the base of my pelvic bone; then he chose a scalpel from a small assortment and made an odd, almost moaning noise. It was as if he was as giddy as a schoolgirl as he dragged the blade against my skin. My body screamed back at me, recoiling in horror as the doctor gutted me like a butcher prepped a fresh cut of meat. Though Rocky’s hand was as steady as—well—a surgeon’s, the pain was so great that I worried it was enough on its own to kill me. There was nothing I could do but seethe. I could hear the heart monitor behind me beeping faster and faster as the incision grew to the size of a nickel. Its minuscule size mocked me, as in reality the cut felt like it ran from my throat to my clit.

Rocky put the scalpel aside, and Lucy came back with a spiked pinwheel roller. I used to use those tools with my dad to carve pumpkins for Halloween. Now, they were being dragged slowly against my breasts, where the spikes stabbed me countless times until it ached just to breathe. The sensation was slight, but it pinched enough to make me cry phantom tears.

“Enjoying yourself?” Lucy asked me, glancing up to see my response. I made sure to blink twice and no more, prompting her to giggle from behind the mask. “Fabulous! You can’t have pleasure without pain, don’cha know?”

“She should be overwhelmed with pleasure by now,” Rocky said. He pushed a large, oddly shaped needle deep into my abdomen, just below my belly button. The pain burst inside of me, bouncing off my inner walls until I was ready to shatter. The needle was attached to an odd tube that ran through to a gas canister, marked with a label that sat just barely out of my sight. Within seconds, however, I could feel my insides ballooning up with air—or gas, maybe—and watched my skin bulge up like an alien was ready to pop outside of me.

“Move from her chest,” Rocky snapped. “You’re in my light.”

Lucy didn’t argue and pulled her cart down behind Rocky in front of my feet. I braced myself ahead of time as the pinwheel ran up my heels and to my toes. My breath was positively frantic, coming in in small, short snorts. Lucy giggled again, as if she could feel the agony radiating off of me.

Rocky swapped the gas tube out for some other machine I had never seen before and inserted it into the same thick needle that stuck out of me. He snapped at Lucy again, ordering her to “turn on the monitor.” Beside him, a screen flipped to life, revealing my raw, pulsing insides. All gooey and gory, just how God made me, Dad would say. It seemed the device was some sort of camera. Nausea bubbled up inside of me as Rocky dove deeper into my guts.

“Making the first cut,” Rocky announced, pushing a clipper-like device in through his initial incision. I watched the screen from the corners of my eyes as he held the clippers up to what I could only assume were my fallopian tubes and sliced right through them like butter. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt before, like I was being struck with an ax right into my belly. There was no way it was supposed to hurt this badly. Something must have been wrong. Surely my body was oversensitive. It was the drug; it had to be.