Professora

Professora

A PIECE OF FLASH FICTION BY MICHAELA CATALANO

I stripped, tossed all of my clothes into a corner, and lay down on the table. I lay there for a while, quiet, stilling my excited heart and slowing my breath, feeling slightly sick with anxiety and anticipation. Finally the Professora entered. She was of average height, with a slight build and short black hair. She wore a simple red robe stained with faint dark patches.

"It is time to begin the procedure," she said. "The spells are in place. I will begin with an incision into the abdomen." From a small bag she drew a shimmering silvery scalpel. At the tip of her right index finger a violet light bloomed, and she drew it carefully lengthwise across me. Where it passed it left a faint purple line.

Taking up the scalpel, she set it lightly against the leftmost edge of the line.

"You will not feel pain," she said. "You will feel perhaps a tingling sensation, but no more." I nodded, swallowed.

She pressed down against me firmly, and the blade of the scalpel slipped through my flesh, parting it neatly with little resistance. The smooth metal was cold inside my stomach, but there was no pain. Tugging gently on the grip she laid open my abdomen with one long slow stroke. Blood welled up from the wound. Moving her hands quickly, she traced a series of white symbols in the air, and my blood vanished as quickly as it emerged, reappearing at the bottom of a large basin on the floor.

She traced another line vertically across my stomach and made another swift, sure cut, then pulled the thick flaps of flesh apart and stuck them to my sides with short, slim silver pins.

I looked down across my body, into my opened abdomen, watching the soft and sinuous shivering of organs. She stroked my intestines gently, reverently, then wrapped several loops around her hands and tugged them free of my abdominal cavity.

"These will be the first to go," she said, and then her work began in earnest.