Skinning the Kat

"I suppose. But, Jesus Christ, Michael, my breasts?" Kat said, miserably.

"I know. I know, but you'll get used to the look. Think of all the outfits you'll be able to wear." He mused.

"Yeah? I've been just dying to try on some guys' shirts Michael." She spat. "So, what has Hugo got up his sleeve for me now?"

"Actually, nothing. I think we're done for the time being. There may be a few more additions after your chest heals. I'm fairly certain he wants your nipples pierced, but that will have to wait."

It was odd for Katrina to be walking out of the studio so early in the day. She had the entire day to herself. The wig that she had left on the stand on her dresser would have been good, but she had decided to play a little game.

As modded as she was right then, she wondered if there was any chance at all anyone might recognize her at the Bistro. With her brain tattoo fully healed, and her lip studs in place, she arrived at the sidewalk café just before the lunch crowd showed up.

She hadn't been seated for more than a few minutes before Anna walked up, one of her closest friends. Surely, she would know her, even with all the changes.

"You're going to have to go. You'll scare away the customers." Anna scowled, regarding Kat with disdain.

"You don't recognize me, do you, Anna?" Katrina asked.

Even with her toothless lisp, something about her American accent, and her eyes triggered something in the back of Anna's mind. Suddenly, a look of abject horror swept over her face. "Kat? Oh, my God, Katrina?" She grabbed Kat by the arm and pulled her out of the chair she had just sat in and dragged her inside the employee alcove, where food and drinks were arranged from the bar inside.

"It's good to see you too, Anna." Kat mused, knowing how she had just shocked the daylights out of her friend.

"Kat, I mean, Jesus. Who did that to you?" Anna asked, sympathetically.

The manager stopped and regarded the two talking. "Get that... creature out of here before lunch starts, Anna." Katrina had had a good working relationship with Han, and was surprised by his biting attitude.

"Han!" Anna scolded. "It's Katrina."

Han had always had the hots for the young server ever since she came begging for a job, fresh off the plane from Chicago. He had asked her out a few times and thought he might actually stand a chance with her. Then she had suddenly disappeared. His eyes grew wide as he began to recognize the small portions of her face that had remained untouched. "Oh, Katrina. What have they done to you?"

Slowly, nearly everyone she knew, came to know the new Kat. As shocked as they seemed to be by her appearance, they were even more shocked by her story. They also understood her choice to work in the red light district, considering the changes in her looks. Han was familiar with Vreemde Ballen, but Kat played ignorant as to why.

Weeks passed, and the bandages that wrapped her chest were removed once and for all. The doctor had inspected his work one last time before declaring his work finished.

Inwardly, Kat cursed him for what he had done, even though the job itself was perfect. After her nipples were pierced, each with a large gauge ring, she was declared ready for work. Hugo was overjoyed that he could finally begin to reap the rewards his newest freak would win him.

The hardest part, at least for Katrina was climbing into the small window box, with the other girls. Each evening she would stay in there, until someone called her out, paying handsomely for her services. They crawled about like vermin, the reddish hue of the lights above making them seem almost like demons.

Many people stopped and stared, but only a choice few entered the brothel. Those were the hardened fetishists, the ones that knew precisely what they sought. Kat's looks seemed to bring in an entirely new set of clients, which had Hugo rolling in cash. Katrina made out well, although her share of the profits paled in comparison to his.

Still, she was able to move out of her tiny studio apartment, and into one with a view of the canal, and a bit more room to spread out. The place was clean, and on a respectable block. She would never have earned the right to stay there, had the landlord not been one of her best customers.

He was an odd sort, who got off by simply stroking her 'brains' as it were, while she worked his diminutive member in and out of her toothless mouth. In the end, he loved to spread his seed over her bald head, imagining it to be infiltrating her thoughts with his perversions.

With Hugo's permission, she entertained him in her apartment, which was, of course, part of the deal. Her rent wasn't any cheaper, but she would never be living there at all, considering her appearance.

Living a Lie, Skinning the Worm

The evening had started slowly, and she wondered whether she might not turn a trick that night. It rarely happened, but occasionally, she was passed over. It was then that she saw a very familiar face. Han.

Had he come there to see her, or use her? They had once again become friends, as she had with all her old workmates. It was a welcome respite from the grind that sex work often became.

He walked up to the window, and for the first time in some time, Katrina felt embarrassed by his leering expression as she crawled to the back of the box. To her surprise, she watched him enter the brothel.

"Elf?" A voice called out from the other side of the screen. Elf was the name Hugo had given her on her first night. It seemed appropriate, and she didn't mind the inference.

She slipped through the curtain and was met by Han, who seemed eager to see her. "Hey Kat." He said, raising his eyebrows.

"It's Elf, when I'm working, Han." She corrected. "Business or pleasure?" She asked.

"Oh, both, I hope." He reached into his pocket, depositing a large number of bills into her hand. She was making two hundred euros an hour, of which she only saw seventy-five. Still, it was better than she had been making at the Bistro, by far. She counted the money out of habit, and seeing four hundred, knew that this was going to be an interesting night. Her old boss had her for a full two hours.

Once they were inside her room, his attitude changed completely. "Strip!" He demanded. The thin covering of cloth that Kat wore was easily removed, and she was naked in a matter of seconds. "You know, I used to love the way your breasts moved under your halter tops in the summer. Now, look at them. All but gone."

His insults began to have the desired effect, not only for him, but for her as well. Humiliation had always been a weakness, and it seemed he would be exploiting that to the fullest.

"And your hair, oh, those gorgeous locks. Those are all gone too, aren't they Elf?" He mused, slipping out of his trousers to reveal and rapidly hardening cock, jutting out from under his shirttails.

"Do you know, I used to say to everyone, 'Now that's an American smile, all those perfect white teeth.' But those are all gone too." He walked up to her and lifted her face, spitting into it.

It wasn't the first time someone had done it, but from a supposed friend, it hurt just a bit. "Just look at you now, Kat. You're grotesque, hideous, almost pitiable."

Katrina crawled onto the bed and spread her legs, revealing her still perfectly hairless pussy to him, unaltered and lovely.

"I don't want that. I can get pretty pussy anywhere. I want this." And with those words he crawled over the bed and slammed his cock into her toothless mouth, her gums wrenched open by the force of his attack.

Katrina was so unprepared for what happened that she did something she never did. She choked. Forcing his body away from hers with her hands, until he was forced to pull out of her drooling mouth. "Jesus, Han. Do you want to hurt me, or something?"

He screwed up his face and pulled so close she could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Yes, Katrina, I want to hurt you." He seethed. "Don't you know how I felt about you; how I worshiped the ground you walked on?" He pulled off the bed and spun on her. "Now you're this...this, freak that I can't help wanting to do things to." He admitted, painfully.

Katrina slid down the bed and looked him straight in the eye. "What do you want to do?"

"What I've always done to the freaks in this place. Make them wish they were pretty, humiliate them..." He hesitated, "...destroy them."

"Do you want someone else, I can..."

"No, I don't want anyone else. You are who I want to bring down, Katrina. You were so, so beautiful." He was nearly weeping, and Kat felt like she should do something.

"Will it make you feel better?" She asked. He nodded, wordlessly. "Then humiliate me, Han, destroy me." Katrina sighed, knowing that it was what he needed to do to her.

"Not in here. I need the..." he was almost ashamed to admit his need, "...I need the dungeon." Katrina had only ever been taken to that room in the basement once, and that was on the nickel tour that Hugo had given her. No one was allowed down there without an escort. There was just too much that could go wrong.

Leaving her room, still naked, she walked past a patron in the hallway, who leered at her differences. She slipped through the door to Hugo's office but found it empty. "Hugo?"

"He's downstairs." One of the other girls said.

"So much the better," Kat whispered under her breath. It would be safer if there was an audience. She went back to her room and found Han waiting, impatiently. "Come on, let's go down."

He eagerly followed, knowing the way into the maze of a basement as though he'd been there a hundred times. Maybe he had.

"We won't be alone. Is that a problem?" Kat asked, looking back behind her.

"All the better to humiliate you by, slut." He hissed, his hand pushing her along the hallway as they approached the infamous room. The sound of a whip touching flesh emanated from within, and although Katrina was hesitant to enter, Han simply pushed through.

"This is a private session," Hugo scolded, turning toward Han and Katrina.

"Not anymore." Han bit, pushing Katrina ahead of him, directing her to a large cross, which dominated one end of the room. He paid little attention to the girl bent over the horse, her ass on full display, peppered with thin red welts.

"Your first time down here, Elf?" Hugo asked. She nodded as Han roughly clamped the manacles around her wrists and ankles "Hey pal, take it easy."

"It's alright, Hugo. He needs to do this." Katrina explained.

For a moment, he remained questioning, but as Han picked up a long cat-o-nines, he simply shrugged. "Okay. It's your body." He pulled Han aside. "Nothing permanent. She's got to work."

"I paid for her. She's mine to do with as I please," Han complained. "Besides, nothing I'll do will be there tomorrow."

The other customer was finished with his girl and wanted to leave, so Hugo was obliged to leave the two alone in the basement. "I'll be back." He insisted.

Once they were alone, Katrina felt the first lick of the cat against her back, circle around, and kiss her absent breast. "Ahhh!" She cried, as the pain seared through her.

"So...you want to be a worm?" Han accused, laying the whip cruelly against her, and eliciting another scream. "Looks like you almost got there, didn't you, worm." He scowled, using the knowledge that she herself had imparted about her ordeal in Prague. "No hair, no teeth... what was next?" Another lash fell and she saw stars from the pain. "Probably your breasts, huh? Worms don't have breasts, do they? So, no breasts; I guess you're just about there, aren't you, worm!"

Katrina felt as though she was going to faint, as the pain felt like electric shocks. "Say it, cunt! Say what you are!" Han screamed, the lashes coming fast and uncontrolled, hitting places that they shouldn't.

"I'm a worm. A Worm!" Katrina cried, weeping through the punishing blows, blood coursing over her from the welts split open from repeated insults to her skin.

Katrina continued to scream, so loudly that the rest of the house surely heard, "I'm a worm, a worm, a fucking worm!" But the blows had stopped. Another sound pervaded the room, the sound of fists against flesh. Kat looked over her shoulder to see Hugo on top of Han, pummeling him with one first to his face after another.

"You fucking bastard! I'll never let you in here again! Look what you did to her!" Hugo showed no sign of stopping the beating.

"Hugo! Hugo, stop, you'll kill him!" She shouted.

Han was unconscious when Hugo finally stopped. He sighed, looking at Katrina, and quickly stood and released her from her bonds. "Get to the hospital, I'll deal with this scum."

When the other girls saw what had happened to Kat, they quickly put her together, enough to be transported. Someone had called 999 and it wasn't long before both police and an ambulance were parked at the brothel.

The rest of the night was a blur. They had given her something for pain, and it had clouded her mind, which was already swimming from the humiliating treatment Han had unleashed.

Most of the wounds were superficial, but a few required treatment and some even needed suturing. There was nothing life-threatening, at least on the outside. Inside, turmoil was building within her. Han had opened a wound she thought had healed months before when she escaped the castle in Prague.

Now she felt as though she never left. She hated the idea that she could be brought down so easily. She hated that she had admitted how low she truly felt. Even if it was under duress, she believed what she was screaming. The worm that Goddess had created back in the castle was still hidden within her. She had warned her.

She spent a few days at home, recouping from her injuries, and received numerous calls and visits from her friends; not just from the Bistro, but the brothel as well. Even with all that support and encouragement, she knew that she was nothing more than what Han had accused her of being. She was still a worm.

Timing is everything, as they say, so it was ill timing, indeed, when a specific note arrived in her letterbox that fateful day. There were no markings on it, other than her name and address, corrected from her previous one. It had taken a few weeks to reach her, as a result of the misdirection. She split the seal and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

I see you have abandoned the castle in Prague, little worm.

I have seen you trying to fit in, and how that has been so

difficult for you. I see what you are doing for money.

Would it not have been better for you to have let them do

what they set out to do? Look at you, silly pathetic creature,

trying to be human and failing so miserably. Let me take

you back. What are you? Are you human, or are you worm?

You must decide.

Tonight, same place and time.

Katrina sobbed, knowing everything in the note was true beyond a shadow of a doubt. Everything that had happened since she escaped the castle has been one try after the next to fit in. To be human, in a world where she was seen as anything but. Knowing what already she knew of the castle, she prepared.

She paid her rent for a further two months, explaining to Hugo that she had every intention of fulfilling the balance of the contract upon her return. She placed her new phone and any money she had remaining in a safe place, along with the plastic studs and rings from her nipples, leaving the holes wide open. Katrina left wearing only a thin muslin dress, that was little more than gauze. It would be easily disposed of.

Her determination was obvious on her face as she made her way into the Oosterpark. This was for the best, she told herself. This was what should have been. As many times as she tried to convince herself, there was still that nagging doubt in her gut, a doubt she chose to ignore.

Once again, she was naked as she stepped from the trunk of the old Russian car, fully aware of what awaited her within the walls of the castle. No surpises this time.

It was Victor that greeted her as she was brought through the portcullis. He smiled, seeing how she had changed, seeming to approve of them. "You have returned to us, worm. You tried to make a go of it in the world, but it rejected you, did it not?"

"Yes, Sir. It is a worm." Kat said emphatically. "As many times as I have tried to deny it, it keeps being thrown in my face."

Victor noticed the whip marks on her body. "And, you have been punished for your difference, haven't you?" Victor sighed, running a fingertip over one of the sutured welts that traced her shoulder.

"Yes, sir. It was punished, even as it admitted its folly, that it was a worm, that it is Worm." She sobbed.

"There, there, little one. Let us get you back to your cell, so that we may continue. Only this time we know that there will be no turning away, yes?" He raised a brow.

"I want you to finish. I wasn't sure before, but now I know. I am ready to go all the way; until Goddess is satisfied." Katrina spouted, with conviction.

"Good! Good!" Thank you for bringing her back to us. Helga will see to your fee." Victor opened the door to the passage, the one she had traversed so many times before. The familiar stench of her cell greeted her nose as she stepped inside, and she breathed it in deeply.

"Thank you for not turning me away, Sir." Katrina sighed, curling up on the rancid cot that still smelled of her former self.

"Goddess will see you tomorrow, worm. She is overjoyed that you have returned to her."

Epilogue -- Three Months Later

Katrina was in her cell, but the cot had long since been removed, the floor filled to a depth of three feet with rich loamy soil. When the door was opened, the mud rippled slightly, revealing the worm.

"We will have to move her, she cannot slink that far, goddess." Victor sighed, observing the pale white creature as it inched its way to the surface of the soil.

"Yes. It is full worm now. I am satisfied." She smiled, admiring the long slender cylinder of flesh as it contracted its segments together, and inched forward. All that remained that might remind anyone of the girl 'Katrina', was her face. They had left that, so that she might sometimes remember who she once was.

All traces of limbs had been eradicated, either removed or joined together. Flesh from her amputated arms had been used to graft to her head; the beautiful brain tattoo skinned away. Katrina's head was now a pointed knob, segmented with the rest, completing the illusion.

They had left the mirror on the ceiling, over where her cot had once been, and Katrina had often inched her way under it, if only to confirm that her body was no longer a lie. Every inch of her was a worm, she was a worm, just a worm.

So as the cart slowly made its way down the long descending ramps that carried them closer and closer to the overwhelming stench of the under-cellar, Katrina knew what was in store.

As the door opened, a bellowing cry came from within as a filth-covered woman appeared from the muck, slopping her grub-like legs closer to them.

"Close enough, Melly. Have some pity on our sensibilities." Victor demanded, as he turned the cart around, allowing Katrina to slide face-first into the slime and excrement that was Melly's world. It was a world that she had kept to herself, until now.