Under the Knife (vignette) (Patreon)

“Mr. Ryder...may I call you John?  John,” the Doctor continued, without waiting for a response, “you could have just joined a gym.  Or, with your resources, you could afford some of the best conventional plastic surgeons in the world.  Yet here you are, sitting in my office.  We both know this is about more than improving your looks, yes?  For a man who just turned forty three you’re already in better shape than most people your age, better than most people half your age, so what are you really after?”  

John shifted in his chair, feeling like a kid who’d been called down to the Principal’s office.  For a man used to facing down angry investors and impatient Boards of Directors, it was an unfamiliar experience.  “I’d read that you can do things no other surgeon can.  Results that bordered on the miraculous...actually turning back time.  It’s ridiculous, I know.  I don’t believe in miracles, Doctor, but I’ve been around long enough to know better than to judge a book by its cover,” he said, motioning to the small, ramshackle office around them.  

“That doesn’t answer the question though, does it?”  The Doctor leaned back in his chair and threw his hands up with a friendly smile.  “That’s okay.  Most of my clients don’t know why they’re truly here at first.”  

John bristled at the Doctor’s dismissive, condescending tone.  He knew exactly why he was there; to get the kind of body he’d had twenty years ago, not engage in philosophical debates.  He’d actually already been to a dozen plastic surgeons and had plowed through just as many personal trainers, but he wasn’t getting the results he wanted.  He didn’t want surgery and silicone any more than he wanted bulky muscle under his rough, weathered skin.  He wanted his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair to be thick and full again.  He wanted the creases and wrinkles gone from his face.  He wanted to be able to fuck for hours on end again.  He wanted the impossible.  Or so he thought.  

It was the last reputable surgeon he’d seen who had pointed him in the Doctor’s direction.  The older man had clearly grown frustrated with John’s impatient, ridiculous demands and jokingly suggested that he go find the man only known as “The Doctor.”  A few weeks later and John was on his way to a small mountain town in middle-of-nowhere Argentina, ready to shell out obscene amounts of money to get the version of himself he desired, whatever the risk.  

“Due respect, Doctor, I know exactly what I’m looking for,” John said, his tone flat.  “If you don’t think you can do it, let’s not waste any more time.”  

The Doctor raised a bushy eyebrow, his grin never wavering as he leaned forward and opened the top drawer of his desk.  “Do you know what this is?”  

John’s expression was equally unchanged as he looked at the small, crude knife.  It was made of glassy stone, smooth like obsidian, but a deep green instead of black, with a piece of leather tied around the base for a grip.  He could see markings on the leather between the Doctor’s bony fingers, though he had no idea what the language was.  “Some native dagger?  What is it...obsidian?”  

The Doctor stared at the knife as he rotated it in his hands.  Instead of reflecting off the glossy surface as they should, the dusty beams of light filtering in through the dirty windows were absorbed by the green surface, giving the rustic blade an almost luminescent quality.  “Good guess, but no.  Meteorite.”  

John waited for the thin little man to continue, but the Doctor only stared at the blade in silence.  “Aaaaand that means what to my specific situation?” he asked impatiently.  

The Doctor’s smile finally faded as he looked at John as if the question was foolish.  “Everything.  Do you have any idea how old this is?”  

John gripped the arms of his chair, his thick arms inflating as he tensed and took a deep, slow breath, trying not to let his annoyance show.  “I didn’t fly halfway around the world for a hist…” 

The Doctor shook his head and rubbed his chin, itself nearly as sharp and pointed as the knife in his hands.  “See?  This is what I’m talking about.  The answer is right in front of you and still you bark and stomp and bluster.  You’re not ready.”  He set the knife down and pulled the round, wire-rim spectacles from his face, polishing them against the front of his shirt before motioning with a thin arm towards the door.  “You can go.  Come back when you’re truly ready to change.”  

John clenched his lantern jaw in frustration as he slowly stood and turned to leave.  He’d negotiated enough in his career to know a power play when he saw one, and he wasn’t ready to give in to the Doctor and beg just yet.  So far he hadn’t seen anything remotely close to what he’d heard, leaving him to wonder if the whole thing had been a pointless goose chase.  Without a word he crossed the small office, opened the door and stepped through, only to find himself stepping back inside instead of out.  

There hadn’t been any sign or warning that something out of the ordinary was about to happen.  When John opened the door he saw the dusty foothills outside, but when he crossed the threshold it was as if he was walking in from the front porch all over again.  There was no vertigo or sense of being turned around; just a simple step through a doorway.  

“Wait..what just…” John muttered, shaking his head.  Looking over his shoulder, he could still see his car sitting on the dirt road where he’d left it, and when he looked around the interior he found it unchanged.  The Doctor was still seated in his oversized chair, his skeletal frame seeming small as it swam in his white linen shirt and loose khakis.  With his shiny black hair, sharp, pointy features, and beady eyes, the Doctor looked impish as he smiled at the stunned man.  

“Back so soon?” 

John turned on his heel and stepped through the door again, not noticing his now-bare feet on the rough wooden floor until it was too late.  As before, instead of stepping out the middle-aged stud found himself stepping back in, but unlike before, this time he did so bare-chested.  

“Where did my…” he gasped, reaching up and pawing at his exposed, muscled chest in search of the straining t-shirt that had somehow vanished.  “How are you doing this,” he asked, the hairy, solid mounds of his pecs inflating instinctively as he flexed them in what would normally have been an intimidating display of strength.  As it was, the Doctor just smiled and looked him up and down, his eyes traveling slowly over John’s broad shoulders, brawny arms, and solid, if undefined, stomach.  

The Doctor shrugged.  “I thought you didn’t come here to have a conversation?”  

“Is it drugs?  What’d you do, slip me something?  I don’t know what you think you’re going to get away with, but people know where I am,” John growled, feeling foolish.  If it was a trap, he’d walked eagerly into it.  Here he was, on his own in the backwoods of another country, flashing his wealth as if he was invincible.  A part of him wondered if he could take the Doctor before the smaller man buried the knife in his gut.  He was the bigger of the two, and his years of athletics had left him with a quick, agile body even now, but John knew it couldn’t be that easy.  

He gave the door another try, spinning and lunging through in a blur of motion, only to stumble back in front of the Doctor wearing nothing but his stuffed briefs.  A rush of embarrassment accompanied his growing fear as John looked down at his long, wide cock outlined against the light grey fabric.  His meaty thighs and rocky calves were still tensed from his lunge, and he could feel the warm, dry air wafting in against his barely-covered bottom from outside.  

The Doctor steepled his fingers and tapped them against the bottom of his chin, nodding appreciatively.  “See?  Look at that body.  Rugged and strapping!  Just the right amount of hair on that impressive chest...and the way it trails down to those briefs?  Those sturdy legs?  Those beefy arms?  Throw in that distinguished face and you’re a work of art.”  The Doctor’s smile grew as John blushed and squirmed under his penetrating gaze.  “What is there to improve?  You want the body you had?  And then what?  You do everything over again and we repeat this conversation in another twenty years?”  The Doctor stood and leaned forward against his desk, his slender arms looking like they could snap under his meager weight.  “I don’t think so.  If that’s all you want, then walk through the door again and truly leave.  I’m not keeping you here.  But if you walk through and find yourself back inside…maybe then we talk about what you really want.”  

John’s heart pounded in his chest as he turned to face the door, not sure if he was more afraid of the bizarre circumstances or the thought that the Doctor was right.  He had no frame of reference for any of this, including any real self reflection.  The middle-aged man had always barreled through life from one goal to the next, never stopping to consider if he still wanted something once he had it.  

His pride wasn’t about to let him start now.  John held his breath and stepped through once more, his girthy cock and heavy balls swinging free when he found himself back inside, his briefs gone.  “Oh god…” he moaned, his anger surging.  “You lied!  You’re still doing whatever this is!  What?  Are you some kind of pervert?  Think you’re gonna have your way with me?”  Refusing to give in and let his fear show, John thrust his hips forward defiantly, crossing his thick arms over his chest as he glared.  

“Interesting,” the Doctor said quietly, taking up the knife.  “Where did we leave off?  Oh, right.  Do you have any idea how old this is?”  

John gave a short laugh.  “Is that supposed to threaten me?  You think waving a knife around will make me scared?  It’ll take a hell of a lot more than that little thing to stop memmmphhh!”  John’s eyes went wide when he was cut off, startled by the object wedged between his lips.  He’d been watching the Doctor make quick slicing gestures with the knife while he’d been yelling, and then, without warning or feeling his arm move, John suddenly found himself sucking anxiously on his thumb.  

“And people wonder why I never wanted children…” The Doctor sighed.  His expression was sympathetic as John struggled in vain to pull his hand away and grunted around the invading digit.  

“Mmmphh!  Muummphh...oommphhhmm….!”  John mumbled, his body going crimson with embarrassment.  The handsome hunk tried not to think about what he must look like, his muscled arm flexed and his impressive package dangling on display as he sucked his thumb like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.  

Satisfied that John would be quiet, the Doctor sat and rotated the knife in his hands again.  “Now, as I was saying...this knife, or the stone it was carved from, has existed for tens of billions of years.  Yes, that’s billions with a ‘b’.  Far longer than the planet Earth itself and significantly older than any other meteorites that have been found.  This would be impressive by itself, but the rock has far more interesting qualities.  It’s not just extraterrestrial in origin.  It’s extraplanar.”  

John was too busy trying to pull his thumb from his mouth to pay attention to most of the Doctor’s impromptu lecture, but the mention of the knife being from another dimension caught his ear.  He stopped struggling and raised an eyebrow, slowing the pace of his sucking.  “Mmmphh….hmmmphh?”  

The Doctor laughed and nodded.  “I thought that would get your attention.  Yes, from another reality altogether.  Just think of it!  Something so cataclysmic occurred in whatever far off dimension this rock came from that it jettisoned it through the fabric of the multiverse itself.  It literally punched a hole in the fabric of all existence and wound up here.”  The Doctor gazed at the glossy, green stone the way a proud parent looks at their child, stroking a finger along its edge.  “I won’t bore you with how many civilizations have risen and fallen around the stone, or how the carving of a mere fragment into the shape of a knife caused the oceans to shift, and life to begin anew on a young Earth.  The piece relevant to your situation is that, eventually, someone began to master the unique, reality-slicing abilities inherent in the stone.  The cuts were crude and wide in those early days.  All those monsters and mythical creatures that have been relegated to fairy tales?”  The Doctor waved the knife and sighed.  “Unintended consequences, but worth it in the name of progress.  We’ve come a long way since then, and now we can use the knife with surgical precision.  It can do all manner of wonders, from simple parlor tricks like the door and your clothes, to reshaping the world itself.  The difficulty isn’t in the cutting; it’s in the replacing.  Anyone with will enough can wave the knife around and tear holes in reality, but the real art comes in pulling through what you want...like a John who never outgrew sucking his thumb.”  

John didn’t know how to respond.  His gut reaction was to deny everything he’d heard as the ravings of a lunatic, but he’d seen it himself.  He’d walked through the door, had lost his clothes, and now stood oddly calm with his thumb in his mouth.  

“Which all brings us back to why you’re here, yes?”  The Doctor stood and came around from behind his desk, laughing as John’s eyes went wide when the knife drew near.  “Oh, don’t worry.  It cuts things other than flesh,” he said, running the knife along his arm and leaving it unmarred.  He paced around the frozen, naked John, poking and prodding the athletic man’s trim waist and pinching his solid arms.  “Please, you can relax,” he said gently when he felt John tense at his touch.  “You didn’t think this consultation could happen without an exam?  Even I need to see what I’m working with.  Maybe this will help take your mind off things.”  

John gasped around his thumb when the Doctor flicked the knife and a trio of naked, gorgeous women apparated in front of him.  His first response was humiliation at the thought of the buxom blonde, the bottom-heavy brunette, and the lithe, slender ginger seeing him sucking his thumb, but that quickly turned to awe as he realized they were merely an illusion.  They were like ghosts, having no physical form whenever the Doctor passed through them, but solid enough that he could feel their soft, delicate fingers sliding through the hair on his bulging pecs and caressing his rapidly hardening cock.  

“I thought that would help,” the Doctor said, eyeing John’s fat, seven inch club as it shot to its full, rigid length.  “Truly impressive.  I’ve had many clients come to me wanting a body just such as yours but,” he shrugged, raising his hands, “my job is not to judge, but to change.  And I think I know where we can start.”  

John whimpered, more focused on the sensation of the blonde’s soft breasts pressing against his back and the pair of women draped on either side, stroking his solid stomach and toying with his throbbing pole, than on what the doctor was saying.  He heard him say something about starting, but it was lost in his own groan.  For figments of his imagination, the trio felt fantastic.  With his striking looks and impressive build John had no problem bedding women on a regular basis, but as he stood shivering and writhing in the Doctor’s office, John felt like he hadn’t cum in weeks.  The feeling of the blonde’s firm pecs against his back, and the way his strong arms felt holding him in place while a thick cock wedged itself upright between his solid globes, was overwhelming.  With the tightly built brunette and the stocky ginger filling the space on either side, their cocks batting against his own, John felt like he could pop.  

“Mmmphh…?  MMMPH!  MMMMPHHHHH!”  The naked hunk’s eyes went wide when it finally registered that the trio causing him to moan in ecstasy had changed significantly while dulling none of his arousal.  If anything, the appearance of the naked studs in place of the women only turned him on even more.  

“Ah, I see you noticed,” the Doctor said, rubbing his chin and tilting his head to the side as he watched John squirm between the three men.  “So many years of experience with women...it’s time to try something new, don’t you think?”  John shook his head furiously, but the doctor continued.  “Now...let’s see about that body.”