Teil 2
**The Liberation of the Spirit** – Teil 2

Andrea sat there as if petrified. She had been forced to witness every moment, every moan, every tearing sound. Her hands clenched the seat of the sofa so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A war raged within her between revulsion, sheer horror, and an almost unbearable, arousing fascination.

The sight of Monika’s exposed, steaming entrails—this raw, true interior of her friend—sent a shiver through her that reached to the deepest roots of her existence. It was ugly. It was terrible. It was the most honest thing she had ever seen.

The Snuf officer didn’t move until after a long minute of silence. He stepped forward, knelt beside Monika’s motionless body, and checked her pulse with two professional fingers on her carotid artery. Nothing. He nodded, stood up, and wiped his bloodstained fingers on a white cotton handkerchief.

“Phase one complete,” he said in his monotonous official voice. Then he turned to Andrea. “Are you ready for phase two? You can back out at any time. The contract applies per person.”

Andrea swallowed hard. Her mouth was parched. She looked up from her friend’s corpse, eyed the blood-smeared tanto lying on the floor, and then the officer. There was no encouragement in his eyes, but no judgment either. Only waiting professionalism. That gave her a strange sense of support.

“I’m ready,” she managed to say. Her voice sounded strange, hoarse. “But… I want to do it differently. Not horizontally. I want a vertical incision. From the sternum, through the navel, down to the pubic bone. I want… I want to see everything at once. The entire vertical axis.”

The official raised an eyebrow. “A more demanding incision. It cuts through the linea alba, the central connective tissue seam. Less muscle resistance, but more major vessels in the midline. Bleeding will be heavier and start sooner. And you will very likely rupture the bladder.”

“That’s fine with me,” said Andrea, standing up. Her legs felt like Jell-O, but she forced them to carry her. She began to undress; her movements were less ceremonious, more hurried and mechanical, as if she didn’t want to give herself too much time to think.

Her body came into view. She was similarly slender to Monika, but her curves were longer, more elongated. Her breasts were slightly smaller, her waist narrow. And her abdomen was different: long, with a flat, gentle curve structured by a clearly visible, vertical band of faint musculature. Her navel was not deep and round like Monika’s, but a narrow, elongated slit that lay in the center like a small vertical scar.

An erotically defined but not overly toned abdomen, which now trembled under the cold air and the merciless ceiling lights.

“I’ll kneel in the same position,” she said and walked over to the bloody spot on the parquet floor. She carefully pushed a piece of Monika’s intestine aside with her foot to find a clear spot for her knees. The contact with the warm, slippery mass made her shudder.

Then she lowered herself, sitting on her heels, just as Monika had done. The parquet floor beneath her knees was damp and sticky with blood and other fluids. The proximity to Monika’s corpse, the smell now rising directly up at her from below, was overwhelming. It smelled of death, of a meal being digested, of the most intimate privacy ever made public.

The officer bent down, picked up the tanto, roughly wiped the blade with the clean end of his handkerchief—a pointless gesture given its impending use—and handed it to Andrea. The metal was still warm from inside Monika’s body.

Andrea took the knife. The handle was slippery with dried and fresh blood. She had to grip it tightly. She took a deep breath, trying to find the right spot. With her left hand, she ran her fingers over her own upper abdomen. She felt the hard ridge of her sternum at the base of her ribs. About three finger-widths below that, along the midline, she found a softer spot. Here, directly in the line between her breasts, it should begin. The vertical path led straight through her elongated navel down to the pubic symphysis. A monumental seam that she herself would cut.

She placed the tip of the tanto at this spot high on her upper abdomen. The pressure was immediately uncomfortable, a concentrated, threatening point. She pressed down.

Nothing happened. The tip slipped off the taut skin, leaving only a red mark. A frustrated gasp escaped her. She tried again, with more force. Again the blade slipped; this time it scraped lightly across the skin, leaving a thin, red line. Panic rose within her. She couldn’t even make the first incision.

“The skin is very taut and resilient here,” the officer commented neutrally, as if observing a technical problem. “You need to make a decisive, purposeful thrust. Don’t let it slip. Secure the tip and pierce through.”

Andrea nodded, closed her eyes for a moment, and gathered all her strength. This time she gripped the handle with both hands, placing her thumbs on the end of the shaft to apply maximum pressure. She positioned the tip again, feeling it dig into her skin. Then, with a short, brutal jerk of her shoulders and torso, she thrust forward.

*Rrrt-TACK!*

A different sound than with Monika. Sharper, more abrupt. The tip had pierced the skin and penetrated about a centimeter deep. An immediate, lightning-like pain shot through her. “Aah!” She flinched back, nearly dropping the knife. It now stood crookedly in her upper abdomen, an absurd, towering spike. Still hardly any blood.

She had to go deeper. Much deeper. The thought of driving the blade through the layers of her own upper abdomen was almost paralyzing. She looked over at Monika’s lifeless form. *She did it.* The thought gave her a perverse strength.

She gripped the handle again, straightened the blade, and began to push.

The resistance was immense, but different from Monika’s transverse muscles. Here, in the midline, she encountered the linea alba, a sinewy, fibrous sheet of connective tissue. It was tough, rubbery. She had to shift her entire weight into her arms, lean forward to muster enough strength.

*Krrrk… rits… crack.*

A crackling, fibrous tearing, interrupted by small, snapping sounds as tiny strands of tendon gave way. The blade moved slowly, agonizingly slowly, further inward. With every millimeter she advanced, a new star-like pain exploded in her consciousness.

She groaned, a continuous, deep “Uhhhhhnnnnn…,” vibrating with her breath. Sweat poured down her back in streams, mixing with the blood that was now slowly beginning to seep from the puncture site.

It wasn’t until the third big, desperate thrust, accompanied by a guttural scream—“NOW!”—that the blade suddenly pierced a final barrier and slid several centimeters deeper, almost effortlessly, into the open abdominal cavity.

*Slurp-gulp.*

This sucking, internal sound was even worse than with Monika, because it was happening higher up in her body. An immediate, convulsive gag reflex shook her as the tip grazed her liver or perhaps even penetrated the fundus of her stomach. A pressing, spreading pain, as if a hot balloon were inflating in her upper abdomen, nearly made her faint. She doubled over, coughing dryly.

“Keep going,” she hissed to herself. “All the way to the hilt.”

In an act of pure, animalistic willpower, she repeated the horrific procedure she had observed Monika performing: build up pressure, gain a centimeter, pause, fight against the wave-like pain that accompanied every thrust, then apply pressure again. Every forward movement was accompanied by her body’s own destructive soundtrack.

*Rit-rat-a-tack… crunch… gurgle.*

Her sounds were no longer articulate screams, but gasping, grunting explosions of agony. “Ghhaa! Uff! Khhh!” Her body twitched and convulsed uncontrollably, but her hands, though shaky, did not let go of the handle.

On the fourth such step, she felt the wooden handle strike her skin with a soft *plop*. The knife was buried in her up to the hilt, just below her sternum. The entire blade was sunk into her abdominal cavity, a cold foreign object amidst her warm, injured organs.

She paused, slumped forward, breathing in short, gasping bursts. The pain was monumental. It wasn’t a single pain; it was a landscape of pain, an entire universe of it. Deep, stabbing, pressing, burning, throbbing—each torment had occupied its own region within her.

She felt her liver thud against the blade, a dull, heavy thud. She felt her stomach cramp as if it were recoiling in disgust at the intruder. She felt the quiet, ticking race of her own panicked heart hammering against her ribs.

She opened her eyes and looked down. The sight was surreal: from her otherwise flat, graceful upper abdomen, the simple wooden handle of the tanto jutted out like the handle of a stake driven into her. The wound was still small; blood seeped only slowly around the entry point.

But now came the real work: the vertical cut. The liberation. She had to guide the blade downward, through her navel, all the way down to her pubis.

She clenched the handle, her knuckles white as marble. She twisted the blade inside, an unimaginable act of self-mutilation that unleashed a new, screaming pain. She tilted the blade so that it pointed downward, toward her navel.

Then she began to cut.

She pulled the knife back about two centimeters from the wound. A warm stream of blood followed immediately, spurting over her chest and stomach. *Splash.* Then she thrust it back in—and at the same time with a powerful, downward pull.

*RRRRIIIIITZENDE-ZERRREISSEN!*

The sound was horrific, a long, screeching tearing of tissue. The blade tore through the fibrous linea alba, through fine muscle fibers, through fatty tissue. The vertical wound opened to a length of about five centimeters.

And now, unlike with Monika’s horizontal cut, something else immediately came into view: not intestine, but a dark red, shiny, lobe-shaped organ pulsing in the gaping wound. A portion of her liver.

Andrea screamed. A long, piercing scream that dwarfed all previous sounds. “AAAAIIIIEEEEEE—GHHHHAAA!” The pain was immeasurable. The liver is an extremely pain-sensitive organ, crisscrossed by nerves and surrounded by a delicate capsule. The blade had torn into it, perhaps even cut a small wedge out of it. The pain was a dull, burning burst that spread in all directions.

She couldn’t stop. The urge to end it was stronger than the pain. She repeated the motion: pulling out a bit, thrusting in with a downward pull. A mechanical, horrific cycle.

*Ratchet-gulp-slurp.*
*Ritche-squeak.*

With each cycle, the vertical gash in her abdomen opened wider. After the blade had passed her navel, the contents of the wound changed. The lobe of liver vanished upward, and other things became visible. The pinkish-gray, folded stomach, contracting spasmodically. Then, as the blade split the navel itself—a distinct, small, crackling *pop*—the first pale pink loops of the small intestine gushed out, mixed with yellowish fatty tissue (the omentum), which had lain over the entrails like a protective but now shredded veil.

The smell became more intense, more complex. The sharp, sour smell of stomach acid joined in as the blade grazed the stomach. The sweetish, metallic scent of liver blood. The acrid smell of ammonia from the intestines. Everything mingled into a cloud of inner being that filled the room.

Body fluids dripped in a steady stream from Andrea’s opened abdominal cavity. Blood, bile, digestive juices, lymph. It pooled between her bent legs, forming a warm, colored puddle on the parquet floor that mingled with Monika’s. Her knees were literally standing in a pulp of her own and the remains of Monika’s entrails.

Andrea’s world shrank to the rhythm of pain, tension, and the visceral feedback of her body opening up. Her screams had degenerated into a hoarse, gasping whimper. “Hhh… hhh… aah… aah…” Her gaze was glassy, fixed on the spreading chaos in her lap. She saw her own organs, saw how they worked, how they twitched in their death throes. It was terrible. It was fascinating. It was the ultimate truth.

**Ende Teil 2**