Little Girl No More

It was clear that Garotinha didn’t have any idea what was about to happen to her, but she was visibly shaking when a man wheeled a table of tools in from the side of the stage with the prop room. It seemed a shame that after her hair was cut short that morning, which seemed so long ago, that the man would shave the rest of Garotinha’s hair off on stage.

Then, consulting what seemed to be some sort of diagram, Sarumon set about drawing what I assumed were some sort of surgical guidelines along the young girl’s head, encompassing her ears and her eyes and much of her skull.

Next, Garotinha was made to strip, which unfortunately didn’t surprise me, but I still shut my eyes when the wizard traced a line down her back and the guards had to hold Garotinha upright as she burst into tears.

I glanced back to the stage as they were strapping her to the upright operating table, which left her bound chest-down, her arms and legs spread like a star, and her head tilted upward, with her chin resting against the table, between two restraining clamps. I recall thinking, “What kind of fucked up operation are they going to do with her lying on her chest?” The answer would come soon enough.

Consulting the diagram one last time, and giving it an approving nod, the wizard pulled out a cloth bag and began sprinkling some kind of powder on the ground in strange patterns as the guards retreated to the edges of the stage.

Sarumon placed the end of his gnarled wooden staff against Garotinha’s back, like it was a spear ready to impale her, and began chanting lines in one language after another. Eventually, he seemed to find the right one as his expression changed and he continued speaking in that strange language.

It began with a series of cracks that I would say, “echoed across the chamber”, except that the acoustics of the room wouldn’t allow such a thing. Anyway, the initial cracks seemed to startle Garotinha to the point that she lost her breath and was left desperately gasping.

With the staff moved down to Garotinha’s butt, the cracking was replaced with the sound of tearing flesh, which was only loud against the oppressive quite from the rest of the chamber. The skin split and contorted as it appeared Sarumon was pulling her spine out of her ass.

The truth of the matter became apparent what seemed like hours later, but was probably only a matter of minutes. From Garotinha’s body, a writhing tail hung twitching and batting violently back and forth as its surface roiled and warped.

When the wizard moved up to her head, he rested his staff against her ear and it began to contort, almost as if it was being dissolved by some sort of unseen acid boiling beneath the poor girl’s skin. As the last of it melted, he drew the stuff upward along her skull, leading to a further series of terrible cracks and, this time, Garotinha did scream.

It was a grotesque sight to see the churning mass of what had once been her ear squirm up her head to the bleeding gash atop her skull, like a slug climbing a leaf. When it got there, it flowed from the wound in a bizarre manner, utterly defying gravity as it extended in a sickening pinkish mass, eventually forming a curved triangular shape protruding ten or fifteen centimeters from her skull.

Slithering tendrils, of what I now assume to be tendons or ligaments or whatever, began to snake from under Garotinha’s torn skin and crawl up the cartilaginous protrusion and rear up like a snake about to strike before thrusting down into the mass, trying to anchor themselves in mimicry of a leach.

Garotinha’s skin began to creep up and over the squirming mass and the wizard stepped to the left to repeat the process on the girl's other ear.

My former cellmate had screamed herself hoarse by the time the mad man moved to her eyes. I had to look away as the surface of the nearer one seemed to boil and disappear in a small plume of steam. In what must be the smallest mercy ever, the ogre holding me allowed me to turn my head toward the audience, where I only caught the occasional mad flick of a tail that had finally covered itself in skin and was now sprouting odd patches of stubbly hair.

By the time the wizard finished, Garotinha had, mercifully, fallen ****. Not willing to let a little thing like consciousness deter them, the guards unstrapped her and held her limp and naked form up before the audience, where bidding began.

I, however, didn’t listen to how high the bidding went on the poor kid who had been warped and twisted by some kind of curse that I didn’t understand. Instead, I turned my attention to the bastard that had done it to her.