Phidian Proportions

[Dr. Jeremiah Vedryn]

CW: Mature themes, violence, surgery, blood. Character views on body image are clearly meant to be distorted/disturbed and do not reflect the writer's views.



The afternoon and evening of October 23, 2021

The swelling, triumphant horns of Wagner’s masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen, specifically Entry of the Gods Into Valhalla, filled the spacious, sterile operating room as Dr. Jeremiah Vedryn and his small team huddled around the operating table. The good doctor’s hands conducted their own virtuoso performance equal, if not superior, to Wagner’s as they operated on the body on the table. The path of the scalpel was precise…perfect…as it cut along the lines which marked up the patient’s body. The obsidian blade was much sharper than its steel companion, worked down to a single atom in diameter at its finest point and put to use on such yielding surfaces. The doctor sucked in a breath as the woman’s flesh parted so easily, as he watched the pale skin separate to reveal such a deep crimson beneath. She would be yet another masterpiece when he was through with her.

The blade could so easily cut other parts of her. Open her right up.

The sounds of the machines intruded upon both private thoughts, fervid suggestions and the beauty of Wagner’s musical drama. It was enough to annoy, but not distract.

“Suction.” Dr. Vedryn indicated his need for the attending nurse to remove the pooling of excess blood. It was minimal, yet a necessary function, and spoke to the easy coordination and demanded performance which existed within Dr. Jeremiah Vedryn’s suite of operations.

Today’s procedure, a collection of procedures, was all about restoring a degree of perfection to a woman that had lost it courtesy of childbirth. The profession had begun to call this procedure a mommy makeover…a name Dr. Vedryn privately detested. A makeover was something a person got on a reality television show; a change of hair color or style, a new makeup or whatever surface level alteration they could find to substitute for deep, permanent change like patching a pothole on a ruined street. And for what? For the entertainment of the masses inoculating themselves with the consumption of empty calories in the form of mindless entertainment for no greater goal than to justify their own self-imposed mediocrity as some form of newly realized superiority.

Dr. Jeremiah Vedry did not do makeovers.

He did restorations no different than those that brought the Sistine Chapel back from the brink.

Only his hands restored beauty to those who had lost it, gifted it to those who never had it and let those who could afford his services to know what perfection could feel like.

Today was a combination of an entire back liposuction, an outer thigh lift, and front thigh lift as well as an abdominoplasty. The incisions along the hips and back would be easily hidden by a thong and bra and allow the patient to enjoy the full effect of the good doctor’s miraculous transformation. So much fat and excess tissue was removed throughout the procedure that Dr. Vedryn felt like Michelangelo slowly chiseling away the excess marble to reveal David. He did well to keep his gorge from rising whenever he compared the patient’s current body to the preop photos hanging on the well for reference.

Disgusting. Wasteful. Imperfect.

“Any plans for the weekend, Doctor?” One of the nurses asked as they dabbed a gauze pad to collect a drop of blood that had just begun to run down from the incision at the hip.

“A theater production.” Jeremiah answered as he marveled at the way the retractors could pull and hold open the human body. It was such a marvelous wound…incision…and the striations of the muscle tissue beneath the layer of skin and fat practically begged him to pluck at them like guitar strings, to find this one’s specific tune and play her hidden song.

Another time. Later. Tonight.

“Jekyll & Hyde. A favorite of mine.” Jeremiah continued as his heartbeat slowed and his thoughts returned to the procedure at hand. “A new production.” He wasn’t an overly effusive man, wasn’t talkative for the sake of hearing his own voice.

“Rather fitting.” The reply came quickly and without realization. The stammer gave her away and the recovery flatlined when placed beneath Vedryn’s surgically precise stare. “With Halloween coming, I mean.” The words were a death rattle as once offense was given…it was never forgotten.

She wouldn’t make eye contact with him again for the rest of the procedure and the other staff was wise enough to not draw either his attention or his ire. The procedure continued without further incident and the patient, the failure that she had been, had been transformed into a better version of herself.

The offending nurse, not that she mattered any longer, was fired before the end of the day.

The hospital uniform of OR scrubs and mask had been exchanged for the gentlemanly uniform of suit and tie. The razor-sharp silhouette of a bespoke Brioni suit ruthlessly tailored to his exacting standards and measurements spoke of his success, exacting standards and style while allowing him to blend within a crowd.

He would arrive at the theatre early and claim the center seat out of three tickets he purchased so as not to have to sit next to or touch any of the other members of the audience. The theatre was something he allowed himself to enjoy. It was an acceptable outlet for one with specific passions and refinement.

One had so…few…respectable outlets when one possessed such dark desires.

Asher’s performance as the titular character was a masterful exploration of a complicated, conflicted and ultimately tragic hero. Jeremiah didn’t know his own father though he could calculate the emotions behind such a bond, witness it and mimic the emotive empathy when he discussed familial bonds with potential patients. The same was true of Asher’s performance regarding the illness of his character’s father and the man’s quest to separate good from evil.

Jeremiah pondered such a philosophical question while watching the man perform. What was good without evil? What was evil without good? One needed the other the way the brain needed the heart. The two were interdependent and both were necessary. He considered such ideas while watching, with a mild moue of distaste, the Danvers showy party for Emma’s engagement. Tippletoe plays an admirable Emma and, in his estimation, conveys her love for Jekyll in a tragically believable fashion. He personally detested the group of high society types, detested the same class that he himself was a member of while never discounting the irony of such self-loathing. It was a testament to the troupe of actors and actresses that they could create such a response in the typically detached and aloof doctor.

Yet Jeremiah, like Jekyll, is utterly captivated, however, when the setting shifts to the Red Rat and Alara’s Lucy takes the stage and belt’s out the showy, fun number that allowed the woman to so perfectly own her femininity with a voice and flawless body. Such perfection was such a rare thing when his eyes saw so much imperfection crying out to be fixed. A nose three millimeters too wide here, a left eye one millimeter lower than the right there. The contrast from the kindhearted contemplation of her previous song further sets her apart and further places the familiar woman within his sights. Her familiarity and his inability to place it crawls beneath his skin like so many spiders and the good doctor vents the need to carve them out by turning the sharp tip of a fountain pen to the show’s program rather than his own flesh. There, upon the margin of the page, he sketches the woman’s face and begins to mark it up like she was a patient, changing the lines of her cheeks and chin, the width and height of her nose and brow all in an attempt to recreate where he has seen her before. Line after line changed the girl’s face into another and then another.

Ahhh….I’ve found you. You can’t hide from me…not with that face. The golden ratio had crowned the woman with an innately sensual symmetry. .7 waist to hip ratio, 34C,-24-34...his critical eye could calculate her numbers and ratio even from where he sat. He had the perfect music box already picked out for her.

Spider’s slap to “Lucy’s” pretty face pulls the surgeon from his work. The man delivered it with such realism that Jeremiah can’t help but smile in approval for the delivery. It isn’t just the face…but the voice. The woman delivers her performance with an emotive quality that speaks of personal experience. His own point of familiarity at witnessing Jekyll and Hyde recognizes it within her as well.

The other performances are on par with the Spider’s as Jeremiah watches, transfixed by the compelling story and not immune to certain parallels though the surgeon’s arrogance and sense of superiority prevent any breakthroughs of healing self-awareness. In fact, much of his thoughts are consumed by picking apart Jekyll’s shortcomings and failures, celebrating the raw purity of Hyde’s existence and marveling at how each of the cast completely owns their portion of the stage.

The smile is genuine when Lucy feels the bite of the blade though the fountain of fake blood used on stage is so…disenchanting. The real thing had such viscosity, such permanent, staining color. Yet the feeling is a satisfying sensation as the multiple stabs wound the girl before the final incision…wound…is delivered. There is a primal satisfaction to witnessing such an event and it stirs similar feelings that tauntingly live at the perimeter of his conscious thought. He can’t place them.

But he wants to.

And so he joins the audience in a rare, for him, show of appreciation by adding his applause to the growing evidence of celebration and recognition. Several needs gnaw in competition within him. A need to know who this woman is…who she has been in the past, a need to glut himself on a suitable outlet, to vent the pent-up needs which will consume him if not released. Each collision of his hands in applause drew those needs closer and closer to the surface.

”Do you really think
That I would ever let you go?
Do you think that I’d ever set you free?
If you do, I’m sad to say,
It simply isn’t so.
You will never get away from me.”

The lyrics, those particular ones, from the song Confrontation sutured themselves into his memory as the good doctor exited the theater to the streets and returned to a penthouse view. It was a new start to the season, but it was a visceral need that was far older than time itself.

[Dr. Jeremiah Vedryn]

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

The operating room was empty save his presence and that which held his attention, dark save for the soft luminosity which spilled from the operating table, still save the beating of a single heart and the slow expansion and expulsion of a pair of lungs. There was an oppressive energy which clung like ozone about the nose and the room remained as silent as a tomb. He hardly noticed the blood spattered about his hands, the thick streaks of it which had splashed black across his chest and torso to stain OR scrubs and color his face. Nor had he cared to notice the instruments still sticky with bits of vitae and viscera.

The surgery had been routine and well within the purpose of his new practice in Rhydin. Too many perfect faces already lined the streets; an ordinary practice or satellite office performing the same services as he had before simply would not stand and might not even be needed at all. Jeremiah Vedryn was far from ordinary. And so, he had come to Rhydin with the intent of making the extraordinary…mundane. Hated like your celestial heritage? Excise it from the very DNA like a tumor. Innate abilities an embarrassment and burden? Permanently erase them in a single procedure. Don’t like that you’re different? Let Phidian Perfection and Dr. Jeremiah Vedryn gift you with the unexceptional and average.

Of course such transformations came with a cost. One far higher than a new nose or breasts required.

As the Tiefling that had occupied this operating room not too long ago had found out.

To be reborn…one first must die.

Smoke curled upwards from the softly glowing ring of fire which slowly consumed the paper and tobacco of the cigarette. The slender tendrils rose and twisted, writhed, and danced for him and him alone on unseen currents of air. And yet not even the allure of the rush the smoke provided could steer the good doctor’s attention away from what so captivated the entirety of his gaze. The cigarette had been lit but otherwise untouched. The long trail of ash behind the burn was so delicately held together and yet the surgeon’s hand remained so still (would anything else be expected?) that nothing had disturbed its growth. Just as nothing could disturb or distract the man’s eyes from the current object of his obsession.

A small jar sat upon the blood spackled operating table, crimson drops still dripped from larger pools here and there to sickly slap against the tiled floor. A shimmering essence of black fire flamed energy sizzled, popped and sparked within the magically sealed container. Grinding away horns, filing down fangs, even snipping a tail were all easy necessities. But extracting the infernal essence? That is where the true talent showed itself…and where Vedryn’s true nature revealed itself. He had money and so his only charge for such procedures was that he kept what he took…permanently. And what he had taken from Zaitari Riza was incomparable to what she had been given.

He could still feel the last beats of the female Tiefling’s heart against his fingertips as he absorbed and manipulated the energies of life, drew on the negative energy of death to shepherd them across the veil living veil as the heart beat slower and slower until…nothing. And all so that he might claim what she hated. How foolish were those that did such paltry things with their talents such as fly or conjure elemental energy? Such wasted potential. And then she had been brought back…resurrected…and was born again without that which now burned inside its new prison.

She would awaken…perfectly…normal. And eternally grateful.

“You will fuel a wonderful music box for my perfect host.” The Necromancer smiled a cruel sickle of a smile after such a successful harvest and the realization that the spirit…the essence that had been forcibly ripped from the only home it had ever known…hated…him for it. “Come along.” The cigarette’s ashen perfection vaporized with the first bit of movement and Vedryn claimed the jar and the essence within. “Your hate will be useful. It always is.”

Yes…Jeremiah Vedryn was far from normal.