Doctor Dumaya, MD, PhD, FTW
Razia's Shadow
Doctor Dumaya/Princess Anhura (one-sided)
PG-13
The internet is full of people calling Doctor Dumaya a perv. He's not a perv! He's just lonelyyy!
He takes his pills upon waking, anti-anxiety and painkillers and tiny multicoloured circles that he can't remember getting, but they taste like apple pie so they must be good. He washes them down with a shot of liquor (never got used to swallowing them dry) and skips breakfast, mostly because his last “midnight” snack was chocolate spread and marshmallows on toast at six that morning, only two hours before he had to be up.
Doctor Dumaya's hair is sort of limp and useless before midday. He combs his hands through the tangles - force of habit - and shakes it out while he looks through today's clients.
“Spiders!” he shrieks, opening his red leather diary to today's date. It's completely empty, save for a smear of what seems to be the remains of a fly, drying in the margin. “Spiders! Who's coming in today?”
The spiders clatter across the cracked wooden floors. Dumaya giggles at their chattering. “Oh, hurry up, sillies,” he laughs, “we need to get the surgery ready!”
The spiders scuttle over and on top of each other, arranging themselves into two humanoid shapes staggering across the floor.
“Ooh, goody!” He claps, stomps his feet, and a spider squeaks and darts away. The spider-people fall to bits and scatter on the ground. “The Princess and her little boyfriend! Oh, this will be fun!”
He pulls on his lab coat, swiping uselessly at the rust-red hand print on the left side. He really should get it properly cleaned. Nobody wants to be treated by a bloodstained doctor. Then again, it is a nice souvenir... he can still remember the appointment. A routine check-up. The boy had been perfectly healthy - you know, aside from the cherry tree growing in his spleen.
There was a mix up with the anesthetic and a problem with the branches scraping at his kidneys, and the poor guy woke up an hour too early. Dumaya shudders with glee at the memory. Good times.
He's a little hungry, now, so he calls for the spiders to make him a sandwich while he sits out on the back step with his pipe. He still can't smoke it properly - he has to stop and splutter every few moments, but the end effect (the burning in his throat and the fullness in his lungs) is satisfactory.
He ponders cutting a hole in his facemask so he can smoke during appointments.
He takes a couple more of the rainbow apple pie pills with the sandwich, muttering his plans to the spiders. They click at him in agreement, crawling over his arms and into his shirt. The largest (his favourite) climbs his arm and sinks its teeth into his shoulder.
“Oh, stop it,” Dumaya scolds, “that tickles!” He brushes the spider away and stands, tipping the chair over as he does so. He drops the end of the sandwich for the spiders (they squeak happily and hurry down his leg) and pushes past a dangerous-looking stack of boxes that he can't remember putting there to his surgery.
“Spiders, come here!”
The spiders come immediately, of course - they make the most loyal pets - clutching pieces of reddened, sauce-drenched bread int heir tiny front legs. Dumaya tosses them loose pieces of paper from his desk, clumps of hair and pieces of stained bone. “Must make the place presentable!”
He yanks open the top draw and collapses into a coughing fit as silvery dust explodes out, finding its way into his throat. It coats the walls and all the equipment, covers the books and clothes and piles of what-the-fuck on the floor.
Dumaya bites his cheek to stop himself laughing. “Oh well,” he chuckles, “guess not - ooh, spiders! Someone's here!”
Surely enough, a few seconds later there's a tap at the door. Dumaya pulls it open dramatically, grinning under his mask. “Welcome to my humble abode! Please, don't mind the mess...”
He jerks his head towards his surgery, sweeps his hand in the same direction and bows. “Your highness,” he giggles. He watches the Princess' hips sway as she goes through to his sugery.
“Just nest yourself down comfortable,” he says, gesturing at the couch alone one wall. He snaps on a pair of latex gloves. “Let the Doctor do the rest.”
The couple share a look that clearly says, what are we doing here? Dumaya widens his eyes innocently. “What?”
He takes the Princess' wrist and pulls her from the couch, directing her to the white surgical bench opposite. “Dear ghost!” he gasps, letting his hand slip up her arm, “you look white as a sheet! Just have yourself a seat.” He pushes gently at her shoulders and she falls onto the table. Another push, and she's vertical, her legs hanging over the edge.
“Um,” says the boy sitting on the couch.
“Open wide!” Dumaya fumbles in his desk for his torch. “Say 'ah'! Let the Doctor take a peek...” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
The princess wets her lips nervously before opening her mouth. Dumaya slips a tongue depressor between her lips and squints, peering down her throat, talking as he works. “Now, I must admit, I knew you'd come... the boy, and his love...” He leers openly, then turns to the couch. “My spiders told me, see,” he says earnestly, before turning back to the job. He prods at the Princess' ribs, pokes at her stomach and sides.
“I don't want to alarm you, but you certainly are ill. You can sit up now,” he adds, smiling sweetly at the Princess and hoping she notices it through his mask. “Stricken with a sickness deadly enough to kill...” He remembers the last time he had a case like this. He got to use the jackhammer. “Even the strongest man would drop dead where he stands,” he continues, lowering his voice excitedly. He loves terminal illnesses!
“Isn't there anything -?” the boy stands abruptly.
“Shut up, I was getting to that,” Dumaya snaps. He lowers his voice again. He likes to think it gives him the extra sex appeal that the coat and mask miss out on. “Princess, I urge that we make haste if you are to stand a chance!”
“Anything,” the boy urges. Dumaya glares at him.
“Anything,” the Princess echoes.
Dumaya clears his throat. “Spiders! Scalpel!” The spiders scuttle around, completing his orders. “Forceps..! Anesthetic!” The spiders pull a bottle labeled HOG'S BREATH off a shelf, knock it right into the Doctor's outstretched hand. Dumaya wriggles his fingers excitedly, reaching for the scalpel. “Right!” he says, scalpel poised.
He drops it with a clatter.
“What you've got here ain't no quick fix,” he murmurs. “This ain't no common cold.” He turns to the shelf and starts pulling out bottles, checking their labels, and chucking them over his shoulder when they're not what he needs. They shatter against the wall, raining down like fairy dust. (Deadly fairy dust, he thinks, delighted.) The spiders tut and fetch a broom.
“What you need's a Bona Fide... Doctor's... miracle! Got it!” He whips a tiny vial out of the shelf, shaking it between his thumb and forefinger. The liquid is a thick, dreamy blue-green, the colour of angry seawater.
“The thing about miracles is that they don't grow on trees. They don't fall from the sky.” He motions to the spiders, and they bring him a metal syringe, his favourite: burnt steel with an inch-long needle. “You need a doctor like me, and there just aren't any, you see.”
He stabs the needle through the plastic cover of the vial and draws the stuff up into the syringe, knocking it against the windowsill to pop the air bubbles.
“Lucky for you, you found me! The rest should be no fuss. Stretch out, deary.” He swipes the inside of the Princess' arm with an alcohol-soaked cloth, ties a dirty-looking piece of string around her perfect pale arm, and raises the syringe. “But.”
“But?” The boy is out of his seat again, across the room in a second. “What do you mean, 'but'?”
Dumaya shakes his head. “Before we get to saving lives, there's a few things to discuss.”
“Payment,” the boy mutters, “of course. Look, we haven't got a lot -”
“I'm not asking for a lot,” Dumaya cuts in. He really doesn't like this guy. “It won't cost you a dime.” He looks at the Princess, sitting on the surgical table with her white-blond hair tied back, bones all but visible under her skin. “I just want the Princess here with me until the end of time.”
It's a perfectly reasonable request. After all, it does get lonely, out in his glass shack with nobody but his spiders and the occasional client for company.
The Princess gasps. The boy's face goes white.
“I promise to take care of her,” he adds, smirking. He doesn't say what he's thinking: (rather, she'll take care of me.) He laughs out loud at himself, cackling - he supposes it probably sounds evil from the other side, but he doesn't mean it to be.
“I can't do this,” the Princess murmurs. Dumaya's heart sinks.
“But you must, Princess,” the boy says, taking her hand in both of his. Dumaya tries not to glare - he knows how intimidating he can be with his hair in his face and his eyes glinting over his mask. It would be creepy even if his stupid shoulders didn't make him a giant.
“Sign my life away?”
“It's the only way.” The boy holds her hand to his chest and kisses her cheek. “Trust me, I know how this must go. Just do what the Doctor says.” He glances up when he says that, looking right at Dumaya, and Dumaya smiles.
+
Dumaya tapes the gauze over the Princess' stitched skin as carefully as he can and wraps her torso in a thick off-white bandage, just in time for the anesthetic to wear off. The Princess groans. “Adakias?”
The boy had been sitting there the whole time, wincing and shuddering and saying “is that really necessary?” when he started to slice. Dumaya really can't stand the guy.
“It worked!” the boy shouts now. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” He hugs the Princess, who grimaces with pain, and then Dumaya, and then the Princess again, gently this time. He whispers into her ear.
Dumaya says, “Careful! If you move too much the stitches will rip, and all your pretty little guts will come tumbling out!” He giggles at the thought of his spiders rushing around cleaning up the girl's intestines, even though he really doesn't want it to happen to his Princess.
The boy helps the Princess to her feet and kisses her softly, then leads her towards the door.
“Hey,” says Dumaya, “heys! Where are you going with my princess? Hey! You promised!”
Before either of the young couple can reply, something thuds heavily against the door. Twice. And then the door splinters, cracks, and falls straight off the hinges.
“My door,” Dumaya moans, dismayed. “I needed that!”
A man in a white tuxedo, black spikes drawn down his cheeks with coal, whips a dagger from his belt and advances on the couple. “I've been tracing your steps...”
“Oh god, not again,” Dumaya grumbles. “Hey, come on, this is a business! Leave me my princess and get the fuck out!”
When they pay no attention he groans again. “Spiders,” he mutters, “make me some ice cream.”
+
“But I suppose it's in vain, since her life is ending when I thrust this blade into her heart a-thumping...”
“Brother, no!”
Thud, scream, gasp.
“Brother, what have I done? My blade has pierced your side!”
“Better than an opera,” Dumaya giggles, stirring his half-melted ice cream and rainbow sprinkles. He can't see anything, but they're practically singing out there.
+
When Dumaya emerges, the surgery is empty, save for a large puddle of blood on the floor. He stares at it for a very long time.
“Where the hell is my princess?” he spits at the blood. It doesn't answer. “Spiders, clean this shit up. They took my fucking princess.”
The spiders click sympathetically. “Shut up,” he says, “I am not lonely.” The biggest spider looks at him. Dumaya has a feeling that if he had eyebrows, they would be raised. (All eight of them.) “Not that lonely, anyway,” he mutters, as he turns back to his desk.
Doctor Dumaya/Princess Anhura (one-sided)
PG-13
The internet is full of people calling Doctor Dumaya a perv. He's not a perv! He's just lonelyyy!
He takes his pills upon waking, anti-anxiety and painkillers and tiny multicoloured circles that he can't remember getting, but they taste like apple pie so they must be good. He washes them down with a shot of liquor (never got used to swallowing them dry) and skips breakfast, mostly because his last “midnight” snack was chocolate spread and marshmallows on toast at six that morning, only two hours before he had to be up.
Doctor Dumaya's hair is sort of limp and useless before midday. He combs his hands through the tangles - force of habit - and shakes it out while he looks through today's clients.
“Spiders!” he shrieks, opening his red leather diary to today's date. It's completely empty, save for a smear of what seems to be the remains of a fly, drying in the margin. “Spiders! Who's coming in today?”
The spiders clatter across the cracked wooden floors. Dumaya giggles at their chattering. “Oh, hurry up, sillies,” he laughs, “we need to get the surgery ready!”
The spiders scuttle over and on top of each other, arranging themselves into two humanoid shapes staggering across the floor.
“Ooh, goody!” He claps, stomps his feet, and a spider squeaks and darts away. The spider-people fall to bits and scatter on the ground. “The Princess and her little boyfriend! Oh, this will be fun!”
He pulls on his lab coat, swiping uselessly at the rust-red hand print on the left side. He really should get it properly cleaned. Nobody wants to be treated by a bloodstained doctor. Then again, it is a nice souvenir... he can still remember the appointment. A routine check-up. The boy had been perfectly healthy - you know, aside from the cherry tree growing in his spleen.
There was a mix up with the anesthetic and a problem with the branches scraping at his kidneys, and the poor guy woke up an hour too early. Dumaya shudders with glee at the memory. Good times.
He's a little hungry, now, so he calls for the spiders to make him a sandwich while he sits out on the back step with his pipe. He still can't smoke it properly - he has to stop and splutter every few moments, but the end effect (the burning in his throat and the fullness in his lungs) is satisfactory.
He ponders cutting a hole in his facemask so he can smoke during appointments.
He takes a couple more of the rainbow apple pie pills with the sandwich, muttering his plans to the spiders. They click at him in agreement, crawling over his arms and into his shirt. The largest (his favourite) climbs his arm and sinks its teeth into his shoulder.
“Oh, stop it,” Dumaya scolds, “that tickles!” He brushes the spider away and stands, tipping the chair over as he does so. He drops the end of the sandwich for the spiders (they squeak happily and hurry down his leg) and pushes past a dangerous-looking stack of boxes that he can't remember putting there to his surgery.
“Spiders, come here!”
The spiders come immediately, of course - they make the most loyal pets - clutching pieces of reddened, sauce-drenched bread int heir tiny front legs. Dumaya tosses them loose pieces of paper from his desk, clumps of hair and pieces of stained bone. “Must make the place presentable!”
He yanks open the top draw and collapses into a coughing fit as silvery dust explodes out, finding its way into his throat. It coats the walls and all the equipment, covers the books and clothes and piles of what-the-fuck on the floor.
Dumaya bites his cheek to stop himself laughing. “Oh well,” he chuckles, “guess not - ooh, spiders! Someone's here!”
Surely enough, a few seconds later there's a tap at the door. Dumaya pulls it open dramatically, grinning under his mask. “Welcome to my humble abode! Please, don't mind the mess...”
He jerks his head towards his surgery, sweeps his hand in the same direction and bows. “Your highness,” he giggles. He watches the Princess' hips sway as she goes through to his sugery.
“Just nest yourself down comfortable,” he says, gesturing at the couch alone one wall. He snaps on a pair of latex gloves. “Let the Doctor do the rest.”
The couple share a look that clearly says, what are we doing here? Dumaya widens his eyes innocently. “What?”
He takes the Princess' wrist and pulls her from the couch, directing her to the white surgical bench opposite. “Dear ghost!” he gasps, letting his hand slip up her arm, “you look white as a sheet! Just have yourself a seat.” He pushes gently at her shoulders and she falls onto the table. Another push, and she's vertical, her legs hanging over the edge.
“Um,” says the boy sitting on the couch.
“Open wide!” Dumaya fumbles in his desk for his torch. “Say 'ah'! Let the Doctor take a peek...” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
The princess wets her lips nervously before opening her mouth. Dumaya slips a tongue depressor between her lips and squints, peering down her throat, talking as he works. “Now, I must admit, I knew you'd come... the boy, and his love...” He leers openly, then turns to the couch. “My spiders told me, see,” he says earnestly, before turning back to the job. He prods at the Princess' ribs, pokes at her stomach and sides.
“I don't want to alarm you, but you certainly are ill. You can sit up now,” he adds, smiling sweetly at the Princess and hoping she notices it through his mask. “Stricken with a sickness deadly enough to kill...” He remembers the last time he had a case like this. He got to use the jackhammer. “Even the strongest man would drop dead where he stands,” he continues, lowering his voice excitedly. He loves terminal illnesses!
“Isn't there anything -?” the boy stands abruptly.
“Shut up, I was getting to that,” Dumaya snaps. He lowers his voice again. He likes to think it gives him the extra sex appeal that the coat and mask miss out on. “Princess, I urge that we make haste if you are to stand a chance!”
“Anything,” the boy urges. Dumaya glares at him.
“Anything,” the Princess echoes.
Dumaya clears his throat. “Spiders! Scalpel!” The spiders scuttle around, completing his orders. “Forceps..! Anesthetic!” The spiders pull a bottle labeled HOG'S BREATH off a shelf, knock it right into the Doctor's outstretched hand. Dumaya wriggles his fingers excitedly, reaching for the scalpel. “Right!” he says, scalpel poised.
He drops it with a clatter.
“What you've got here ain't no quick fix,” he murmurs. “This ain't no common cold.” He turns to the shelf and starts pulling out bottles, checking their labels, and chucking them over his shoulder when they're not what he needs. They shatter against the wall, raining down like fairy dust. (Deadly fairy dust, he thinks, delighted.) The spiders tut and fetch a broom.
“What you need's a Bona Fide... Doctor's... miracle! Got it!” He whips a tiny vial out of the shelf, shaking it between his thumb and forefinger. The liquid is a thick, dreamy blue-green, the colour of angry seawater.
“The thing about miracles is that they don't grow on trees. They don't fall from the sky.” He motions to the spiders, and they bring him a metal syringe, his favourite: burnt steel with an inch-long needle. “You need a doctor like me, and there just aren't any, you see.”
He stabs the needle through the plastic cover of the vial and draws the stuff up into the syringe, knocking it against the windowsill to pop the air bubbles.
“Lucky for you, you found me! The rest should be no fuss. Stretch out, deary.” He swipes the inside of the Princess' arm with an alcohol-soaked cloth, ties a dirty-looking piece of string around her perfect pale arm, and raises the syringe. “But.”
“But?” The boy is out of his seat again, across the room in a second. “What do you mean, 'but'?”
Dumaya shakes his head. “Before we get to saving lives, there's a few things to discuss.”
“Payment,” the boy mutters, “of course. Look, we haven't got a lot -”
“I'm not asking for a lot,” Dumaya cuts in. He really doesn't like this guy. “It won't cost you a dime.” He looks at the Princess, sitting on the surgical table with her white-blond hair tied back, bones all but visible under her skin. “I just want the Princess here with me until the end of time.”
It's a perfectly reasonable request. After all, it does get lonely, out in his glass shack with nobody but his spiders and the occasional client for company.
The Princess gasps. The boy's face goes white.
“I promise to take care of her,” he adds, smirking. He doesn't say what he's thinking: (rather, she'll take care of me.) He laughs out loud at himself, cackling - he supposes it probably sounds evil from the other side, but he doesn't mean it to be.
“I can't do this,” the Princess murmurs. Dumaya's heart sinks.
“But you must, Princess,” the boy says, taking her hand in both of his. Dumaya tries not to glare - he knows how intimidating he can be with his hair in his face and his eyes glinting over his mask. It would be creepy even if his stupid shoulders didn't make him a giant.
“Sign my life away?”
“It's the only way.” The boy holds her hand to his chest and kisses her cheek. “Trust me, I know how this must go. Just do what the Doctor says.” He glances up when he says that, looking right at Dumaya, and Dumaya smiles.
+
Dumaya tapes the gauze over the Princess' stitched skin as carefully as he can and wraps her torso in a thick off-white bandage, just in time for the anesthetic to wear off. The Princess groans. “Adakias?”
The boy had been sitting there the whole time, wincing and shuddering and saying “is that really necessary?” when he started to slice. Dumaya really can't stand the guy.
“It worked!” the boy shouts now. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” He hugs the Princess, who grimaces with pain, and then Dumaya, and then the Princess again, gently this time. He whispers into her ear.
Dumaya says, “Careful! If you move too much the stitches will rip, and all your pretty little guts will come tumbling out!” He giggles at the thought of his spiders rushing around cleaning up the girl's intestines, even though he really doesn't want it to happen to his Princess.
The boy helps the Princess to her feet and kisses her softly, then leads her towards the door.
“Hey,” says Dumaya, “heys! Where are you going with my princess? Hey! You promised!”
Before either of the young couple can reply, something thuds heavily against the door. Twice. And then the door splinters, cracks, and falls straight off the hinges.
“My door,” Dumaya moans, dismayed. “I needed that!”
A man in a white tuxedo, black spikes drawn down his cheeks with coal, whips a dagger from his belt and advances on the couple. “I've been tracing your steps...”
“Oh god, not again,” Dumaya grumbles. “Hey, come on, this is a business! Leave me my princess and get the fuck out!”
When they pay no attention he groans again. “Spiders,” he mutters, “make me some ice cream.”
+
“But I suppose it's in vain, since her life is ending when I thrust this blade into her heart a-thumping...”
“Brother, no!”
Thud, scream, gasp.
“Brother, what have I done? My blade has pierced your side!”
“Better than an opera,” Dumaya giggles, stirring his half-melted ice cream and rainbow sprinkles. He can't see anything, but they're practically singing out there.
+
When Dumaya emerges, the surgery is empty, save for a large puddle of blood on the floor. He stares at it for a very long time.
“Where the hell is my princess?” he spits at the blood. It doesn't answer. “Spiders, clean this shit up. They took my fucking princess.”
The spiders click sympathetically. “Shut up,” he says, “I am not lonely.” The biggest spider looks at him. Dumaya has a feeling that if he had eyebrows, they would be raised. (All eight of them.) “Not that lonely, anyway,” he mutters, as he turns back to his desk.