She thumbs the tumor where it rubbed on the boning of her bra. Her work shirt is half undone, her chest exposed to the mirror. The hooks unclasp, and it’s there in full view: pill-sized, pill-hard and intradermal. She squeezes, this is no pimple – the skin that hides it turns a deeper pink and that’s the end of it. An intruder to the bathroom fails to enter, the door ruts the lock. She buttons her blouse and smooths out her hair to return to her work. The tumor snugged in its place over her breastbone, against the bra, beneath the blouse.
At home, the blouse is torn open for inspection. The woman lives alone, where no-one will stop her picking and probing. Her thumb angles it left, right. The node is anchored and completely numb. How long has it been growing there? It’s been a long winter. When dressing and undressing in the dark, certain sacrifices are made. It’s entirely possible for a woman to miss the point, no matter what she thinks she’s agreed to lose when signing the contract. Every job has its roadblocks. This was little more than the latest in a string of unanticipated set-backs.
The tumor is clothed in soft skin, reddened from inspection. It slides downward when her thumb slips sideways, aghast and curious, she slides the pill further down and finds no resistance, no pain in the slightest. The effort translates it a few centimeters lower. The woman’s skin is split open. She opens a thin, oval window through yellow fat to the wet, pink muscle underneath. A clean wound, she braces for burning that she expects but doesn’t feel. For minutes, she is thrown back on her ass in shock before the mirror. Her features are catlike. She crawls forward again to inspect her opening. The tumor lies waiting, the skin above shows no sign of releasing it and when she tries to push it back up where it came from, it refuses. A dilemma presents itself. Reason dictates an open wound should endeavour to remain small – though reason has not encountered a wound as willing as this. Why didn’t it hurt? She thinks she might have gotten lucky. Logic dictates that harm creates pain. She will have to keep pushing to feel some. Then – and only then – will her condition make sense.
As she tests, the pill slides further until it rests at the beginning of her stomach, a trail skating behind it like the fly of a dress. There is still no pain, but there’s something like it. Slowly now, the body peels tenderly, the split inches as the cells divide. Electricity from their parting comes in small dispersals, easy warmth. The sensation deepens with the cut, she realizes when the tumor passes over the naval that she is out of splittable skin. How unfair. Feline face flushed, mouth agape, torso yawning with muscle sparkling under the drooping cuts. Pill-like tumor pressed and ready over the mound of her cunt.
She forces it down, measuring her limits. Her skin gives way. Pleasure courses thicker and hotter than blood though unready veins. The passage is savoured. Movement of the tumor over the slick flesh of her vagina arches and blossoms to unimaginable heights at every millimetre. It shoots through her legs and cools the palms of her feet. She feels holes torn where none have appeared. But alas! Her openings meet at last and somehow the tumor becomes lost inside her. It is gone.
What remains is the woman, legs spread to reveal the opening wide enough to dissect her body to the breasts. Underneath the wrapping, the muscle is healthy and vibrant. It trembles involuntarily when inspected.
Breath clouds her face in the glass, but she is not currently interested in breath.. Gently, she pulls the sides of the wound wider, it gives way easily. Pain refuses to find her, friction between skin and muscle is like slipping an old burn through velvet. Fingers find their way under. She is confronted with the image of herself, a woman she knows well, naked, panting and dipping her hands beneath her skin as though she were hungrily caressing a lover under their clothes. Whole hand under, whole hand up. The rift splits more where her arm has gone, it passes the breastbone to her neck. Wrapped in ecstasy, she has torn the skin all the way to her face in want of further release. Her fingertips run over her teeth and she recoils, at last, in face of what she has done. Is continuing to do. Terror grips wide eyes for a moment and the shock has sent her limbs moving spasmodically.
She catches her loosened skin on the carpet.
It pulls to the side, replacing fear with ecstatic friction once again and her thoughts of repercussion are replaced by greed. Her hand runs under the opposing arm and removes it like a glove. Just as simply, the other is removed, then she works on loosening her leg. She slips out of herself like stockings. Leveraging her hands over her top row of teeth, she reaches up, pulling her face off like a hood. She drops the whole thing on the floor, a deflated heap of blood and flesh.
Free from her binding, the body feels lighter, less agitated. The pleasure has died down to an insignificant hum. But has not yet made a full exit, as the open air against her muscle brings a slight tingling sensation. Blood billows out around her feet like a shadow where she walks on her plush cream carpet, the fibres putting welcome shocks through her naked soles. Facing her in the mirror is a glistening wide-eyed creature of meat. Hairless, lipless, quivering red ape of tendons and sinew. Although it moves at her command, strangely, there is no compulsion to covet or mourn for it. Nor are there thoughts of returning to the chrysalis. She kneels in a widening pool of blood, raw palms smearing the mirror where her teeth grind the glass.