Mark Pearson
Blood Work

© 2009

The woman's muscles spasmed and as she floated towards consciousness she heard a man's voice, and what she heard made her want to scream and kick and thrash her arms. But she couldn't move. She had been drugged, she knew that. And the drugs held her paralysed. She could barely open her eyes a millimetre but it was enough to see what the man held in his hand and if she had been able to scream she would have ripped her lungs apart doing so.

The blade in the man's hands dipped and she could feel the flesh and muscles of her stomach parting. No pain. But she could feel it. She could see his head bending lower, his other hand reaching forth, reaching into her. Violating her. Then he stood back, holding a mass of tissue in his hand, blood dripping from it as if he was squeezing what he held. And she closed her eyes, willing it to stop. Suddenly she could feel the cool air, feel it lift the heat from her skin. As she sank deeper inside herself, she could picture that heat like a fine cloud of particles swirling up into the black inkiness of the night sky, separating, dissolving and lost to the universe.

And then she didn't feel anything at all.