It is dark where I am, but that no longer has any meaning. The simple white sheet that
has attendance placed on me when they readied me for his skillful touch provides me with
no comfort, and in the past I would have found it unbearably coarse, but I appreciate the
theatricality of it all. I must be very careful and keep my eyes shut. He must not see them
flicker this way and that. It would give me away. I must remember that though we are to
become lovers, I cannot reveal myself until afterwards. Only then will he understand.
Only then will he know that we are truly meant for one another. I've watched him work, hiding
the shadows, too shy to approach. So I stole one of his older notebooks from his office
while he was lost in his work, and I absorbed the cold descriptions with the rapt attention
of a youth reading a text on reproduction for the first time. I would run the fingers
of one hand over the scratchy outlines of bodies and wounds, and two fingers of the
other hand buried between my legs. I never failed to climax when reading this pornography,
meaning I was on the receiving end of his love. I grew as familiar with his sharp, neat
handwriting as my own. Perhaps that's why I truly fell in love with him. The first notebook
contained diagrams, simple markings indicating where various injuries were found, what his
diagnosis were, his thoughts. But that wasn't enough. The first theft led to another, and
the second notebook. Ah, this was different. There were sketches of tubing and wire, instruments
of some sort connected to the simple sketches of bodies I was used to. I despaired I would
ever understand them, but then I noticed the symbols and the margins. I sought answers
in the old library, and I had the good fortune to find the appropriate ancient tone among
the stacks. The lettering was long gone, the cover and binding impossibly supple. With
time and patience, I discovered their meanings, and I finally understood what my love was
attempting. Truthfully, it allowed me to complete his work. I was afraid at first, but in time,
I accepted that I was a being on the cusp of true metamorphosis. I completed the potion
according to the instructions I deciphered, but I left the small vial untouched for almost
a week. Finally, I found the courage to drink it. When the landlord found me in my rooms
and let out a cry, they did not realize that what they were seeing was a new and beautiful
creature, a pallid butterfly transformed by my love for this one man. It was then that
I decided to make this blasphemous knowledge my dowry to him, a gift that he would not
refuse and could not help but be grateful for. The sound of his footsteps, hard soles
on the worn tiles, roused me from my memories. I take a moment to remember my goals and my
dreams. As the harsh light flicks on with a buzz, I still my movements, even the most
minute. In this new state, it's easier than I imagined. Slowly, as if he too feels the
same anticipation as I do, his hands draw the sheet back. It whispers over my feet and
my thighs, over my sex, chest and nipples. Finally, he reveals my face and he draws a
sharp breath. He recognizes me. He passes the back of his hands slowly and with great
care down the side of my cheek. I desperately want to know if he has an erection, but to
look now would be careless, foolhardy. I will not ruin this through being over eager. The
cold air caresses my skin and I feel myself react to his imagined scrutiny. I cannot see
him, but I slowly become aroused, imagining my lover's gaze across my body. I pray that
my slower reactions to such stimuli will make my excitement less obvious now. He does not
seem to notice, and I allow myself to relax. We both know how this will start, but he draws
it out. He says a few words out loud, organizing his thoughts, but the way he describes me
so clinically, I can hear the passion in his voice, the latent hunger for what is forbidden.
He begins his palpations. He feels for injuries all over my body. It is delicious foreplay,
and I fantasized about it so many times. He is so careful to touch me, all over. His hands
on me are all that exist in this world, all that I need. He inserts a thermometer into
my rectum. After he verifies that I am, in fact, as cold as death, he pauses and I imagine
him looking around. Then he inserts a single finger inside my pussy. Were anyone there
to witness him? I'm sure he would claim to be ensuring that nothing was occluding the
orifice, but I know the truth. He's testing me, tasting me, what it's like to be inside.
I do not begrudge him this indulgence. With a reluctant sigh he removes his invasive digit.
He rolls the cart containing his instruments closer, and I hear the rattle of a metal and
the anticipation would be killing me if... He started the Y incision, hand steady. I
can't see it, but I feel the line of red pain drawn across my chest in sharp steel. He pauses
for a moment, and I'm glad for it. It hurts so much, but in a new and intensely arousing
way. I was not prepared for the warring sensations, and my mind is a storm of confusing thoughts.
Every part of me is already begging for release when he starts the second cut. Now I'm fighting
a battle not to open my eyes, to speak. I need to see him. I need to beg him to stop,
to keep going, to go faster. The cut is complete. Were I still able to breathe I would have
sobbed out loud. Without giving me time to adapt to the new sensations, he peels my flesh
back with such unflinching care that I could weep. My body is on fire with pain and I tense
up, ever so slightly, before I force myself once again into supple compliance. I am now
exposed to him, vulnerable. I'm so close to the edge and he's barely penetrated me.
I need him inside of me. He does not make me wait long. The shears come out. He opens
them and the sharp snick they make sings to me. With a sudden force he thrusts one of
the blades underneath my ribcage. Now he's deeper inside of me than any man has ever
been. He pauses and I am lost in pain, fulfillment, want. I feel the cold metal so close to my
unbeating heart. I know his process, like I know my own cold body. I'm ready. I need
him so much. I need him too. There's a crushing pressure for but a moment and then the shears
pass through the bone of my sternum as if it is nothing. All my resistance and preparation
are for naught. I climax for the first time during this procedure. I make no noise through
the agony and the pleasure. But my eyes snap open and my entire body tenses before releasing.
He steps back from me, shock all over his face. I am suddenly terrified. Does he find
my pleasurable convulsion revolting? He sets the shears down and examines me again and
I realize that he's checking to see if I'm alive. I feel such relief. The thermometer
enters my rectum again. His fingers test for a pulse on my neck. He even lowers his ear
close to my mouth and nose. I am cold, I have no pulse, and I do not breathe. I want to
touch him, to put my mouth on him. But I know that would do nothing to arouse him further
and would only reveal my dowry early. So I lie still and waiting, and I remind myself
that I must be patient and attentive to his needs. I've learned so much from observing
my love. I know exactly what he does in this room and in what order. I know he prefers
bodies who look like I did. I know that he will cross the final line for me. I will earn
the honor of calling him husband. I allow myself a very small smirk as I realize that
despite his calm and collected exterior and his measured movements, his quickened breathing
means that he is, in fact, quite excited. But this is different than normal. This time
he starts low, with my liver. I feel him caressing it, lovingly, with great care. I bite my lip
and pray he does not notice. He frees it from the surrounding flesh with a few skillful,
searing cuts of a scalpel. He takes it tenderly and places it on the steel scale, making note
of the weight as he says it out loud. He's not a barbarian. His tools of the trade are
medical. He says things out loud before writing them down in his notebook with a pen. Scientific.
Though I can't see it from where I lay, I'm sure this notebook looks exactly the same
as the ones I stole from him. Next he removes my stomach, then my intestines. My blood flows
freely down my flanks and into the grooves of the table. As he progresses, I can see
his impulses warring behind his eyes. He knew me after all, and my death does, in a way,
trouble him. He cannot find anything wrong with me. Every organ, almost, but not quite,
alive. I'm barely decayed at all, just enough to be appealing for him. His curiosity and
medical ethics soon fall by the wayside, his stronger impulse winning out. I know that
he's losing control as I feel his hands move freely through my exposed cavity. He's groping
me as a boy would for the first time. Focused, eager to please, but without the patience
of an experienced lover. My lesser organs are removed as well and placed on a nearby
table next to the others. Even without knowing what I have become, he has treated these parts
of me with reverence, knowing perhaps instinctively that I'm only mostly dead. At last, he stops
his disemboweling and steps back. He is breathing hard and sweating. The scent of his arousal
is strong to be now, heady. I imagine his cock is straining at his pants, forming a
slight wet spot at the tip of his tent. Yet, he hesitates. At first, I don't understand
and I'm a little hurt. I'm open to him, vulnerable and exposed in a way that I never could have
been while I was alive. I am ready. Does he not want me as a husband should his wife?
It takes a moment before it occurs to me that he does love me. Perhaps he always had, but
he wasn't truly attracted to me until now. His hesitation is another sign of his adoration,
his reverence for me. Had I not already wanted him, I would know. I know what he needs. He
needs something to encourage him. I relax my legs, the tiniest bit, and let a soft sigh
escape my lips. He should be alarmed by this. Maybe run or check me again for signs of life,
but he does not. Oh no. His eyes are drawn to my cunt, my cold, dead cunt, clearly and
impossibly swollen, wet with arousal. A delayed reaction, maybe, but a true one to the intensity
of his sensual foreplay. He strips off his gloves and walks to the door. For a moment
I panic, afraid that he's leaving, but he does not. I hear him snap the deadbolt into
place. When he returns, he's not overthinking things any longer. He removes his shirt and
his shoes, then his socks and pants, finally his underwear. He never undressed all the
way for the others. I am special to him. Besides, I know why he removes all the organs before
he mounts. That's the best part. He climbs on the table and it shifts under our combined
weights, but holds steady. He pushes my thighs apart, letting my feet and calves hang from
either side of the table. He holds himself above me on one arm, as he ever so carefully
inserts himself deep inside me. It is so much different now. At first, I feel nothing but
a deep pressure, and I'm so frustrated. But then, I begin to sense each thrust individually,
and finally, agonizingly, I feel all of it. I'm driven wild by the forbidden nature of
our consummation, and the knowledge that my true love and I are finally one. There are
no more barriers between us. No more false moralities or paper gods. Only he and I remain.
Life and death. Seed and rot. Husband and wife. I can look at him almost freely now,
though I dare not move my head. Not yet. I know where his focus is, what he enjoys most.
His left my reproductive organs intact, but removed everything around them. Only my womb
and the passage leading to it remain. He watches me inflate and stretch with his violations,
and then he gasps with surprise. Unlike the others, I am an active participant in this
act. I clench and grip and squeeze him with unexpected pressure. He groans and it is not
from pain. He is beyond scientific curiosity now and begins to thrust eagerly, long and
forceful strokes filling me. I ache each time he leaves me and rejoice when he buries himself
deeply inside of me again. His breaths turn to moans, then groans, then animalistic grunts.
He is losing himself inside me, or willing to be damned for trying. The time for caution
is over. I hook my ankles around his, and he looks up at my face in surprise, but he
cannot stop now. He is taken by his lust for me, and besides, what he sees in my cloudy
eyes should not concern him. There is only adoration there. I wrap my dead arms around
him and pull him close. His chest and stomach grow wet with my blood, and he does not care.
He kisses me, and my cold tongue sneaks into his mouth. As I hear him cry out one last
time, I feel his scene filling me for the first time, and I find the sensation unbearably
appealing. His warmth spreads inside me, coating my insides, seeping towards my world. Will
I take hold there? Even I do not know. I focused on the means to this end, and left the deeper
mysteries of this existence to be discovered through trial and error. Perhaps we can experiment
together. I think no more as I come hard, spasming and twitching uncontrollably, holding
him much too tightly in my corpse grip. He does not mind, and I feel his mouth upon my
skin as pleasure makes me its victim. We fall limply back to the table together. He props
himself up, not quite pulling out of me, and looks down at me with a longing I know is
mirrored on my own, cold features. I see a shadow of fear go across his face, and I'm
left alone, realizing he was willing to take the plunge into the unknown for me, just as
I had for him. This was right all along. He takes his time, restoring me, putting each
of my pieces back in its place, one at a time. I don't know if I strictly need them, but
we both know that this attentiveness is his attempt at romance. I sigh as he touches each
part of me again. He pushes my sternum back together with a small crunch, looking at me
apologetically. He doesn't know as I do that this too will heal in a manner of speaking.
I smile, knowing that we can do this all over again, should he want, and the fire in my
love's eyes tells me that he does want that very much, over and over again. The gentle
violations of the needle sewing my skin back is the final bit of aftercare that I needed.
His soft fingers, each prick and pull, tells me that I'm right. I decide then and there
that I shall always keep this Y-shaped scar as a token of my devotion for him. I softly
whisper the delights I've discovered in the lore of the old ones, of the voluptuous blasphemies
we will share together. I tell him of all the ways he can mutilate and fold and spindle
me. I tell him I am a willing gift for his pleasure. I am the muse for his genius, the
completion of the work he started. I am the final key to death unending. He sheds a few
tears then, and perhaps I do as well. Emotion overwhelms me. I love you. I utter softly.
He responds in kind, and on his face is a deeply satisfied smile as he promises to take
me home. We are one, now, and forever more.
