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“…will perform further post-op review during two week, one month, and three month follow-up exams. End dictation.”

Samir tapped the stop button on the digital dictaphone to end recording and placed the device on his desk. He yawned and looked at his smartwatch to see it was just past 10:30 PM.

“Jeez,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes—his shift had officially ended four hours ago, but he’d fallen far behind on his patient notes. So, still dressed in his blue surgical scrubs, the 38-year old urologist had sat hunched over his desk as evening faded into night, talking into his dictaphone and working his way through the list of medical files on his computer screen. After logging out of his work computer, Samir stood and grunted as he stretched his back and legs for a moment.

“Ooooh shit,” he groaned before relaxing again—his back ached from sitting so long, it felt good to stand again. When he finished stretching, Samir grabbed his coat and tugged it on, then slung his bag over his shoulder before picking up his dictaphone. He hit the lights on his way out of his glass-walled office, plunging the room into darkness as he passed through the door that bore, in block lettering, “Samir Hakim, MD”.

“Free at last?” Cheryl asked as he approached the administration station outside his office.

“Hallelujah, free at last,” Samir returned exhaustedly, placing the dictaphone on Cheryl’s desk. “This is ready for transcription…who’s in this time?”

Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Some kid from the temp agency. Not the brightest, I had to brief him a couple times. But he can type fast…or at least that’s what the agency says.”

“He knows that—”

“Any mention of you wanting to strangle the patient doesn’t need to go in the final transcript,” Cheryl finished. She winked at Samir before taking the dictaphone in her slender hand. “Oh, and Dr. Wright wanted to remind you about that referral for tomorrow.”

Samir nodded and stifled a yawn. “Consider me reminded. Anything else?”

“Get some sleep, we’ll be here when you get back,” Cheryl said wryly before taking a sip of her coffee.

Samir stepped away from Cheryl’s desk, waving as he departed. “Have a good night, Cheryl.”

He began walking down the hallway, his eyes only half-open. He wanted to get away from the fluorescent lights overhead, the smell of antiseptic that pervaded the hospital, the harsh glare from the lights bouncing off of the polished floors, the continuous beeping of monitors, the professionally-objective and detached facade he had to wear all the time in this place; all Samir wanted right then was to go home, crawl into bed, and get at least five hours of peaceful sleep before—

“Ah, Dr. Hakim!” Cheryl called right before he made it to the door at the end of the wing.

Samir stopped in his tracks

“Phone call for you.”

Grumbling, the surgeon turned around and trudged back to his office. “Please tell me whoever’s calling needs emergency surgery to reattach their penis,” he quipped as he passed the administration station.

“Let’s hope,” Cheryl said sarcastically before he re-entered his office.

Leaving the lights off, Samir strode to his desk and picked up the phone that was ringing. “Hakim,” he said gruffly.

“Samir! Hey, it’s Erik!” a jovial voice said from the other end of the line.

Samir paused, both too confused and too tired to answer immediately. “Erik?”

“Olsson,” the voice said, now with a hint of uncertainty.

Through the weary fog that filled his mind, Samir managed to make the connection. Erik, from medical school; Erik, who worked on the other side of the country; Erik, who he’d bumped into for the first time in a dozen years at a surgical conference last summer.

“Erik! Yes, sorry…how are you?” Samir asked, still standing in his darkened office.

“I’m good, and real glad I caught you! I’m sorry, I know it’s late over there, I was figuring that you’d gone home already, but on the off-chance you were still at the office, I wanted to try chatting with you tonight,” Erik explained, sounding as if he’d been mainlining caffeine.

“You got me just as I was about to leave,” Samir replied, trying not to sound too surly. “What’s going on? Is it an emergency?”

“Well, yes and no…there’s an important opportunity that came up, something that could help your side hustle.”

Any traces of exhaustion in Samir’s system were wiped out by the surge of adrenaline. “Side hustle?” he asked, keeping his voice calm and even.

“MeliCorp, LLC,” Erik answered.

Another pulse of adrenaline spiked as Samir’s blood ran cold and his stomach dropped—how could Erik possibly know about MeliCorp? How could he have possibly traced it back to Samir?

“Look, I don’t mean to scare you or anything, that’s not what this is about,” Erik said quickly, picking up on Samir’s silence. “Personally, I think it’s great—the patients you’ve helped with it have benefited much more than they would have without your services. At first, I was a little surprised to hear you were doing that kind of thing, but it made a lot of sense when I thought about it; you really hated that ethics class back in med school…anyway, you should be able to do more, and that’s what I’m calling about.”

Samir’s nostrils flared as he inhaled, then sighed. “How did you find out?”

“It wasn’t me, it was an…acquaintance…of an associate of a friend of a friend who connected the dots, and then this acquaintance reached out to me…to reach out to you,” Erik answered. Samir frowned, trying to follow the links of relationships that Erik had just described. “I don’t know how much sway this guy has, but he must have a lot if he was able to find records connecting you to MeliCorp, it sounded like you did a pretty good job covering yourself,” Erik continued. “But he’s interested in helping with funding. I’m talking more funding than you could get from a grant or fundraising campaign, funding that could take you to the next level.”

Samir tapped his fingers on his desk. “The catch being?”

“He needs you to operate on him.”

“Ah.”

“…Is that a good ‘ah’ or a bad ‘ah’?”

Samir raised his hand from the desk and rubbed his eyes. “More of an ‘I’m tired and not surprised’ ‘ah’.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking—an opportunity like this was rare, although it often came with unforeseen strings attached. But his MeliCorp operations needed funding to keep going, he was just barely getting by at the moment, and if there was any possibility of receiving more than what he was bringing in now…

“But I’d need to talk with him first,” Samir said at last, doing his best to keep his tone neutral. “If he’s in the area, he can come to my office during hours.”

“Actually, he’d need you to make it a house call,” Erik replied. “He’s the ‘wealthy recluse’ type. Big spender, very low profile.”

Samir frowned again, then sighed. “It’s not my usual practice…”

“If anything about this were ‘usual’, you and I probably wouldn’t be talking right now.”

“Hm…true…”

“And, in the interest of full transparency,” Erik continued uneasily, “I should tell you that this guy made it very clear that he has the resources and connections to—”

“Destroy my career if I don’t help him?” Samir guessed.

“Not the exact words he used, but that’s the gist.”

The urologist rolled his eyes. “Sounds like he’s seen too many movies; I don’t need a gun to my head.” Samir looked at his watch again—he had been at the hospital for over 15 hours by this point, and he just wanted to go home and flop onto his bed. “Did he say when he’d want me to do the house call?”

———

It was 11:45 by the time Samir plucked the half-empty cup of coffee from his cupholder and clambered out of his BMW X5. He’d had to stop for a dark roast before getting on the road, and he struggled to keep his eyes open, but he finally made it to the remote ridge in Sandia Glenn that Erik had directed him to.

He locked his car before zipping his coat and turning up the collar at the chilled wind that blew past him. Samir looked around at the dark scenery—ahead of him, from the top of the ridge, about thirty miles in the distance, he could see the lights of Delton illuminating the downtown skyline and the web of neighborhoods that sprawled around the metropolitan area. Samir turned around, away from the city view and towards the natural landscape of trees and rocky outcroppings he’d driven to.

After receiving the address from Erik and confirming that it was correct, Samir had assumed that his colleague’s acquaintance lived in some luxurious mountain home. But as the doctor peered into the dark, he saw that there were no houses of any kind, much less any mansions. It was just…wilderness.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the map on his screen again. This was the place, but—

The phone vibrated in Samir’s hand as he received a message. He opened it to see an unknown number had sent the cryptic instruction “Turn to your left and come inside.”

Samir’s brow furrowed in momentary confusion. He looked up from his phone and slowly turned his head to the left…until his eyes caught on a dark crevice in one of the rocky outcroppings. To get a better look, he turned on his phone’s flashlight and held it aloft, casting a beam of bright light that illuminated the wall of stone; cautiously, Samir stepped closer, and he saw that the opening was large enough for someone to squeeze through. He grimaced apprehensively to himself—he wasn’t the biggest fan of cramped spaces, but if this was what he had to do…

Still holding his coffee in one hand and his phone in his other, Samir shuffled in sideways, passing beyond the narrow entrance and into a tunnel, which, after about fifteen feet, widened enough for the man to walk forward normally. It was silent and dim in the cave, and Samir kept his phone pointed ahead of him, lighting the cave every few feet as he made his way deeper. If he weren’t so tired and unsettled by being in a cave to meet a potential patient, he would have marveled at the fact that this tunnel was here; he’d had no idea something like this existed so close to Delton. But he trudged on in the dark, occasionally sipping the dregs of his coffee while the subtly sloping floor carried him down deeper and deeper, around gradual curves…until the darkness receded when he encountered an LED lamp set into the wall…and another…and another, consistently lighting the hallway. The doctor soon turned off his flashlight and stowed his phone in his pocket, and as he continued walking, he could feel the ambient temperature rising; it didn’t take long for him to unzip his coat as the chill from the outdoors gave way to the more comfortable warmth that began emanating from the rocky walls.

As Samir kept walking, he began to hear the echoes of water hitting stone. It grew louder and louder, until he eventually rounded a corner and arrived at the source of the noise.

Samir gaped at the cavernous chamber he’d entered—it was as if he’d walked into a cathedral, with high, arched ceilings and enough floor space for a congregation of at least a thousand. Lights set into the walls illuminated the rust-colored stone. Samir could see additional tunnel entrances and exits on the far side of the chamber, and a waterfall that seeped out of a high crevice and hit a series of rough protrusions as it cascaded down to a gurgling creek system that pooled into a subterranean pond, giving the whole cave an appearance of a secret grotto; stalactites, stalagmites, and conical columns that reached all the way from the floor to the ceiling added to the effect. An enormous, royal purple cushion large enough for 10 full-sized SUVs dominated a corner of the cave, where Samir also saw a collection of armchairs and a large sofa, presumably as a seating area for guests to gather. Hanging on one of the corner walls was a bank of enormous computer monitors—from where he stood on the cave’s threshold, Samir squinted to see that some of the monitors displayed an assortment of financial information, live camera feeds (including a few angles of Samir’s car and the cave entrance he had used, all illuminated in glowing, night-vision green), and…

Tired as he was, the doctor was taken aback to see several video windows playing muted pornography: men were fucking each other soundlessly in an orgy, women were moaning in silence as they rode their well-endowed partners, a hirsute and muscular brute was mercilessly smacking a younger man’s testicles with a riding crop, a man backing his ass up onto a stallion’s…

“Do come in,” a deep, resonant voice echoed, startling Samir.

Just as the voice spoke, all the monitors changed at once to display copies of a document that Samir was intimately familiar with: his resume. Samir took that as his cue to approach the bank of monitors, and as he walked across the smooth stone floor, the voice continued, reverberating so sonorously that it was impossible for the doctor to identify its point of origin.

“Samir Hakim,” the voice noted; it was a rich baritone, sounding as if it were dripping in honey. “Attended Bluffton University on a full-ride scholarship before going to Logan-Foley Medical School. You graduated fourth in your class, performed your internship and residency at Mercer Memorial, and two urology fellowships at Fisk Health Center where you specialized in reconstructive and restorative surgery.”

Samir, still holding his now-empty coffee cup, neared the computer monitors, getting a better look at his resume and professional accomplishments while the voice droned on, “Five-time winner of the Sloan Award of Excellence, the highest worldwide honor in urology, authored numerous peer-reviewed research papers on urological disorders and their impacts on sexual function, you were a co-editor of the Lorton Medical Journal for six years, and currently practice at Allura Medical Institute while serving as head of the residency board and Gabriel Scholar at Delton Medical School.”

The voice paused before a giant photo of Samir, dressed in a neon pink t-shirt, black athletic shorts, blue sneakers, and wearing a sweatband on his forehead, making an impressive save on the tennis court. Samir’s eyebrows rose in recognition—he’d been wearing that outfit just last weekend, and this photo looked like it had been taken from only a few feet away…

“And you play tennis at the Lakeside Country Club on Sundays,” the voice added.

The voice paused again, and the photo of Samir and his resume were replaced by a collage of additional documents that Samir had hoped would never see the light of day: patient records, billing statements, tax forms and registrations, business licenses, and articles of organization.

“Samir Hakim,” the voice began again. “Creator of nine separate dummy corporations, backed by offshore accounts and working through each other to found MeliCorp, LLC, which has been in operation for the past six years.”

As the voice spoke, Samir began to hear soft thuds from somewhere in the cave, like heavy sacks of leather dropping on stone.

“MeliCorp has a small, dedicated team of employees and contractors, headed and organized solely by Dr. Ramin Madani, who is, in fact, a false identity cultivated by Dai Investors, Inc, one of the dummy corporations responsible for creating MeliCorp,” the unseen speaker went on. The thuds sounded as if they were growing closer, and the voice increased in volume while the echoes began to lessen into a single, unified voice. “Dr. Madani, otherwise known as Dr. Hakim, uses his team to identify, source, distribute, and implant organs and assorted body parts with falsified documentation to circumvent transplant boards, allegedly under the auspices of the National Network for Organ Donation, who, in reality, is entirely ignorant of MeliCorp’s operations. MeliCorp has been identified as a provider in over 750 patient records, and 89.4% of those organ recipients reported positive long-term outcomes with minimal negative impacts. The remaining 10.6% of those patients experienced failures due to extenuating circumstances and not because of any medical malpractice by MeliCorp.”

Samir turned away from the monitors—his host, whoever he was, sounded as if he were coming down one of the tunnels on the far wall of the cave. The thudding footsteps grew louder as they closed in on him, and Samir kept his eyes on the tunnel entrances while the voice went on, “Such acts indicate that Dr. Hakim ascribes to a legal and ethical basis not endorsed by the medical institutes at which he has practiced, and his history, combined with his high rate of success, suggests that he will continue to do so, provided he has the funding and his operations remain undiscovered.”

By the time the voice finished speaking, Samir had pinpointed the tunnel that his host was using—his gaze locked on the tunnel entrance on the far right, Samir watched as, at last, a white-scaled dragon’s head, as long as Samir was tall, with a distinctively reptilian snout and bearing bony crests that led to its widespread, angular, ivory horns, emerged from the darkness and into the light.

Shocked, Samir took a step back, and he felt his heart skip a beat. There had been dragons in the past, and he’d heard mixed rumors about one remaining who was supposedly a notorious recluse, but to see such rumors in the flesh—here, addressing him—was beyond surprising, beyond astonishing, beyond fascinating. This was…he couldn’t even describe how he was feeling, all he could do was watch, wide-eyed, as the quadrupedal dragon crept further into the cavern, revealing its thick, serpentine neck, and broad, incredibly muscled shoulders. The dragon’s forefeet, each the size of an adult lynx, came into view, padding heavily on the floor, and Samir noticed the dagger-sharp, almost porcelain-white claws adorning each scaled talon.

The dragon smiled at Samir while it further entered its den, just barely raising its scaled lips to show the tips of its impressive fangs; the doctor saw enormous white wings folded on its back, each probably large enough to form a 12-person tent. Its body, covered in white scales, was an extended tank of muscle and sinew, twice as long as Samir’s car with a keg-like chest large enough to seat a family of four. As the rest of the dragon emerged from the tunnel, Samir guessed that it was at least 20 feet long, not including the additional 20–30 feet of tail that swayed after it, which tapered from the base as thick as an oak tree and to a blunt point as wide as Samir’s fist.

Awestruck by the sheer size of the beast, Samir mutely watched the dragon approach, until it was only 10 feet away; it bowed its head cordially to him in greeting before fixing him in its steely gaze, and spoke.

“Welcome to my home, Dr. Hakim,” the dragon said in his richly resonant tone. “I recognize the hour is late, but I needed to get your attention, and I didn’t want to waste much time.”

Samir gulped nervously, then guffawed softly. “I…ahem, excuse me…well, consider my attention gotten, mister…?”

“Vakaris,” the dragon supplied. “Simply Vakaris.” He nodded to the bank of monitors behind Samir. “I’m grateful that you came so quickly tonight, it tells me that you’re willing to do what it takes to get the job done. And while I’m sure you appreciate this whole display, I have a feeling you would appreciate it even more if I cut to the chase: Provided you help me, I can give you the funding you need to keep MeliCorp in operation for decades, and the protection to keep it hidden long after you’re gone.”

Samir stared at Vakaris, then blinked, processing what he’d said. “How?” he demanded.

Vakaris chuckled. “Any dragon worth his scales has a horde, and mine…has grown so large, it’s hard for me to do much of anything with it, except give it away.”

“And you want…”

“I can,” the dragon emphasized, raising his right foreleg and idly inspecting his claws, “make an anonymous contribution to any number of your offshore accounts so you can stay in business for as long as you want to continue helping people without having to navigate the ocean of bureaucratic red tape. I also have the legal network available to put safeguards in place for your career, making you practically invincible.” Vakaris glared meaningfully at Samir again. “I can do this…or I can use my resources—”

“To shut me down, yes, Erik mentioned,” Samir finished succinctly.

Vakaris’s glare softened somewhat. “Ah, it was good of Dr. Olsson to pass that along.”

“Yes, but what he didn’t pass along was what exactly you’d like me to do for you, other than a surgical procedure,” Samir noted.

At that, Varkaris smirked. “Well, that would be more of a story. Please…”

As he turned toward the large cushion in the corner, Vakaris gestured for Samir to follow him; the doctor took the dragon’s invitation, walking alongside his towering haunches that supported his massive rear. He warily watched out for Vakaris’s tail so it wouldn’t hit him as it swayed from side to side, but the dragon seemed to keep it under control, letting it swing no closer than arm-distance to Samir. Vakaris led the way over to the sitting area, where he motioned for Samir to take a seat on either the couch or one of the arm chairs—the human chose a spot on the sofa, while the dragon settled onto his gigantic cushion near the wall.

“So far as I know, I am the last of my kind,” Vakaris began, folding his forelegs over each other. “I don’t tell you this because I want your sympathy, but because I want you to understand. Dragons live extremely long lives; I remember when knights went off on crusades, and I was around when the telescope was invented. I’ve spent the past centuries watching the wheel of history turn, surviving, finding ways to adapt to civilization without becoming part of it. And I’ve had to watch my fellows die out because of age, because of hunger, because of old grudges against one another, because they were unable to change with the times…” Vakaris trailed off, his gaze drifting from Samir’s as he spoke, as if he was losing himself in a reel of memories that began to play.

After a moment, he shook his head and addressed the doctor sitting before him again. “And this all happened without another generation to replace them—every dragon who has been killed by humans was young, of breeding age. Like humans, dragons have a time window for their fertility. But while humans can reproduce as much as they please, dragons are (or I should say ‘were’) unable to do so more than a few times in their lives—females had only 60 years in which they could reproduce, hardly any time at all. So, with a young population that was being killed without remorse, and an aging population that could no longer produce any more descendants to follow us, we have effectively gone extinct.”

Vakaris paused and shuffled his wings, as if collecting himself. Samir lightly tapped his fingers on his empty coffee cup, waiting.

Vakaris cleared his throat and took up, “If I do nothing, if I keep ‘surviving’, it’s likely I’ll see the next millennium. But that’s just what I’ve been doing: surviving. I haven’t been…living. Enjoying the perks of being alive in this day and age. Enjoying the more…carnal pleasures.”

Samir cocked an eyebrow, signifying that he was following the dragon’s meaning.

“As you entered my lair, I take it that you saw what I had playing for my entertainment?” Vakaris prompted.

Samir nodded respectfully, recalling the video windows of pornography he’d seen briefly before the dragon’s computer monitors displayed his resume. Vakaris shifted on his cushion, not quite looking uncomfortable, but seeming somewhat on edge, as if he weren’t entirely in control of the situation.

“Try as I might, I…it’s been difficult to…that is to say, I have not been able to…release…” the dragon said haltingly, now sounding as if he was trying to dance around the topic.

Samir couldn’t help but let an unprofessional smirk flit across his face before resuming his objective, clinical composure—as dignified as the dragon had been, Vakaris still sounded like one of the thousands of patients that Samir had seen, too proud and too uptight to describe his problem. As if he were sitting in an exam room at the hospital, Samir leaned forward in his seat, to demonstrate that he was listening, that he was present for his patient, that he was here to help. “You haven’t been able to orgasm?” he asked.

Vakaris sighed and visibly relaxed—it was as if just the use of the word was enough to break the barrier. “No, not for over 500 years now,” he replied.

“That’s…quite a while. Has there been any kind of emission similar to an ejaculation in that time?” Samir probed.

“Nothing.”

“But you…have been able to experience arousal?” the urologist clarified. “You still have erections?”

Vakaris smiled ruefully. “Oh yes.”

Samir opened his mouth again, but the white dragon raised a talon to silence him.

“Before you continue, doctor, I should ask: Are you familiar with draconic anatomy at all?”

Samir paused, then sat back. “I can’t say that I am…we didn’t exactly have a unit in medical school devoted to dragons. I’m sorry to say that you’re a very niche subject of study, considering…”

“Considering that my people are, for all intents and purposes, gone from the world,” Vakaris finished dismissively. “Yes…in any case, for dragons, certain anatomical processes are based on specific activities. In males, the…well, we can get excited just as easily as humans. Like you said, I still have…erections,” the dragon continued, uneasily emphasizing the last word. “But there’s nothing I can do about them except wait for them to pass.”

Samir raised an eyebrow, quizzical. “You can’t masturbate?”

Vakaris chuckled. “Oh, I tried for the first fifty years, but I learned that it’s not an option for me…for any male dragon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Like I said, certain processes are based on specific activities,” Vakaris stated. “Males are physically incapable of…orgasming…for anything less than actual procreation. There is some basic pleasure I can feel when I…tried helping myself, but it’s nowhere near the pleasure I would feel when reproducing. I’m not certain what the physiological triggers are, but…I suppose you would say that we’re literally ‘wired’ differently.”

The urologist pursed his lips, thinking. “And you haven’t tried any kind of…simulated procreation aid, or anything, have you? Or have you and it just didn’t work?”

“The latter,” the dragon answered. “The variations I’ve tried over the centuries would astound you. I’ll admit, you humans have a remarkable knack for technological innovation, especially for weapons of war and sexual gratification. But I found that even the most sophisticated fleshlights haven’t helped…and I’m sure you can imagine the trouble I had to go to in order to acquire one large enough for me.”

Samir nodded, then tapped his foot as he thought out loud. “So, if you’re not reproducing, you can’t achieve orgasm,” he summed up contemplatively. “And being the last of your kind…it’s not likely you’d be able to orgasm on your own…”

“And so we arrive at why you’re here now,” Vakaris announced.

Samir sat up straighter, attentive.

“You have the skills, knowledge, and resources that make you uniquely qualified for the procedure I’d like you to perform,” the dragon continued, fixing the doctor in his gaze—Samir could see himself reflected in Vakaris’s steely eyes, each the size of his own hands and looking down at him imperiously. “Not to mention the particular ethical code that sets you apart from other physicians. Secretly facilitating and financing the sale and implantation of body parts without consent from viable donors or their next of kin violates nearly every moral and legal tenet of the healthcare profession, and yet you do it seemingly without remorse.”

Samir sighed softly at Vakaris’s appraisal of him, partly amused, partly exhausted, and partly perturbed. “Is this where I should try to defend myself?”

“Not at all—I’m merely observing how well-suited you are for my proposal,” Vakaris noted. “Even though, from what I gather based on your more recent operations, you specifically have been stepping back from the more ‘hands on’ aspects—funding is a more pressing concern while you still run the show, so to speak.”

The doctor tipped his head, conceding that the dragon was correct. “I’ve gotta say, I’m curious how you came by all this information about me and my work. Whoever your investigator is, they’re very thorough.”

“Oh yes, extremely,” Vakaris mused confidently. He shuffled his wings slightly, readjusting his posture on his cushion. “But that’s for another time. It’s getting late, and we’re both very busy people. Now, you’re already familiar with my terms, so I see no need to describe exactly how your involvement with MeliCorp will be disclosed to the medical community at large if you refuse, and all you need to know about the financial aspect of your agreement is that you’ll have the funds and legal protection to continue your work…essentially ad infinitum.”

Vakaris paused, which Samir took as his cue to nod his confirmation.

“As for the procedure itself…” Vakaris trailed off. He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself to cross the point of no return. His tail twitched, but he kept his focus on Samir as he clearly stated, “I want you to dissect my genitals, without anesthetic of any kind.”

His request hung in the air. Samir blinked, then frowned. The only sound was that of the waterfall and gurgling brook in the cave…before Samir tilted his head and asked, “You want me to what?”

“Must I repeat myself?” Vakaris asked, bemused.

Samir had to stand to better process what was being asked of him. His footsteps, muted by the cushioning of his sneakers, softly echoed on the stone floor as he began to pace, considering the dragon’s request. “Let me get this straight: You want me to perform a dissection, to essentially take apart your penis piece by piece, and then…what?”

“That’s it,” Vakaris replied simply, watching the human pace around the couch.

Samir sucked his teeth in thought, then huffed through his nose. “You don’t want me to try any kind of treatment, any kind of therapy, any kind of corrective procedure, to help you?”

The dragon chuckled, as if entertained. “Doctor, this would be the treatment.”

Samir came to a halt behind the sofa and peered at Vakaris, trying to understand. “What even gave you that idea in the first place? You can’t have exhausted every other option.”

“Believe me when I say every other option has been examined to its fullest extent by many of the brightest minds in your field,” Vakaris said factually. “Ashton, Watkins, Liu, McCready, Gao, Acharya, Sakai, Quincy—it would be redundant to ask if you’re familiar with them, considering you’ve performed peer reviews for all of them, attended medical school with one of them, and co-authored seven papers with three of them. And not a single one of them could find a suitable alternative, except for Gao, who came up with this idea as an afterthought.”

Samir raised his eyebrows in surprise—Gao? Of all people, Gao suggested this?

“But all of them deferred to your expertise,” Vakaris continued. “They all agreed that for any kind of attempt to have even the slightest chance of success, Samir Hakim would need to be the attending surgeon.”

The urologist sighed and planted his hands on the back of the sofa, leaning against it as he hung his head; the obvious obstacles were piling up in his mind, and he took his time considering which to focus on first.

“How can I be sure that you’re in the right state of mind to request and accept this procedure?” he asked finally, looking up at Vakaris. “Normally, for sexual reassignment procedures or nullifications, patients have to demonstrate that they actually need it; they’ve sought counseling, they would objectively benefit from surgery, and they’re fully aware of the impacts that it will have on their lives.”

“Have I given any indication that my sanity might be in question?” Vakaris returned smoothly, taking extra care to flash his teeth as he spoke.

Samir eyed the massive fangs that glared back at him—the transparent intimidation tactic aside, this whole situation was beyond bizarre, and Samir had to admit that the dragon seemed as level-headed and clear-minded as they come, not that he’d encountered any other dragons or read a psychological report on one. He briefly wondered what a therapist would actually make of Vakaris…

“Furthermore, I believe that since this falls outside of your normal operations, we can dispense with the formalities of providing documentation of counseling and mental health exams, when they’re primarily used for two things: insurance and liability,” Vakaris went on. “Both are purely human concepts, and as such, I’ll take advantage of the fact that neither apply to me.”

“Well, there’s…okay, yes, there’s the argument that neither is applicable in this case,” Samir conceded. “But that’s incredibly shaky ground.”

“Humans have done more with less,” Vakaris returned.

Samir rolled his eyes.

“Might I suggest that you look at this another way,” Vakaris said with just a hint of exasperation creeping into his tone. “At the core of this, I’m a patient, and I’m asking for your help—as a doctor, you are obligated to help. You, specifically, Dr. Hakim, take that obligation so much to heart that you defy standard ethical practices to ensure successful outcomes for your patients by providing illegal transplants. Yes, I’m providing incentives for your assistance and, at worst, extorting you. But to concern yourself with my state of mind? The measure of mental competence on a human scale is irrelevant to me.”

Samir shook his head. “Okay, but beyond that…do you fully understand what a dissection is? I mean, it’s not an exploratory surgery where I’m trying to reduce my impact or clean up after myself as I work—a dissection is a complete disassembly of the components, where I would be slicing into you and there won’t be anything to put back together. It’s essentially an autopsy—or maybe a necropsy; there’s no salvaging anything after that.”

Vakaris nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

“Why?” The question, simple and loaded, slipped out of Samir’s mouth before he could stop himself.

The dragon sighed. “Imagine, if you can, spending 500 years in a constant state of pain. I don’t mean the kind of pain that you would get from a cut or blunt trauma, nor the kind of pain from having your teeth drilled or your nails ripped out.”

Samir clenched his jaw simply imagining the kind of pain from the torture that Vakaris described.

“This is a pain that runs far deeper,” Vakaris continued, his eyes glued on the doctor, imbuing every word he spoke with somber significance. “It invades every fiber of your being and penetrates so deeply into the very core of your being that you become numb to everything…and eventually all you feel is that continuous, perpetual ache. There is no respite from it, no glimmer of hope that one day it will end—it gnaws at you every second of every hour of every day…for 500 years.”

The dragon rolled his head to the side, as if to pop a crick in his neck, and he went on, his baritone, honeyed speech filling the cavern. “You know that there is a way to resolve it and continue living, but you physically do not have the means of helping yourself. So, you continue on with it, not really living, so desperate and willing to do anything to distract yourself from the agony, contemplating what possible acts you could perform to bring yourself some form of pleasure…”

As he spoke, Vakaris’s eyes seemed to glaze over and slide out of focus for a moment while losing himself in the reverie. His voice sounded distant when he eventually picked up again. “And over the decades in solitude with nothing but pain for company, those once-so-simplistic thoughts begin to morph. The more…intrusive…and tantalizing and…unnatural…desires begin to take hold, a wish for some…barbaric, yet…methodical violation…mutilation of the highest caliber…and the imaginary acts of basic hedonism become an appetite for something more and more twisted…to the point of glorious self-destruction…at the hands of one of the world’s most accomplished urologists, to whom I offer this opportunity, this…honor, if you wish to call it…to be the first human ever to lay hands upon a pristine set of dragon genitals…and then ruin them beyond repair…”

Vakaris fell silent and his gaze slid to the ground, as though he were in shock after a confession. Samir remained as still as he’d stood throughout the dragon’s monologue. He waited a moment…

Vakaris inhaled and huffed, then refocused his attention on Samir. “The only reason I haven’t done anything to myself and remained…intact until now,” he continued, “is because I kept holding out hope that some new invention or procedure would arise, some new innovation that would help me at last. But no such thing has appeared, and I’ve grown weary of human trivialities…I’ve waited long enough, and if I’m to have my satisfaction the way I need it…I’ll need your services,” he finished with a resonant growl.

Samir paused—Vakaris sounded like he meant business…and it wasn’t as if Samir was in a position to say no to the dragon’s proposal. But still…

“You realize I can’t do this in a regular hospital,” he noted, switching to the potential logistical roadblocks. “Or even an animal hospital or the zoo—not to be too blunt, but…I don’t know where I’d find the space for you, and for it to be a sterile environment away from any kind of administration—”

“A space will be provided,” Vakaris supplied dismissively. “There’s a warehouse in Sutton ready and waiting.”

Samir blinked, momentarily taken aback, before he went on, “And the equipment—I don’t know exactly what I’d need, but I can’t just take everything from AMI and hope nobody notices.”

“My contacts have already gathered all the equipment you could need, as well as additional instruments I’ve requested.”

The doctor bit his lip, then opened his mouth again, but Vakaris cut him off. “And I have a dedicated surgical team ready to assist you, all of whom have signed non-disclosure agreements about working with you.”

Samir tapped his fingers on the back of the sofa, playing out his lingering logistical concerns…but he had a hunch that Vakaris would have anticipated and prepared for those before he could even ask about them. He stepped back from the couch and resumed pacing, changing tack as he did so. “You said you don’t want any anesthetic—what about painkillers of any kind?”

“None whatsoever,” Vakaris said firmly.

Samir continued pacing. “As a doctor, the Hippocratic Oath prevents me from knowingly and intentionally causing pain. I get that my track record isn’t exactly spotless when it comes to legal and ethical practices for MeliCorp, and I own that. But what you’re asking for…you’d be fully awake and the amount of pain you’d be in would be beyond excruciating.”

“Which would be the point of this exercise, as I’ve explained,” Vakaris responded. Samir looked up at him as he said, “It’s on you to reconcile yourself with the fact that you would be causing me bodily harm at my request—as you observed, your record isn’t spotless. However, your previous history does suggest that you will find some way to cope with this moral quandary.”

“Not only that, but…even if I agree to this, there has to be some kind of safety protocol for both me and the surgical team…and I have no idea how you’d react to that kind of pain,” Samir added.

“I suspect when you’re referring to a ‘safety protocol’, you really mean something for both physical safety and legal safety,” Vakaris replied. “Physical safety measures will be provided; I have a team working on restraints as we speak, and they’re being designed to lock down an intercontinental ballistic missile. As for legal safety,” he continued calmly, “consider it as though I’ve signed a Do Not Resuscitate order—my legal team has ensured that there are to be no measures for pain relief at all. Furthermore, the order is structured so that if I ask or beg or try to bribe you to stop, you are obligated to continue the procedure. I should add that if you violate it, you will be held liable for malpractice, after a fashion—enough to hold up in a human court of law.” Vakaris eyed Samir smugly as he said, “Such a document should help allay any ethical misgivings you might have, as your hands would effectively be tied.”

Samir folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “Not exactly, but now you’ve put me in a ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ situation.”

“Indeed.”

The doctor rubbed his eyes tiredly before voicing another concern. “You said that insurance and liability don’t apply to you…let’s say we work in that legally gray area. The thing is, at a more basic level, surgical procedures—no matter if they’re on humans, animals, or dragons, or anything in between—can only be agreed to when both the patient and physician have an understanding of the risks involved. There’s no precedent for any of this, no real research I can refer to—I have no way of knowing or anticipating what kinds of complications could come up. This isn’t the same as getting informed consent on a regular surgical procedure, this is…is—”

“What this is,” Vakaris said forcefully over Samir, “is an opportunity for you to break new ground without repercussions. Of course there are going to be risks and complications, it’s an inherent part of the process. But how many physicians get the chance to dissect and break down a dragon’s genitals to study them in such great detail? None that you know of. If you need some kind of assurance that I won’t seek damages or carry out punitive measures, consider the legal paperwork signed in triplicate. And if you’re concerned that I’m not aware of the risks, then allow me to put that concern to rest—at best, I will never be able to orgasm or experience pleasure again. At worst, I’ll be dead.”

Samir stared at Vakaris, flabbergasted.

“All I’m looking for, after these 500 long, miserable years is this one, final, climax,” Vakaris stated. “Yes, there will be pain, which is the point—it’s what I have been lusting after for so long. Yes, I will never again be intact enough to orgasm. And yes, I’m willing to risk making the ultimate sacrifice of my life for this, because this last release will. Be. Worth. It.”

Samir leaned back, contemplating the dragon; Vakaris was watching him, holding his massive, muscled frame in a way that boasted confidence. “You sound very sure of yourself—how do you know that you’ll orgasm as a result of this procedure?” Samir asked. “I’ve heard some very compelling descriptions about the pain that you’re in and the feelings you’re experiencing, but how can you be 100% sure that you’ll orgasm, when you yourself said that you’re not wired for it without procreating?”

Vakaris’s gaze wavered…then he looked to his left and sighed. “At best, all I have are stories…supposedly, in the old days, dragons would spontaneously orgasm when they were either on the brink of death, as they were dying, right after death…and from serious injuries to their genitals. None of us could make sense of the mechanics or if it was the truth, and it’s been some time since the last dragon died, but the general consensus was that the assault of physical sensations was enough to give one the most blissful experience upon their death…or perhaps it was to protect our minds from the shock of a truly traumatic injury—none of us knew for certain.”

The doctor paced back in front of the couch as Vakaris spoke, and sat heavily on the sofa when the dragon finished. “So all of this is based on…rumors?”

Vakaris glared at Samir, a fire burning brightly in his bright, pale gray eyes. “It will work,” he growled fiercely. “All you need to do is operate.”

Samir leaned back against the sofa, exhausted and resigning himself to the fact that he’d effectively been conscripted into operating like this. “Okay…okay…I guess I can’t really say no, with you holding my work over my head…”

Vakaris’s snarl that had formed on his lips curled up into a satisfied smile. “I’m glad you see it my way. Now, there are just two more items to discuss.”

“Those being?”

“My legal network has put together a set of final instructions based on my wishes in the event of my death, similar to a will, but specifically for the purposes of this operation,” Vakaris noted. “It includes directives for how funds will be transferred to you and how your future protection will work, as well as my consent for you to use my body for science. On the off-chance that it can’t be used in that manner, you also have my permission to distribute my body parts as you see fit. You can dispose of them however you like, sell them for profit, use them for experiments, put them in storage, give them to a museum—do as you please,” he added casually.

The doctor started in his seat. “Are you sure? Why would you—”

“Well, who wouldn’t want a piece of a dragon in their personal collection?” Vakaris said dismissively. Samir did a double-take when he saw that the dragon had quickly winked at him. “Call it…call it my wish to satisfy others after I myself have been satisfied.”

Samir settled back on the sofa, processing the dragon’s request. “If you’re sure…”

“As for the other item,” Vakaris pressed on. “You’ll be operating with an audience.”

“An audience?”

“There will be a viewing gallery installed and accounted for in the sterile environment,” Vakaris clarified. “It will be at a distance, and cameras will be set to provide closer views, but none of the spectators will be able to interfere, they are simply there to observe.”

“Can I ask why you’d want an audience for this?”

Vakaris grinned wryly, and his tail twitched. He could have described how much he wanted to be witnessed by others in his most vulnerable hour; how he wanted to show off for the viewing gallery, to have his perfectly intact and awe-inspiring genitals on full display before having them systematically ripped apart, to make a point to his audience that they could never hope for the same level of magnificence with their own endowments and that nothing would ever be as great as he after the end of the procedure; how he also wanted to be an object on exhibition for their viewing pleasure as they watched him respond to the doctor’s methodical, clinical touch during the pre-op exam of his most sensitive and intimate of areas; how he wanted them to shamelessly ogle as he anxiously waited for the first cut; how he wanted them to bet among themselves how many slices into his flesh it would take for him to roar in agony; how he wanted a gaggle of spectators to witness the increasing, irreversible damage that Samir did to his genitals; how he wanted them to applaud in delight or laugh in disgust when he finally came, exploding like a geyser through his useless and ruined cock; how just the thought of having an audience to this show was already threatening to make him begin spilling out of his slit.

Instead, the dragon chose to evasively reply, “You may, but I’d prefer to keep that reason private. If it helps, you can think of it as an operating theater of old, when scholars would watch physicians perform procedures like a show to learn from. It will not, however, impede your work in any way, nor is it medically relevant.”

Samir pursed his lips. “I think I might need to be the one who decides what’s medically relevant here.”

Vakaris inclined his head, conciliatory. “In your operating room, that’s your prerogative.”

The doctor leaned over and exhaustedly rubbed his temples—he opted not to glance at his smartwatch, he didn’t even want to know how late it had gotten. He yawned before asking, “So…what are the next steps from here?”

“As far as the procedure, my contacts will email the preoperative briefing to you,” supplied Vakaris. “It will include details on the operating space, instruments available to you, the surgical team I’ve sourced, relevant details about draconic anatomy I’ve been able to identify for you, a rundown of who will be invited, and safety procedures for the building—you’ll find that it will be compliant with federal workplace regulations. I also would have included an outline or a list of suggestions on how you can actually proceed,” he continued, “but, as you’re the attending physician, I’ll defer to you completely. My contacts will also work with your scheduler to put time on the calendar and provide transportation to the site. We’re planning for sometime within the next two weeks.”

Samir nodded and yawned again, and Vakaris looked down on him, a mixture of gratitude and arrogance in his eyes—an expression that only a dragon could pull off. “From here, however, I suggest you go home, doctor. You have a very busy day ahead of you.”

———

Samir, already wearing a facemask and hat, held his bare, recently-scoured arms up in front of his chest as he used his back to push open the swinging doors that led from the washroom to the dressing room that acted as a quarantine space between the washroom and the main operating theater. As he turned from the doors to face the room, Samir encountered a tall surgical assistant in a smock, mask, hat, and gloves, waiting at the ready.

“All set, Dr. Hakim?” he asked nervously, holding an empty smock up for him to step into.

Samir sighed, steeling himself. “Let’s roll, Gary.”

After securing the smock over Samir’s scrubs, the assistant helped the surgeon into his neoprene gloves. When he was ready, Samir nodded, and Gary held the next door open for the urologist to step through.

Samir’s eyes widened behind the thin plastic face-shield that extended from the mask over his mouth. He’d familiarized himself with the layout of the operating theater, but the preoperative briefing he’d received in his email hadn’t quite conveyed the scale of the space. It was as if he was standing in a hangar large enough to house an olympic-sized swimming pool; the polished concrete floor was completely empty except for the tables of medical instruments and tools arranged in neat rows, the bare exam tables used for further dissection, the stands that supported the health monitors and television screens, the microphones and massive halogen lights hanging from their respective housings above, the cameras that were pointed at fixed viewing angles on their tripods, and the specimen storage unit positioned another 20 feet away from the main operating space.

As Samir gazed around the space, he saw the nondescript observation tower that stood about forty feet above the operating area; the tower was a featureless, broad column of white painted concrete that jutted from one of the warehouse walls, with its only defining characteristic being the thick, soundproof, mirrored window that stretched across the width of the tower at the top of the column. It was from behind this one-way glass that Vakaris’s audience was watching, although the surgeon had no way of seeing his spectators or their reactions to the procedure.

Privately, Samir was grateful that he wouldn’t have anyone visibly breathing down his neck or distracting him while he worked, but he could still feel the gazes of dozens of unseen eyes from behind the mirrored glass. The preoperative briefing document from Vakaris had mentioned no specific names from the guest list, although it had noted that over 30 people would be in the viewing gallery, among them a selection of academics, scientists, zoologists, and a handful of Vakaris’s own personal contacts.

Samir wasn’t entirely sure what the dragon was playing at by inviting such a group—perhaps he wanted to give the academics and scientists the opportunity to observe a specimen such as himself being dissected for objective research purposes? But the zoologists and his personal contacts…Samir guessed that they would probably be horrified at this whole spectacle, especially if Vakaris hadn’t shared anything with them about this procedure until sending out his summons. Or maybe Vakaris knew that they would at the very least be morbidly curious and unable to resist such an invitation? Samir couldn’t quite fathom what kind of satisfaction—if any—Vakaris would derive from his audiences’ reactions, unless part of this whole experience was to play out some twisted exhbitionist fantasy…

But then again, it wasn’t exactly Samir’s place to guess the dragon’s motivations—his place was to operate on the patient, who was currently reclining against an angled concrete slab that rose from the floor like a wide ramp leading to nowhere.

That night in his cave, 10 days ago now, Vakaris had mentioned that his restraints would be durable—Samir now saw just what kinds of fetters the dragon had commissioned. Thick steel cables, strong enough to support a bridge, had been fashioned into a harness strapped across Vakaris’s enormous chest and belly, with the joints welded into place; the dragon’s pectoral muscles, each the size of a couple oil barrels and flexing with the strength of numerous horses straining against their reins, bulged against the metal bands, and his stomach, easily as large as a few SUVs combined, gently rose and fell with his relaxed breaths.

The upper and lower cables extending from Vakaris’s harness had been bolted into the concrete support structure under the dragon at multiple points of failure, and Samir could see that there was no wiggle room whatsoever for Vakaris’s torso. The same was true for the dragon’s groin; steel cables bolted into cement casings in the floor held his splayed legs apart at his pelvic joints, his muscled thighs, his knees, and his ankles, resulting in his genital slit—which was slightly flushed and just barely beginning to spread apart—being completely exposed while his legs were entirely immobile.

Vakaris’s arms were pinned by his sides into the support he reclined against, with more cables binding his biceps and forearms, while his enormous paws were encased in additional concrete housings; the dragon’s wings had been clamped shut and secured with more steel bands than Samir could count, while his tail disappeared into an airtight opening in the floor between his spread legs.

As for Vakaris’s neck, semi-circular collars had been bolted around the mighty column of muscle and scales and into the concrete structure that the dragon lay upon, leaving just his head free to move and allow the dragon to look around the room. A hose had already been attached to and fed into Vakaris’s nostrils, and Samir knew from the preoperative briefing that the dragon’s lungs were being filled with a steady supply of chemical suppressants to prevent him from creating any kind of fire. By this point, the worst that Vakaris could do was roar, but the entire surgical team, including Samir, had been equipped with noise-canceling earpieces that would mute any and all sound above 100 decibels, so there was no chance of going deaf.

All in all, the dragon was rendered completely impotent, incapable of causing any harm.

“How are you feeling, Vakaris?” Samir asked as he stepped closer to the dragon; he strode past the few assistants standing by the equipment tables and monitors, waiting to begin.

“Eager to get started,” Vakaris replied, bowing his head slightly in greeting. “Shall we?”

Samir hesitated…but what else was there to say? After all the lengths Vakaris had gone to, all the preparation and planning…

“Okay…Eric, monitors, please. And let’s get the vasodilator started,” Samir said, directing his instructions to his assistants.

Eric, a stout man in a tight-fitting smock, began placing monitor patches along Vakaris’s arms and chest before sticking additional sensors to the dragon’s cranium—as Eric connected the patches to the appropriate monitors, Samir saw heart rate information, blood oxygen saturation levels, and brain activity data appear on the large television screens.

Parker and Santiago, two of the other assistants, wheeled over a small tank and IV setup to stand just behind Vakaris’s left leg, and Santiago, holding a large butterfly needle, stepped around the secured limb to join Samir in front of Vakaris’s groin. Samir took the needle from Santiago and leaned closer to the scaly, vulnerable pelvic area; about three inches to the left of Vakaris’s genital slit, he wedged the needle between the white scales.

“Breathe in,” he instructed.

Vakaris inhaled.

“And out.”

As the dragon exhaled, Samir pushed the needle into the tough skin between Vakaris’s scales, sinking it down into an artery that he’d had a hunch would be waiting for him there. Vakaris didn’t flinch when the needle pierced his hide; if anything, he seemed to comfortably settle further into his bonds.

With the butterfly needle in place, Samir held out his free hand, and Santiago handed him a strip of surgical tape, which he used to secure the needle. Next, Parker handed over the connecting tube for the IV tank, and Samir skillfully used the tube’s adapter to link the butterfly needle to the IV.

“Start at 60 drops per hour, let’s see how he handles that,” Samir directed. As Parker set the IV flow rate, Samir addressed Vakaris. “To make things easier to work with, we’re using a vasodilator and hormone cocktail to get you aroused; it’s going to be on a continuous drip, so you’ll stay erect, but it’s also combined with a coagulant so you don’t immediately start bleeding out on us when I start cutting.”

“I understand,” Vakaris replied calmly.

While the rest of the surgical team got into position to hand Samir implements as he asked for them, the urologist glanced back and forth between Vakaris’s gential slit and the clock that displayed on one of the television screens. A minute passed…no change…then another minute…the pale pink of Vakaris’s scales surrounding his slit seemed to grow deeper and more flushed…another minute…Samir’s trained eye could see the beat of Vakaris’s pulse in the thin, vertical lips that had spread further by only a few millimeters…another minute passed…

“Ah,” Vakaris grunted softly, wincing before trying to arch his back in his restraints.

But the cables held fast, preventing Vakaris from doing more than rolling his head back in pleasure while Samir watched the dragon’s slit incrementally spread; between the rim of scales that gave way to moist, smooth, almost glistening flesh, Samir could see the flattened, blunt tip of Vakaris’s pale-gray penis poking out, emerging from the interior folds of his genital slit like an oblong pearl unearthing itself from an enormous oyster.

“Subject is responding to the vasodilator as hoped and is becoming erect,” Samir noted out loud for the recording microphones hanging nearby. He leaned in closer for a better look and continued, “On initial visual inspection, the subject doesn’t appear to have a typical glans structure of mammals, appears slightly more reptilian, but not quite; I’d say it’s about the shape and size of a large gardening spade, with the concave side forming a shallow dip around the subject’s urethra. The opening to the urethra itself appears swollen, with the meatus bulging up by one to two millimeters, maybe more. And the head has a circular protrusion of flesh around it…which looks like it’s merging with the subject’s shaft.”

Vakaris’s penis, mostly the same pale-gray as his head, although almost imperceptibly striated with subtle hints of fleshy pink, swelled out of its housing with his every heartbeat, the organ forming a slightly bent column that followed a gentle S-shaped curve and bore a seemingly familiar basic topography; Samir could make out the bulges of the dragon’s corpus cavernosa that formed the bulk of his penis, with a rounded strand that protruded between them and extend up along the shaft to the head. But as the member continued to swell and stiffen and rise, Samir began to see more alien features.

“There appears to be a line of fleshy barbs running along the ventral side of the subject’s shaft,” Samir observed. “They’re almost shaped like fishhooks, protruding out and then bending down to form serrations, with one every four or five inches. I’d guess that these are to lock the male’s reproductive organ into the female’s during procreation, to prevent accidental uncoupling…or it’s possible that, like foxes or cats, the barbs are intended to prevent other males from successfully inseminating the female,” Samir hypothesized.

He continued his dictation when he noticed ridges and ripples of flesh that formed collars around the fleshy column.

“Patient is continuing to grow erect, and I’m now seeing structures that almost look like the preputial rings that an equine penis would have,” Samir noted. “Except there are four of them stacked on top of each other, they’re far more pronounced…and they form a distinct dip on the ventral side of the subject’s shaft…the overall effect makes this look like a weapon for battle,” he added, a slight smile playing on his lips under his facemask.

Samir waited another minute, simply watching Vakaris engorge further, until the dragon began to breathe faster and deeper; he rolled his head back against the concrete support structure under him and seemed to try wriggling his hips in his restraints.

“Patient’s breath rate is increasing, possible sign of distress,” Samir observed. “Genital slit is bulging more prominently and…”

“Mmmf!” Vakaris groaned.

Samir watched as the genital slit seemed to expand and bloom with a fleshy prolapse around the base of Vakaris’s penis, as if a bulbous and slightly squishy object was being squeezed out—and then the surgeon saw the entirety of the dragon’s scrotum slickly plop out, with his large testicles dropping down to fill out the sac and draw the smooth flesh taut around them as they hung plumply from his groin.

“Subject’s testicles have emerged from the genital slit, as well,” Samir noted. “This suggests that rather than being kept internal for temperature regulation, the testicles are secured for protective purposes and emerge when the subject is sexually aroused…so I won’t have to dig around for them. Subject also appears to be fully erect,” Samir continued after his quip, eyeing the pulsating shaft and swollen scrotum that glistened with the dragon’s natural secretions—there was no further growth happening, and Vakaris was looking down at his endowment almost proudly. “Okay, let’s get started—disinfecting genitals with antiseptic.”

Samir directed his surgical assistants to swab Vakaris’s penis, scrotum, and the surrounding pelvic area with alcohol; the dragon watched with an amused grin on his lips as the team roughly handled his penis to wipe it down and get in between the fleshy ridges that adorned the shaft before swabbing his testicles with the cold fluid. From the sound of the wipes against the hide of Vakaris’s scrotum, Samir guessed that the dragon’s gonads were durable enough to withstand even the most powerful well-placed kicks; if he could compare them to anything, the heavy punching bags at his gym came to mind. When his assistants finished and discarded the used wipes in the biohazard disposal bins, Samir moved in with a sterile tape measure.

“Disinfecting complete, taking measurements,” Samir noted. He used one gloved hand to hold the end of the tape measure against the very tip of Vakaris’s penis—the heat he felt radiating from the smooth flesh and through his gloves was like a freshly-made cup of coffee, and the meat of the dragon’s organ was pure muscle, stiff as iron beneath a thin layer of sponge. With his other hand, Samir pulled the tape measure downward, following the subtle curves of the dragon’s shaft. He had to stop and readjust a couple times, as his arms weren’t quite long enough, but he soon pressed the far end of the tape measure down against the base of Vakaris’s penis.

“Subject’s penis from distal to proximal point of origin measures 5 feet, 9.35 inches,” Samir announced. “Diameter of the head at its widest point…18 inches. Diameter of base…2 feet, 1.45 inches, with the circumference of the shaft at….” Samir had to effectively hug the dragon’s shaft in order to thread the tape measure around it. Vakaris watched intently as Samir measured his shaft, his eyes trained on the doctor. “6 feet, 6.5 inches. Diameter of the rings at the widest point…2 feet, 2.2 inches, with the circumference at…6 feet, 10.2 inches.”

The urologist pulled the tape measure back to a more manageable length, so it was no longer wrapped around Vakaris’s penis, and Samir began measuring the additional features of the dragon’s phallus.

“Barbs are placed 3.75 inches apart. As we move from distal to proximal points, the barbs increase incrementally in size from the smallest being…2.5 inches in length, to the largest…14 inches in length.”

When Samir finished measuring the dragon’s penis, he moved downward between Vakaris’s legs to inspect his testicles. The egg-shaped organs looked to be about as large as a couple of oversized pumpkins stuffed in a tight leather bag, and Samir could feel more of the dragon’s natural body heat emanating from them.

“Testicles appear to be fully descended. From superior to inferior, the right testicle measures…2 feet, 6.5 inches…same for the left,” Samir added as he conducted his measurements. “Diameter of the right testicle is…2 feet, 1.5 inches…same for the left. Combined circumference of the subject’s scrotum at its widest point is…wow…13 feet, 4 inches,” Samir mused, awed by the sheer size of the reproductive organs he was handling.

“Someone’s been eating well,” he quipped, chancing a glance up at Vakaris.

The dragon looked back down at Samir, a mixture of arrogance, amusement, and arousal in his eyes. “You lucked out and got a prime subject, doctor—I have to admit that I’m…larger than average for a dragon.”

“Well, I’d say you’re setting the standard for us,” Samir chuckled. He turned towards Parker, who was standing nearby, and handed the tape measure over to him. “Get me the handscale, let’s see how much weight he’s carrying around.”

Parker did as he was told, returning shortly with a hanging scale similar to the ones used for produce in grocery stores. He looped the harness that hung from it around the bottom of Vakaris’s scrotum, squeezing both of the dragon’s hefty testicles into the confines of the apparatus—when everything was in place, Parker handed the scale to Samir to do the honors. The surgeon lifted the scale with both hands, and Vakaris groaned softly as his balls were roughly lifted away from his groin—Samir’s biceps strained under his scrubs as he tugged upward on the dragon’s testicles. As the tension rose in the spring that connected the weight sensor to the harness that held the enormous gonads, the numbers on the digital readout increased until maxing out at…

“Testicles are weighing in at 67.47 pounds,” Samir announced before lowering the scale—and Vakaris’s testicles—again. He handed it off to Parker, who went to work taking the harness off of the dragon’s balls again before replacing the scale on the appropriate equipment table.

Once Vakaris’s groin was unencumbered again, Samir stepped closer. “Starting the initial surface exam with the penis. Coloration appears normal, still fully erect and showing signs of presumably normal function—no lesions, sores, warts, or any signs of abnormal discharge.”

The surgeon raised his hands and placed them on either side of the broad shaft, close to the head. Vakaris thrummed softly in the back of his throat, evidently enjoying the sensation. Samir, more focused on the task in front of him, began pulling his hands down along the gently curved column.

“Skin is slightly leathery and semi-rigid, but appears to be smooth and is warm to the touch owing to natural body heat, and…” Samir squeezed his hands around Vakaris’s penis as he kept pulling downward, as if milking a giant udder. “Displays nominal elasticity similar to that of a human—the skin isn’t completely fixed, it can be pushed back and forth. I’m detecting some bumps, which I’m assuming are muscle cords of some kind,” the doctor noted, feeling a series of rolling ridges just beneath Vakaris’s skin. He stopped halfway down the slight bend in the dragon’s shaft and used his fingers to inspect the barbs on the underside of Vakaris’s throbbing penis—Samir plucked at them individually.

“The barbs I noted earlier appear to be semi-rigid, although I can’t tell if they’re engorged with blood or if this is a strong type of cartilage,” Samir dictated for the record. “They’re flexible enough to bend with my finger when I pull on them, but solid enough to return to their original shape and position when released.”

Samir turned his attention to the base of Vakaris’s penis, where he saw a thick, branching vein semi-embedded in the side of the fleshy column. He placed both hands on either side of the base and held still, counting to himself before looking up at the television screen that displayed Vakaris’s heart rate information, confirming his count. “Healthy pulse in the penis, no signs of inflammation or swelling beyond normal, no concerns about prolonged priapism, as it’s not relevant in this situation. Now testing range of motion.”

Samir kept his grip on the base of Vakaris’s penis and began pulling it towards himself with all his upper body strength. The dragon winced and thrummed again in the back of his throat, but Samir felt like he was tugging on a firmly rooted tree—it didn’t budge at all. “Zero inferior flexibility…moderate to extreme superior flexibility,” he observed when he pushed the penis away from him and towards Vakaris’s stomach, enough for the upper curve of his shaft to make contact with his lower abdomen. Vakaris grunted softly when Samir released his hold, and, like a catapult, the penis swung back to its natural position. “Penis returns to a 110-degree angle of erection, with zero lateral curvature,” Samir observed.

He then placed his hands on the dragon’s right testicle. “As for the testicular exam, scrotum appears fully intact, no lesions or sores. Checking the testicles for any abnormalities…” Samir rolled the right testicle between his hands as best as he could; it was like rolling a soft, cumbersome keg of beer with a flexible, but stiff, membrane holding it together.

He slid his hands over every square inch he could reach, reaching from the front to the backside of the dragon’s scrotum, where the sac began to merge with Vakaris’s perineum. Samir methodically checked from side to side as well, feeling the smooth surface of the large organ wrapped in its leathery sac; the only defining features he could make out were the organ’s oblong shape, massive size, and the mushy mound of what was presumably Vakaris’s epididymis, which connected the dragon’s testicle to the spermatic cord.

“No abnormalities present on the right testicle…and none on the left,” he added after completing his exam on the other gonad. “Both testicles are symmetrically shaped, with no significant size difference. Testing pain response.” Samir tapped on the left scrotum with his fingers with enough force to make a plate of gelatin slightly wobble, but Vakaris didn’t so much as flinch. “No response to a 1 out of 5, going for a 2.” Samir hit the testicle again, this time with enough force to make a soft clap, but again, not even a groan from Vakaris. “No response to a 2 out of 5, going for a 3.” Samir hit harder, with a louder clap—it was like striking a baseball glove with his hand, the tough skin of Vakaris’s scrotum absorbed the shock of the impact, with his testicle just barely moving as a result. “No response to a 3 out of 5,” Samir said, standing up straight from the dragon’s groin again. He went on for the record, “It’s likely that dragons evolved to be able to withstand minor injuries to their reproductive organs, though I’m curious to see how modern surgery implements will do.”

“Swords seemed to work well in the old days, so a much sharper scalpel should suffice,” Vakaris volunteered, the trace of a chuckle in his voice.

“Noted. Alright…quick digital exam of the urethral passage. Lubricant, please,” Samir requested, holding out a gloved hand.

One of the assistants squirted a liberal dollop of viscous, jelly-like lube into Samir’s palm, and he quickly spread it over his fingers as he approached Vakaris’s erection. Samir reached up and firmly grasped the side of the dragon’s shaft, just under the head, with his still-dry hand. He raised his lubed hand and positioned his slick, shining fingers just above Vakaris’s urethral lips, poised to plunge into them like a diver on a high platform above a pool.

“Initial insertion,” Samir stated for the record as he pushed down into the concave divot that was the tip of Vakaris’s penis. He pressed against the bulging lines of tissue that were the dragon’s urethral lips…and the meatus spread easily around his gloved and lubed digits.

Samir paid no attention to Vakaris’s partly-restrained hiss of pleasure; he kept his focus on feeling out the texture of the dragon’s urethra, running his fingers over the subtle ripples in the otherwise smooth and fleshy surface.

“It feels like the interior of the urethra is already pre-lubricated, likely by natural bodily secretions,” Samir observed as he began pushing deeper. Vakaris’s penis accepted his hand effortlessly, opening around the wide part of his fist and closing again around the narrower joint of his wrist. “There’s no resistance, and even though it seems easy enough to penetrate the urethral canal, I do feel some compression,” the surgeon noted. He pushed deeper, sinking half of his smock-covered forearm past Vakaris’s meatus, and as he twisted his hand inside the dragon’s urethra, Samir continued, “Body heat in this internal cavity feels higher—definitely hotter than a jacuzzi, although not quite as hot as a sauna. I’m not detecting any blockages or obstructions…and I’m about 12 inches in and I can’t detect any sphincters, so either there aren’t any at all or none this distal from the groin. But I can feel a similar type of spiral groove that’s present in humans, which aids with urination. And…” Samir trailed off, concentrating on what he felt when he pressed against the insides of the tube he was exploring. “I can feel additional structures that…might be acting as supports? Function and material are both unknown at present—it doesn’t feel like cartilage, but at the same time it’s not strong enough to be actual bone.”

Samir experimentally pressed on the structures for another moment, before he pulled his now-damp forearm out of the orifice, which almost seemed to gape now that it was empty. “I’ve retracted my hand…the meatus is still spread apart, suggesting that it’s not quite as elastic as initially assumed…oh, it’s closing now, although slowly…let’s get a temperature reading in there…”

An assistant handed over the thermometer unit, and Samir pushed the flexible probe past Vakaris’s loose urethral lips. The metal tip of the probe disappeared between the meatus, and Samir fed more of the thin cable down, pushing it along the mild bend in the dragon’s penis…until there was no more to push in; the probe was only two feet long, after all, barely halfway down Vakaris’s shaft. Samir pressed the measurement button and looked at the readout on the screen.

“Halfway down the subject’s urethra, temperature is measured at…132.8 degrees Fahrenheit,” Samir announced. He began pulling out the probe’s cable, paying no mind to the quick shiver that ran through Vakaris’s spread thighs as the wire was drawn out of him. When the slick probe was fully in hand again, Samir passed it over to an assistant before requesting a speculum. Another assistant handed the enlarged medical device to him—Samir had used plenty of smaller specula for normal procedures before, but this was the largest he’d ever held. With the blades closed, it looked like he was holding an elongated fire extinguisher tank with handles; if he weren’t so focused on the task at hand, he would have been surprised that a speculum could even be ordered in such a size. But the clinician took the oversized instrument in stride and hefted the stainless steel speculum to poise the closed tips of the blades just above Vakaris’s urethra.

“Inserting the speculum into the subject’s urethra…to facilitate catheter insertion,” Samir stated as he began pushing the blunt metal ends of the speculum downward. The dragon’s meatus spread around the conical instrument, and Vakaris hissed slightly. If Samir had been paying attention to his patient’s facial expressions, he would have seen the dragon narrowing his eyes and clenching his jaw in mild discomfort, but the doctor’s gaze was fixed on the stainless steel sliding past Vakaris’s engorged urethral lips. There was no resistance as Samir continued pushing, with the dragon’s natural secretions helping the cold, unyielding metal glide easily down the fleshy tunnel. Samir kept going until all 18 inches of the speculum blades were fully inside the dragon’s accepting urethral canal.

“Speculum completely inserted, spreading to…9-inch diameter,” Samir noted as he squeezed the handles, which were pressed against the curved rim of Vakaris’s cockhead.

Vakaris emitted another soft hiss as his urethra was forcibly spread apart; the rounded edges of the speculum blades dug into the inner lining of the sensitive tunnel, but there was no resisting the fact that the doctor was expertly prying his most intimate of spaces apart like a chef cracking open the shell of a crab’s leg to expose the tender meat inside.

When the speculum was spread wide enough to admit the catheter, Samir clamped the handles in place to keep the dark, fleshy chasm of Vakaris’s urethra open.

“Catheter,” he requested, holding out a hand.

An assistant standing by carried a long coill of the silicone hose over his shoulder; the far end with the urine drainage port was connected to a six-gallon collection reservoir on a rolling stand, while the assistant placed the blunt, hollow tip in Samir’s waiting palm. Samir took up the soft, silicone tubing and began roughly inserting it into the dragon’s open urethra, practically stuffing it into the opening created by the spread speculum blades.

“Beginning catheterization,” Samir announced for the record as he continued feeding more of the silicone tube past the spread orifice and into Vakaris’s urethra.

In the corner of his eye, Samir noticed Vakaris’s leg twitch, but he paid it no mind, nor did he look up to see that Vakaris had squeezed his eyes shut and was wincing. Samir did, however, hear the faint “Ooooh” that escaped the dragon’s scaly lips. Had Samir asked how he was doing, Vakaris would have groaned that he hadn’t quite expected such an odd and unpleasant sensation, as if he were urinating in reverse—the thick, silicone hose was spreading him apart as Samir pushed it deeper than the thermometer, and the underside of Vakaris’s penis bulged visibly with the large tube snaking into him. The blunt tip of the catheter pressed down past the ends of the speculum blades, and while Vakaris appreciated the fact that it was smooth and flexible silicone rubbing against his insides, he still squirmed in his restraints as the wide hose curved around the initial bend in his penis and continued down his shaft. The steel cables around Vakaris’s body held him fast, though, and all he could do was try—and fail—to hold back a soft grunt of discomfort while Samir carelessly pushed past his clenching sphincters, which were trying to prevent the intruding object from going any farther.

“Encountering some resistance from the subject, but not enough to prevent forward movement,” Samir observed while he kept feeding more of the catheter into Vakaris’s urethra. By this point, the assistant standing behind the surgeon had unspooled three feet of silicone hosing, all of which was now inside the pulsating and erect shaft. There was still another six feet of catheter looped over the assistant’s shoulder, and he continued handing inch after inch to Samir while the surgeon fed more of the tube into the seemingly-bottomless tunnel.

“My assumption is that there are sphincter structures contracting automatically, similar to human anatomy,” Samir said while he forced another foot of catheter into the dragon’s penis. “Although I’m encountering multiple sphincters, which would suggest additional musculature in the subject’s penis that’s not present in humans.”

Another soft groan from Vakaris while he was invaded further and further. Over the minutes that passed in the surgical suite, he did his best to bear the uncomfortable sensation of being forced open as the catheter plumbed his depths; he hissed as the catheter slid around the second bend in his shaft and then descended into his groin, and he squirmed while the hose bent with the subtle twists in his natural tubing…

Vakaris’s eyes snapped open.

“Ah!” Vakaris couldn’t help but gasp as he threw his head back when he felt the blunt tip of the catheter press against a solid obstruction deep inside his groin.

“Encountering resistance again, more significant this time,” Samir observed, pulling the tube back by a few inches. “My guess is that we’ve hit the prostate; if the subject were sedated, the muscle would likely be relaxed enough to penetrate without discomfort, but due to subject requests, this isn’t an option. Attempting forcible, blunt penetration…”

Before Vakaris could do anything else, Samir pushed…hard.

The dragon’s groaning was like an engine revving as the tip of the catheter rammed against the obstruction…and Vakaris’s groan rose to a higher pitch before breaking in a powerful sigh as the catheter plunged past the obstruction.

“Penetration successful, continuing catheterization,” Samir announced as he continued to feed the rest of the tube into Vakaris’s urethra.

Vakaris’s claws dug into their restraints, but they didn’t budge, and soon the dragon felt the catheter push past one final barrier; as it did so, Vakaris suddenly felt the urge to urinate, but nothing could pass out of him—the muscles were open, but the catheter was blocking any fluid from exiting, and he assumed that the catheter itself had some kind of internal mechanism to prevent urine from going into it until the doctor allowed it to.

For his part, Samir also felt the change in density as the catheter entered Vakaris’s bladder, and he stopped pushing. As he walked around to the collection reservoir, Samir dictated, “Catheter has been successfully inserted into the bladder, with the urethral canal measuring at roughly…7.5 feet, based on the amount of tubing currently inside the subject’s penis. Inflating the balloon to keep the catheter in situ…”

The urologist used a syringe to pump sterile saline solution into the balloon port, and Vakaris felt the balloon inflate inside his bladder.

“And initiating urine sample collection,” Samir continued before he pulled a plug on the urine collection port.

Immediately, Vakaris felt the familiar rush of urine exiting his body, now unobstructed and free to enter the catheter and pass out of him. It didn’t take long for the translucent, pale yellow fluid to begin spilling out of the drainage port and into the collection reservoir with the full force of a garden hose filling up a large bucket—the entire surgical team heard the splatter of fluid against the bottom of the plastic drum before it filled enough for the urine to softly echo as it splashed and splooshed on itself.

“Urine sample collection in progress,” Samir noted. “Subject has produced…half a gallon so far, with more coming in as I speak.” Samir paused to finally glance up at Vakaris, who looked like he was utterly relieved to be uncontrollably urinating in front of the surgical team and the audience in the observation tower. “Subject may have experienced mild discomfort from catheterization, but appears to be relaxed enough to provide the urine sample.”

Samir and the rest of his team watched the collection reservoir fill with more urine, which sloshed around the container from the force at which it was expelled from Vakaris’s bladder. The dragon huffed in satisfaction as a half-gallon became a gallon…became two gallons…

“Do you…know how big a dragon’s bladder is?” Santiago quietly asked, breaking the silence (save for Vakaris’s occasional huffs and the continuous sound of urine surging into the reservoir).

Samir shook his head, watching the fluid rise past the 3.5-gallon marker on the plastic container. “Elephants can hold about four gallons, so I’d assume that the subject can hold roughly the same, but…it looks like we just passed that, now at 4.25 gallons,” Samir said, speaking more clearly for the microphones to pick up his dictation. He kept his eyes glued on the rising fluid level in the reservoir while Vakaris continued filling it…and filling it…until, at 5.75 gallons, the flow finally slowed to a trickling drizzle, and then a drip…and stopped.

“Okay…let’s switch out the reservoir for an empty one, and put the full tank in storage,” Samir directed.

The surgical assistants jumped into action like a racing pit crew; one of them plugged the drainage port to prevent any more urine from dripping out, while two other assistants worked together to carefully detach the heavy bucket of dragon urine from the stand, moving smoothly to avoid any spillage. The two assistants sealed the container shut and carried it over to the specimen storage unit; meanwhile, another assistant inserted an empty collection reservoir into the stand before opening the drainage port again. When the reservoirs had been switched out, Samir requested a modified clamp.

The clamp that the urologist now held had been specially ordered for Vakaris—it had the handles of a typical surgical clamp, but it could be pulled apart by a removable pin in the joint of the jaws, and the ends of the jaws were connected by a thick, open-ended, green elastic loop, making the instrument into a fusion of a clamp and an elastrator band.

“Leaving the catheter in place for the remainder of the procedure, now clamping the subject’s penis to prevent excess blood loss,” Samir announced as he sidled into position.

He pulled the clamp apart and slung it around the base of Vakaris’s penis; Samir then tugged the clamp handles back towards each other, encircling Vakaris’s organ with the elastic band, and squeezed hard to reclasp the joint by the pin in the middle. Vakaris grunted as he felt the tight, crushing band cinch around the base of his shaft as Samir, in effect, elastrated his member, with the clamp handles hanging down over his testicles. Based on the preoperative briefing document he’d reviewed, Samir knew that the clamp wasn’t tight enough to completely cut off the circulation to Vakaris’s penis and leave him feeling numb, but just enough to constrict the arteries and veins and prevent too much blood from pumping out of any open wounds.

Samir alternated between checking the time on one of the television screens and Vakaris’s still-erect and throbbing penis. As the minutes ticked by, the urologist saw the organ’s skin tone start flushing with a faint purple under the pale gray and pink.

“Clamp appears to be working, subject’s penis is noticeably pooling with blood…should be good to start cutting,” Samir finally added after five minutes of waiting. “Right…marker…”

When an assistant handed him the permanent marker, Samir inked a dotted line from the bottom of Vakaris’s urethral lips to the underside of his shaft.

“Giving myself a longitudinal guide eight inches down the shaft, and another lateral guide around the circumference of the shaft at the bottom of the eight-inch terminus,” Samir noted as he drew his lines on the dragon’s penis. When he was done, Samir handed the marker back to the assistant and announced, “Let’s start with a subincision following the longitudinal line . I’d like to see how durable the meatus is and inspect the upper interior of the urethra. Scissors…”

With a pair of shining surgical scissors in hand, Samir opened the razor-sharp blades…and wedged one of them into the tight space between Vakaris’s urethral flesh and the silicone catheter. The dragon flinched in his restraints at the sensation of the stinging metal pressed against his urethra, but there was no escape for him.

“Making first cut,” Samir noted.

Excited, anxious, scared, and exhilarated, Vakaris forced himself to watch Samir squeeze the blades shut.

Snip.

“Sssshhhhaah!” Vakaris hissed through his teeth at the first slice into his flesh—the pain bit sharply into him as his skin and connective tissue separated easily under the shears.

Samir kept going. “No resistance from the meatus; the connective structure is thick, but no difficulty cutting through it,” he said with another snip of the scissors.

Despite Vakaris doing his best to squirm and writhe in his bonds, the dragon’s penis stayed perfectly still—he was locked in place too well, and Samir continued methodically slitting his member open. The surgeon cut from the bottom of the dragon’s urethral lips, following the inked line up over the rim of Vakaris’s inverted glans and down the shaft, extending the incision further and further. Under his scissors, he could feel the satisfying slice of metal cleanly cleaving through the multiple thin layers of tissue, from the delicate urethra to the thick epidermis; the blades met in a resounding snip, before separating again for the next cut.

“Minimal blood spill, which means the clamp’s working. Swab,” Samir added—a couple assistants stepped in with pads of gauze in clamps to swab the excess blood that oozed out of the split in Vakaris’s penis. “Heart rate?” he asked absently as he continued cutting.

“Slightly elevated, within normal range,” an assistant replied.

Samir nodded…then snipped through the last centimeter of his guiding line, earning another soft hiss from Vakaris.

“Subincision complete,” Samir declared while handing the used scissors to an assistant. “Retractors, please.”

Another assistant handed him the curved metal instruments, and Samir wedged their hooks into the new slit he’d made. Vakaris flinched again at the cold steel digging into his tender, freshly-cut flesh, but his penis throbbed hard while the surgeon pulled apart the eight-inch incision with the retractors. Samir peeled back the loosened wall of the dragon’s urethra, exposing the upper portion of the catheter tube that was still lodged in the warm, moist tunnel. He took a close look at the inner lining of Vakaris’s urethra, noting the layers of flesh that sandwiched a lean sheet of subcutaneous muscle and fat.

“Upper urethral structure has defined layers, with inner lining, a lean sheat of subcutaneous muscle and fat similar to the corpus spongiosum, and then the superficial fascia and skin on the top…not seeing Buck’s fascia, and the connective tissue…is more similar to fibrous, not areolar. Coloration of the interior is a deep red…and I’m seeing the spiraled groove I’d noted earlier in my exam,” Samir added as he used the retractors to further spread apart the sides of the subincision. He looked for another minute before pulling the retractors out of the slit and leaving the dragon’s new subincision slightly open.

“Next, we’ll remove the most-distal eight inches of the shaft, similar to a glansectomy,” Samir said while he handed off the retractors. “I’m going to use an electrosurgical pencil, with the subincision as the initial point of entry.”

An assistant placed the wired medical tool in Samir’s hand, and the surgeon positioned the tip of the long metal rod inside the bottom-most point of Vakaris’s subincision, millimeters away from the dragon’s flesh.

“Set to pure cut, blend mode 3…50 watts,” Samir directed. After confirming that his desired settings had been programmed, Samir depressed the power button, making the electrosurgical pencil hum softly…then, with his free hand holding the upper portion of Vakaris’s shaft steady, Samir began drawing the tip of the pencil through the dragon’s flesh like a white-hot razor blade through butter.

“Rrrrraaaaahh!” Vakaris grunted loudly, gutturally.

He pushed hard against his restraints, but it was useless—he was completely stuck, and all he could do was alternate between throwing his head back in pain and looking down in horror, fascination, and twisted delight as Samir steadily pulled the electrosurgical pencil further through his shaft. The surgeon—clinical, professional, and focused—paid no attention to Vakaris’s reaction; he intently followed the circumferential line he’d inked on Varkaris’s penis, taking care not to cut too deeply and penetrate the catheter still lodged in Vakaris’s urethra, while the electrical current surging through the metal stylus in his hand simultaneously cut and cauterized the dragon’s flesh.

“Heart rate rising…EDA indicating extreme arousal,” an assistant noted in the background.

Vakaris thrashed his head from side to side, tried arching his back, tried yanking himself out of his bonds, tried squirming his way out of the agony and ecstasy he felt, but his restraints held him down, and Samir kept going, drawing the electrosurgical pencil through the erect shaft, slicing through the hot, pulsating flesh, millimeter by millimeter. Vakaris grunted and groaned as the nerves and flesh were clinically sliced apart, while only a few drops of blood occasionally spilled out from the seam that Samir left behind; an attentive assistant stood at the ready with a gauze pad to wipe away the beads of red that oozed from the slit and lazily rolled down the taut hide of Vakaris’s penis.

For the most part, Samir kept his eyes trained on his progress, on the electrically-charged stylus cutting through the dragon’s bulging shaft. But there were a couple brief moments when his gaze meandered all the way from the very top of Vakaris’s meatus, down to the subincision that he’d created, and then to the deep wound that was spreading laterally from it under his blade—the extended opening in the upper portion of Vakaris’s shaft almost looked like a lopsided mouth. And in those moments when his attention wavered, the surgeon couldn’t decide if the mouth he had opened in the dragon’s flesh was gasping in pleasure or screaming in terror; the resulting maw only grew wider the more that Samir cut, and the head of the dragon’s member gradually detached further and further under Samir’s hands…but the doctor refocused, shaking himself from his reverie and re-engaging on the task in front of him.

“Rounding up from the ventral side to the dorsal side,” Samir said for the record as he continued his circle around the thick shaft in front of him, although he came to a brief stop as he tried lifting the stylus through the dense flesh. “Encountering some…mild obstructions now, with a thicker structure…raise to 60 watts.”

An assistant raised the wattage for the electrosurgical pencil as instructed, and Samir resumed cutting, this time much more smoothly.

Vakaris, meanwhile, tried thrusting his hips forward desperately to work through the pain, but it seared through him, tinging the pleasure that he felt with. His chest rumbled and he wanted to hurl the hottest fires in existence from his mouth, but the chemical suppressants he was being fed through the tube in his nose stopped him from making even the smallest spark—while he tried to free himself, tried to lean into the blissful pain wracking his nerves, his mighty stomach heaved with his heavy, huffing, and flameless breaths.

And while Vakaris was flailing and writhing in his restraints, the only thing that Samir noticed was the bobbing and twitching of the dragon’s arousal—he used his free hand to hold the dragon’s penis steady and keep his incision smooth. His eyes were glued on the electrosurgical pencil as he worked, but continued his dictation. “The structures of the corpus cavernosa feel a lot denser than what would be present in the human penis…and I’m encountering small areas of tougher, more resistant, muscle…or they might be made from a different material…encountering them about every half-inch.”

Samir kept going…halfway through the dorsal side of Vakaris’s shaft now…and then all the way through, rounding back down to the ventral side again.

“Approaching subincision on the other side,” he eventually announced.

Vakaris observed that the sensation in the head of his penis was being extinguished bit by bit as the nerves were cut, and he could feel—and see, as he looked down—that the only thing attaching the head of his penis to the rest of his shaft was a mere inch of flesh…

He gritted his teeth and hissed as Samir pulled the electrosurgical pencil through the last few centimeters of flesh, severing it completely.

He no longer had a cockhead; the now-disembodied mound of nerve and muscle, which had once been the tip of his penis and brought him so much pleasure so long ago, had been cut open thanks to the subincision he’d received, and cut off entirely. He could feel nothing from it now, and his cockhead rested uselessly against the supportive silicone catheter poking out of his urethra—the catheter which, without Vakaris even noticing, had ferried another quarter-gallon of urine into the collection reservoir during his glansectomy.

While Vakaris stared down at his genitals in a euphoric and agonized stupor, Samir switched off the electrosurgical pencil, handed it to a waiting assistant, and dispassionately pulled the severed head of Vakaris’s penis off of the stump of the dragon’s shaft.

“Examining the cross-section now,” Samir said as he stepped away and placed the head of the penis face-down on one of the empty exam tables, angling the exposed cross-section so it pointed up at the camera lens that was pointed down at the tabletop. Samir took up a probe and examined specific structures in the cross-section, pointing them out as he dictated. “I count three corpus cavernosa, one situated centrally on the dorsal side, and one for each lateral side, with a semi-cartilaginous support structure between them. And inside each corpus cavernosum, I’m seeing multi-banded strands of what appear to be cartilage…but they’re all different densities, they’re in triad clusters. It’s unclear if they’re used for support or possibly to help with shock absorption.”

Samir pointed his probe to the outer rims of the corpus cavernosa and continued, “As I noted before when cutting through the corpus cavernosa, there were obstructions every half-inch—these look like supportive cables of some kind, positioned at half-inch intervals on the outside of each corpus cavernosum. There are more of them surrounding the urethra, which I felt during the digital exam earlier. These are placed in…maybe two-millimeter intervals. They aren’t as solid as bone, and not quite as loose as cartilage.

“I’m also counting…10 dorsal veins and six dorsal arteries…and four deep arteries per corpus cavernosum,” Samir continued. “Like I noted post-subincision, the connective tissue surrounding the overall structure appears more fibrous than areolar, making it tighter and stiffer, although the construction of it…also includes these small globules.” Samir paused, leaning closer to inspect the globules in the stiff connective tissue. “It’s uncertain what purpose they serve or what they even are…if I had to guess, I’d say they could be used to further shore up the structural integrity of the shaft, or it’s possible that they’re additional muscular bundles that assist with contractions.”

Samir took a further glance at the exposed cross-section for another minute before putting his probe down on the table. “More in-depth dissection will be performed following this procedure,” he said for the record, before addressing his assistants. “Let’s bag this and put it in storage.”

While two of the assistants worked the disembodied cockhead into a transparent bag and ferried it over to the specimen storage unit, Samir returned to his position between Vakaris’s legs—the dragon looked like he was still basking in the sensation of having his penis decapitated, as he was gazing, in a mixture of pride and pain, at the headless stalk of his erection.

Samir, however, had no time to talk through whatever the dragon might be feeling; instead, he requested a scalpel, which another assistant immediately handed over. The surgeon adroitly gripped the handle and approached Vakaris’s member while he announced, “To aid in further dissection, I’m going to remove the skin from the shaft. Making the first incision in the center of the ventral side, working from distal position to proximal…”

Vakaris watched with interest as Samir settled the razor edge of the scalpel on the rim of his headless shaft, the top of which also showed a cross-section of his penis. Then he shuddered when the scalpel began slicing through the layer of skin covering his urethra—the blade didn’t penetrate all the way through to the urethral canal, as Samir, with the ease of a well-practiced surgeon, dragged the scalpel downward as if he were unzipping a coat, taking care to avoid the fleshy barbs that lined the underside of Vakaris’s shaft and leaving them intact.

“Even though the hide is much tougher than what a human would have, I can still get through it…I’m not detecting a clear differentiation between layers, which would suggest a more reptilian skin structure,” Samir observed while he made his way down to the very base of the penis in front of him.

Vakaris wasn’t quite sure of what to make of the experience—it felt like the most bitterly cold shard of ice was tracing a path down his penis, but at the same time it was the most tantalizing and deliciously tickling sensation, and he wanted…more.

Fortunately for Vakaris, Samir repeated himself, making additional slices through the epidermis along each lateral side of the dragon’s penis, one more on the dorsal side, and then one last circular cut around the base of Vakaris’s shaft, just above the clamp he’d secured in place. Vakaris thrummed in the back of his throat and shuddered at the beginning of each cut, relishing the feeling of having his skin sliced apart into four long sheets before his member was skinned. When Samir was done, he handed the scalpel to one of his assistants before taking up two pairs of forceps, one in each hand.

“Incisions complete, removing the first sheet of skin from the subject’s left ventral side,” Samir announced. He reached up with the forceps and used them to grip the top lip of his chosen skin flap. “While I probably should cut the membrane between the skin and the musculature underneath, for the subject’s sake, I’m going to do this a little more…brutally,” Samir dictated before glancing up at Vakaris—the dragon’s eyes were wide with excitement, and the surgeon felt Vakaris’s mutilated penis bob and twitch again.

Samir pulled hard.

Vakaris clenched his jaw and threw his head back against the concrete support structure he reclined on, growling forcefully while Samir ripped the sheet of skin off of his penis with the forceps. A wet, slimy, sucking sound—punctuated by Vakaris’s throaty growls and the rustle of his squirms against his bonds—filled the operating space as the surgeon pulled the dragon’s skin off in a series of rough tugs, flaying Vakaris’s penis six inches at a time. Samir continued all the way down to the terminating slice he’d made around the base of Vakaris’s shaft, and the strip of pale-gray, pinkish skin came away to reveal the angry, fleshy red of muscles, cartilage, fat, and other materials that the surgeon didn’t quite recognize. With one last tug to sever the lingering connections between skin and underlying flesh, the sheet was free, and Samir handed it off to an assistant to put into storage.

“It looks like the preputial rings I noted earlier are a muscular structure and not just folds of skin,” Samir observed, glancing at the denuded quarter of the collars that encircled Vakaris’s penis—the fleshy protrusions bulged with visible muscle cords.

“Forceps,” the doctor requested—another assistant handed him a sterile pair, and he gripped the top of the next skin flap. “Removing the second sheet from the subject’s right ventral side…”

Vakaris lost himself in the ecstasy of having his penile skin ripped off; he tossed his head back again, almost unable to stand the torturously pleasing pain. He occasionally forced himself to watch Samir work, to watch the significantly smaller human procedurally mutilate his once proud and pristine cock. The surgeon toiled and labored with his forceps—Vakaris felt them bite into his loosened skin and tug against him, sending him into the throes of agonizing bliss every time Samir forcibly yanked another six inches of his dermis away and exposed more of his wet, sensitive flesh to the open air. A mushy, moist, shredding sound—the sound of membranes and subcutaneous dermal roots separating from each other—accompanied every pull of skin from his penis, and another sheet was torn off and taken to the storage unit…and then another…all as Vakaris struggled and wriggled futilely in his restraints, his arousal so erect that it pained him, that he wanted nothing more than to simply combust. In between the bouts of aching lust that made him thrash his head from side to side, Vakaris eventually looked down at his penis again, marveling at the fact that it had once been among the very pinnacle of draconic masculinity…and now it was simply a headless and—by the time Samir was finished pulling away the last leathery sheet of hide—completely skinless stalk of unprotected muscle and nerve, visibly marbled with thin traces of fat, and utterly impossible to use for anything except one final act of glory…

“Storing the skin for further examination—the penile shaft has been completely degloved,” Samir noted as the final sheet of skin was carried off to the specimen storage unit. He eyed the throbbing, raw, headless erection, and motioned with his hand, mimicking slicing motions as he continued, “The overall structure will be trisected into three distinct, longitudinal columns, one for each lateral side and a central column. I’ll remove the two lateral columns first, using the electrosurgical pencil…although let’s go with the number 12 stylus.”

One of the assistants swapped out the stylus in the pencil with a significantly longer and thicker metal rod, this one a good 16 inches in length. Samir received the tool in his hand, and after the assistant programmed it with a high wattage, the urologist raised the tip of the electrosurgical pencil to the top of Vakaris’s blunt stump.

“Starting on the subject’s left lateral side, distal position to proximal, cutting between left lateral corpus cavernosum and dorsal,” Samir announced before holding down the power button.

Vakaris gulped and stiffened when he heard the hum of the electrical device in Samir’s hands…then tossed his head back and clenched his claws in his restraints when the doctor began drawing the stylus vertically down through the left third of his penis. The metal rod was just long enough to cleave all the way through from the ventral side of the shaft to the dorsal side, with the tip poking out of the fleshy surface of Vakaris’s penis like a stud piercing that was making its way down his erection.

“Hrrrrr-rrr-rrrr-rrr!” Vakaris huffed shakily at the intense pleasure and pain of his organ being so callously sliced apart. He could feel the rod descending, searing through his flesh as it cut and cauterized. His loins quivered, and the dragon tried thrusting his hips upward again, to push further into the ecstasy, to embrace even more of the excruciating sensation that was torturously dragging itself down his once-perfect, once-magnificent member—but his restraints made even the slightest movements impossible.

“Angling the stylus to follow the curvature of the left corpus cavernosum…although I can feel it bumping alongside a more solid mass that seems to be running down the center of the shaft,” Samir observed, oblivious to Vakaris’s attempts at thrashing and squirming—he simply continued pulling the electrosurgical pencil further down. “Might need to investigate further…approaching the proximal terminus, changing from a vertical slice to lateral,” he announced while he drew the stylus to his right to finish the cut.

Vakaris gasped when he felt Samir slice through the last few inches of meat that kept the left side of his penis attached to the rest of the tall, curved column.

“And…subject’s left lateral column has been separated.”

Samir handed the electrosurgical pencil to a waiting assistant before quickly catching the now-unmoored and unsupported slab of penile beef that began to fall away from Vakaris’s shaft.

“Unf! It’s pretty heavy…maybe thirty pounds,” Samir guessed while he ferried the five-foot long strip to the examination table he’d previously used for Vakaris’s cockhead.

As Samir stepped away from the dragon, Vakaris, squinting through the exquisite pain that still blazed through his nerves, looked down at his shaft—it was as if some enormous creature had taken a gigantic bite out of the left side of his penis, making it look hideously, yet somehow beautifully, unbalanced.

Samir, meanwhile, laid the heavy portion of dragon penis on the exam table and began alternating between slicing into it with a scalpel and probing it for the camera, describing his observations as he worked. “As I noted earlier, there’s a triad cluster of semi-cartilaginous support structures between the corpus cavernosa, and it appears to run the entire length of the penile shaft.” The urologist cut deeper with the scalpel, peeling back layers of connective tissue before probing the outside of the corpus cavernosum that now laid bare before him. “Likewise with the supportive cables on the exterior of the corpus cavernosum, they form solid lines along the structure. I’ll take a sample later for detailed study under the microscope…examining the interior of the corpus caver…wait…”

Samir paused, then used his scalpel and a pair of forceps to pry out a dense, grape-sized lump from the inner wall of the corpus cavernosum. “I’ve identified a mass, roughly 4 centimeters…and there are more at regular intervals in the layer between the outer connective tissue and the inner corpus cavernosum. From the structure and their prevalence…my best guess is that these might be glands of some kind, possibly for additional hormones…or proteins of some kind to help sustain an erection…”

Vakaris, in a haze of lust and agony, was only half-paying attention to the doctor’s observations, before he saw Samir direct his assistants to wrap up the disembodied portion of his penis and additional specimens that the urologist had specifically sliced out for further dissection. The dragon forced himself to keep his eyes open while the assistants carried everything to the storage unit and the surgeon made his way back to his position between Vakaris’s legs, where he took up the electrosurgical pencil again…

Vakaris winced and hissed when Samir began cutting off the right vertical segment of his penis. The pain awoke him from the reverie he’d settled into after the left segment had been removed, and he watched the human carving into his organ in between grimaces and snarls.

Like he had with the left side, Samir gradually switched to a lateral cut to separate the last few inches of the right side of Vakaris’s penis from the remaining central column—where the dragon’s reproductive organ had once been a broad, subtly curving column, it now looked like a bulging cable of flesh, with just the urethral tube being supported by the dorsal corpus cavernosum.

Or so Samir thought.

While a pair of assistants carried the severed, oblong chunk of meat that had once been the right side of Vakaris’s penis to the storage unit, Samir looked closer at the exposed sides of the central column. They glistened wetly under the halogen lights, with the wide flare of the dorsal corpus cavernosum narrowing into the connective tissue that bulged around the dragon’s pronounced urethral tube, which was still filled with the catheter going down into his bladder. But in the narrow midsection of the connective tissue…

“I’m now seeing the object…actually, objects,” Samir corrected himself while he took up a scalpel and probe before maneuvering in for an even closer exam, “that I was bumping against with the electrosurgical pencil.” Using the scalpel and probe, the surgeon cut through thin layers of tissue—eliciting more winces and thrumming from Vakaris—and pulled back the flaps of flesh to reveal the long, individual strands of ivory. “They appear to be multiple bacula…three of them. They’re all floating, like the collar bone—not attached, but providing support. The most proximal baculum extends from the base of the shaft to the halfway point, the medial is about a quarter of that size, and the most distal baculum is…roughly a sixth, supporting the distal curve of the shaft.”

Samir used the blunt tip of his probe to tap one of the penile bones, and Vakaris shuddered at the sensation of metal dinging against the very core of his member; even though Samir tapped with only enough force to wiggle his finger, Vakaris could feel the vibration rattle through his system, and what was left of his penis bobbed feebly, barely supported by the bacula and dorsa corpus cavernosum.

“Subject appears to have sensitivity in this region, as well,” Samir noted. He then moved in with the scalpel as he continued, “Extracting the most distal baculum—it appears to be the smallest, and shouldn’t be too much trouble to remove for further study.”

Vakaris huffed hard through his nostrils, and his chest heaved while he desperately writhed in his restraints, but there was no escape from Samir’s scalpel. Disregarding the dragon’s reaction, Samir dug the razor-sharp blade into the exposed, raw flesh that cradled the uppermost bone, and he roughly sawed through the connective cartilage and tissue that held it in place. His scalpel followed the curved perimeter of the baculum, cutting it out with the finesse of a chef deboning a tuna. All the while, Vakaris vacillated between the stinging anguish of having the surgeon’s knife root around within his innermost flesh and lightly scraping against the sensitive bone, and the intense, deep-seated need for the doctor to pull out his baculum as violently as possible.

Which Samir soon did—after removing his scalpel, he pushed in a pair of forceps, clamping on the bone, and forcefully yanked out the baculum with a soft, wet squelch and leaving behind an empty void of moist, tender tissue.

“Ah, there we are,” Samir mused, bringing the baculum up to his eyes for a better look. He twisted it from side to side, observing the small barbs on the ends of the bone, before dropping it into a waiting bag that an assistant held out for him. Vakaris, gasping to catch his breath, watched hazily as the assistant then took his disembodied bone to the storage unit while Samir resumed his investigation of the dragon’s central penile column.

“In addition to the baculum and dorsal corpus cavernosum, I’m also seeing another series of semi-cartilaginous support structures, running vertically at a 45-degree angle from the proximal to distal end,” Samir noted. “They connect the ventral side of the dorsal corpus cavernosum to the dorsal side of the urethra, with space made for the bacula. These structures weren’t evident in the lateral sectors I excised, suggesting that they’re only used for the central support…they almost look like suspension bridge cables…”

Samir stepped from one side of the shaft in front of him to the other, peering at the subtle ridges evident around the prominent urethra. “Towards the inferior urethra, there appear to be additional sphincters. While human males have two sphincters, one at the bladder’s inferior end and one inferior to the prostate, the subject has…eight distinct sphincters. They’re forming distinct rings around the urethra and…”

Samir used his probe to poke one of the sphincters, and watched it contract wetly under the lining of muscle that covered the outer wall of Vakaris’s urethra.

“Appear to respond to physical stimuli. Assuming that they’re controlled via the autonomic nervous system, as the subject doesn’t appear to exert conscious control,” Samir added while he glanced up at Vakaris, who was huffing deeply in a mixture of torment and bliss. “I’m going to remove the most distal sphincter for later examination…electrosurgical pencil, number 2 stylus, please.”

With the electrosurgical pencil in hand and using a shorter stylus again, Samir sliced down into the central support structure attached to the dorsal side of Vakaris’s urethra. The dragon gasped and squirmed while the doctor cleaved through his shaft as easily as a patriarch using an oscillating knife to carve into a turkey for a family feast.

Samir intently dragged the stylus down along the dorsal side of the dragon’s urethra, searing through the connective tissue, until he stopped just under the first sphincter he reached. Taking care not to go too deeply and cut through the catheter still lodged in Vakaris’s urethra, Samir adroitly angled the electrosurgical pencil to slice through only the wall of the dragon’s urinary tract, navigating the circumference of the canal until he reached the terminating point of his initial incision.

“Cutting longitudinally up through the ventral side of the urethral wall,” Samir noted for the record while he made the corresponding cut.

Vakaris couldn’t help but watch in morbid fascination through the fog of pain and lust that had thoroughly addled his brain by this point—Samir was expertly cutting him apart with the skill of a sushi chef preparing salmon, professionally, clinically, reducing his penis down to manageable slices with no regard for the torture that the dragon was enduring or the satisfying thrill that was sending shivers along his spine.

When Samir finished his incision, he handed the electrosurgical pencil off and placed his gloved hands on either side of the moist, raw section of urethra he’d excised…and then lifted, smoothly sliding the segment up and along the catheter tube. Vakaris groaned as he felt his flesh wetly rub against itself while Samir removed the portion of his urethra…and then it was gone, leaving the catheter sticking out of his shortened urethra while what remained of his central penile column towered over it.

Samir used the vertical cut he’d made in the detached segment of Vakaris’s urethra to open the long flap of flesh and pull it off of the catheter before he carried it over to the examination table, where he once again took up his probe and began dictating his observations.

“The sphincter is also evident on the interior of the urethral wall…and in the ring of muscle, I can also see what appear to be more glands, each about a centimeter wide,” the doctor noted. “They’re still secreting a fluid of some kind…it has a much higher viscosity than pre-ejaculate, although it’s transparent, suggesting that it might serve the same purpose as a natural lubricant…or it might form a kind of mucosal barrier.”

When Samir finished examining the section of urethra he’d extracted, he instructed his assistants to place it in storage while he approached Vakaris again, observing that the dragon’s penis had certainly seen better days. Where the phallus had once been an impressive, pristine—almost somehow graceful—shaft, Samir had broken it down to something more akin to a deranged science experiment. What lay between Vakaris’s legs was now a malformed, raw, angry, headless, misshapen, butchered column of exposed flesh, nerve, bone, and—judging by the look on the dragon’s face and the occasional twitching of what remained of his penis—extreme arousal. And it was all the result of a dissection that had been carried out with the methodical rigor of a certified and extremely talented clinician. As much as he didn’t want to, Samir had to admit that it was work to be proud of.

The urologist took a steadying breath—he wasn’t done yet.

His gaze drifted down from the still-clamped base of Vakaris’s penis to the dragon’s immense, plump gonads.

“Okay, let’s put a pause on the penile dissection and transition down to the testicles next,” he said. “Clamp.”

With another elastrator clamp in hand, Samir set to drawing the band tightly around the neck of Vakaris’s scrotum.

“Clamp is in place around the spermatic cords,” the surgeon noted when he finished setting the clamp’s position—the thick elastic band made the dragon’s scrotum swell even further, forming an overstuffed pouch that hung from his groin. “Marker.”

With the marker an assistant handed him, Samir quickly inked two vertical lines on the leathery hide of Vakaris’s scrotum before trading the marker for a fresh scalpel. “Making first incision for the subject’s right testicle, moving longitudinally from superior to inferior along the scrotum.”

Vakaris braced himself for the bite of the blade…and grunted when he felt the surgeon push the scalpel into his taut sac and draw it down through the tough layers of skin that protected his testicles. He looked down at his groin, watching in satisfaction as his soft, but durable scales and underlying tissue parted easily under Samir’s knife; the doctor continued pulling it downward until he stopped at the nadir of the dragon’s scrotum, creating a large slit in the skin just above his right testicle.

“First incision complete, making second incision for the subject’s left testicle,” Samir announced as he repeated himself on the other side of Vakaris’s scrotum.

The dragon hissed softly at the sensation of his sac being slit, as if Samir was making an opening in a large leather purse. Vakaris wanted so desperately to push his pelvis forward, to swing his testicles hard enough to make them pop out of his sac—his dragon-makers had never seen the light of day before, and he wanted to put them on display, to show off how virile he truly was, to make his hidden audience envious of their sheer size and potency…

And soon his wish came true; when he was done making his second incision, Samir handed off the scalpel and began manipulating the skin of Vakaris’s scrotum, pushing it down to force the dragon’s right testicle out of its sac.

Vakaris groaned at the tension he felt; his skin stretched…and bulged as the doctor pressed hard, forcing the pale pink organ to begin spilling out of its opening like an egg through an elastic hole…

“Aaaah!” the dragon gasped through his clenched teeth when he at last felt his testicle slide out of his scrotum. The open air was cool on his exposed organ, and tickled the naked flesh in the most tantalizing way.

“Right testicle has been forced out through the incision—let’s get it on the table here,” Samir instructed.

Two of his assistants rolled another exam table to rest between Vakaris’s spread legs, and they lifted together to hoist the heavy, egg-shaped organ onto the worktop. Vakaris winced as he felt the extra tension on his spermatic cord before it, then shivered at the cold metal surface his testicle casually rested on. He had barely any time to process the sensation before Samir began working his left testicle out…and within a minute, it, too, popped out of his scrotum and was unceremoniously plopped on the examination table next to his right gonad. He grunted needily, reveling in the feeling of having both testicles exposed and on display, with his spermatic cords extending out from the slits in his scrotum, which sagged slightly under their own weight on their way to the gonads that they connected to.

“Both testicles appear similar to human form,” Samir observed, examining the enormous organs. He placed an outstretched hand on one of them, eliciting a shudder from Vakaris at the sensation of neoprene on unprotected, wet flesh. “Spermatic cords and vas deferens connect to structures analogous to the epididymis, which partially wrap over the testicle itself. Invasive dissection will occur post-procedure to determine if internal structure is also similar to human anatomy, but for the purposes of current procedure, we’ll use the non-invasive HMT unit for hormone measurement and sperm count during ejaculation.”

As Samir spoke, an assistant wheeled over another monitor stand and calibrated the device while the surgeon connected one of the wire leads to a sterilized, steel spike. After checking the calibrations, Samir raised the spike…

Vakaris watched, wide-eyed.

The surgeon plunged the metal spike into the dragon’s left testicle, all the way to the hilt.

Vakaris roared loudly—the earpieces that the surgical team wore automatically muted the sound to the intensity of a hair dryer, but the dragon’s bellow was powerful enough to make Samir’s bones vibrate. Nervously, the surgeon watched the dragon recover for a moment; Vakaris huffed heavily, his eyes glazed over in harrowing pain and nearly overwhelming lust, but he made no signs of begging Samir to pull the giant needle out of his testicle.

At ease again, Samir looked at the monitor. “The HMT is showing an initial spike of testosterone, adrenaline…oxytocin, and dopamine, suggesting that hormones associated with human neurochemistry have glands within the subject’s testicles,” the surgeon noted. “There are also several unidentified hormones…it’s unclear what purpose they serve, and how testicular chemistry overall impacts the subject’s neurology…levels are beginning to plateau as the subject recovers from initial shock. With the subject’s testicles extracted and hormone levels being monitored, transitioning down to the prostate now.”

Samir received a clean scalpel from an assistant and repositioned himself between Vakaris’s spread legs. In a daze, the dragon glanced down to see Samir focus in on his perineum, where the surgeon first pressed with a closed fist, as if fist-bumping the dragon’s taint. But Vakaris remained still.

When he felt no reaction from Vakaris, Samir adjusted his fist, lowering it by a few centimeters, and pressed again, digging his gloved knuckles into the dragon’s perineum.

Vakaris shuddered, and the doctor smirked under his mask as he felt he’d found his target. “Prostate located via digital stimulation, making first incision longitudinally along the perineum, moving from anterior to posterior,” he announced as he positioned his scalpel.

Vakaris hissed when he felt the sharp blade slice into him, below his now-empty scrotum. He had never felt this exposed, this vulnerable before…and he wanted the doctor to continue opening him up, revealing his body’s secrets and treasures in a way he had only fantasized about for the past century. The dragon thrummed in his throat and squirmed in his bonds again as Samir made a 12-inch incision in his taint, easily cutting through his hide and sinking the blade past the thinner underlying tissue.

“And initiating second incision, moving laterally to medially intersect first incision,” Samir announced as he began cutting from left to right, until he’d formed an incision in the shape of a plus-sign, squarely in between the dragon’s scrotum and anus.

“Lockable retractors,” the surgeon requested in exchange for his scalpel.

An assistant handed over the first two pairs of curved retractors with prongs on the ends of the blades; Samir strategically inserted the prongs into the vertical incision he’d made, pushing them down past the layer of connective tissue. When he was satisfied with their placement, the surgeon squeezed the handles, dilating the long wound open and exposing a wide sliver of a dark purple mass amid the angry red muscle he’d sliced apart. Samir locked the self-retaining clamps into place before taking another two pairs and wedging them inside the horizontal slit—he squeezed the handles, pushing the tough layer of skin apart and widening the surgical site to reveal more of the mass he’d uncovered.

“Subject’s prostate is partially exposed…making further incisions to expose the inferior hemisphere and detach the superior hemisphere. The goal here is to preserve the connection between prostate and urethra, for a better view of the mechanics,” Samir announced while he used his scalpel to slice through more of Vakaris’s internal flesh.

The dragon relished feeling the surgeon excising his connective tissue and excavating his prostate; with every slice that Samir made and every shred of flesh that the doctor cut out of him to unearth the large gland, Vakaris couldn’t help but clench what he could of his pelvic floor in pleasure…but his severed muscle cords pushed uselessly against the hard metal clamps that kept his taint open for the surgeon. Vakaris shuddered whenever he felt the flat edge of the scalpel circle around the sensitive organ, slicing through the bonds and membranes that held it in place—the dragon had envisioned teasing himself before in his desperate moments of isolation, but this was teasing and edging undreamed of; this was beyond any kind of stimulation he could have possibly imagined. His penis bobbed and twitched, and, as much as it pained him, the dragon clenched hard around the sturdy catheter in his urethra, unable to stop himself from delighting in the electrifying agony and lust that zinged through his body.

Samir noticed Vakaris’s persistent and useless muscle contractions, but he continued the dissection, pulling sinews and flaps of flesh to draw them taut, then cutting them off with his scalpel, and discarding the scraps in a collection bowl. His hands were fully inside Vakaris’s perineum as he worked, enlarging the cavern of muscle that he’d made and roughly plunging in up to his forearms as he maneuvered around the far side of the dragon’s prostate.

In another life, Samir could have been a professional jack-o’-lantern carver—his technique for detaching Vakaris’s prostate was eerily similar to hollowing out a pumpkin as he sank his arm into the dragon’s guts and expertly slid the scalpel around the entirety of the gourd-sized gland.

“Unlike in human males, the subject’s prostate isn’t directly connected to the bladder, there’s an additional segment of the urethra between them,” Samir noted as, with surgical precision, he navigated the gap between the top of the prostate and the bladder; he took extra care to preserve the structural integrity of the urethral tunnel connecting them.

When he’d at last finished freeing Vakaris’s prostate from its moorings, the doctor turned his attention to the visibly protruding tube of Vakaris’s urethra; he threaded his scalpel under the fleshy duct, easily cutting through the connective tissue until he had two feet of fully detached urethra laying against the dragon’s flayed interior.

“Prostate has been fully excised, as well as a length of the urethra…extracting the gland for further study,” Samir announced, reaching out with his gloved hands.

The second that the surgeon directly laid his fingers and palms on his prostate, Vakaris groaned and shuddered—an indescribable wave of euphoria washed over him. It was at once the most satisfying thing he had ever felt, mixed with a nearly unbearable ache, all coated in an encompassing warmth that chilled him to the bone and set his entire body ablaze with the strongest sexual hunger he’d ever known.

“All levels on the HMT just spiked again…and rising,” an assistant noted. “Heart rate increasing, but still within nominal range.”

The incredible rush that rolled through Vakaris’s mind only intensified as Samir tugged…and pulled..and yanked…and at last hauled the heavy gland out of his body and laid it on the exam table that also held the dragon’s testicles. Vakaris, lost in the cloud of hormones that was steadily consuming his senses, paid barely any attention to the surgeon making his observations.

“Prostate diameter measures at 19.75 inches. Texture is rippled with prominent strands beneath the exterior lining; it looks like there’s an additional muscular structure within the gland itself, which would likely aid with ejaculation,” Samir inferred while he traced a finger over the delicate flesh covering Vakaris’s exposed prostate. “It doesn’t appear to be inflamed or swollen beyond what might be considered normal, as the subject hasn’t reported any discomfort or issues with urination. Further dissection will occur post-procedure”

When he finished his notes, Samir glanced uneasily at the table bearing the piece of equipment he hadn’t used yet…then he looked up at Vakaris.

The dragon was rolling his head back against the concrete support he reclined on, panting and huffing in the obvious throes of ecstasy, while also grunting in pain.

The surgeon sighed, steeling himself for what he was about to do. “Subject has requested the use of a car battery for electrical stimulation; from a research perspective, I’ll also be curious to observe how the subject reacts to such stimulation, and what the impacts might be on hormone production…let’s get to it,” he addressed his surgical team.

One of the assistants wheeled over the table bearing the car battery and modified cables that ended in thick needles, stationing it next to the table already between Vakaris’s legs that held his prostate and testicles. Samir picked up the needles in his gloved hands and held them above the positions he’d chosen on the dragon’s prostate.

“For the longest band of electrical output, cathode needle will be inserted into the subject’s superior prostate, pointed towards inferior, and the anode needle will be inserted into the subject’s inferior prostate, pointed towards superior,” Samir announced

Vakaris, allowing himself to be carried away on the tides of euphoric bliss that surged through him, grunted and huffed when he felt the piercing stabs of the long needles in his vulnerable prostate. He tried to curl in on himself, to bathe in the all-consuming pleasure that made his nerves tingle, but his restraints prevented him from moving at all, and the dragon could only flex against his bonds while Samir settled the needles into place.

“Levels of testosterone and unknown hormones 5, 9, and 12 are increasing faster,” the assistant who kept his eye on the HMT monitor announced.

“Subject appears to be experiencing preliminary sexual response to the insertion of the needles, introducing electrical current,” Samir dictated while he flicked a switch on the modified car battery.

Immediately, Vakaris spasmed in his restraints as the electricity flowed steadily through his prostate—there was no regulating the car battery’s output, and all 500 amps it had to give crackled loudly between the needles in the overwhelmed organ, which was seizing as the muscle cords within it constricted.

Vakaris writhed and clenched as much as he could; what remained of his penis throbbed back and forth more intently than ever before, the dorsal corpus cavernosum doing its best to keep the whole structure upright. Samir watched the dragon’s urethral sphincters visibly contract and relax in rapid-fire pulses, squeezing out large, transparent beads of pre-ejaculate around the catheter tube—the viscous fluid dripped down the raw flesh of Vakaris’s dissected, headless penile column, all the way down to his empty scrotum, before falling to the floor with soft splats. An assistant stepped in to collect a sample in a cup before stepping away again to take the specimen to the storage unit.

Vakaris snarled loudly through barred teeth while his spermatic cords tightened and feebly dragged his moist testicles a few inches across the metal surface of the examination table. The dragon tried again to thrust his hips upward in a vain attempt at humping into an imaginary orifice, but his pelvis remained immobile, still constricted by the restraints he had commissioned. His mind was blank, save for one fact: he was close, so torturously, wonderfully, dangerously close to what he’d been longing for.

“Subject is continuing preliminary sexual response, although no signs of completion yet,” Samir noted, alternating between looking at the monitors and the expression of abject torment and exhilaration on Vakaris’s face. “Support structures within the central penile column are holding while the urethral sphincters are constricting synchronously. Subject’s heart rate has increased significantly, EDA is indicating extreme arousal…unknown hormones 1 through 4, 7, 8, 10, and 11 are climbing on the HMT, and there’s an increased production of triiodothyronine and prostacyclin, which indicate increased metabolic rate and additional vasodilation.”

Vakaris could hardly hear anything over the pounding of his own heart, and he could hardly feel anything except the intense throbbing of his own penis…or maybe he felt everything and was beyond overwhelmed with the sensory overload, and the throbs and twitches of his organ—his poor, ruined, once-impressive, now-butchered member, once his source of pride and now an even greater source of rapturous anguish—were the only things he could focus on, a resounding beat that cut through the noise of his body as cleanly as Samir’s blades had cleaved through his flesh…

Samir waited another minute, but Vakaris remained on the brink of his orgasm. His vitals were stable—they were in higher ranges, but still stable. The surgeon’s eyes drifted to the urethral sphincters working overtime, and an idea came to mind.

“Performing longitudinal incision on the most distal urethral sphincter,” he noted as he picked up a clean scalpel and made his way over to the spasming dragon. “I’d like to see a cross-section of how the sphincters are contracting…”

The urologist positioned himself in front of Vakaris’s bobbing shaft and laid a steady hand on the exposed flesh before raising the scalpel…and slicing into the topmost sphincter around the dragon’s urethra.

Vakaris threw his head back forcefully, slamming it against the concrete ramp under him, while the monitors came to life, blaring their alarms, and Samir jumped back in surprise.

“Vitals are spiking! His heart’s jumping, temperature at 170!” an assistant called.

“Oxytocin and vasopressin levels rising!”

“Brain activity is crashing!”

Samir looked around at the monitors, all indicating a cascade of bodily failures. Wide-eyed, he watched the dragon’s testicles drag further on the examination table as the spermatic cords drew them closer to Vakaris’s body—

Vakaris roared with the ferocity of a jet fighter engine, making the whole room shake. The entire surgical team clamped their hands to their ears, steadying themselves as their bones rattled while their earpieces blocked out the dragon’s bellow.

Disoriented from the silent vibrations reverberating through his body, Samir forced his gaze up from the floor—it all happened in a matter of seconds, but those few seconds seemed to slow as he watched Vakaris finally orgasm.

Violent, explosive jets of semen pulsed out of the dragon’s urethra, gushing around and along the catheter tube still lodged within it. The fluid was as viscous as cornstarch and water, thin enough to behave like a fluid as it flew 10 feet in the air, but with enough solid mass to give it the appearance of a dense, translucent sludge that coated the catheter tube and Vakaris’s belly when it landed on his scales before falling to the floor.

As the dragon climaxed, Samir saw the mechanics of his central penile column in action—the urethral sphincters constricted even tighter than they had before, and with every throb of Vakaris’s ejaculation, the connective structures between the urethra and corpus cavernosum snapped. Where Samir had once likened the structures to bridge cables, the cables were now breaking apart and letting the bridge collapse. And in fact, the tower of Vakaris’s erection began to waver and wobble; it wasn’t just the support structures that were failing, but also the connective tissue itself that was breaking apart. It snapped and tore apart, with small fissures joining each other to become larger cracks and rips in the dragon’s flesh. The dragon’s prostate and testicles—all still outside of his body—convulsed on the examination table as they powerfully pumped their respective fluids into the urethra, which began to split at newly-formed seams as what remained of Vakaris’s penis shook itself apart…and split, falling to pieces on his pelvis, no longer erect, no longer usable.

Vakaris, meanwhile, seized in his restraints—his muscles locked and he spasmed in the cables that bound him. His chest and stomach heaved erratically, his arms and legs writhed, and his mouth hung open in the roar that slowly faded to silence. His eyes practically bore a hole in the ceiling from how intently he was gazing upward, as if he was engaging with the most powerful, blissful state of euphoria that could possibly be achieved…before, with a lingering, exhausted smile on his scaled lips, Vakaris settled. He exhaled…inhaled…then exhaled as his head limply fell back and his neck sagged, while his whole body, which had once been the picture definition of “tense” simply…relaxed.

Samir continued to gaze at the dragon’s body—he had seen it in motion, had seen Vakaris in a state of self-assured control when he had first spoken with him, could imagine the incredibly powerful form getting up and ripping off the steel cables that bound him…and yet here the dragon lay, limp, lifeless, and untouched, except for the devastation that Samir himself had wreaked upon his genitals. How could such a creature that looked so (otherwise) intact and strong simply be…dead?

Beeeeeeeeeep.

Samir’s hearing came back as his earbuds allowed him to pick up sound again, and he at last lowered his hands from his ears while he looked from Vakaris’s body to the flat line on his EKG, which emitted the high-pitched, monotone note. The surgeon took a deep breath, steadying himself, while his assistants muted the monitors and he gazed at Vakaris again—the dragon, still as the grave while thick semen continued to drip out of his utterly destroyed genitals, looked supremely content.

———

It was dark in the cold storage unit that Vakaris’s network of agents had prepared in the event of his death—dark, except for the white LED lights illuminating the insulated, clear acrylic drawers in the wall unit, and the glow of the lamp on the desk at the far end of the room.

Samir sat at the desk, looking over the lab reports and test results that he’d compiled while he spoke into the digital dictaphone as part of his post-mortem. “…combined with the overwhelming evidence from the molecular stains, the outcome was most likely due to the subject’s unique anatomy and body chemistry,” the urologist continued. “Based on the chain of events, I can only hypothesize that the sheer mechanical force of the subject’s orgasm placed too high of a demand on the compromised structure of the penis, while the chemical receptors translated the stimuli as pleasure, which motivated the body to continue the sexual response unabated, which ultimately created a feedback loop that caused the subject to rapidly deteriorate.”

He glanced up from the notes for a moment, gazing at the dragon’s severed head that occupied one of the larger storage drawers. Vakaris’s horns had been sawn off and were stored in another drawer, but through the thin film of frost on the inside of the transparent acrylic drawer, Samir could still see the dragon’s contented smile.

“Put more simply, it’s likely that the subject was experiencing the height of sexual pleasure and pain, and the subsequent onslaught of endorphins and hormones was so intense that the subject’s entire nervous system experienced a catastrophic failure,” Samir droned on, rubbing his forehead tiredly. He had spent the entire day and the better part of the night breaking down the dragon’s body for storage and performing exhaustive lab tests and dissections. His scrubs were stained with splotches of blood, mucus, and too many other bodily secretions to name, he was so worn out—it was all he could do to keep talking into his dictaphone.

“As for the underlying motive behind the sexual response to such an intense procedure,” Samir began, now sitting back in his chair, “according to the subject’s own testimony beforehand, male dragons are—were—physically incapable of achieving orgasm for anything less than actual procreation. This is pure conjecture, but based on the subject’s biochemistry, it’s possible that some autonomic function may have assumed higher executive function in an effort to procreate before the subject’s genitals were completely destroyed…as if the body recognized that it was in danger of losing the ability to reproduce, and needed to issue its genetic material for reproduction before it was rendered incapable of doing so. Whether this is driven purely by mortality or by the current state of the genitals is uncertain, and it’s still unclear if this is a neurological response or a feature of the physical anatomy. However, either way it created an unforeseen consequence, as both the subject’s genitals and life were in danger due to the procedure, and the feedback loop of hormones and physical sensations ultimately resulted in a negative outcome for the subject…or positive, since he ultimately wanted to orgasm,” Samir added, more for himself than for the record.

He glanced at Vakaris’s head in the drawer again before his tired gaze roamed over the rest of the dragon’s body parts in storage—each arm, leg, and wing had a drawer of their own, while the tail, chest, stomach, and groin had been further divided to occupy multiple drawers. The dragon’s organs had been packed away on ice, while the shreds of his penis floated in a tall, five-gallon jar of preservatives.

“Personal dictation…even if he had survived, I wouldn’t have been able to reassemble anything,” Samir mused as he absently stared at the remnants of the dragon’s member. “But with the hormones measured in his system and the way he was visibly enjoying himself, I’m pretty confident he died happy…it was worth it, for him…and me…”

The surgeon lapsed into silence, reflecting on the numbers he’d seen when he had checked his offshore bank accounts for MeliCorp—forget about decades, Vakaris had given him enough to keep him in business for centuries, long after Samir retired. He recalled that Vakaris had also given him the authority to do with his body parts as he pleased—the doctor hadn’t decided what to do just yet, but the cold storage facility would keep the dragon’s disembodied parts preserved for a long, long time. Samir could keep them here indefinitely if he wanted to…even though he’d made hundreds of discoveries about draconic anatomy as a result of the post-mortem exam, there were still so many more anatomical features to study…and it wasn’t as if the dragon could—or even would—object to having his body picked apart further, piece by piece…