The doctor kneels behind him as he cuts. Each time, she leans a little closer, until she's whispering in his ear. Her breath is cherry licorice, but her hair smells like blood. Beneath that, a smell like the nurse's office at school lingers around her. He wonders if that's just how she naturally smells, like how Mommy smelled like violets, or Daddy gun oil.
"No no, Jackie," the doctor says. "That's crooked."
It's hard. If his hand shakes even a little, the arc goes wild. The scalpel blade is a tiny thing, and the cuts it makes are paper thin. It would be difficult even at an arm's length, and he's not at arm's length. No, the doctor has him cut from across the kitchen. (Daddy) The patient is propped up against the far wall, unconscious, already riddled with failed cuts.
He expects her to hit him; to yell and slap the side of his head like Daddy would, but she hasn't done that. Not even now, after he's messed up the cuts so many times.
But, in another way, what the doctor does is worse than hitting. Much worse.
"Let's try again." She says.
"I'm sorry." Jack says. His lips are dry, and he can't stop himself worrying the lower with his teeth.
"Don't be sorry, kiddo. Practice makes perfect, after all!"
Her hand leaves his to fish in the pocket of her coat. She has a lot of pockets and jingles like coins whenever she moves too quickly. The remote she withdraws looks like a tv remote, but with more buttons. This is the tenth time he's seen it today.
Click.
Spidery little robots emerge from one of the cupboards. It's the one where Mommy puts his cereal, low to the floor so he can reach it. He was big enough to make his own breakfast. The spiders click and whir across the linoleum until they reach the man. One spider deploys gauze from its abdomen, while the other wields a needle and thread to stitch the cut closed.
There are seven identical sutures on the man's bare torso alone.
Jack waits in silence. The doctor hums quietly to herself, idly twirling one of her long, blonde curls.
The spiders finish and return to their spot in the cupboard. Jack feels his hand begin to shake. She'll make him cut again now.
"Alrighty, Jackie, let's try it again." The doctor says.
"It's Jack." He says.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. He shouldn't have said anything. Now he's in trouble. Being stupid is what let Daddy trick him in the first place.
But the doctor laughs, high and musical.
Jack actually turns in place to look at her. Kneeling, she's not much taller than he is, and he's still not sure about her age. Older than him, but younger than Mommy. Old enough to be an adult though.
She winks a mismatched eye at him before smiling. Her smile stretches from ear to ear.
Literally.
The ends of her mouth are stitched closed, but the line of threads goes wide, elongating her smile into something dreadful.
"Just Jack, huh? You know…" She says slowly, one mutilated lip quirking upward. "I never introduced myself. How rude of me."
Her hand, each nail painted with a red cross, sweeps out to point at the striped woman in the corner of the kitchen. Jack tries not to look at her. She's naked. The striped woman doesn't react to the attention; continues gnawing on (Mommy) a woman's arm.
"That's my bestie Siberian," the doctor croons. "And King, and Toothsome, and MurderRat, and Hatchethands, and…"
Each new name merits a new line of terror down Jack's spine. They aren't people. None of them are people. They're Frankensteins. Dead, ugly things stitched together like mismatched puzzle pieces. She brought Frankensteins into his house.
"And then there's me," she says. "Doctor Bonesaw, the one and only!"
The pause stretches out uncomfortably. Doctor Bonesaw, the one and only raises an eyebrow at him.
He fakes a smile.
"Yay."
She seems satisfied. She resettles herself behind him, one hand resting on his shoulder.
"Now then, Jack, can you begin with a six inch incision in the patient's throat? Make it vertical, beginning with the underside of the jaw and ending at the top of the sternum."
He doesn't know what any of the words mean, only that he's expected to cut again. He can't. Not again. Not even if it's Daddy. Because Daddy lied about a lot of things, but that didn't mean that Jack wanted him to-
Her cloying breath brushes his ear. "Do you need some help?"
He can't.
Jack spins, his swing wild. The silver arc sweeps out from the scalpel blade, cuts across two cabinets, the wall clock, Bonesaw's face, and then ends with the cabinets on the other side.
A coil of blonde hair hits the floor.
She slumps backward, joining her hair on the floor.
Siberian stands up, meat and gristle falling from lips suddenly bared in a snarl.
Jack raises the knife toward her too, but a sound freezes him on the spot.
Laughter.
The doctor sits up, head lolling bonelessly. The gash across her face goes from her right jawbone to her left temple. One side of her mouth is slack, the stitches severed, exposing the glistening flesh inside her cheek. Her right eye is a weeping, oozing mess, the eyelid in two flaps.
And she laughs. The sound bubbling up through a mouthful of blood to fill the kitchen. Her hand comes up to probe the cut; fingers pressing into it indiscriminately.
"Very good, Jack. That's the cleanest cut you've made all day." She rolls her head up, smiling crookedly. "Siberian, be a dear and get me that woman's eye, please."
Siberian nods.
Jack turns away, but the wet, squelching noises sends him heaving. He vomits into the potted plant by the door. One of the Frankensteins is standing next to the plant, looking at him. The thing's smell- like old, moldy meat, has him coughing up bile, trying to empty an already empty stomach.
A hand pats him on the back, rubs him gently, like Mommy always did when he got sick.
Jack turns, wiping his mouth.
Bonesaw beams down at him. The cut he made has already closed, but her face is still bloody.
"I'm sorry." He says.
He's not sorry. Doesn't know what to say anymore.
The world has stopped making sense.
"That's okay." Bonesaw says. "You'll get it with practice."
She holds the scalpel out to him.
"We've got all the time in the world, Jack."
Bonesaw winks at him with his mother's eye.
XXX
A repost of an old oneshot. Bonesaw and Jack switch places/characters, giving us an adult-Bonesaw recruting a six-year old Jack.
It didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped, and even now I can't think of it as anything more than 'interesting.' A lot of the narration style came out of rereading Stephen King's The Shining, and being inspired by Danny's child's perspective on horrifying things.