Juliette Miranda

(NOTE: This is the next installment of my Clarissa series. If you’d like to read the first, it’s posted in my archives. Fair warning – this story is graphic, likely disturbing to sensitive readers, and is meant as a work of HORROR FICTION. Don’t read it if you don’t like horror.)

2.

“Is this how it starts?” she wondered. The website Clarissa was viewing promised “elite suffering” and it most certainly delivered. The authenticity of it all pleased her tremendously. She was tired of watching staged whippings, where what should have been screams come out as giggles, and needle “play” was nothing more than a few glorified piercings.

Those fanciful downloads catered to people who lacked Clarissa’s reserve. She found it absurd that someone would prefer to experience the illusion of pain when the real thing was so much more fascinating. The so-called elite suffering website delivered a far superior presentation than any she’d witnessed thus far.

Indeed, the needle and black thread being woven through a writhing woman’s labia was as real and vivid as Clarissa desired. As she watched blood bubble and smear in bright streaks along the woman’s spread thighs, she knew the resounding screams were genuine. The only downside Clarissa could see was that none of the dialogue was in English.

The human body has such possibilities with the right ingenuity. There was such energy to be had in testing its tolerance, in seeing, smelling and feeling the results. Clarissa often solicited stories about medical procedures from people she knew just to be one heartbeat closer to the experience. But in asking “Did that hurt?” Clarissa was not interested in the well being of her friends, as they thought. She more enjoyed seeing the recollection of fear that built in their eyes; liked hearing the pitchy tremble in their voices as they recalled the sensation of pointed steel against skin.

Clarissa could feel her enthrallment with physiology and blood leading her to more tangible means of appreciation. She’d already made the arrangements, in fact.

Her girlfriend was stretched out on the procedure table that Clarissa kept in her White Room. Although she had already cleaned and marked her, Clarissa continued to eye her friend’s skin.

She focused her gaze on her breasts, taking in their fullness, and let her eyes trail the expanse of her body. Had her friend’s eyes been open, she might have squirmed under the investigation. Certainly, it wasn’t entirely necessary to stare so long at the girl’s prone body.

Clarissa leaned forward and pinched the skin between her friend’s breasts with her thumb and index finger. The sensation wasn’t quite what she’d hoped for – she found her surgical gloves to be a mild annoyance. Sadly, they were a necessity, not just for appearances, but to appease Clarissa’s own fastidious nature. She was, above all else, practical.

She watched her friend’s breathing grow deeper. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and at the top of her next exhale, Clarissa forced a dermal punch directly through her supple skin and twisted it right into the subcutaneous tissue.

Removing that circle of flesh was more satisfying than she envisioned. She smiled at the pooling of blood that seeped from the gape; it made it easier for her to insert the cold, hard steel of her elevating tool into the hole. Slowly, Clarissa worked her way across the subdermis, separating the skin layers coolly, as though it were the single most natural thing she could be doing.

She almost wanted to giggle. There was a distinct pleasure to forcing the skin into new positions. Even the subtle sounds that came from tearing flesh to create the pocket for the steel rod she now slid into her friend gave her a heady buzz.

She was finished far too fast for her liking. It was only a 12-gage rod she inserted, externally threaded on one end so that she could screw a small jewel into it. Daubing the wound off with a saltwater solution, she felt minor disappointment. There really hadn’t been so much blood, and Clarissa could think of far more things she’d like to do.

Clarissa’s friend sat up. She was handed a mirror and considered her reflection. The trendy microdermal chest anchor looked just as perfect as Clarissa had promised.

This was, after all, just a glorified piercing, so Clarissa couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm her friend did. But she smiled at her as she busied herself cleaning the room.

Her White Room was a work of medical art, stocked precisely and more thoroughly than a doctor’s office. Clarissa was pleased at how easy it was to acquire the tools of the trade, though her sharps did require somewhat more… creativity to obtain.

Now that she’d had a chance to really look at her surroundings, Clarissa’s friend was unnerved. The sterility that had initially seemed so reassuring now seemed blinding. There was no comfort to be found in the room, no color of any sort aside from the industrial glare of stainless steel.

Nervously, she chattered on while Clarissa wiped down her trays and counter. “You did such a good job,” she told Clarissa. “You must do a lot of piercings. Do you have a lot of customers?”

Clarissa, who had just slid a cauterizing pen from its place in a drawer, turned to face her friend. She figured she may as well let her in on her little secret.

“Actually,” she said with a small wink, “I’ve never done this before. You’re my first.”

Her friend started to back away as Clarissa approached her. “Don’t worry about it,” said Clarissa. “I knew I’d be good at it.” And that, Clarissa knew, was only the beginning.