How Much Is The Snail
Desmond was born to the aristocratic family of vampires, the second most noble and wealthy family at the Peak of Ecstasy, the highest mountain of the world. The grandiose fortified castle of his vampire father was surrounded by the most elegant graves and marvelously decorated crypts, which the local undead elite called home. There lived some of the prettiest of banshees, the most well-polished and stylish skeletons, fancy liches wearing long skirts and crowns, their refined bare torsos seemingly ready to break into a bellydance at any moment, some of the bendiest zombie jesters entertained the noble public by breaking every single bone in their bodies and neatly putting it all back together...
Because of their deathlessness, the undeads have long made the best company for the cruel vampires. The vampires could unleash their cruelty completely on a hired undead beauty and do whatever they wanted to the undying skinny flesh, and after days and days of most sophisticated experiments give the hard worker enough gold to feed his entire family with the finest brains.
Beside entertainment, the vampires mostly used the undeads to improve their main speciality, surgery. As the world's greatest medics they had to make sure they know the body better than anyone else in the world, as medical operations were their main source of income, their prices were fabulous and they needed to stay that way.
But apparently, undeads didn't require any surgery, unless for fun. As surgeons, the vampires had to serve, first and foremost, the living foreigners who visited to heal their broken spines, ruptured bowels, shifted kidneys, unlucky piercings, you name it...
Some of them, on the contrary, wanted to have their bodies modified to improve their already existing talents and break through the anatomical barrier. Desmond's father specialized in the latter kind and had a whole resort for foreigners who weren't exactly sick but just sought to break their limits.
Desmond often visited his dad's laboratory to stare at all the beautiful patients: gyspies standing before the basilisk's eye to x-ray their wasped waists in hope it can be made even smaller, impossibly flexible elves attended by chiropractors snailing them up on yoga mats, risky blade-loving knights instructed on how to pierce their bodies with rapiers safely and bloodlessly, without making a nasty shish-kebab of their livers, kidneys and stomaches...
"Oh my, father! Can we stay here for a little longer?" Desmond would tug on his dad's hand.
"Patience, my child. When you grow up and become a surgeon like me," Desmond's father would say, "you'd have your own patients. But now it's time for your glass of blood."
One day Desmond couldn't contain his internal urge anymore. "C- can I be the patient instead?"
"What are you saying, my dear, you're born to be the surgeon, not the patient
Since that day Desmond was getting sadder and sadder, until he finally managed to talk with a group of leaving patients who helped him to run away. The boy managed to cross the entire world and settle in T'High-Hai, the barbarian city, where the young vampire immediately began mastering the art of contortionism.
He spent over 6 years in T'High-Hai, full of stretching and joy. His guides in the past were right, barbarians were the best contortion trainers with a lot of passion for working with the young lithe forms of their students. He met a lot of very slender, very bendy elves in this city, all enjoying the strong arms and caring mercilessness of their savage tutors.
Everything was going well and Desmond's spinal cord was almost as loose now as that of some of his elven opponents. He learned to fold it in half on his very first year and having achieved what he wanted so quickly, he desperately needed a new goal in contortion. And after a few days of thinking he found it: he swore before his teacher that one day he will touch his own belly button with the back of his head. Alvar, his teacher, almost wanted to burst out laughing at this ridiculous idea but only gulped, seeing so much determination in fierce eyes of the vampire.
It was the first time Desmond realized the power of his eyes and since then he used his hypnotic stare a lot to convince his teacher to work with him for hours and hours and forget about everything else. In the end Desmond got half-way toward the Goal, almost like a miracle the back of his head could reach and touch the lowest part of his own belly.
Not everybody appreacited such wondrous skills and soon Desmond lost contact with some of the bendy students who used to be friends, specially elves who suddenly ran full of jealousy after Desmond started becoming the main highlight at every contortion festival. Notably, elves and barbarians have been friends since the most ancient times and the elves certainly didn't want to lose the status of the savages' beautiful companions even to one single vampire.
Coincidence or not, but very soon Desmond's location was discovered. The boy and his teacher were working on the daily chores, slowly but steadily approaching the ultimate goal, until suddenly...
"Hey, big boy," called an arrogant female voice. "10 gold if you can stand on top of the small boy with those fancy ballsmashers of yours!"
"W- what?" Alvar the barbarian turned his head to face two giant dickworms mounted by two strangers. One of them an elf, seemingly a guard, the other looked like a noble vampire. "Milady, we haven't tried that before, don't wanna just..."
"100 gold?"
The barbarian put his boot on the folded-up boy's hip and hesitantly rubbed it against the soft surface. Desmond softly moaned, wondering if his teacher is really going to do that.
"What are you waiting for?" The vampire lady's eyes made the barbarian feel like his skull is getting drilled. "How boring! 200 gold right now or I'm going away!"
Watching the savage's hestitation for another moment, the lady turned her head, raised her chin even higher and pinched her dickworm's sensitive flesh, decisively directing it to crawl away.
Desmond suddenly gasped. "W- wait, that's so much money! I think I can take it, master Alvar! I'm more than used to be a living chair, we always sit on each other at school, remember?"
"Yeah but your schoolmates are your size!"
"Doesn't matter, I'm more than eager to try someone heavier," Desmond begged.
"If you say so," Alvar whistled loudly.
The noble lady turned back. "Changed your mind? Squish that worm to the ground and the gold is yours."
Very slowly and carefully the massive savage stepped with both of his feet on top of the fragile teen body. His weight immediately squished the pliant trainee flat against the ground like a folded towel. His spine, however, did only produce a couple of cracks but not the bad ones that Alvar was so afraid to hear. The boy's elasticity was quite phenomenal!
Desmond will definitely make it an everyday exercise now, the barbarian thought. When suddenly something bad happened. A loud and most nasty crack and Desmond's head fell to the ground.
"Oh noes, did you break him after all?" the lady exclaimed rather coldly. "But don't worry, here comes the main deal. I'm a surgeon and I can fix him, but then I want to take him for good. And you, you can have 500 gold in total for your efforts."
Alvar kneeled, looking at his ruined pupil, the supple flesh lay there squished like a towelie. Only in the morning the teen did such a fantastic dance for him that Alvar truly felt like a king, and then the soft body fell in his mighty hands and he felt those neat vampiric fangs against his pecs, playful bites on his pierced nipples. And now what was left of this beautiful youth...
"Look, big boy, if you haven't noticed I'm a vampire, and this boy is a vampire too. I'm just taking him home. He's been missed for 6 years!"
Desmond tried to open his eyes. A white, sterile chamber. Cold like in a cave. Smells like home. But not the barbarian home, THE home. He's been missing this medical smell for 6 long years. He looked around. A figure in the chair. Slowly turns face to him. "Fa- father?"
"Welcome back, my child. Seems your dream to become a patient came true after all? That's my boy. Set the goal and then reach it!" The father smiled.
"I'm afraid I'm still so far from reaching my goal, father..." Desmond sighed.
"Really? What kind of goal is that, may I ask?"
"I... I want to touch my belly button with the back of my own head
"What an interesting experiment, hmm... You know, son, I always wanted to raise you to be my best surgeon, but apparently I was mistaken and you were born to be my best yet patient."
"Really?"
"A noble deed, now to think of it. As a surgeon you'd merely repeat the known practice, but as a patient you might help to discover something new."
"I'm very much looking forward to it, father! You know, I can't spend an hour without stretching, it's my whole life!"
"Now, now. Adele told me you've become extremely good at it. Those barbarians sure have a firm hand. But brute force isn't always the best, sometimes you need the delicate fingers of a surgeon... That's what I usually tell my patients."
"The wisest words, father..."
"Anyway, Adele is my best chiropractor, she will help you to reach your goal. She's the most merciless woman I know, but she can fix anything she breaks. We have an amazing new torture rack, a new word in chiropractics, plus this weekend I planned a little surgery to loosen your spinal cord a little."
"I'm so excited, father..." Desmond almost cried of happiness. It's so good to be back home. And to be finally understood.
"Also..." the father smiled naughtily. "It seems to me that Adele has turned your contortion coach into her new boyfriend, so you both are going to visit those barbarians a lot. Maybe we'll even sign a few pacts with them. But now, if you like, it's time for your contortion therapy, your spinal discs can use some workout after the operation."