Disclaimer: Kroenen and Ilsa are characters from Hellboy (C) Mike Mignola
No Hellboy in this fanfic, because he is fat and ugly. No Rasputin, too, because he has a beard and a bald head - ugly, too.

Pain frees.

For the second time in his entire life his hand trembled, in which he held the scalpel. The first time was at the beginning of his doctor training, when he should open the belly of a young woman. He knew to deal with the scalpel and he knew each fiber of the human body, but having a halfdead, naked, female body in front of him without ever having felt an exposed, living woman at his own body, disconcerted him deeply. His first time. The good, sharp instrument gently sank into the twitching skin. Red tears. In the pain no thoughts existed. Paradise of pain. Deeper. Free. At that time it was uncertainty. A woman.

Knives and swords were his passion. Even as a child, when he just had a little pocketknife. Instead of going to school, he often played in the forest for hours, cut flowers, fought against nettels, in order to finally free a beautiful virgin from the catches of a bad dragon.
Even in this days of abundance, where he had his knives and tools in nearly each room, he surprised himself by collecting fragments of glass of the road - like he had done as a child. After he was forbidden to play in the forest and his pocketknife was taken away by his parents, this was a quite good alternative. He should behave more ripely and not sink in dream worlds, his parents had said... They could take away his glass pieces again and again. He would find new. Sometimes he cut himself with them. Out of fun. Locked up in his room he developed a much more interesting game than fighting imaginary enemies - How far you dare? A play against himself, with only one rule: Deeper.
So his parents had partially guilt at his psychologically unstable condition, which brought him no friends. They had to die. Everybody. At that time death was still somewhat affecting for Kroenen, today was it everyday life. He had forgotten each face of the past. His parents. His comrades. He could hardly remember his own face. And what he did today, wasn't a game anymore.

Today it was highest sexual excitation. Karl Ruprecht Kroenen liked to hurt himself, liked to abuse his body as he abused many of his "patients". A tickling shower drove through his body, when he looked at the bright, flashing metal.
Did it happen again?
Was he again in his dream world?
The bad dragon...
Ogdrun Jahad...
The beautiful virgin...
Ilsa...
He set the scalpell to his skin, trembling, because this time it was not a part of his body, which he could sew on so easily again. And this time he was not alone. Although his body was dead for a long time, his heart a clockwork and the blood in his veins old and sandy, it seemed to pound, just from thinking of her. Perhaps it was only the memory of the beating of his heart, which he had, when he had seen her the first time.

His beautiful virgin...
Well, she was not a real virgin anymore. A woman, who dedicates her life to dark powers, is not interested in church/conjugal guidelines. Therefore she had sex with everyone, who pleased her. An aura surrounded her, which had somewhat godlike and at the same time something, which made one ill. Like poison flowers. Usually she liked the young, blond men with dry figure, which were old enough to serve their purpose, but too young to fight. To fight against her. To free themselves from her, when she was in her dominant mood. Ilsa was a ripe, healthy eagle woman, who was not the type for a fluffy love and took what she wanted. Most of the boys could not bear that. After short relations with her the young men were bleach and weakly, as if the life energy was taken from them. None of them was enough for Ilsa, no one knew to satisfy her.

Complete sacrifice. Since the first day he saw her, his heart and his body belonged to her.
"My pain in your hand... Ilsa... "
Her ice-blue eyes cooled the wound in his heart. A memory of love overcame him and he split his skin, veins and chords, fast enough, in order not to cry, slowly enough, in order to feel the pain. Her lips formed a smile. The pain freed him. In the pain nothing existed. Only bodies. A squeaking, hard breath came out of his mask and with his last strength he handed the freshly separated meat to her. He never dared to touch her. Even when he was alone in his laboratory and looked at a blackwhite snapshot of her in front of him, he behaved, and dared not to touch himself. Everything should be only for her. Although he did not feel that part of his body any longer, nevertheless the fact excited him that his love kept and stroked it careful with their scarlet painted fingernails in her hands.

His penis.

...end...