The Surgeon
by Addy Gravatte

Content Warning: Graphic Violence and Assault

Part I

Once you finish having sex, he takes out a knife. He digs it deep into your core. You can feel the knife going through your back, puncturing the sheets, and are secretly happy because look how slim you are, the knife reaches all the way through. He cuts upward. It’s uncomfortable because the knife isn’t one for carving, so he works especially hard to move it past the bone and tissue and towards your chest. Your eyes are locked with his. Is this intimate? The knife gets to your sternum, slowing in pace. You ask him kindly to cut out your heart. He looks down, slicing with a careful intensity until he makes it to your heart’s top. Fitting a hand into the fresh slit, he wraps his fingers around the base, closing a fist over it. What fire it feels in his hands. Quick slices of the aorta and some pulmonary veins & arteries and it’s out. His hands locked over it, it pulses feverishly. You see the scarlet heart glowing in the dim lights. He asks you where to put it, you reply on the beside table. You look at it for longer, the tight condensed muscles weighted with fat. How it’s heavied with blood. How much lighter you’ll be without it.

Part II

He asks if he can try something else. You nod, heartless. He plunges the knife again into the original mark. This time the blade moves south, slicing open your stomach and the contents spill out. Apple skins and black coffee lay all over you. You are thankful you had nothing embarrassing, like candy and stomach relaxers. Further down into the intestines, you can finally feel the relief you so longed for in all those stomach aches caused by nerves and impulses that have finally gone silent. They are out in the open now in new kinds of emotion. He’s taking his time with this cut, relishing each organ splitting open underneath the blade. He tears your belly button in two. The birthmark, unbirthed. The knife is level with your hips. It moves farther down. If you had a heart, it would be beating fast. The knife hits something inside you to make you scream. There is no greater pain here. It stays there, piss spitting out at it, the instrument caught on the os pubis. He was enthralled by the scream, however, so he digs it deeper, gutting you underneath the shield of your bone. The knife touches something else, and you emit a real shriek. He is deeper inside of you than ever before. Is this intimate? The knife is extracted, and cuts over the skin of your bone heading towards the thick slit between your legs. There is true madness here! He runs the knife over the vestibule, barely drawing blood. You meet his eyes again. There is no difference in face when he fucks the knife inside you.