dot.

4: Scalpel

  "Is the other wing the same?"

  She moved the scalpel towards the untouched wing to demonstrate, her quick movements making Dot flinch with every step she took.

  "As you can see, the bones of the hand and fingers are slender and light, as well as elongated. This is to provide support and to help manipulate the wing membrane."

  Dot felt a familiar warm feeling appear at the back of his throat as he squirmed against the iron restraints that held him down. He swallowed the rising bile and blinked tightly, scrunching up his toes until they felt as if they were about to snap.

  The scalpel travelled smoothly through skin, muscle and sinew to reveal pearly bones, sitting in a slowly accumulating pool of blood. Dot scrunched his toes up a little more as the open wound throbbed and became uncomfortably warm.

  He felt the blunt claws on the ends of his toes pressing against the skin of his feet, threatening to break through it and spill even more of his blood onto the floor. He was deaf to the ongoing lecture of the Doctor as she explained his anatomy to the students that crowded around him. The only thoughts swimming through his light-headed skull full of cotton were ones of fear, and of pain.

  "What's that part called?" A student gestured to the thin membrane that connected his shoulder to the middle of his forearm.

  The Doctor grabbed the membrane and twisted it upwards to show the students, grinning when Dot recoiled as the split in his arm stretched further. He pulled against the strap that ran through his wing and across his wrist fruitlessly, the futile effort only earning him more pain as the hole it was running through tore a little more.

  The fresh wave of pain left his head fuzzy, dark spots appearing in his eyes as his heartrate spiked and he panted heavily. Each fresh, cruel scalpel stroke split more and more of his body into pieces, the monotonous lecture fading to a steady background hum as he dug his claws into the metal table, causing them to split and crack, exposing the nerves inside and spilling yet more blood out of his body.

  His dry throat hurt to breathe through, the air felt like shards of red-hot glass scraping their way through the thin pipe. He had his eyes tightly closed, staring at the dancing galaxies of brown-black static that resided under his eyelids.

  She finally finished her lesson and ushered the students out of the room, taking her time just so that Dot would have to spend longer in unrelenting agony. Cruel.

  "Hm, you were good today." She glided over towards a tray that sat on a table to the right of him. It contained a small beaker, a needle, and a syringe. The Doctor twisted the needle onto the syringe and drew out some of the clear liquid that the beaker contained, humming a tuneless song as she went.

  Dot braced himself for the feeling as she drove the needle into his thigh. He could feel cold metal digging deep down into him, releasing the frigid liquid into his body before it was promptly removed and a cotton bud was placed over the small wound.

​​   "You didn't squirm too much." The clear liquid began to serve its purpose, clotting blood and knitting loose skin back together almost as if by magic.

  Changing to topic to one she knew would frustrate Dot, she ran a dainty finger across the long healed scar on his neck, giggling as he bit his lip. "Don't talk much, eh?" She asked with a mocking pinch to his cheek.

  Dot wanted so badly to jerk his head away from her cold fingertips- but she seemed to be in a good mood today and he didn't want to ruin that, so he kept to merely a hateful glare.

  "This is from before we figured out how to stop the scarring." She took a final glance at the purposeful white stripe of calculated cruelty and tutted. "At least we figured it out eventually."

  Drawing a needle and thread out from a draw behind Dot's head, she continued her one-sided conversation while stitching to repair what the clear liquid could not.

  "Can you imagine what it would be like if we hadn't figured it out? What you would look like?" She giggled again. That sound- that stupid sound. It was so light, so childish, yet was always accompanied by the jab of a needle, the stroke of a scalpel- that noise haunted his every waking moment. Sometimes he'd even wake up with ears ringing, full of the jarring laugh.

  She hummed a tuneless song as she worked, threading the needle though painfully every few seconds to keep Dot from zoning out from the pointless things she said.

  Delicately undoing the iron buckle restraint that went through his wing and replacing it with a much kinder leather alternative that ran on top of the wing instead, she spoke at him relentlessly.

  "Gotta do it up tight, tight, tight..." She sung lightly while pulling the leather restraints ever tighter. "Is that good?"

  He shook his head, but was met only by another giggle.

  "I will admit, I do miss when we used to talk." She ran a hand through his hair and eyed his neck scar with an irritated tug on his scalp. "Do you think you could learn sign language? Wait no, that's stupid- you don't even have proper hands. How do you feel about finding some other way to communicate?"

  Dot didn't respond to her query fast enough, and was promptly punished by a harsh flick to his forehead. "Answer me."

  He shrugged again. What else was he to do?

  "I'll hire someone to try and teach you something." She finished stitching and put the needle and thread away in a drawer.

  "So you like mango, eh? I had always thought you preferred kiwi." Her eyes glinted at this statement, eager to see how he would react.

  Ah. So she had been watching him the other day as he struggled to get across his room without flying. The knowledge that she had been watching him and hadn't stepped in to help made him shudder- what if he had fallen?

  He quickly nodded in response and allowed her to gently comb the knots out of his hair. His hand-wings were fairly useless for when he had an itch or a tangle, and, as much as he would never admit it to anyone- it felt kind of nice.

  "I should have come over to help you, really. It would have been bad if you fell."

  Dot nodded again.

  "And besides," She finished combing his hair and quickly gave him another dose of the clear liquid before continuing, "I can't have you dying on me. Do you remember when you got out? That was bad."

  He couldn't remember much of this alleged great escape of his, save for a few fuzzy memories of a burning ball of flame sitting in a baby blue sky. He had been so young, and they had captured him almost immediately after he had got out- so he supposed there probably wasn't much to recall anyway.

  "You were way too expensive to make to just let you die or leave." She undid the straps and allowed him to sit up and stretch in an uncharacteristic display of kindness.

  "If you really like mango then I'll have to put some more in there for you sometime."

  Why was she being so nice?

  "And a few more perches as well. In hindsight, it was silly to not give you the option of walking from one side to the other."

  Her strange kindness made him squirm, his discomfort quickly being picked up by her beady eyes.

  "So you get nervous when I'm nice to you?" She grinned and opened the door. "Noted."

  Dot looked down at the floor. He just wanted to go back to his room and get out of her presence.

  "Hm." Her eyes glinted in the florescent lighting as she pulled him off of the table and helped him to walk through the corridor. "Let's take you back home then, shall we?"

  Yes, he thought. Please let's.