ACT I
SCENE I 
Setting: An operating theater

The professor stands alone on a stage with an operating table, a mirror and diagram of the human body drawn on a chalkboard. 


THE PROFESSOR 


Hello. Good morning class, and welcome to Auto-Dissection 101, a guide to the self. Let’s get introspective. Literally. Now, you will barely recognize the cadaver in front of you as human but believe me when I tell you, that it is you. Or in my case… me. 

    Begin with the hands. Examine the delicate skeletal structure. These are some of the most precise instruments nature has ever crafted. Far more complicated and efficient than any lousy scalpel. What have you done with them? Have you used them wisely? The hands are the first elements of yourself that will begin to show signs of the disease we are looking to find today. Are they rusty? Disused? Dull and overused? Are they, like mine… as you can see here, perpetually caked with mud and rot? When’s the last time they were washed? Did your cadaver… did you… ever get that damn spot out? If the hands will still move, if you can still spread the fingers, you’ll know that rigor mortis hasn’t set in just yet. Try to hold your own hand? Are you warm? I should hope not. You’re dead. 

    Now. If you’ll examine the diagram here, you’ll see the diagram of the human body. These are just drawings of course. Everyone knows that the brain is not pink, and the heart is not separated into chamber red and chamber blue. We create this because what is inside is far too messy to draw on a blackboard. By the end of this course, you will truly understand the inherent falsity of the diagram before you. You do not know what the human body looks like. You do not know what you look like. You could never draw your own face. 

    You must take the scalpel now and make the incision. You will experience slight discomfort, though it should feel no worse than a papercut. You are, after all, a cadaver. You should not feel anything. You do not feel anything. Isn’t that right? 

    That’s right! I’m just an empty meat suit! Haha… we… we try to have fun here. The next element you must inspect is the intestines. The smell is… ugh. Repulsive. You would think that it was just because of all of the half-decayed food particles in your stomach. That is a part of it certainly. Ugh, my mother was right. I did eat far too much reheated Chinese take-out. You die and you learn I suppose. Far worse, in your gut, are the impulses. There are, of course the bad impulses that do get out. You know when you feel them. You taste vomit in your mouth. Those don’t stay in your corpse; they take roots in the corpses of all of your friends. What’s in there still are the rotted bad impulses you sat on. They stay with you. The baby you wanted to gag on the plane because it was crying. That stays with you. You monster, who would do that? Every hurtful thing you ever thought… it’s with you. Even if you didn’t let it out it is still a part of you. It’s… it’s still in there. 

    Next, we examine the lungs. Breathe in. Breathe in until your chest hurts. Do you feel full? That void in your chest, is it the lungs or is it something else? This is the lightest part of your body, the only part that can float on water. They are not the reason your chest is heavy. It’s… it’s something else. If you were to cut open all the lungs and all of the bronchioles and lay them out, they would be roughly the size of a tennis court. The human body is more inside than out. Everything in you is so much bigger than you. Do you ever think about how much you hold your lungs back? About what they could do if they weren’t attached to you?

    And now, onto the heart. Now the average heart rate of an adult human sits between 60 and 100 beats per minute, lower if you are a healthy strong athlete. I never was an athlete but now my heart rate is slower than them all. Because there is no heart rate! It’s… it’s not that funny. Now at this point in the process of decay the heart should be shriveled, blackened and calcified.  Here, I’ll show you. 

    

    They turn away from their audience and pull a paper cut out of a human heart that had been hidden somewhere on the actor’s costume.


THE PROFESSOR 

(cont) 


That… that doesn’t make sense...


    They glance over to the black board, then down at the heart in their hand. The two hearts look disturbingly, almost exactly alike. 


THE PROFESSOR 


It looks… it looks exactly like you’d expect it too… Ahem. Now. The heart is not the metaphorical heart of the body, however. We all know that that is the brain. The theory of cardio centrism began in ancient Egypt, wherein the heart was weighed against a feather to deem worthiness. Goodness. 


    They drop the paper heart, watch it float and fall. 


PROFESSOR 


Wonder how much it weighs…The ancient Greeks later found evidence of the theory, in the dissection of primitive animals. They could move and seemingly feel without the brain, but not with the heart. You’ve heard of a chicken with its head cut off, but never a chicken with its heart cut out… have you? You can… understand the confusion, can’t you? I can understand. 


    They pick up the paper heart on the ground.


PROFESSOR 


What I can’t understand is this. I’d always thought it would look different. Somehow. Darker. Heavier. There had to have been something in the chest cavity, weighing you down. Something that made you strange and off putting. There should have been something, something about your heart that was different. That was the only explanation! It can’t just be normal. I mean, this? 

    

    They hold the paper heart up to the audience again 


PROFESSOR 


Cannot be the heart of someone who never understood other people, who couldn’t sleep through the night. It had to have been smaller, lonelier. But look at it, it’s all there. It’s so normal. Two chambers, one that is red and one that is blue. Just like you’d expect a human heart to look. 

waited 

PROFESSOR 

(to themselves) 


I don’t understand it. I just… I want to understand. 


PROFESSOR 

(back to the audience) 


Don’t you want to understand why we’re so lonely and so sad all the time? Find the medical answer to why you’re always unlucky? And miserable? You know, when I was little, I was always waiting for the day my mother told me that I was adopted. Waited for her to tell me that she’d found me in the dark woods on a dark and stormy night. Waited for her to tell me that I was a baby made of mismatched parts stolen from graveyards. Or that when I’d been born, I’d been born… wrong. But no. You’re normal. You were just a normal, lonely person. 


    With sudden aggressiveness, hey stand, rip the heart in half. 


PROFESSOR 

(to the heart) 


You! There was no need for you to be so miserable all of the time! You were fully functional! You could’ve been happy! Just like anyone else in the world. Why did it have to be us? There was nothing! Nothing that made us special! If you were normal, then why did I die alone? Why did our entire life suck? What was the point? All of this was a waste!


    They set it on the medical bed. Defeated. 


PROFESSOR 


Of course. It’s not always the heart is it? Sometimes, it’s the brain. Or the household. Or just… just bad luck. But even that. Not exactly odd. Or atypical. Or monstrous. 


    They stand, go to the blackboard, erase the full diagram of the human body and draw instead a crude anatomical heart. 


PROFESSOR 


The living creature with the smallest heart is a kind of wasp, called a fairy fly. Cute name, right? I wonder if it can tell that its heart is small. Probably not. It’s only ever had one. Doesn’t know any better. But if it can tell, it only has to live with that knowledge for 3 to 11 days. Who knows, maybe they’re proud of their small heart for giving them what it can. Maybe they’re just glad it hasn’t burst out of their chest cavity. 


PROFESSOR 


It’s not the fault of the heart. All it does is keep you alive. 


    They go, pick up the ripped heart and hold its two pieces gently. 


PROFESSOR 


It does the best it can. Class dismissed. 

Auto-Dissection

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Addison Fulton