18F – The Night Dentist

The old rough leather belts held his arms to the chair. They felt out of place in the room now – worn, cracking at the edges. Everything else was clean lines and stainless steel. He flexed his arms beneath the bindings and looked up.

“You’ve upgraded.”

The dentist was picking over a series of metal implements. They seemed smaller than he remembered.

“Been a while since you were here. How long since your last clean?”

“A year.”

“No, I mean your last real one. Like this. When did I see you last?”

He tried to count.

“Would have to be at least eleven years. Maybe twelve.”

The dentist rattled around the metal tools, pulled one out, held it up in front of him. Like he used to, when he was just a kid. To stop him from being scared.

“This other dentist, did he try for an x-ray?”

“Tried. Managed to talk him out of it before it got awkward.”

He nodded, and slowly approached the chair.

“You’d better be careful about things like that.”

A gloved hand grabbed the edge of his lip and twisted it outwards, not too gently. He saw the eyes, more sunken, huge behind the glasses, peering in at his teeth. He wasn’t just older, something else about him was different, his voice a little colder, harder.

“You been behaving yourself then?”

He caught the inference, ignored it.

“Been working on farms, mostly. Middle of nowhere.”

“Uh hunh… Oh. What’s this then?”

The spectacled eyes leaned in closer, squinting. He selected a small metal rod from his tools and gently tapped one of the raised incisors.
His jaw exploded with pain. Everything went vague, and he felt his muscles and nerves instantly tense. When the haze cleared, he looked up. The dentist was at the far end of the room, watching him cautiously.

“Quite a racket you’re making there. Thought that might be a bit tender.”

He felt a tiny burst of anger. He shut his eyes and forced it down. A few deep breaths and he was himself again. He looked up.

“What’s going on?”

“Hard to say. It looks like one of your… what do we call them? One of your other incisors has been damaged. What have you been eating?”

He didn’t reply.

“My guess would be an abscess, probably at the base. When the teeth retract it gets pushed deep, right under the jaw. Might explain the headaches you were telling me about – your body just can’t localise the pain.”

The dentist began picking through his equipment, holding up one implement after the other while he spoke.

“Normally we’d be looking at a root canal, but you have to understand, your whole physiology is a complete mystery to me. I don’t even know what will happen once the tooth retracts. And we’ve only got a few hours until that happens.”

“So… what can you do?”

“I can try to pull it out.”

He sat there for a minute, tried to think.

“What happens if we leave it?”

“I can only assume that the headaches will get worse. The infection could spread – it could become life threatening. You’ll need antibiotics. At the very least I’d say there’s a good chance you’d end up in hospital.”

No hospitals. No blood tests. No x-rays.

He could wait. But waiting would mean another month. Another month for another moon.

“So it has to come out then.”

The dentist looked over, needle in hand, and laughed nervously.

“I suppose I don’t have to point out that I’ve never done this before? Not on someone like you, anyway.”

Then the old man leaned in and injected something into his gum line. A sharp stab of pain gradually receded into a faint, fuzzy sensation. His face went numb.

“That’s a little more than the usual dose. You’ll be needing it, too.”

He watched the gloved hands carefully select a short, metal spike. The dentist began to tap the inside of his mouth, tentatively at first, but then with increasing force. He could feel nothing, no but his head shook, jostled with the effort. He watched the old man’s face, tight with concentration, but excited, too. Not the kind of operation he’d get to do every day.

His jaw began to throb, softly at first, then growing stronger, beating out a deep, solid rhythm. He could taste blood, and when the dentist backed away he could see it as well, on the metal and a small spray on the dentist’s smock.

The dentist leaned in with what looked like a pair of sturdy metal forceps, and clamped on to the tooth, gently wiggling it backwards and forwards. And then, bracing himself against the edge of the chair, he tensed his muscles and yanked backwards.

The dull throbbing became an uncontrollable rush of pain. Every muscle strained against the bindings that held him to the chair, until the metal arms bent and the bindings themselves gave way and snapped. A foul tasting liquid rushed into his mouth and he spat violently on the floor. In the same moment he was up, the hair on his arms and his back standing upright, his whole body awash with blood and adrenaline. He roared.

When he came to it was the early hours of the morning. His bare skin shuddered against the cold metal doors of the cabinet. His chest was sticky with blood, and there was a faint metallic taste in his mouth. He forced himself to look over at what he’d done, even though it twisted him up inside, even though it made it difficult to breathe. He wanted to remember.

He walked over to the body and gently pulled the tooth from the forceps. His tooth. Two inches long, a sharp, evil looking thing with a strangely curved root, bloodied and soft. He slipped it into his pocket and stepped quietly out of the surgery.