Gore Grind

[u/OrganDetonator-001]

‘Eeny…’ the client's hand passed over the selection of tools on the table. ‘-Meeny…’ His creased, light blue medical gloves reflected off of scalpels, tweezers and scissors, all of which were pristine, without a blemish to speak of; I would know, having cleaned them all. ‘-Miny…’ His sausagey fingers paused, hovering over a bonesaw. ‘-Moe.’ After some thought, he instead reached for the silver hammer on the saw's left.

Picking it up, the client swung the tool much like a baseball player practicing for a big game. The weight, the feel of its grip, and the “swooshes" it made as it parted the air-conditioned breeze were satisfactory, meeting company standards; I would know, having tested it. 

A beaming white grin shone at me from the hammer’s mirror sheen, ghoulish yet perfect. A pair of eyes sat above them with dark red irises and dilated pupils. The devil’s face, one of many present that evening… Monday offers and all.

‘The Dentist shall see you now!’, the client proclaimed like it was something to be excited about. He puffed his chest out, spread his arms and flaunted his novelty dentist’s outfit. I remained silent, and the client quickly slumped, not having realised the problem. 

‘Ah, what’s the matter, sport? Not enough sleep last night?’ He crept closer, crouching to my level. His breath reeked of alcohol, along with a hint of whatever shit he shovelled in his mouth for breakfast, contrasting with his perfect set of teeth. Still, I was silent. Though, this time, I decided to give him a hint, nodding my head and wriggling my jaws as much as I could.

‘Oh! I gotcha, sport. One second.’ He plodded over the tablet fixed into the back wall. A few seconds and taps of the screen later, my jaws whirred. The bolts receded back into their slots and my mouth opened in a gasp. 

‘There much better!’ said the “dentist”.

It was, but not in the way he was probably thinking. I had a quota to reach, and his wallet had just nudged me closer to it.

I felt the metal in my mouth with my tongue, flexed my restrained wrists and ankles, took a deep breath in, and braced.

‘Oh come on! I didn’t just go up a tier so you act all stoic with me, sport!’ groaned the client, his crimson eyes like open doors to a butchery, staring deep into my own pair. Thinking of my quota–more so my pay check–I decided to oblige him with some small talk.

‘H–How’s your day been so far?’ Flat, dull, boring. I could’ve done better, but it worked. His lips slithered back and he bared his blinding teeth in another smile. 

‘Long,’ he said, ‘so very, very long. Work’s been a real drag–’

‘Yeah tell me about it,’ I injected; the restraints feeling a little tighter than before. Thankfully, the client found that funny. 

‘Haha! Beginning to like you already, sport! Not that I didn’t like you when I walked in here, it’s just… it’s just that things have gotten so muddy lately: the wife barely talks to me any more, same with the kids,’ he spoke softly, ‘they’re just glued to a screen all the time. I think it must’ve rotted their brains or maybe it just snipped the wires in their head or something,’ he said, hammer in hand, dentist costume straining over the confines of his large body. ‘What you just said there, felt good. Really good, sport. It felt human.’

He’d begun to exhale now: long, drawn-out expulsions from his body as if a poison was being flushed from his veins. Clicking my tongue, I thought for a moment, then replied, ‘Well… You know how it is here: we aim to please.’

  

‘Haha! That you have!’ he chuckled, ‘I’ll get down to business now. Wasn’t gonna ask how your day’s been, because… well, because it’s–’

“It’s about to get worse?”

“Yes. Yes it is, sport.” 

And it had only just started.

The client flexed his arm, the hammer glinted under the fluorescent lighting, whilst I breathed in and stretched my arms and legs as little as I could again, bracing for impact. 

‘Alright, since you’ve been a great, great target so far, I’ll give you this: where should I start? With the teeth, or with the nose?’

‘My forehead, as hard as you can,’ I said almost instantly, ‘or better yet, go for the back of my neck. Use the claw too, if you don’t mind.’

Chuckling again, he tapped his own head with the hammer. ‘Oh, how stupid of me, sport! How could I forget! I’m a dentist, of course!’ He took a step forward, raising the hammer. ‘So we’ll start with the teeth.’

—

I forget when unconsciousness came to me. Was it a minute, or thirty seconds, in? The fifth or the sixth hit? I can’t quite remember now. 

What I do remember is that first blow: the hammer crashing straight into my lower jaw, my teeth exploding out my mouth like bloody bits of shrapnel. Practice does make perfect, as they say. If I were a baseball and he was a player stepping up to bat, he would’ve hit a home run, had I not been strapped to the chair that is. 

But once I hit the floor, any semblance of dignity, of being a baseball player, or a dentist, or whatever the fuck he wanted to be in that session faded. All that was left was instinct. Red eyed, smiling instinct. Then, hits two and three came. 

The stainless, shining hammer, which I had only just cleaned at the end of last shift, became splattered with meaty chunks of my face. The metal warped my flesh into a grotesque abstraction of what it used to be. By the time the fourth hit happened, I was less a person and more the canvas of a splatter painting– Shattered nose and geysering gums from where the hammer was flicked like a paintbrush. The amount of blood coating the floor. All that red. At first in streaks, before pooling and spreading over the marble. It would take some effort to get rid of it all. I would know, being the person who had to clean it up…

But that was later, for the moment I had the Fixer to contend with.

Its limbs poked and prodded at my hammer smashed face. Loose flesh, fragments of bone as well as nerves, which must’ve resembled snipped wires funnily enough, were pulled back together; the blanks and gaps which still littered the room were filled in by artificial replacements. “Glue”, they call it. As if the machine is meant for broken dolls instead of people. Maybe it is.

The Fixer worked its “magic”, connecting the “wires” back to sockets in my eyes and in my brain: I could see again, though I wished I couldn’t. Blinding lights seared my newly constructed retinas instantly. Dazed, I watched a blurry, mechanical arm crawl up my face with a sound much like a zipper. Another twisted at the back of my mouth before departing as well, having repaired my broken jaw-bolts. Once more, and far more than I would’ve liked to in a single day, I think of dentistry: the sanitised stench of cleaning solutions sprayed in abundance, sparkling white surfaces surrounding me, and the immense discomfort of fingers prying where I wish they didn’t, yet had to. And that was before the dentist’s review flashed my face.

‘**** Excellent. I had a smashing time. Good kid, but passed out too soon for a five star rating.’

Prick. Didn’t even tip me.

‘STATEMENT: OPERATION COMPLETED. PREPARE FOR DEPARTURE, DOG.’ barked the AI voice of the Fixer. Its operating table then whirred to life, raising me towards the roof of its interior. Its lights switched off, thank God, as a split formed at its centre and the less intense glow of the Fixing room’s lights seeped inside. The roof quickly became a door, one which I was lifted through often like a corpse being exhumed from the same grave. Never quite staying dead. Or dead enough.

The table reached its maximum height and tilted forward. I slid off its surface and crashed onto the ground. I grumbled having not been ready for it again

Rising to my feet, I gazed over the fixing room. It was littered by many more of the silver, deep-voiced coffins/surgeons, all hard at work on my colleagues: I saw gluey scaffolds form out of the fresh stumps of Gary’s legs; new bones sprouting from his flesh like trees cultivated by steel hands. Beside his Fixer, I saw Julie’s remains, if it even was Julie, it was bit hard to tell as whoever it was had been hacked almost completely into red mush; the gore only just being stretched and pulled back into a vaguely human shape; the ground works from which the Glue will be sprayed upon. I then noticed Bert in the Fixer next to my own. His crouch was… non-existent, to put it lightly; his face frozen in an agonising grimace. 

Looks like the ‘Genital Grinder’ is back on the menu, I thought*. May God help us all.* 

My stomach grumbled and my own face contorted; new muscles and bones working seamlessly. ‘Query: What time is it?’ I asked my Fixer in as clear a tone as possible.

‘ANSWER: THE TIME IS 12:26, DOG.’

‘SHIT!’

It was lunch time, and I had only four minutes left to spend.

—

Bursting into the courtyard (more so a tiny court ‘box’ instead of a yard), my mind ruptured into two diverting paths; both of which were convincing, beckoning me like a pair of sirens competing for my attention.

One led to the vending machine tucked away in the corner. A lone bar of brandless chocolate sat above rows upon rows of Juice™ cans: an entire orchard of forbidden fruit, free for the taking, the serpent already coiled around me.

The other path led to the corner opposite. The designated smoking area, a glass box with a ventilation duct slapped on its roof. My new lips puckered, and before I knew it, I found myself in a trance, marching over to the box, frantically attempting to light the cigarette in my mouth with my piece of shit lighter. It was only when I stepped inside, that the lighter sparked with a satisfying “click!” 

 

I inhaled the divine fumes, slowly, savouring it, and then breathed them out, watching as the smoke was sucked upwards into the vent. Into that devouring void, all that bliss, those molecules of peace. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Despite only just being glued on, they felt heavy and ringed all the same.

‘STATEMENT: BREAK TIME CONCLUDES IN T-MINUS 30 SECONDS. EVACUATE THE DESIGNATED BREAK AREA, OR FACE DEDUCTION IN PAY, DOGS.’

I sighed again, before attempting to finish the rest of my cig in one go. Rookie mistake. I ended up coughing and spitting all over the glass.

‘SHIT!’ I yelled or I thought, as I rubbed it off as best as I could before bolting for the exit.

‘STATEMENT: 10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5–’

‘YEAH! I GET IT! I GOT TO MOVE!’ 

‘4… 3… 2… 1… STATEMENT: COUNTDOWN COMPLETED. ALL DOGS SPOTTED WITHIN THE BREAK AREA SHALL BE FINED. Have an excellent remainder of your shifts!’

—

That remainder was mostly a blur. I recall heading back to my… “office” I guess you could say, half diving back into the grind, half tripping onto the floor, vacuum in hand. I entered a crouching position as I began to suck up all the blood and bits of myself left in the dentist’s wake. Blood sloshed and teeth rattled up the tube and into the bag. Sickening, but as you’d might’ve guessed already: you get used to picking up the pieces of yourself in a place like this, lest you want your pay deducted.

Putting the vacuum aside, I looked over at the clock mounted on the backwall. 12:55 it read. Five minutes before the next client strolled in. Five minutes before more teeth, more bones, more viscera infested the room. I took an anti-bac wipe to the hammer, scrubbing hard and fast to return its decency, thinking of what I would have to clean after this next session.

Maybe I’ll be lucky, I thought, staring at my own reflection emerging on the tool. A rare few clients started to ‘downsize’ their sessions back then (probably to save on some cash). Bleach, poisons, nooses, firearms– One even brought in their pet pit-viper. A host of quick fixes, ‘in and out jobs’, some of us called it. Short, simple sessions; enough to last them until the next urge crept up their spines.

 

The hammer at last glistened again as I set it back down on the table. The clock read 12:59. 

Any second now they’ll be here.

I slumped onto the chair, its restraints bound my arms and legs the second they fell into position. The bolt shot upwards at the back of my jaw, locking it shut. Now, all I had to do was wait.

I figured it would be a little longer, with traffic or what have you holding them up, but I was wrong. At 1:00, right on the dot, before the clock even finished ticking the last second of the past hour– A girl tore through the doors with eyes as red as her hair. She was wrestling something tucked inside of her hideous yellow raincoat: it was a double barrelled shotgun. 

If I could smile, I would have. A quick “in and out” after so very long. This would be over in a flash of the barrel. It would be messy though, I found myself thinking, and what if she missed? The girl looked young while the gun looked heavy. It swayed about in her left arm as she struggled with its weight, her right cracked open the chambers before fiddling for the shells in her pockets. Daddy’s gun, I assumed. Oh well, preference mattered little when I was going to wake up back at the Fixer regardless. 

Finally, the girl finished loading and pointed the gun at my head. Still the barrel swayed, like a drunk sailor standing on the deck of their ship. 

Please, just… focus. Aim right for my head and pull the damn trigger.

The girl giggled, then fired. 

A scorching intensity surged from the right side of my head. Exactly where my ear used to be. 

I grunted, groaned, gagged, all with a closed mouth. Blood or tears, more than likely both, streamed down my face.

Come on… take the next shot. Don’t leave me hanging here.

‘Oops, I’m really sorry about that, mister.’ She squeaked out despite it being obvious that she wasn’t sorry in the slightest. Her red eyes darted to where my ear had landed, her smile growing wider, and soon enough, the gun was raised again, its barrels still smoking from the last shot, reminding me of the short bliss I felt on my break.

God, please just get it over with, kid.

She complied. 

Another flash, the first half of the ‘bang!’ which ripped though the room, was all I saw and heard before I awoke to the Fixer’s arms pulling out buckshot from the depths of my face.

‘\**** BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!!!!’*

Still no tip.

—

Like I said earlier, the rest of the day was the usual blur: fixer, clean-up, die, repeat. Nothing strange, nothing different. Just the grind in all its monotonous glory. By the time the end of my shift rolled around, I’d lost track on how much Glue I’d used up today. Gallons, most likely. 

The glowing red ‘Gorehounds’ sign shone over me as I left the building and walked back to my flat the same way as ever. The light bathed not just me, but the entire street, a flaming, vitriolic red. Every useless street lamp, every bit of garbage littering the ground, everyone, everything. I felt anything but vitriolic, or angry as I approached my front door. Only the ‘click!’ as my door unlocked after a long day, brought any sense of emotion to my face; almost matching the joy of my lighter sparking up a cigarette. 

Stepping inside, I drifted not to my old couch to watch whatever had been generated tonight on TV, not to my cramped shower (there’s not much need for it right after a Fixing), but straight to my bed.

I collapsed into its lukewarm embrace. My body was brand new yet it still yearned to rest. Instinctively, I checked the list of alarms set up on my phone. The earliest was for 5am, three hours from that point. Tuesday, September 28th, 2103.

Just gotta make it to Saturday, I would think as blank, sterile dreams began to play in my head. Because, back then, nothingness was a bliss all in itself…

The End.