The Surgeon’s Daughter

By: Alexander Rivera

Scott stood resolute in the shadows, puffing and exhaling nervously at his cigarette while watching in between his long dirty blonde locks curling downwards as she walked close by, not too over the top in her choice of clothes, she looked stylish and modern, rather than slutty like the girls he had been with earlier before. She’d turned him down then, in front of all those people, they had laughed at him, he hated that, he hated women like that. But she wouldn’t turn him down this time, looking down at the knife in his hand he thought to himself, he wouldn’t give her a chance to say no this time.

Pulling up his hood, he checked to see if anyone else was around and threw down the smoke to the cold, wet pavement. Stepping out into the open, he started to follow, matching his pace to hers so that she wouldn’t notice the addition of his footsteps in the otherwise silent street. To an outside onlooker, Scott would have appeared as a professional, she would not be his first and he had no intention of her being his last. Really, he hated and loathed women, conceited and so damn sure of themselves as if they never took a foul dump, thinking they were better than him, laughing at him in front of everyone. A ladies’ man he wasn’t. He wasn’t as dumb as those women had thought he was, he had made them pay, he was going to make her pay. He had thought she was different, watching her everyday, he thought she was classy, but deep down she was just like them, a witch, a nasty, dirty little witch.

Glancing back down at his hands he noticed he was bleeding, he had been gripping the blade too hard and it had sliced into his flesh so smoothly he had barely noticed as small streams of blood leaked down over his hand and to the pavement. As they continued down the street the lights became further and further apart, dropping them into almost complete darkness for longer periods between each light. This made his job much easier, creating less shadows for her to catch notice.

A sharp noise startled him as he caught his foot on a wayward piece of plastic rubbish, he looked up to gauge her reaction, but she showed no sign of having even heard and so he continued on after her, after the hunt, the kill. As they rounded a corner her pace seemed to quicken, he was sure she hadn’t heard him and so he sped up to match her pace. He glanced at his watch, they had been walking a while now, yet she showed no signs of stopping. She obviously lived a long way out of town, he told himself and so he still followed, despite the fact his instincts were telling him to walk away, this one wasn’t worth any of his trouble. Not that he was one for listening to his instincts.

Out of the blue the streetlights seemed to run out, and the road was thrown into absolute darkness. Had they walked that far already? Scott could no longer see her shape ahead of him, his footsteps faltered when he realized that he could no longer hear her either. He stopped, looking around him, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the level of darkness. It came to his attention then, that she was nowhere to be seen, yet there was nowhere she could have turned off, least of all without a torch. A chilled shot rang his spine to the base of his body – sending him into complete paranoia.

Something was very wrong. The gut feeling grew into nervousness - this wasn't normal at all. These women were stupid, how could they get the better of him? She must have known he was there all along and had been trying to lose him, yeah that was it. Suddenly there was a noise in the hedgerow behind him, nervousness started to bloom into panic as he realized losing him had not been her intention. He turned to see what it was, but more darkness exploded before his eyes and a sharp pain shot through his skull as something heavy collided with his head and he sank into a deep unconscious abyss.

When he awoke he found himself sitting in a cold, steely cage, unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation at first glance. Disorientated, he tried to get to grips with where he was, but he quickly wished he hadn’t bothered. Looking around, he realized he was in some kind of display room, the walls were painted a deep blood red, or at least he hoped it was paint. There were other cages in the room, and what looked like a surgical table in the middle. There were no windows, and only one very heavy, metallic door. It looked like a hospital door, but what kind of hospital would this be? He shook this thought from his mind; no hospital would be like this or at least what he had thought before.

Thinking back to where they had walked he tried to think of where they might be that was near by, but nothing came to mind. Morbid curiosity took over and he had a closer look at the other cages that took up this terrible dark place. In total there were approximately eight other cages in the vicinity of the room, naked and terrified men in each one, as the oldest of them in a cage marked Father. He had no physical signs of being male; any possible genitalia had been surgically removed, as had all the hair from his body, head to toe. All identifying marks had been burned off as though they had been removed by branding, his mouth was stitched up and a catheter had been fitted.

The other men were of varying ages, all in similar states, all mutilated in a horrific way; each one with a label containing their appropriate description of their crime. Several were marked “Thief”, as their hands were missing, and any piercings were forcibly removed and ripped out, as with “Father” all tattoos and identifying marks had been burned out by a blowtorch some under some kind of anesthesia; others fully conscious throughout the torture session. Others said “Defiler”, guilt of the crimes of attempted forced rape – he wanted to look at these least of all, they too, like “Father” were missing all signs of masculinity; eunuchs on display at a zoo of utter morbidity. All of the other men had their mouths stitched up also, leaving a gap big enough for a straw. Whoever did this was some kind doctor or surgeon; she obviously had experience as none of it looked sloppy. Every incision was clean and precise on these naked and confused subjects. Not that he would know for sure.

As Scott stared at the others he started to feel his stomach churn, but vomiting didn’t seem to be an option and so he swallowed it back down in a river of acidic bile. As he became less disorientated he was aware of a general numbness that swept over his body. Before he had time to look at himself, the door opened. The woman he had been following walked in, but this time with the clear and plastic garments that a surgeon would wear.

She greeted coldly without feeling: “Ah, so you’re finally awake, good, we wouldn’t want you to die or anything.” He tried to answer but his mouth would not open.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you’ll tear the stitches, and it’ll get infected.”

He desperately wanted to ask who the hell she thought she was, so many questions went over in his head. He was dying desperately to scream in both pain and frigid horror.

“I know what you’re thinking; you see I know what you are and why you were following me. You see the muggers aren’t so careful; they don’t keep pace and follow for so long. All men think I’m a bitch. But that’s fine. I usually am.” The panic writhing within him threatened to overwhelm his mind; he tried to force it down as she continued on to talk about her many victims that sought to make her a victim.

“You can guess who the man in the first cage is, that’s my father. He, like you, thought he could lay his hands on me, but he’s a surgeon, a very good one at that. No-one knew what really went on. So I studied his books and figured out how to put a stop to him, just remove the thing that makes him a man. And you see I’ve done the same to you.”

Despite thoughts to the contrary, he decided to look down at himself. What he saw caused his panic to rise higher, she had done the same things to him, he had no genitalia, his tattoos were burnt off, as were his fingerprints – he was the perfect eunuch of her collection. Though he was unconscious for the unnecessary surgery he had endured, the searing memory of excruciating pain still had remained with him for him to repeat over and over in his mind. He wondered how long he would have to live like an imprisoned animal until he would eventually die.

“You’re never going to leave here.” She said as she started to laugh maniacally. The laugh reminded him of the hyena and he could no longer hold down the panic inside him ready to burst like a dam on a riverbed. He screamed and screamed so hard the stitches tore, but he continued to scream, the blood running down his face intermixed with sweat dripping down from open pores on blemished white skin. He didn’t even feel the needle in his neck, just the relief of darkness sweeping over him. The darkness kept swaying at him, eating away at his conscious mind yet he still maintained some semblance of what was left of his sanity, as he struggled like he had never had to struggle throughout his adult life.

The next thing he could remember was the forceful placement on a cold, steely surgical table while being covered in plastic as if he were a piece of flesh stripped from a carcass ready to be purchased and consumed in perhaps a cannibalistic rite of passage. What other malignant experiment would he go through next he wondered through his panic-ridden mind? He should have killed this fucking bitch right on the spot before he was knocked out cold. Karma is perfect, indeed.

“Go ahead. Struggle. It’ll only make it worse.” Scott did struggle and did make it worse as the nameless handler of fear did all she could to make him cry out and long for the reaper to claim his soul and die, escaping the small, torn and dingy confines of this terrible place. He wondered to himself what other black sins he had committed in another life to deserve this wicked punishment. What other possible torment would he have to endure now after his manhood had been taken away from him? To him, there was no other fate worse than that. He pleaded to his tormentor despite the fact that he could not move his lips as she could barely understand his words, “Kill me…kill me!”

The reaping angel of death she was not and only his focus of nightmares for days and weeks to come and go. His heart palpated so fast, he felt as if it would give out at any given moment and prayed for such an attack to be fatal to end this sexless, hairless, torturous existence. He still continued to breathe and still continued to cry for mercy to the powers of heaven yet no heavenly angel or saint would redeem him and so it was, the stalker becoming the prey, sedated and imprisoned. God, even in this place, at this moment in time, he wished he had a cigarette to puff on.