THE DOCTOR OF DREAMS

About this story

Port Alfred is a small town with a quiet reputation and a doctor it cannot stop talking about. Dr. Nkanyezi cures phobias nobody else will touch: the terror of speaking to women, the panic of being seen, fear of lifts, beaches, bosses, of wanting the wrong thing in the wrong room. The methods are unconventional and the results are perfect — every patient leaves cured. The town never asks how. This is how. The doctor has a gift: the power to become any patient's dream woman, to wear the exact shape of the wanting and walk into it. Every transformation is a cure. Every transformation is also a hit — of being wanted, of pleasure that belongs to somebody else's fantasy — and the doctor is not sure anymore where the performances end. Eight appointments. Eight borrowed faces. And one patient, near the end, who asks for the one thing the gift cannot perform: the doctor, as the doctor is.