"Thank you, sweetie."  Warren drank in Ali's screams of agony.  Each one was unique in its own way, the earlier ones tinged with the vibrato of shock as his blade sliced through her flesh...the later ones with a timbre born of the despair over the pain not ending.  "You have good healthy lungs.  I see we haven't been smoking have we?  Good, I can't abide that habit."  Warren picked up the bloody scalpel up and reached down to make another incision before he stopped.  "What am I doing?  I should be using a fresh scalpel, don't want to risk you getting infect with something nasty, Ali."<br/><br/>He placed the scalpel into a small steel bowl filled with rubbing alcohol, the blood drifting upwards and diffusing like crimson smoke into the fluid.  Warren then picked out a fresh scalpel and brought the blade down into the top of the the line he had carved and started slicing a perpendicular line to it.  More blood welled up and Ali's screaming continued like a cello accompaniment to his blade-work magic.  He loved it when the girls screamed in such shrill agony...it was invigorating.  It was a shame though that not everyone appreciated a good proper scream like he and now Maria did.