Mom never did come upstairs, and when they’d both healed up well enough Alyssa jumped out of the window so she could “return from visiting Andrea,” maintaining their complicated web of lies. She broke both her legs, of course; soft, overgrown lawn or not, she was still days away from being fully healed and would be inconveniently fragile for a while.

Truth be told, the reason they’d rarely gone straight from fight to fight was exactly because of that, since they both enjoyed playing outdoors and therefore didn’t enjoy becoming impromptu anatomical dolls. There was that time when she’d lost all her limbs from the impact of catching a football… that had been pretty embarrassing, and she’d seen the frustration on her gym teacher’s face as he put her back together.

But this time, she simply reached down and snapped all the bones back into position. Dislocated knee, broken ankle… the first was easy to fix, and she could walk on a broken ankle, even if it was hard not to limp. Good enough, Mom wouldn’t comment.

She crouched in the grass, taking stock of herself. Pretty good, all things considered… she could probably pass for normal., overall Everything ached, but that couldn’t break her mood. It was like someone had injected helium into her chest—she thought, though that had never happened—

She giggled, smiling at nothing in particular. Alex had said sorry. *She* had said sorry, even though it hurt, and—for a moment, they’d been ten again. They’d actually hugged, the sort of awkward hug where neither quite remembered how to do it, and both were lacking in limbs—although a part of her had kept waiting for the inevitable betrayal, it had never happened.

It wouldn’t fix three years of quarrels, but it was a start.

xxx

Mom looked up from the newspaper as she slammed the door behind her.

“There you are.” Her eyes flicked over her, probably scanning for injury. “Alex! Come on down for a bit. I have something to tell you.”

“Coming…”

They sat down on the couch, habitually picking spots as far from each other as possible. Alyssa grimaced inwardly, but even if she’d wanted to do differently there was no way things could change that quickly.

“All right.” Mom tapped a finger on the table. “Long story short. Something’s come up, and I need to go out of town this weekend. Since your father is still working at the T3 point, that means you’d be alone. So—“

“But I have band practice!” “I’ll be fine on my own—“

“Don’t interrupt.” She looked severely at the two of them. “You’re still children, and I’m not going to leave you alone for an entire weekend. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. I already talked with miss Jona, and she agreed to give Alex some extra instruction Friday night. I’ll drop him off before we leave. As to you, Alyssa, you’re coming with me.”

She hung her head. Mom looked a little confused.

“I’d have thought you’d enjoy being on your own for a while.”

And be bored out of her mind? Mom just didn’t get it. But she knew better than to protest, she just sighed deeply instead.

Amends would have to wait, it seemed.

xxx

Friday.

Her friends were confused, though not unsupportive, at the way she was suddenly not going out of her way to avoid Alex anymore. They didn’t know how hard that was—avoiding him at school had become a habit, just like teasing and fighting was one at home, and any time she didn’t fight back her impulses she found herself falling back into old tracks. They’d even had a fight. Not a serious one, not the kind where they ended up in bits, but they’d both wanted to use the kitchen at the same time. Truthfully, Alex had gotten there first, and she’d ruined minutes of work. She’d apologised later, which was… progress, she supposed, even if she’d had to tear the words out of herself.

But now it was Friday, and she was about to spend a weekend bored out of her mind. What, she thought to herself, was the point? What was Mom afraid of, if she’d stayed at home? She was thirteen! It wasn’t like she was going to wander off into the wilds—and she’d only done that once!

“Got everything?”

She blinked and looked up, then nodded mutely. A couple of books, her phone and its glasses, purse and a spare change of clothes. It wasn’t like she needed much.

“Good. Let’s go.”

She let Mom drag her out to the car without really paying attention. Her mood was already sour, and it would only get sourer as time passed.

For a while, as they drove, Mom tried to engage her in conversation, but eventually she sighed and turned back to her own book. If Alyssa felt guilty about that, it was buried under a pile of righteous sulk.

xxx

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

They stopped, an hour in.

xxx

She tried to sleep, since she had the entire back of the car to herself. Mom wasn’t as worried about crashes.

xxx

“I’m hungry. And I need to go to the bathroom—“

“Again?” Mom sounded exasperated. It had been barely an hour since their last stop. “I told you to eat up at dinner. Well, it can’t be helped, but I want you to be a bit more thorough on the toilet this time. I’ll find us a pizza or something”

And so, while Mom was negotiating the purchase of plentiful comestibles—she liked that phrase—Alyssa snuck into the back of the shop to borrow their facilities, wondering how to be “thorough”. It wasn’t like she’d done anything unusual last time.

If she’d been more reflective, she might have realised that that was itself the problem. Nevertheless, the outcome might have been the same; what she did was press harder, and after she’d done her business, she kept pressing, holding her breath and pushing in an attempt to get *completely* clean. Unnecessary, of course.

Although, and in contrast with the narration—which was pointing out that she simply hadn’t tried at all last time—she could feel another lump sticking out. She squeezed, trying to cut it off—

“Hey!” Mom rapped on the door. “Are you alive in there?”

“Give me a minute, geez!” Alyssa yelped.

“Well, I’m going back to the car. If you want to come with me you won’t be too long.”

She grumbled something undecipherable to herself. It was *stuck*, so she tried to wipe it away with some tissue, and got the shock of her life when she felt it from both ends. That *wasn’t* excrement, it was—she squeezed her butt experimentally. Part of her intestines, sticking out, dammit. She’d never had that happen before, and she wasn’t keen on it happening again, but—

Squeeze. Squeeze.

It was an odd feeling. The inside-out part of her digestive track stuck out almost a hand’s length, well beyond her actual butt-cheeks. She had to put it back, only…

Her stomach tingled. She thought for a second, then reached down and pulled off her panties; they’d get in the way. She was wearing a knee-length skirt, so it wasn’t like there was any risk to that.

Oh, the things she would do to escape boredom.

xxx

Naturally, when she sat down, she sat behind Mom instead of at a diagonal, so she wouldn’t be able to see. Well, she “sat”. More like… slouching, she supposed. Her extra bit of flesh had stung, when she’d tried to sit down on it, so instead she’d slid down until her knees were level with the seat in front and she was half-lying in her own.

She’d had a splendid idea, you see. The car started, and operation “See how much of herself she could get out without resorting to a knife” was go.

How did it go, again?

She drew her breath in as deeply as she could, held, and pushed, her face going red from exertion.

Breathe. Push. Like she was giving birth, though she’d never tried *that* game. Breathe. Push…

“Aren’t you going to eat your pizza?” Mom asked, making her blink. Oh yeah, there was that. Operation postponed until the end of comestibles~

Nom.

xxx

Breathe. Push. Grip. Gasp for breath, but quietly.

She’d scrounged up a plastic bag from somewhere, and had tied it up so her inverted intestines fell into the bag rather than on the floor. She’d gotten at least a meter out, and pushing just wasn’t… *doing* very much anymore, though her intestines didn’t seem inclined to climb back inside either. The part outside of her had doubled up, one tube inside the other. Every time she pushed, the inner tube would slip out by a few millimetres, and then she gripped, tightly, and felt a kind of slithering, nauseating slip-and-slide as she relaxed and the intestines still inside of her tugged on the parts outside.

Her stomach felt sore. Her stomach felt hollow, getting emptier by the minute. She’d been disembowelled before, but never so slowly—and she’d never done it to herself.

And there was *so much left*.

Feverishly, she glanced at her phone. They’d been driving for three hours already, so less than an hour left. Which meant she wouldn’t get anywhere near completion before then. That was—she licked her lips, feeling an immense internal itch whenever her intestines slipped a little. That was not acceptable, and she wasn’t going to stand for it, but—

Breathe. Push. *Tug*.

Her bum jumped as she felt it distend, as she tugged at the opening to her anus. The truth was, part of the reason she’d decided not to use a knife was that she didn’t have one, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have other tools.

Her fingernails, filed down to the nub, failed to do a thing.

Tug once again, experimentally.

Could she rip it out by the root? Probably. But she might lose a lot of skin in the doing.

A meter of intestine…

Her skirt folded up to her waist as she dragged her intestines out of the bag, and up to her mouth. If anyone had been looking through the window they’d have seen something odd, but she wasn’t worried; it was too dark, and they were moving too fast. Besides, she was curled up on herself.

She gnawed, too excited to care about the taste. It was something she had a lot of practice with. And, very shortly, the outer tube was cut in half—without pain, she noted. She supposed it didn’t have pain sensors.

So, more tugging. Much easier now, when she had her hands directly on the right intestine. She pulled, and it slipped out with only a little bit of force, the sensation nearly sending her into convulsions after an hour of far weaker stimulation. Her stomach felt hollow—no, she put her hand on it, and it *did* hollow out, her skin stretched tight over her hip-bones. Too much volume, too fast—she gnashed her teeth, as the outer part of the tube, the last half-meter or so of her intestines felt the vacuum and started sliding back inside even while she was dragging out more. That same hand snuck down to her pussy, pulling and tugging at various bits, and the feeling was sublime, the slight pain and hollow feeling in her gut only setting off more fireworks as she finally scratched her itch.

And it didn’t end. She kept dragging, going from her large to her small intestines, eventually catching up with her pizza from the other end. That part of her intestines felt squishy, and quivering, reacting to her touch when she pushed at it. She couldn’t feel it, but she wished she could. She’d had two orgasms going that far, as quietly as possible; she wanted to feel it from all the sides.

And then it did.

There was no more to pull out. Her stomach looked like she hadn’t eaten for years, her t-shirt hung slackly across her hips, and when she tugged at what was left of her intestinal tract she could feel it all the way up to her neck. She’d removed all that could be removed, at least without tearing herself apart further, and probably proven several of Alex’ claims in the process—that he didn’t need to tear her open, she’d do it to herself if given an excuse. The plastic bag underneath her was full, almost to overflowing. The smart thing to do would be to put it all back in but, well… the car was a little warmer than she preferred, and her dangling entrails acted almost like a radiator. So she let it be, and picked back up the book she’d been working on for the last two months. This time she’d finish it.

xxx

She almost did.

The sounds of highway driving had given way to a city without her notice, and then to the crunch of wheels on gravel. At that last she finally did notice, but by then it was too late, they were already driving up to the tiny hotel’s side entrance. She looked around in a panic. What could she—

There was *no way* she’d have time to put herself back together. Wincing, she reached down to the fleshy rope dangling out of her and pulled, as hard as she could. She kept pulling, even though she could feel herself tearing apart inside—no, because she could; the burning pain as she felt her stomach being stretched was part of her intent. She hoped it’d tear—it had to tear—

Something ripped, and her hands jerked downwards. They only stopped for a moment before something else inside of her failed, and she pulled in a panic, not even hesitating when she felt herself passing several organs of some sort.

She stared down at the floor of the car, where her bag was full to overflowing with most of her digestive system. So much for her pizza—no, so much for *eating*, until she put it back, but she couldn’t carry this in.

Mom stepped out of the car, and she was out of time. She kicked the bag under the front seat as best she could, then picked up her other stuff and followed her out. A few seconds after she closed the door the car’s engine started back up, and it sped off on its own. She looked after it in consternation.

“Forget something?” Mom asked.

“Ah—“ Ulp. “Nothing important.”

“Right…” Mom sounded distracted. “Now, I think the conference was on the second floor. We’ll check in, and… you can do what you like while I work, I suppose, just don’t leave the hotel. We’ll go sightseeing tomorrow, okay?”

She forced herself to relax. If they were doing that, then… “Sounds good to me. Can we get the same car?”

“So you did forget something. No, I can’t call a particular one, and it’d be cleaned anyway but… hold on.” She tapped at her phone for a few seconds, then looked apologetically at her. “Sorry, looks like it’s already being refurbished. The depot was just down the road, and it’s all automatic so there isn’t much I can do. Nothing expensive, I hope.”

She heard herself talking, almost on autopilot. “No, just a bookmark I liked.”

“I’m sure we can find another one.” Mom smiled at her before turning around, and Alyssa, gulping and trying to get used to her new top-heavy state, soon followed after.