Tuesday

“You’ll never believe what I can do!”

Cassie and Susan’s school road is not, strictly speaking, a road. Or paved. Or, indeed, passable to anyone above the age of fifteen: Their homes are only separated from their school by about three hundred meters, as the crow flies, but the crow would in this case have to fly over a practically impassable forest. The crow would be fine with this, and in fact there are no less than nine crow nests in that single slice of ancient wood.

As far as any adults are concerned, the forest is quite impassable. This belief suits Cassie and Susan well: They long since discovered that there are winding, always-changing but always-there paths through the undergrowth. Half-walking, half-crawling through the forest is never quick, but as the official road to school is nearly three miles, the shortcut is always worth it, and so they have become expert woodsmen over the last few years. After a few bad experiences with rain, they always left in time to walk around if they had to, so the forest served mostly as a place to chat and play before school. Conveniently for this purpose, the forest also has several small clearings that only they know about.

As Susan had just entered one of those clearings before turning around to tell Cassie this, she was backlit by a single shaft of sunlight. Her voice startled a single crow, who took to the air with a complaining ‘caw’ to punctuate her statement.

Cassie paused, a long-suffering expression on her face. The leafy tunnel she’s walking through was too low for her to stand up, and Susan was blocking her desired exit. With the tired voice of someone who dislikes mornings, she asks her, “And what… can you do?”

“Hehe…” Susan laughed, twirling around with her hands extended, moving enough to let Cassie out of the tunnel. “I’m not telling! I’ll show you after school, instead!” Cassie grinned, then pounced in mid-twirl, and for a few seconds they were a confused jumble of tumbling bodies. When it all settled down Cassie was on top, holding Susan to the ground spread-eagled, one limb per limb. “Spill,” she commanded imperiously. “Or I’ll have your nose.” Susan shook her head, grinning. Of course Cassie couldn’t go back to her word, so she slowly lowered her face towards Susan’s, mouth twitching into a grin of her own and a light blush covering her cheeks.

“I will, you know. Tell, or you’ll be short one nose.” Susan seemed to find this even more amusing than usual, but finally deigned to stop shaking her head and respond. “I can’t, you wouldn’t believe me! I’ll have to show you! After school!” Then, impishly, she bent upwards and kissed Cassie right on the mouth. Of course Cassie immediately released her hands and sat up, wiping her mouth and blushing fiercely. Susan took advantage of this phenomenon to twist out of her grasp, then pounced on Cassie, deciding the best defense was a good offense.

Shortly afterwards they were laying side by side, hands clasped and looking up at the azure sky. Cassie would occasionally point upwards at some particularly interesting cloud formation; Susan, who was shading her eyes with her free hand, would name it. “Tiger… Elephant… Heffalump…” Cassie groaned, and turned her head to look at Susan before asking, “And what, pray tell, is a heffalump?”

“Half-man, half-elephant, a mysterious beast made by a mad scientist!” Susan snickered. Wouldn’t that naturally be mostly elephant? Cassie turned back and closed her eyes. “Sounds fun,” she said dreamily. “Then I could trample the school… we’d have lots of days off…” About fifteen minutes passed like this, the conversation gradually slowing down as the two got sleepier. I can’t blame them; it was a wonderful day, and Susan in particular had had a late night. Sadly, all good things must come to an end. At 8:20 AM exactly, Cassie’s watch started beeping, startling them awake. Susan groaned and tried to go back to sleep, to no avail; Cassie got in on it, shaking Susan until she had no choice but to get up. Then they ran off to school, completing a fairly typical morning.

---

Six hours later, their last class of the day – the only one they shared, save homeroom – was once again biology. Today their homework burden was light, none of which needed to be returned tomorrow, much to everyone’s relief; this was the establishment’s last chance, and for Cassie and Susan it wouldn’t matter either way. They could spend the evening together, which was all they wanted. The bell rang, interrupting the teacher in the middle of a sentence.

“Er, right. Then, for tomorrow’s lesson: Finish reading chapter three, and write at least one paragraph about each of the organs described. Only those, mind. You don’t need to read ahead. And that’s a paragraph of at least fifteen words!” she said, raising her voice at the end when half the class started getting up from their desks without being told. Cassie and Susan were among the first to leave, though Cassie at least took the time to write down her homework assignment before Susan practically dragged her out of the classroom. While many of the other pupils were lining up for one school bus or another, those two were out of school and in the middle of their forest in five minutes flat.

With Susan pulling her along at high speed, Cassie took more than a few bristles to the face. Finally she’d had enough, and pulled her hand away. “Slow down!” Susan turned around, grinning, then scratched the back of her neck sheepishly when she saw Cassie’s state. “Sorry, sorry,” she apologized. “I got over-excited. Forgive me?” Cassie pouted, but agreed. “Forgiven. What’s so exciting anyway?” she asked, hoping Susan might finally fess up.

“Nuh-uh, still not telling. Oh, look, we’re at the edge already!” Indeed they were, having made the trip in near record time. “Bring your homework and come over, I’ll show you at home.” Cassie good-naturedly grumbled, but did as asked.

Fifteen minutes later, Susan answered the door for Cassie, who was laden with a backpack full of notebooks, textbooks and quite a few snacks. She kicked off her shoes, dropped her backpack to the floor, then raised one eyebrow at Susan. “Well? Are you ready to tell me yet?” Susan just turned around, walked a few steps towards the stairs, then twisted around to look back at Cassie – and stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry. “Not yet!” Cassie chased her upstairs, laughing. Susan threw herself on the head of her bed then, with Cassie in midair and aiming for a grapple, rapidly twisted around, moving down the bed so Cassie got nothing but a mouthful of pillow for her trouble. “Blurgle,” Cassie commented intelligently. “Oh, fine. Now?”

“Now,” Susan agreed, sitting up. Then, sounding a little worried: “Cassie, you’re not going to hate me if I do something weird, are you?” Cassie, who had turned around to lie on her stomach, her head resting on her hands, gave Susan a look. “Hate you? You can’t be serious; you know I’d never hate you. We’ve been best friends forever, and we’ll stay best friends forever. What brought this on? Besides,” she snickered, “if I was going to hate you for being weird, we’d already be arch-enemies.”

Susan smiled tremulously. “I’ll hold you to that, you know. All right, pay careful attention…” Susan held her left hand in front of Cassie, horizontally, and deliberately took hold of her left ring finger with her right hand. Then she started bending it backwards, stopping at a ninety degree angle. “Um, Susan…? What are you…?”

“Told you it was weird, right? It won’t hurt… look closely.” So Susan gave the finger a jerk, almost breaking it off in a single move. The skin, muscles and tendons tore, and the bone pulled out of its socket with a quiet ‘pop’; the digit was now only hanging on by the few bits of skin connecting it to the top of her hand.

Opting not to continue the movement and possibly tear a strip off herself, she instead reversed the movement, separating it entirely from her hand with the second jerk. Cassie gave a wordless cry, looking at the proceedings with horror in her eyes. Susan immediately tried to recover the situation: “No, look, it’s fine! There’s no blood, right? And it doesn’t hurt, and I can put the finger back on anytime I want.”

“You… can?” Susan nodded. “Right! See for yourself.” She twisted her hand ninety degrees, letting Cassie see properly, then put the finger back on. It rejoined smoothly – as if it had never been separated. Cassie took hold of Susan’s hand and started poking the spot curiously, turning it every which way for a better look. “Your finger is back on… but you tore it off, right?” Susan nodded again. “Uh-huh. Doesn’t hurt or anything. Cool, isn’t it?” Cassie still looked a little green. She was thinking about how much that would hurt if she did it. If it didn’t, though… she smiled, weakly. “You’re right, Susan. That is weird.” Well, that could go either way. Susan decided to ask for some clarification. “…but cool?”

“Maybe a bit… no, wait!” She grinned. “It’s only cool if you tell me the full story. Just what happened yesterday? Oh, and…” she poked Susan’s hand. “Can you do it again? There’s no point in just examining your normal hand, I’d like to see what it looks like detached.” Susan smiled, relieved. “Sure! Which finger do you want?”

“…which finger? Er… you pick, they’re your fingers!” Susan nodded, then grinned deviously. “Then turn around for a minute, will you?” Cassie looked curious, but did as she was asked. Susan went to work, breaking off fingers… little finger, ring finger and thumb, leaving just two on her hand. Then she reached over for the fish knife – which was still lying on her table from last night – and started sawing at the hand joint itself, quickly cutting her wrist and separating the hand entirely from her arm. She curled the remaining two fingers around the detached digits, hid her arm behind her back, and hid the detached hand under the edge of her pillow.

“Okay, I’m ready now,” she chirped. Cassie turned back. “So, do I get to see it?” She leaned a bit to the side, trying to see around Susan’s back. “Yup!” Susan agreed, and pushed the detached hand almost in Cassie’s face. Cassie yelped, and fell over backwards. “…Very funny. Did you break off your entire hand?” Susan nodded. “Yep! Well, actually I cut off my hand, but same thing, right?” When she noticed the little twinkle in Cassie’s eye she knew she had her hooked. “…you definitely have to tell me the full story now.”

---

Ten minutes later, Susan had gone over the highlights – suitably edited, as she didn’t want Cassie to know she actually got off on tearing herself apart. That did leave a somewhat inconsistent tale, but Cassie didn’t seem to notice. Cassie was still looking at Susan’s hand, turning it every which way, holding the internal edges up to her eyes and generally studying it closely. Susan had taken to gesticulating while narrating, and the somewhat messy-looking stub of her left arm repeatedly caught Cassie’s attention. “And you really just… go back to normal? Like, no matter how much your limbs are torn up?”

“Yep…” Cassie looked a little overwhelmed, just now. I wonder how she’d have taken it in Susan’s place? Finally, she shook her head and handed the hand back to Susan. “You should put this back on, though.” Susan did so, looking a little quizzical. “Sure, but why? I told you, it doesn’t matter how long I’m disassembled.” Cassie didn’t answer immediately, leaning forward to examine the process first. Then she said: “That might be true, though it’s a little weird if you’re fine with missing a hand, but… Susan, did you forget we need to do our homework?”

“…Maybe? I can do most of that tomorrow, though. Oh, right! Biology!” She smiled sheepishly. “Er, what was our biology homework?” Cassie had turned around, and was fingering the big book of anatomy Susan brought up yesterday. She answered distractedly: “Finish reading chapter three, write one paragraph about each of the organs described therein, no lawyering options… this book looks like it’ll help. Hm, human anatomy. Now, just hold on a minute…” Susan started shaking her head frantically. “Oh, no. I can see what you’re up to, and you will not get to dissect me for a better grade!”

“But Susaaaan!” Cassie wheedled. “Think about it, we’d get the best grades in class! Nobody else can do this!” Susan was having none of it. “Nope, nope, nope! Putting myself back together was hard enough yesterday, I’m not letting you try, you don’t even know what you’re doing!” She was still shaking her head, then suddenly stopped and narrowed her eyes. “If you want a better grade so much, why don’t I dissect you?” Now, this was hardly what Cassie had expected to hear. A flat ‘no’, sure, but not that option. I wasn’t expecting it myself, either… I thought to myself, surely she won’t accept?

Cassie looked rather taken aback, to be sure. She responded by trying to think of reasons why it was impossible. “Me? But I’m better in school.” Susan narrowed her eyes. “Not in biology, and even if you were, that’s not a good reason. We’ll have to write separately anyway.” Cassie thought of another reason. “But I don’t have the power, it wouldn’t work!”

“How do you know? I didn’t know I did until yesterday, we don’t know it’s just me. Maybe it’s the house?” I wince. Good guess, if not quite true. “We should check, at least,” Susan finishes. “All you have to do is slice off a tiny piece of skin. If you do have the power, it’ll rejoin itself; if you don’t, you’ll just lose a little blood.”

“Yeah… I guess…” Cassie didn’t look happy, but she’d talked herself into a corner. She also wasn’t entirely unwilling; it was a neat power, she thought. So Cassie scooted over to sit next to Susan. Then, remembering that Susan was the one who’d do the actual dissection, she took Susan’s hand in her own, asking her to do the trick. Susan lifted Cassie’s hand in front of her eyes, holding it steady, and Cassie looked away and closed her eyes – she didn’t want to see the blood if this didn’t work. Then Susan took her knife, and – carefully – cut a tiny flap of skin off the end of Cassie’s right little finger. Cassie winced as a droplet of blood started gathering in the cut.

Now, this left me in a pickle. Cassie was not part of the contract, and I had no obligations to her. On the other hand, I had been trapped in this house for close to a century now, and Susan was the first really good entertainment I’d had since my first contractor got herself killed by the police. I’m really not supposed to give out freebies, but after this much time, can you blame me? If anyone asks, I’ll claim the droplet constituted blood sacrifice.

So the droplet evaporated into nothingness, gone before Susan really noticed it was there. Cassie noticed a sting, but one that quickly went away. And when Susan stuck the bit of skin back on, it rejoined just like she was hoping it would. “Well,” Susan said. “I’d say this is sufficient proof, wouldn’t you?” Cassie had reopened her eyes for the last part, and had seen Susan put the skin back. She nodded, looking resigned. “Let’s just build up, okay? Try cutting off the entire finger before we do anything more.” Susan was agreeable. Cassie didn’t look away this time, and a minute later she was holding her own detached little finger. “Freaky…”

“Do you want me to put it back on?” Susan asked. “Don’t know why I’d bother… no, wait, let me try.” Cassie looked at it a moment longer, pensively, then put the finger back on her hand while she was looking closely at it. Of course they rejoined normally. She put on a woebegone expression. “So… I guess you’ll be dissecting me, then. Poor Cassie, torn apart by a mad doctor in the prime of her life…”

“Hey, it was your idea. Look, if you don’t want to, that’s okay, we can just copy the books.” Susan said, not feeling entirely certain if she really wanted to go through with this either way. “No, that’s…” Cassie took a deep breath. “Let’s do this. But if we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly, okay?” Susan raised an eyebrow. “…properly?”

Two minutes later Cassie was lying spread-eagled on the bed, head on the pillow. The blanket was missing; Susan had put it in a closet, but I was too busy to notice which one. Cassie was as naked as the day she was born, and sporting a full-body blush. There were a variety of tools set on the table next to her. The original knife was there, but so was a razor blade Susan dug up somewhere, as well as several pliers of increasing size, a pair of garden shears, a metal saw and some cutlery – forks, spoons, etc. On the floor, there were two empty plastic boxes.

Just then, Susan came into the room carrying a bucket. Cassie squeaked, and tried to cover herself – but was thwarted by an element I hadn’t yet mentioned: her arms and legs were tied to the bedposts with ropes. Susan put down the bucket. “You know, if you don’t want me to do this, you just have to say so. I’m not going to force you. Want me to untie you?”

“No, no…” Cassie gasped. “I told you, a proper mad doctor has to tie up her victims, and I’m not going to chicken out. Just get started, we don’t have forever.”

“We might as well.” Susan sighed. “My parents won’t be home until noon tomorrow, and if I remember what you said at school, yours won’t be back until after midnight. Do you actually just want me to hurry up?”

“Just get started, the anticipation is driving me crazy,” Cassie responded. She certainly looked it, for Susan shot right back: “Just what kind of stories have you been reading anyhow? But sure, I think I’ve got everything now. Everything, and then some.”

Cassie tested the ropes again, trying (and failing) to get free. That was probably just her idea of how a proper prisoner should react, as Susan picked up the scalpel and brought it to her shoulders. “Now, hold still…”

Susan held Cassie’s left arm down with her own, then started cutting into the muscles holding it to her shoulders. It was tough going, and she had to pry manually as well, but eventually she had gotten it most of the way off. Cassie was still clenching and unclenching her hand at this point, finding it curious that she still could. Then Susan jabbed just the right place, cutting the nerves, and the arm went numb.

“Ooh… that feels weird; it feels like my arm is just lying there. I can still see you poking around –” Cassie had turned her head, and was looking right at it “– But I can’t feel you touching my arm at all.” There were still some points of attachment left, some of them quite hard to reach. Giving up on the scalpel for this, Susan defaulted to the old standby and started wrenching the arm off with brute force, soliciting a yelp from Cassie; it only lasted a few seconds after that.

“Oh… my arm…” Cassie watched, pensively, as Susan gently leaned the arm against the wall. Then she closed her eyes and leaned back. A minute and a half later saw Cassie entirely bereft of arms. This also left her with only two ropes holding her down, a state of affairs she immediately took advantage of by sitting up to watch Susan starting to work on her legs. Susan seemed to have decided she needed larger tools for this, and had picked out a heavy, saw-toothed knife.

Cassie’s eyes grow increasingly large as Susan placed the knife against her inner thigh, and she squeaked when the cold metal touched right next to her labia. “Susan, that’s too high up! And too close to… you know!” Susan paused in her measurement to reply. “No, it really isn’t. Remember what I told you earlier? This is the lowest I can cut; it’d be easier to cut through it.”

Then she drew the knife up, biting through the skin and provoking a frantic “Eep!” from Cassie as the saw teeth made her pussy vibrate. Susan paid it no heed, continuing to work as if she was cutting a lump of meat. The thighbone was thick, and Susan was soon rotating her knife around it, cutting it off rather gradually.

Cassie had gone as red as a lobster. She was trying her best to stay quiet, but she couldn’t stop the occasional yelp from escaping, and despite her best efforts she was getting a little moist. The ropes prevented her from rubbing her thighs together, otherwise she was sure she would… well, no, her left leg wasn’t working anymore, she’d need to use her right only. Cassie was becoming a very frustrated young lady.

Susan wasn’t unaffected either. She was still sawing away, but there was a heavy blush on her cheeks. Shortly afterwards it the leg came off as Susan cut the last few muscle fibers. Cassie wobbled on the spot, off balance and threatening to fall over. Susan had noticed the fibers were under tension; she immediately grabbed Cassie by the shoulders, steadying her, but Cassie hardly seemed to notice. Her eyes were half-closed, and she was breathing shallowly. Her skin seemed to have permanently taken on the color of a tomato.

Susan bit her lip, lightly, and leaned down towards Cassie. Then she seemed to think better of it; she rapidly pulled back, but started lowering Cassie down to lie on her back. Cassie, still out of it, didn’t say a thing. “Cassie…?” Cassie mumbled something indecipherable. Susan pouted, shrugged, and started lining her knife up for the next cut; Cassie’s breathing sped up a little, and her whole torso shuddered when she felt the metal next to her labia.

“No…” she mumbled. “Susan, wait. Do it higher.” There was a curious hitch in her voice. “Higher?” Susan was incredulous, though not as much as she might be. She was also a little turned on, so she didn’t protest as much as she might have. “Any higher, and I’ll be cutting through your pussy.”

“Don’t care… you said it would be easier, right?” Cassie replied dreamily. She had, but she wasn’t exactly serious. Still, there was no way Susan could tell Cassie that – let her know that she had exaggerated? Never! She’d just have to – blush – do it, and let whatever happens happen. It was Cassie’s body, anyway. So Susan set her knife aside. Cassie’s pussy was closed, after all; to cut through it, she’d have to pull it open. That meant using her hands, but Susan had never even looked at that part of Cassie before today. She gulped; her stomach was doing somersaults, but nevertheless she slowly reached a hand down, touching her fingers right next to Cassie’s pussy. Cassie drew a sharp of breath, muscles tightening, then slowly relaxed. Susan’s eyes were fixated on what she was doing, and she licked her suddenly dry lips. Then, slowly, she reached one finger over, stuck it just barely inside, and pulled Cassie’s pussy open. It was as wet as a sponge. Cassie hissed.

“I’ll… go ahead, then,” Susan stated. She picked her knife back up, put the blade next to her finger – Cassie shuddered slightly – and, deciding to get this over with quickly, started sawing violently. Cassie arched her back, wailing, then started making short exclamations in time with the blade. “Ah. Ah. Ah!” She twisted her torso around, as if trying to escape. Her mostly de-limbed condition made this problematic, but no-one can say she wasn’t doing her best! One twist later, bucking with her remaining leg, she jumped around violently enough that Susan’s knife slipped.

Susan’s grip on the knife was a little nonstandard. To get a better view of the situation she held it handle-low, angling the blade upwards to cut into Cassie’s leg, while also leaning downwards herself. To make matters worse, at the time Cassie jumped she was drawing the blade upwards as hard as she could, and although Cassie’s flesh was pretty hard to cut, the same could not be said for air. She saw it coming, of course.

“Aaah!” Cassie exclaimed, bucking again, quickly entering the throes of a powerful orgasm. “Aagh!” Susan exclaimed, her suddenly least favorite knife newly embedded in her right eye and scraping the bones around it. She hesitantly reached up to run her hands along the blade, then over her face. Vitreous fluid was leaking out, trailing downwards and looking like particularly thick tears. With her remaining eye, she could see Cassie slowly calming down and relaxing on her bed.

Susan was starting to feel more than a little annoyed at her. She grabbed the knife with both hands – the sharp blade lacerating her left hand as she did – and started pulling, twisting and bending to get it out. This quickly succeeded, but most of her eye came out with it, looking like a deflated egg. She put it on the table, then tried blinking – her eyelids were intact, but without an eye they wouldn’t close properly. “Ooh… that was nice.” Cassie opened her eyes, realized where she was, saw Susan and blanched, embarrassment filling her thoughts. “Susan! That wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t…” She looked closer. “Wait, are you okay? What happened to your eye?”

“My eye, you ask.” Susan looked away for a second, shoulders shaking, then stared at Cassie. “When you were having your orgasm – don’t deny it, that couldn’t possibly be anything else – you jumped, and I ended up jamming the knife right in my eye. It’s on the table over there, looking like a punctured football.” Cassie looked sheepish. She tried looking over, but couldn’t manage the movement. “Um, sorry about that, but no harm no foul. You can just put it back in – right?” Susan stayed silent for a second. “…Right?”

“Cassie,” she drawled, drawing out the syllables. “Those stories of yours. Mad scientists and whatnot. Would you agree, maybe –” she crawled on top of Cassie, pinning her one leg and holding her upper body down by the shoulders, “– that part of the rules for a mad scientist is that she needs to have some sort of deformation? A missing eye would fit right in, don’t you think?” Cassie shifted her eyes, refusing to meet Susan’s gaze. “Not… not necessarily. Just because you’re mad doesn’t mean you’re evil –” She abruptly clammed shut, realizing what she had just said. “So you’re telling me that evil mad scientists would have deformities, then,” Susan grinned. To Cassie, this was a deeply unsettling sight. “What are you going to do? Susan?”

“Heh, isn’t it obvious? I’m going to follow the plan. I’m going to take you apart.” If she had protested at this point, Susan would still have let her off, but for whatever reason – guilt, excitement, curiosity – she didn’t make any signs of protest. “Oh, but let’s just get this pointless appendage off first. You’re not going to need any limbs.” Cassie gulped.

---

“The day is done, the light is fading. The sacred owl will soon be wading. On bed lies Cassie, bereft of limbs – and part of my pussy, which feels really very odd.” Susan gave Cassie a doubting look. “Your poetry is really very sucky, that’s what. If you’re missing bits, you shouldn’t have asked me to cut them off.” Cassie sucked her cheeks in, pouting, then stopped when Susan grabbed her hair and held her head down – spoon in hand. Cassie eyed it, quite an easy task given that it was approaching her right eye. “Susan?” Susan wiggled the spoon under Cassie’s eyelid, under the eyeball, and started gently prying the eye out of its socket.

Cassie went cross-eyed trying to watch the proceedings with her other eye, then decided she’d have better luck watching through the ceiling mirror. Prying the eye out turned out to be harder than expected (she didn’t want to damage it), so Susan eventually grabbed another spoon and levered it under from the other side. Two minutes later there was a wet pop, and Cassie’s mouth opened in an O. “Hey, I can still see through that! Awfully blurry, though.”

The eyeball was still attached to Cassie through its optic nerve, dangling just outside its socket. That nerve really wasn’t long enough to move the eye around any, though, as Susan discovered when she started pulling on the eyeball – it tore out almost immediately, before getting more than a fraction of an inch above the socket. “Okay, so you’ve got my eye. What are you planning to do with it?”

Susan gave the matter some thought, then grinned. “Well, I figure a proper mad doctor, with a deformity like this, would try to fix herself. So here’s what I’m doing.” She dug around in the socket of her right eye, pulling out a few remaining shreds, then held the eyelids open and – using quite a bit of force – pushed Cassie’s eyeball into her own socket, with predictable consequences.

This made her look quite odd, as Susan now had one blue and one green eye instead of the two green eyes she was born with. Cassie seemed to agree, to judge by her staring, but Susan seemed to have other things on her mind. She blinks, then looks wildly around the room, closing alternately one eye and the other. “Wow,” she whispered, entranced. “This is freaky. Cassie, the ceiling is blue, right?” Cassie looked at her as if she had lost her mind in addition to her eye. “Well, yes… I don’t see how that matters. You stole my eye!”

“Never mind that,” Susan replied dismissively. “You weren’t using it. If we both agree that the ceiling is blue, how come your eye sees it as red? And –” she gesticulated at the anatomy book, which had a green cover. “That’s blue! And the red bits in the wallpaper look green! All the other colors are weird, too! It worked for you, why does everything look all wrong when I’m using it?” Cassie fell silent, hesitated, then hazarded an answer. “Are you sure it does?” Susan gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, well, look at the ceiling. It’s blue, we both agree that, but why do we agree?” Susan tried to say something, but Cassie ploughed on. “Simple, our parents told us it’s blue. Yours told you that the color you see there is blue, mine told me the color I see there is blue, but who says that means we see the same color?” This argument struck Susan as reasonable. She fell silent, nodding, but eventually returned to the task at hand. “Well, at any rate… time to start on the main event. Last chance to turn back, Cassie.” Cassie stayed silent.

“Right… Right.” Susan took a deep breath, picked up the scalpel, and cut Cassie open from sternum to pubes, pushing hard to get through both skin and muscle in one go. Subsequently she made horizontal cuts, opening Cassie up like a book. Cassie, seeing her own viscera for the first time, gasped. Susan ran her hands through Cassie’s intestines, feeling them out, and started pulling them out one arm-length at a time, holding them up for Cassie’s inspection in the process.

“These are the large intestines. Food goes here after going through the small intestines, which –” she pulled out a few more lengths, dropping them in the bucket next to the bed, until she reached the joint between the large and small intestines “– look like this.” She noticed a short tube of some sort also attached to the joint, only four inches long.

“Huh…” A minute of frantic reading later she held it back up, announcing victoriously that that was the appendix. Susan dragged out the rest of Cassie’s intestines, cutting the small intestine just below where it started connecting to the stomach. Then Cassie grimaced as Susan started cutting out her anus from the inside. Into the bucket it went, joining the rest of her intestines. “Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way.” Cassie’s bladder was next, but when Susan put a hand on it, Cassie screamed for her to stop. “Don’t! You’ll make me pee myself, I could feel it!”

“Well… what do you want me to do, then?” If she was going to cut it out she’d have to touch it one way or another. “Just be careful. Can’t you pinch it shut or something?” Susan shook her head. “No way, it fits too tightly. I’ll have to cut the whole thing out in one go.” Cassie nodded, then froze. “Wait, that would mean cutting through–” she trails off, because Susan is already leaning down to do just that. “Susan!”

“Oh, relax. There’s a bone in the way, I’m just going to punch a hole around your… ah, urethra is the right term. So I can pull out the bladder without putting any pressure on it.” Cassie seemed discomfited. She protested, but Susan pulled her labia apart when she was still in the middle of her sentence, and the protest turned into a high-pitched squeal. “You’re punching a hole through – what, no, stop!”

Then Susan started cutting, mercilessly. “Hold still, or you really will end up peeing,” Susan pointed out. Her face was clinical, though she still had a light blush on her cheeks. Cassie froze. Susan turned a page in her book, then frowned. “This’ll be a bit tricky. The muscles that hold your urethra shut are actually set around the urethra, not your bladder. I should be able to pull it out through your abdomen now, but if I do, you’ll lose control halfway. I can’t pull the other way, not without getting a lot more than just your bladder – I guess I could shatter your pubic bone and then take it straight up, or I could just start pulling and hope you can hold on until I get a grip on the inside…” Cassie paled. “Shatter my pubic… That doesn’t sound good at all. The second one, please!”

“Clench as hard as you can, then.” Cassie clenched, both mouth and hips. Susan levered two fingers between her bladder and pubic bone, eliciting a whimper from Cassie, and started pulling – slowly ramping up the force, hoping to give Cassie time to tell her to stop. A little more, and Cassie started throwing her head from side to side. A little more…

Susan’s efforts paid off, and the bladder started moving, ever so slightly. Cassie started gasping. “A– Ah! I… I can feel… it feels like something is sliding in. That’s… it feels wrong, I don’t think that part is supposed to move.” She managed a weak chuckle. “I mean, you don’t say? It feels really weird, though, I don’t think I can hold it much longer.”

“That’s okay.” Susan slipped her index finger and thumb down to the urethra’s innermost point, around it, and pinched. Hard. Her next pull was not gentle at all, and Cassie’s voice raised in a screech as she called Susan’s name, but then it was out – without spilling more than a drop or two. Of course, the contents largely spilled out after Susan dropped it in a plastic container set aside for the purpose, but perhaps they would wash it later? At that point, Susan started picking up the pace a little.

“Kidneys. Two. They’re what make the pee, and you only need one.” Consequently, she cut out one of them. “Stomach. You know this one. Maybe I should cut it open and have a look at your dinner?” Susan took one glance at Cassie’s expression after that suggestion. “Maybe not.”

“By process of elimination, this is your spleen. I think. It’s supposed to store spare blood, filter blood, make blood and all that, but… uh, have you seen any blood? Or blood vessels? Looking at the heart should be interesting.” Cassie looked a bit put out. “This lecture leaves a little to be desired, I should have known you’d skim. Next time, let me do it.” Susan was surprised at that. “…there’s going to be a next time?”

---

“Oh, come on. Then how am I supposed to get in?” Having finished cataloging everything in her abdomen (except, by unspoken consent, the sexual organs), Susan was having a spirited discussion with Cassie about how, exactly, to get into her upper torso. It was not an idle question; unlike her stomach, Cassie’s lungs and heart were well protected with a rib cage. Worse, the rib cage was protected by Cassie’s breasts (which, to her joy, were larger than Susan’s), and she was flatly refusing to let Susan remove them. “Hey, aren’t you the mad doctor? Go from the sides! From the bottom! From below! Just leave them alone!”

“You know I can’t, I won’t be able to see what I’m doing. Neither will you. Stop being so stubborn, Cassie, they’re just… see?” Susan held up the relevant page of the anatomy book. “They’re basically lumps of fat, nothing to care so much about.” Cassie shook her head wildly. She didn’t want anything to happen to her beautiful breasts. Searching desperately for an alternative, she seized on something in the mirror. “Look! You haven’t even finished my abdomen, why are you in such a hurry?”

Susan followed her glance, and blushed. “But that’s… no, we talked about that, that’s your womb. There’s no real need to remove it, is there? I mean, there’s… you can see it just fine from here!” Cassie, letting her mouth rush ahead, doubled down. “The outside! What about the inside? Is that even in the book?” She regretted it immediately, but her pride refused to let her back down. No, she made it worse. “I thought you were going to take me apart, but I’m still pretty much in one piece! Organs I can’t even feel while they’re attached hardly count.” She finally went quiet, possibly a bit late. “Well, I thought –” Susan started. “Ah, er… if you’re sure. I’ll still need to start with your ribs, but I guess I can avoid your breasts. That’s all right, I guess?” Cassie mentally kicked herself, but forced a smile. “Sure.”

“Then, to cut your ribs open, um. I guess it’ll have to be these.” She picked up an enormous pair of steel garden shears. Cassie’s smile developed a tic. “Relax, this won’t hurt a bit.” Cassie, seeing a pair of scissors practically as large as she was, had absolutely no intention of relaxing. She actually really wanted to scream at Susan to stop, but an equally large part of her still refused to back down. Caught between two powerful forces, the only thing she could do is squeeze her eyes shut and wait for everything to be over.

“Right-o.” Shears half open, Susan carefully aligned the lower blade with the top of Cassie’s diaphragm. This particular cut was harder than usual, since the target was moving… well, quite a lot; Cassie was almost hyperventilating. That didn’t stop Susan, who got it suitably stuck in a good-looking spot and then leaned on it, ramming the shears in with her full weight.

Cassie heard a drawn-out farting noise. No, a continuous farting noise, it was sounding in tune with her… breathing… she couldn’t breathe, no matter how hard she tried no air entered her lungs! She tried screaming, but there was barely a whisper of sound. Susan didn’t seem to notice; she was putting all her weight on the shears to cut bone. She tried grabbing her, only to realize she had no arms. She heard a loud buzzing noise. Her vision started going black, darkness closing in from the edges until all she could see was a tiny spot in the middle. She tried to move her torso, but she couldn’t feel her body. Everything faded.

---

“Phew… well, that’s half the job. Geez, you really like making things harder on us. At least you finally stopped squirming.” It took a lot of time and effort, but Susan finally managed to cut all the way through Cassie’s sternum, vertically. There were more than a few bone splinters lying around, of course, and she’d dulled the shears quite noticeably – I wondered how she was going to explain that, though it would be easier than explaining a dead body.

After removing the sternum, she started peeling off the skin and muscles covering Cassie’s ribs. It took a few extra cuts at the throat, but after that it was a bit like peeling off a thick sweater; the muscles were strongly bonded to the ribs, of course, but not so strongly that Susan couldn’t pull them off, slowly. There was no reason to make any cut down at Cassie’s sides, so she didn’t; the end result was Cassie lying spread across the bed, both her back and the breasts she was so proud of facing downward onto the mattress, her ribcage visible for all like a macabre decoration.

It was probable that she would have protested at this treatment as well, but she was in no condition to do so. Susan subsequently started breaking off ribs. Ribs are pretty strong, and they’re normally very hard to remove – excepting the floating ribs – but by this point none were connected to anything except the spine, and by concentrating on one at a time it wasn’t too hard for Susan to get rid of them. Then she extracted Cassie’s two hip-bones, expertly cutting them free of her skin and muscles without damaging either.

The pubic bone left her thinking for a minute. The various sexual nerves and connections basically ran straight through it, which made removing it without damaging anything rather difficult. Cassie told her not to just shatter it, and she wants to follow at least the letter of her instructions, but… hmm… yeah, that could work, she thought. So Susan pulled out the metal saw and went to work. Ten minutes later, the pubic bone in about a dozen pieces in a box of its own, she put her hand on Susan’s beating heart and sat down to think.

---

“Oh, good, you’re finally awake.” Cassie’s eyes were not, factually speaking, those of someone who’s fully awake. It felt like she just woke up after a slightly too long nap, or maybe a way too short night; at any rate, she was having trouble remembering where she was. ‘Oh… there’s a mirror on the ceiling. Susan’s room, then.’

She stared at the mirror, uncomprehendingly. That was her, but it looked like she was under some sort of very strange blanket. She felt cold, though. That was Susan, holding something in her left hand and stroking her forehead. It felt nice. The thing she was holding, though, that was… Cassie jolted awake, gaping. Of course, they were dissecting her – that wasn’t a dream. And the thing Susan was holding, that was… that was her heart, which made the strange blanket…

This was Cassie’s situation: She was spread out across the bed. Literally. Her skin was mostly intact, but she was spread out like a bear rug, furry side (that is, outside) down. Her heart and lungs were still there, and her womb, but nothing else was, and there wasn’t a bone left in her body except the ones in her head. She wasn’t breathing; she couldn’t breathe; her lungs apparently didn’t work, despite being still attached. Needless to say, she couldn’t talk. She tried moving her neck, but the only effect was a ripple in the rug. She still felt everything, however. From her neck to her pubes, it was all there, and she felt every part of her touching the mattress at once. It felt much like being surrounded by one.

“You know, you actually fainted when I started cutting through your ribs.” Susan’s voice. “I guess I should have warned you, you can’t breathe without an intact ribcage, but I didn’t expect you to fake death on me! You had me scared for a minute, young lady. Still –” Susan leaned over, closer and closer. This time she didn’t stop, but actually covered Cassie’s lips with her own, and started teasing her lips with her tongue and sucking. Cassie blushed dramatically; she tried shaking Susan off, or rolling out of the way, or something – all instincts from earlier episodes – but of course there was nothing she could do, and it was starting to feel really good. So she slowly, hesitantly opened her mouth and let Susan in.

For a little while it was a duel of tongues, and Susan almost got lost herself, but then she remembered what she was trying to do. Cassie felt Susan’s lips clamp shut around her tongue, then a powerful suction, like Susan was trying to suck the tongue out of her mouth. She tried to resist, but without functional lungs of her own she was helpless. Then Susan’s mouth clamped shut, she felt her tongue pierced by several teeth, and Susan started ripping it out of her mouth. Hard. There was no pain, but it felt not very much unlike getting a tooth pulled at the dentist might feel, if the tooth was your entire tongue. Cassie could feel the flesh parting; for quite a while she could still feel her tongue, and the pressure of the teeth piercing it. It was not a fun sensation. When Susan was finally holding the tongue free, it remained attached to quite a bit of the inside of her mouth. No teeth, but a lot of flesh.

Cassie gave Susan her best look of betrayal, throwing in a bit of moisture in her eyes for good measure. The inside of her mouth felt like a gaping hole. She’d like to probe it with her tongue, but… yeah. “Aheheh… sorry, but I told you I’d take you apart. Anyway, remember what we talked about a week ago? About cunnilingus?” She couldn’t mean…

Cassie blushed again, harder than before. Really she wanted to tell Susan to stop, but there were so many reasons why she couldn’t that it wasn’t even funny. Her pussy tickled… she felt a certain sense of anticipation. Would Susan really do that, though? “So! Let’s finish the lecture, shall we?” What. “This–” Susan nudged the heart she was still holding, “–is your heart. As you can see, it seems to have no blood vessels attached, despite pumping. I didn’t do that, it was like that when I opened you up. Weird, huh? Well, it gets weirder.” Susan removed her hand, leaving the heart to fall…

It hung in place. In midair. “As you can see, right now it’s not actually attached to anything. Except, I suppose, those blood vessels. Which don’t seem to exist. I’d ask the physics teacher, but I’m pretty sure he’d tell me I’m loony.” As a matter of fact, Cassie could still feel it beat. Susan took hold of her heart, interlacing her hands behind it, and started pulling. Cassie couldn’t feel the pull, but… there was something…

“It feels… gh… like trying to pull two magnets apart. Ah, there we go. Okay, have a look at these veins…” Susan fell over backwards, holding Cassie’s heart but still managing to keep up the lecture. Cassie was too distracted to keep track, though. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up while Susan was pulling, but now… now, there was nothing, except a background noise she’d never even noticed before, fading. She could feel her blush fading, too. Of course. If she was heartless, there was nothing to….

She snapped back to reality when she felt Susan touching the skin just between her breasts, vaguely. Now she was cutting out her lungs, which felt like… nothing, really. Most of the sensations from Cassie’s body had gone away, during the evening; the last really significant one was the feel of her blood flowing, which she’d never really noticed before it stopped being there. Now there was only the feel of being surrounded by cotton, cold – utter cold, growing, but somehow not uncomfortable – and an itching sensation from her pussy, as if it was telling her to rub it. Not very strongly, but with nothing competing, it… stuck out.

Her entire body – what was left of it – was going numb. It was so cold… she tried moving, but couldn’t manage even a shiver. This probably ought to worry her, but it didn’t; all she felt was a strange lassitude, all she could do was lie there and watch Susan, and now the only thing left for Susan to touch was her sex. Even had she wanted to do anything, she couldn’t: the only thing she could move was her eye, and even that responded sluggishly.

She closed it, choosing to focus on only her senses of touch and hearing, but for a long time there was nothing. Her lassitude grew; she felt like she was floating in nothingness, or frozen in a glacier. She heard shuffling, a sigh, and… something was touching her, at her most secret place, but it felt so far away. She could barely feel it at all. Even so, as time passed, the teasing was enough to drive some part of her over the edge. She felt herself spread open, letting the air chill even that last remaining spark of fire; it flickered, sputtered, gave her pleasure, then went out. She no longer felt anything at all.

---

Cassie’s skin had gotten cold. When Susan decided it was about time she did what she promised, that was her first impression – Cassie was cold and lifeless, room temperature really; she didn’t feel like a living girl at all. That was only fitting, given that she was spread out like a rug, but to Susan it was discomforting. Still… she poked at Cassie’s labia with a finger, and it tensed slightly. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but it was there. Was this the result of removing her heart? They would have to try it when she wasn’t so… disassembled, Susan supposed. Maybe she could try it on herself, if she dared. Maybe…

Susan pulled off her t-shirt, wondering what the hell she was doing. Certainly removing her heart took a while to affect Cassie, there’d be time enough to back out – still, this was a new level of crazy for her. She cupped her left breast, feeling her heartbeat and, inside, her ribs.

She picked up her scalpel, felt the metal between her fingers and slowly pushed it through her breast, angling inwards so it would just barely miss her ribs and sternum. It stung, just a bit. She tweaked her nipple, pushed the breast around a bit; the scalpel lacerated it, which felt like nothing, but the lacerated part felt slightly colder from the air.

She felt the scalpel touch her heart, and felt her pulse speed up. Susan gasped; as she pushed the scalpel just slightly further, she could feel her heart stuttering. Every heartbeat, it hesitated for just a moment. And it was speeding up; she felt a kind of pressure, all over. Then, in a single stroke, she cut halfway through her heart. It beat, once, then clenched. She felt no pain, but it felt like something was crushing her heart, or like there was an elephant sitting on her chest. Hands shaking, she stumbled to her feet. Something was crushing her chest; it felt like her heart was going to burst…

The pressure went away, just for a moment, as her heart beat half a beat. Then it was back, and she shuddered, collapsing against the wall. One hand gripping the scalpel, she started waving it around randomly – lacerating her heart every which way. Eventually, it stopped. Susan hugged her knees, eyes wet with tears, and listened to the silence. Her lungs were still working, but she had lost any urge to breathe, so she didn’t. She sniffed a little, leaned back against the wall, and retrieved the scalpel from her chest. Given what she remembered doing, the entry wound was surprisingly small – it was a tiny little hole, easily overlooked. Nevertheless, she passed her finger over and healed it. She felt so tired…

Five minutes passed. Finally she dragged herself to her feet, thinking of Cassie, and shuffled over to her with a sigh. She was going to… spread her open, right, and confirm that Cassie is still there. She could do that. So she fumbled with Cassie’s sex, doing her tired best to excite her, then picked up a pair of scissors – her favorite pair, because they were so sharp – to cut her vagina open. Even in her current weary state she didn’t have any trouble managing that.

While spreading the vagina flat, she massaged it; it shuddered, twice, so she opened and spread the womb too, but there was no analogous reaction. Susan paused, trying to think despite the cold that was infiltrating her every limb. She wanted to sleep, but there was something she had to do first. She wished she didn’t have the room temperature set so low. What was it… taking a bath? No, that would be nice, but that was not part of sleeping. Something about heat. Oh yeah. You need a blanket to sleep. That was it. Annoyance seeped into her thoughts. There was something blanket-like right here, but it was too short. It wouldn’t cover her lower body. Which was still wearing clothes, wasn’t it… that made it okay, then…

Susan collapsed onto the bed, pulling Cassie around her as if she were an actual bear rug. Inside out, of course, Cassie’s breasts were comfy against her back. She was worried Cassie might not approve, so she gave her unresponsive head a hug. Then, because she knew better than to sleep with clothes on, she kicked her shorts and panties off. This left her lower half mostly bare, but she didn’t really feel it. The cold kept seeping in, and she didn’t understand why, but she knew that sleeping was always warm. All she has to do was go to sleep. Easy. Twenty minutes later, the ceiling light detected a lack of movement and shut off.