This takes place in the same world as Phil Tippett’s Mad God. In that film there is a live vivisection and this is my take on it.

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The scavenger came too slowly.

Sickly yellow light and blood filled tubes filled his vision. He tried to move, move anything at all, but it was as if his brain were disconnected from his body. All he could do was look around. He couldn’t even blink.

A dull fear panged at the back of his mind. He knew what this place was used for but he couldn’t quite pull the memory from the muddled, inky depths of his mind.

He glanced around the septic room. The walls around him were blackened by mold and splattered blood, their paint peeling and stained. A tray sat by his bedside with a blood soaked fabric underneath antiseptic needles and medical knives and syringes strewn beside them. A single rusted metal clock sat on the far wall.

His vision tunneled on the clock as horror dawned on him. The second hand seemed to slow and the ticking grew louder.

The ticking sounded strange, as if someone was plucking a metal prong or releasing a metal spring, allowing the metal to return to its original form only to resume the process all over again with each time causing it to warp and distort the noise a little more.

The ticking fell into a rhythm, matching his heartbeat as it started to quicken, and his eyes darted above him in panic. There were x-rays on the walls and a brief memory flashed across his mind.

A syringe jammed into his throat. His strength beginning to wane. Light fading into spots of black and white.

A ringing filled his ears, but he wasn’t given time to recover as shadows entered the doorway to his room. They walk over and situate themselves by his bed (Bed? Table? He didn’t know. He couldn’t feel what was beneath him), becoming black silhouettes against the suddenly burning bright glow of the lights above him.

The bigger silhouette grabs a pair of plastic gloves and puts them on. The synthetic plastic stretches over his hand as he pulls it down and flexes his fingers, making sure it fits perfectly against his skin. He lets go of the bottom and the resulting snap is dulled by the fabric of his sleeve.

The smaller shadow’s glasses glint in the dim lighting as they grab one of the scalpels strewn across the tray by the bedside and hand it to the doctor. The movements are stilted, mechanical, almost as if the scene happening before the scavenger’s eyes was missing frames.

His breathing grows shaky as the scalpel gets closer to his chest and it vaguely registers that all of his clothes are missing. All he has covering him is a thick layer of dirty bandages, worn by the sweat and gentle rub of the layers he is forced to wear while exploring the unknown depths.

None of that matters because the scalpel cuts through the bandages and flesh with ease. Blood pours from the cut, dyeing the already stained bandages red.

The lack of pain does little to ease the terror of seeing his chest and belly split open in fact in some ways it makes it worse. Pain tells you you’re still alive. It tells you that you exist, especially in a world like this.

Everything feels like he’s seeing it through someone else’s eyes. He can’t feel the sharp pain of being cut into. He can’t feel the warmth of his own blood. He can’t feel the fingers digging into the newly created seam in his flesh, his chest being pried open and his ribs being broken, jagged and uneven, to expose his heart and organs.

His mind screams to do something, anything, to stop himself from getting torn apart, but all he can manage is a pitiful twitch of the fingers on his left hand that sends pins and needles through his arm.

The shadow’s hands disappeared into his chest cavity. The wet, sticky shlormp of blood and guts being roughly displaced could be heard as the doctor dug around inside him.

Thick, congealed blood spurts from his body coating the doctor and walls a dark magenta. Slimy film and organs are removed and unceremoniously dropped onto the floor. The doctor diving back in immediately each time he pulls back.

This seems to go on forever before the distorted jingling of something metal hitting the messy linoleum floor could be heard. Jewelry, maps, and coins were being pulled from among his organs.

He wondered if he was unique in any way. If anything being pulled from him gave him any semblance of individuality or if it was all something the doctor had seen before.

He knows this is where scavengers are brought to die. How he’s dying isn’t unique just like how the mission he carried out in life wasn’t unique. Was he just another identical cog that came and went? Inconsequential and irrelevant?

Was he just like that hair doll he watched be trampled to death? Just another pointless, inevitable demise that no one will notice?

He doesn’t know and he probably won’t ever know.

The scavenger is forced to look away as handfuls upon handfuls of items are pulled from his stomach to try and provide distraction from the thoughts toiling away in his brain.

His eyes settled on the far wall where some of his blood had splattered during the procedure. His mind detached as he watched the blood ooze down the wall, light glinting off it in a way that accentuated every rivulet of blood that slowly slipped down towards the floor.

He doesn’t know how long he was staring but he was shocked back to the present by the wet slap of damp paper hitting the floor below. His eyes are drawn back to the arms that are up to their elbows within him.

The next thing the shadow pulled out wasn’t anything he’d seen before. It looked like another being, stiff and rigid as if it had been dead for a while. The doctor looked it over for a second before it was dropped to the floor, treated with the same dignity as the gold and guts before it.

Two more are pulled from his body and dropped before one comes out writhing and crying, sharp and piercing, cutting through the artificial sound of machines beeping and respirators forcing air in and out of useless lungs.

The smaller shadow, the assistant, offers a small bin the wiggling body is thrown into. The doctor doesn’t even give it a second glance. The assistant, however, gently wraps it in a fuzzy pink blanket completely out of place in this environment. There’s a hint of care that can be seen through the blood, grime, and protective gear obscuring the assistant’s face - care that shouldn’t be there considering where they are and what she’s doing - but it is closely followed by sadness and the scavenger understands the being’s fate.

Nothing lasts here, let alone something as helpless and fragile as that thing pulled from his belly. At least something cared for it, however briefly, before it had to go.

She carefully cradles the thing in her arms and rushes off. The doctor doesn’t even acknowledge the absence, continuing to prep something as the crying fades down the hall.

He hears a switch flip just out of his line of sight and the tools attached to the operating table come to life. The one on his right whirred to life, its jagged teeth spinning in a circle, and pushed into his head, drilling through the bandages and bone to reach his brain.

He hears the bone grinding to dust, sees the boredom in the doctor’s posture, and knows there’s nothing special about him. He’s just one of hundreds they go through every day and yet a part of him wants to escape and live out his life even if it is in the world of suffering he is surrounded by.

He doesn’t need to be special. He just wants to be.

He guesses it doesn’t matter because he’s already–

…