Voices spoke through a tunnel, echoing with strange vibrations in his head. Kello whimpered, struggling through confusion as thick as molasses. Pain throbbed in his chest, and though he felt cold, heat pulsed through him, a burning agony slicing sharply through his body. Something brushed at the edge of his thoughts. Something important he was supposed to remember. What was it?
Muffled clinking and snipping pulled him toward consciousness, but he resisted. A brief period of silence was broken with a loud clanking sound. A bright presence seemed to hang over him, pressing downward to suffocate him, an initial fierce spear of pain, until finally… everything stopped. Once again, he was pinned to the surface beneath him, and he floated in dark oblivion, caught between waking and sleeping. He drifted deeper, carefully avoiding concentrating too much on the pain that had befallen him. His breathing was erratic, strained and shallow. Slender rib bones spread out, opening his ribcage and accenting his slender stomach beneath.
The tall man who had taken him, Kesto Vartija, lingered over him with morbid fascination, and Kello recognized him vaguely… he was known in Germany as a brilliant medical doctor, once appointed to work for royalty, who'd declared him long ago to be the man who would bring the nation out of the dark ages and diving freely into a future of innovation and wonder. Vartija was devilishly intellectual and disgustingly wealthy, able to buy whatever he wanted, yet he seemed to hoard the majority of his money away, never even buying new clothing or furniture. He was, at the present moment, dressed in a ragged gray wool pullover robe that hung to his sandaled feet with frayed strands. He ran his fingertips curiously down his pointed chin and grinned at the small rebel boy lying before him. Kello trembled on the table, his eyes open wide, his hands shaking. His feathered jet-black hair was soaked in sweat, yet he was freezing cold, trembling, wishing more than anything for a warm overcoat or a cozy fireplace to protect him.
Vartija's servant, a frumpy stick-thin lady called Miss Kasvis, stood by with a mop and bucket full of clean soapy water, her face haggard and drenched in grease. She never quite seemed to move, her bristly auburn hair sticking out in all directions, her own gray wool robe, which looked to be a filthy hand-me-down from her Master, draped on her body like a shroud. Kello swallowed with difficulty through his dry throat. He'd been without water for hours, to the point where he would have almost been willing to drink from Miss Kasvis's soap-laden bucket.
Vartija reached out and placed his palm on Kello's chest, pushing into him until the pressure forced air out of his lungs. He coughed harshly, shuddering as the doctor's hooked fingers moved under his ribs. Miss Kasvis winced, but didn't speak a word, her own hands gripped tightly around the handle of her mop. There were, Kello could see, traces of her Master's scientific experimentation etched into the sides of her head, two distinct red marks on her temples that appeared to have been burned right into her skin. Vartija made his servants from subjects he could afford to buy, but Miss Kavis's prior history was, like her mind apparently, charred and scalded and buried forever.
Kello closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing. He didn't want to end up like Miss Kasvis, a silent servant with no identity or memories or life of her own, just a mindless willow tree adrift in the wind of her Master's control… but he was paralyzed, his breath catching in his chest as he saw Vartija's hands going to his shirt and tearing it open. There was a shattering burst of clicking, and Kello realized that it was coming from a rusty mechanical tool in the doctor's bony fingers. He traced a sharp yellow fingernail down the boy's hollow stomach before pressing down again, burying his clenched knuckles into his body. "The internal organs are located here," he told Miss Kasvis, "and once I open up the stomach, I can harvest them for my studies."
Kello's vision began to blur, and warm tears shone in his eyes. He couldn't make a sound as Vartija leaned in towards him, seeming to grow in size, rising high with gnashing teeth, salivating like a mad dog. He had a sharp needle in his other hand, within it a fluorescent green substance that almost seemed to glow vividly in the dim light of the room.
It hurt for only a moment as the needle sank into his wrist... but then the drug travelled through his blood, quickly overtaking him, rendering him immobile, frozen, but alert and awake, unable to do anything more than blink his eyes and breathe stiffly. He tried to lean away, but the spreading numbness made his struggles weaker and weaker. Whatever the doctor had put in his body had left him still and quiet. He was like a doll, immobile but existing, trapped in catatonia.
He felt lost in a heinous nightmare as he saw the sharp hooked tool sink into him, dragging along his body, splitting his stomach open. Blood poured from his body like thick water, yet there was no pain… but he still felt it, something moving towards him, then through him. His internal organs, soft and unresisting, went cold as the hook drifted against him, pressing down heavily and digging forward… and then, rather suddenly, Vartija's hands replaced the sharp tool. They slipped into him, and he felt as the doctor rummaged around, gripping through his stomach and squeezing down harshly with the awful sensation of pulling, and he wondered if he might not lose his mind before he died when he saw Vartija's hands dragging his intestines from his torn abdomen. Kello shivered, immobile and trapped. Vartija was tearing him apart noisily, pulling more and more of his intestines loose.
He was surprised by an even stronger tug than before when Vartija found his liver, and the doctor's hand slipped back into the gaping wound. Kello didn't feel any pain… just a horrible, hazy disorientation as his liver was gripped violently in Vartija's fingers, torn free and set aside. Miss Kasvis, moving with jittery, jerky steps, began mopping up scarlet blood from the floor. Her eyes, staring blankly, saw nothing. Kello didn't care. He was beyond even the horror of what was happening. He just wished he would stop experiencing it in such shocking detail. Vartija had gone back to the boy's intestines, kneading the organs like bread dough in his bony hands, pressing down slowly, letting the heel of his hand shove back down with a squelch, giving gentle squeezes, digging, searching for other organs he could remove. Kello's abdomen had sunk down, hollow, as Vartija kept on slicing and pulling, hunting and gripping around.
Kello felt tired, ill, as though he were falling into some foggy illusion of a coma, but then the pointed metal hook returned, pressing against his sternum and tearing downward viciously, revealing the bones of his ribcage. Vartija had gotten messier, squeezing the soft lining of Kello's stomach like a dishcloth and ripping the organ from his body in a haste, holding it towards the empty eyes of Miss Kasvis. The mute servant stared for just a moment, unfazed, only to return right back to her mopping duty as soon as she was finished. There was more blood gushing forth, spilling from the operating table, and gratefully, Kello had finally noticed a blackening around the edges of his vision. Vartija was grabbing at other organs, his spleen, his kidneys, tearing them free, but Kello didn't feel so frightened, not anymore. He could only feel his heart beating, so slowly it was almost as if he were asleep… but it wasn't a dream, much as he might wish it was. Vartija reached for it, caressing it almost gently before taking it in his grip…
