GIRLS will be GHOSTS

Chapter 3 | Bad to the Bone

Iris was cut open like she was a frog in a middle school science class. Her bones had been cracked apart and sawed through to a near unrecognizable degree. The surgeons had removed both of Iris' shoulder blades and removed a strip of skin on her back from the bottom of her neck to the end of her spine which quickly disappeared into a puff of smoke after becoming separated from her lower back, proceeding to replace the human bones with two large heavy metal objects that clamped onto her spine tightly. During this entire operation, not one drop of blood exited her body. She assumed this was because a ghost had no blood to bleed in the first place. But that still raised the extremely painful question of why Iris could still feel every cut to an excruciating level of awareness. 

Next came the welder. All along her spine the metal was fused to the bone until her spine and this foreign object became one and the same. Iris could do nothing to stop the horrible procedure. The entire procedure didn't seem physically possible, something only capable in her new habitat. She wanted to scream, to tell them to stop, to thrash and protest, but didn't have the slightest amount of control over her body. It was like Iris was a corpse all over again.

The final part of Iris' surgery was not painless, but certainly far less painful than either of the previous steps. Iris could hear one of the surgeons exit the room only to reappear a short while later carting in a large, hot, rod. This rod was then placed against her right arm, a blazing hot sensation akin to that of being cooked alive. 

They're branding me.

The rod was removed yet the pain did not begin to subside. None of the pain anywhere in Iris' body had subsided, not even the bullet giving her a splitting headache. Her entire body was in an unfathomable amount of agony that would have killed a normal human. Eventually the procedure was finished, and Iris' restraints were removed. A small needle was injected into her thigh and her vision, and most importantly movement were restored. Iris' body ached in discomfort.

As soon as she could, Iris pushed herself up off the table and shoved one of the surgeons out of the way, landing on her feet and beginning to run. She would make it exactly four paces towards the door before collapsing under the weight of whatever had been attached to her back. Falling face first into the clean floor, her translucent lips kissed the plastic floor of the operating room. The back of her head was greeted with the sensation of a bird's feathers landing hard atop it, and Iris' eyes were treated with the visual of what appeared to be a set of massive ghostly, semi-transparent wings landing to the left and right of her. One wing was almost twice as larger than it's corresponding arm's span maximum reach.

Wings. This mother fucker gave me wings. What the-

"Language young lady." Cosmo's voice rang out, gentle and calm. He strode towards Iris as she struggled to push herself up, her initial adrenaline rush falling back down as the surgeons exited the room. Taking a look at her arm, Iris saw a barcode burnt into her arm. A numerical code designating her as one of presumably many like her. "You might want to take things slow as you get used to your new appendages." Cosmo said smugly. She despised him. What kind of person puts someone through this? The answer was in plain view of course. He was a demon. Every movie and book Iris had read painted them in a bad (or sometimes sexy) light.

Iris began to cry, but no tears came out. "How can you do this to someone? I'm a freak!" Her wings twitched, hitting and briefly dissipating on the floor beneath her. Iris stood up shakily under the weight of the appendages. "Au contraire, you are a tool to be used for my bidding. And I think you'll be just the right tool for the job. Come, we will take you home now to rest." Cosmo began walking towards the exit to the room, but stopped in his tracks realizing Iris had not moved a single step forward. She leaned on the wall, feeling weak from her surgery, the throbbing torment of her wounds sapping all energy out of her, overwhelming her mind.