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Chapter 34 : Surgical Workshop
🕑 Added 2025-07-12 07:07:07 +0000 UTCChapter 34 : Surgical Workshop
The stench hit first—a nauseating cocktail of rotting flesh, industrial bleach, and something sickeningly sweet that might have been perfume.
Deep beneath Gotham's streets, in the abandoned subway maintenance tunnels, Professor Pyg had built his cathedral of madness.
"La donna è mobile, qual piuma al vento," he sang in a trembling tenor, his pig mask bobbing with each note as he worked. The aria echoed through the concrete tunnels, a beautiful melody corrupted by the horror of its context.
Strapped to the surgical table before him, Delilah Vance, a nineteen-year-old runaway who'd been sleeping rough for three months, could only watch in paralyzed terror as Pyg selected his instruments.
Her eyes, the only part of her still capable of movement, darted frantically between the bone saw, the drill, and the collection of facial features floating in jars of formaldehyde.
"Oh, my sweet little pigeon," Pyg cooed, his voice muffled by the grotesque mask. "Papa's going to make you so very special. No more dirty thoughts about boys, no more nasty urges. Just perfect, pristine purity."
He held up a scalpel, its blade reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights. "First, we remove the corruption. The skin holds so much sin, you see. All those times you let filthy men touch you for money—Papa will cut that right off."
The first incision was deliberately shallow, designed to maximize pain while keeping the victim conscious. Delilah's paralyzed throat couldn't scream, but her eyes bulged with agony as Pyg began peeling back strips of skin from her face.
"Sempre un amabile, leggiadro viso," he continued singing, painting her exposed muscle tissue with antiseptic. The chemical burned like acid on the raw flesh. "In tears or laughter, still deceitful. That's what the song means, little dove. But Papa will make you honest."
Around them, the tunnel walls displayed Pyg's gallery of transformation—photographs showing his victims before and after their perfection.
But these weren't clean surgical photos. They were trophy shots of the torture process itself: faces being flayed, skulls being opened, eyes rolling back in agony. Some showed the victims' families, taken before Pyg had killed them too, just to watch the light die in his patients' eyes.
"You see that pretty girl in the red dress?" Pyg gestured to one photo while selecting a bone saw. "That was Dollotron-23. She fought Papa so hard when he took her baby away. But look how peaceful she is now!"
The image showed a young mother, her infant's blood still on her hands, her own face a ruin of surgical mesh and porcelain. The baby's tiny corpse lay discarded in the corner of the photo like garbage.
"Papa doesn't like children crying," Pyg explained conversationally as he positioned the saw against Delilah's skull. "So messy. So imperfect. Better to make them quiet forever."
The saw's teeth bit into bone with a grinding screech. Delilah's body convulsed involuntarily, her nervous system shorting out from the trauma even as the paralytic kept her conscious.
"Qual piuma al vento, muta d'accento," Pyg sang louder, his voice rising to cover the sound of splintering skull. "E di pensiero!"
But the true horror wasn't the surgery itself, it was what surrounded them. In alcoves carved into the tunnel walls stood sixty-three Dollotrons, all facing inward to watch their newest sister's creation. Their porcelain faces were identical, painted with the same creepy smile, the same rosy cheeks. But their eyes were still human, still aware, still screaming silently behind the masks.
Pyg had perfected his technique over the years. The lobotomy was precise enough to destroy free will and personality while leaving consciousness intact. His victims were trapped in their own heads, fully aware but unable to control their bodies, forced to watch as their hands committed atrocities on command.
"Watch carefully, my angels," Pyg addressed his collection as he opened Delilah's skull. "Papa's going to show you how to make a new sister."
He reached into the exposed brain with a long, thin probe. "The hippocampus first—that's where she keeps her dirty memories. All those times she spread her legs for strangers, all those drugs she put in her body. Papa will make it all go away."
The probe twisted, and something fundamental died in Delilah's eyes. Her memories of childhood, of her mother's lullabies, of the first boy she'd ever kissed, all of it dissolved into electrical static.
"Now the frontal lobe," Pyg continued his lesson. "This is where she keeps her nasty opinions, her selfish desires. Papa doesn't like selfish little girls."
More probing, more destruction. Delilah's personality, her dreams of becoming a veterinarian, her love of old movies, her fear of spiders, all of it was erased.
"And finally," Pyg said, selecting a smaller instrument, "the parts that make her struggle. Papa likes his children obedient."
When he was finished, Delilah's body still breathed, her heart still beat, but everything that had made her human was gone. She was like a living corpse, animated by brainstem reflexes and whatever sick programming Pyg chose to install.
"È Sempre misero chi a lei s'affida," he sang as he began fitting the porcelain mask over her ruined face. "Chi le confida mal cauto il core!"
The mask was beautiful in its simplicity—a young girl's face frozen in eternal innocence, with painted tears that looked almost real. But underneath, Delilah's actual features were a horror show of surgical scars and exposed tissue.
"There we are," Pyg said, stepping back to admire his work. "Dollotron-64. Isn't she gorgeous?"
He helped the newly converted victim to her feet, guiding her to join the others in their silent vigil. She moved with like a robot, her head tilted at the same angle as all the rest, her hands folded in the same submissive pose.
"Papa loves you all so much," Pyg whispered to his collection, his voice filled with genuine emotion. "You're all so perfect now. No more ugly human desires, no more troublesome thoughts. Just pure, beautiful obedience."
He turned to a corner of the tunnel where fresh supplies waited—three more homeless people, unconscious and ready for processing. Among them was an old man who'd been trying to organize the street community, a teenage boy who'd been asking too many questions about missing friends, and a woman whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Papa's going to make you all so beautiful," he sang to the unconscious forms. "La donna è mobile, qual piuma al vento..."
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NB :
1) Italian lines are from Guiseppe Verdi's Opera : Rigoletto
2) People dont realise how fked up Gotham really is. Imagine living in a city where clowns, pigs, and plant women try to kill you on the daily. That's Gotham.
3) Feel free to point out any mistakes you find.
Comments
Radiant Tiefling
Thank you for the chapter.
Delltree100
Well of course gotham is a hell. For example, Harley Queen has already planted bombs on children and made them play a video game, if he lost the bomb would explode. All that just for fun. The only protection the normal people have is a rich guy dont have the ball to do what is necessary.
