The Tooth Fairy Comes a Knockin’
Copyright© 2012 by Deborah Krider
I’m never going to get paid for this, Dr. Smith thought dismally as he looked into the mouth of Billy Bowden. Billy was a ten-year-old boy from the poor side of town whose buck teeth were already beginning to rot.
Is it written somewhere that poor people have to have rotten teeth? Is it a rule that they can’t afford a goddamn toothbrush? It’s a toothbrush for christsakes, not a Mercedes!
“Billy, how many times a day do you brush?” Dr. Smith almost asked how many times a month. Freudian slip. Or maybe not.
“Twith a day, thir,” little Billy replied looking innocently up at the doctor, his buck teeth almost as big as his wide eyes.
Twice a day, my ass, Smith thought, ignoring the kid’s lisp . . . for now.
“Your teeth don’t look like you brush at all.” Smith began to lose his patience. “In fact, I bet you didn’t even brush before you came here today, did you?”
Billy’s eyes filled with tears.
Oh, Christ, here we go! The kid eats sugar every day, doesn’t brush and comes crying to me when his mouth hurts.
Elk Creek was a small, weary town. With a population under a thousand the only thing it could really boast was the paper mill which provided jobs to most of the town’s residents. Still, no one in Elk Creek was rich or ever going to be. Including Dr. Smith, which was probably one of the reasons he hated it there so much. Five Smith generations had resided here and why Dr. Mike Smith didn’t just move away was beyond him. Too set in his ways, he supposed. Perhaps even afraid he couldn’t make it in anything bigger than this one stoplight town. So he stayed and bitched. His neighbors were hicks. His job was boring. And the smell from that paper plant was enough to drive him crazy sometimes. He swore he’d rather hang out at old man Johnson’s farm and smell pig shit all day than to have to breathe one more breath of that mill.
It didn’t help when he learned that some of the people in this town were driving to Penn City, over thirty miles away, to see a dentist there.
It didn’t occur to him that it was because of his horrendous bedside manner. His rude tongue and rough hands knew no discrimination. Although kids took the brunt of it because Smith knew that kids were less apt to talk back. They usually cried like Buck Tooth Billy.
It also didn’t occur to him that the people in this town were onto him and his sneaky ways. Overcharging for services. Charging for services not rendered. Trying to charge for things like equipment sterilization and cotton bibs which were standard office overhead and his responsibility.
* * *
“Billy, do you want to be toothless by the time you’re twelve?”
He shook his head.
“Do you want to be the only eighth grader wearing dentures?”
Silence.
“Oh, wait! Your parents couldn’t afford them, so you’d have to walk around without any teeth. Think the girls will like that, Billy?”
Smith smiled in contempt at the little boy. He felt his anger at this piss poor town fade away as he made the kid feel bad to worse.
“Got anything you want to say?”
Billy ripped the bib off and pushed himself up from the dentist chair.
“You’re an athhole!”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re gonna get yourth, mithter!”
“Nice lisp. Christ Billy, do everyone a favor and just keep that yap shut, would you? Oh, I forgot – you can’t because of those beaver teeth of yours.”
“Fuck you!” Billy screamed and ran through the waiting room and out the door.
Smith chuckled to himself, unconcerned about any consequences. Mrs. Bowden was even more timid than Billy and there was no Mr. Bowden.
The rest of the day went along pretty much like any other. Smith yelled at a half dozen people both young and old for bad habits, bad breath, and payment upfront. When twelve-year-old Suzie Rindscomb came in for a filling, he gave her a miniscule dose of Novocain and told her he’d given her the most he could a girl her age and she’d have to buck up and deal with the pain. The little twerp did, he had to give her that. Cried silently through the whole thing, but made it. Pretty impressive. When Johnny Larsen arrived to get an abscessed wisdom tooth pulled Smith purposely, if not gleefully, showed the frightened eighteen-year-old quarterback every tool used to get that sucker out. He ended his day by making Mrs. Novak, an eighty-nine year-old widow, cry, saying that until she could come up with the money, she wouldn’t get her repaired dentures back.
Only Dr. Smith would think it a productive day.
* * *
He was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming because his dental instruments were marching around the office. Picks and mirrors and dental molds bobbed and bounced around the dim waiting room, hallways and examination room. Smith realized they weren’t moving around at random - they were coming for him. Dread pulled at his stomach. To his right, he saw an In Case of Emergency box on the wall that contained an ax encased in glass. Something about it was familiar and foreboding and instinct told him not to retrieve it. Yet going against his gut he smashed the glass with his elbow and snatched the ax. He began to swing, slicing through the instruments, sending them flying in pieces through the air. They lay still on the carpet as he breathed heavily and dropped the ax. He realized why this had all seemed familiar and he wasn’t surprised to see the pieces begin to quiver and reshape - each piece and fragment becoming a whole new instrument. Like the brooms in Fantasia, dozens turned to hundreds and again they rose and marched toward him. Shiny, sharp weapons intent on picking and slicing him up, coming closer -----
“Hey, wake up.”
Smith jerked awake, glad to be taken away from the disturbing image, only to be petrified with what he woke up to.
“Who are you?” He asked the man before him. A stranger, for sure, he was a huge man, wearing a dirty white tank top that exposed tuffs of body hair on his arms, back, and shoulders. Shaggy brown hair framed a round face darkened by a five o’clock shadow.
“How’d you get in? What do you want?”
“I’m your wake up call, you little prick,” the man informed and leaned back in a chair by Smith’s bed. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and exhaled a thick white tube of smoke. “All the shit you got going on is going to stop. Hurting people. Overcharging people. It’s all going to stop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Smith trembled because he did know what he was talking about. The jig is up. Lose my license. Get ridiculed out of town. Is this really happening?
The stranger smacked Smith across the face, hard. “Yes, it’s really happening.” He leaned close to Smith. “I’m going to be watching you. For Billy and Suzie and Margie Novak, just to name a few. You’re going to set things right, Smith. Or we will meet again. And believe me you little fucker – you won’t want that.”
“Who are you?” Smith asked again.
“Consider me the tooth fairy,” the stranger answered and smiled, revealing grayish-black teeth. There were things moving around in his mouth. White and small. And when he opened it, a handful of maggots fell out and pattered on Smith’s comforter.
“Oh, my - ” but that’s as far as Smith got before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.
By the time he came to, sunlight brightened his entire bedroom. Instantly he remembered the previous night and he sat up sharply expecting to see the stranger. But he was alone and a headache instantly sparked, sending a painful dagger behind his left eye.
“It was a dream,” he said out loud and felt relief pour over him. Even his heada
che didn’t seem as bad. But then he saw it. One. Just one. A little squirming worm flopping around on his blanket.
* * *
The following Monday, Smith started the day calmly. He made a point to be at least courteous to his receptionist and patients. He kept on his best behavior until noon. Bobby Jensen, a twelve-year-old, freckle faced scrawny boy came in for a cleaning for what looked to be the first time in his whole life. It was then that Smith didn’t want to be nice anymore. At twelve, Bobby had one of the worst cases of gingivitis Smith had ever seen. That was it – Smith laid into him, chastising him for poor oral hygiene until the kid began to cry. Still showing no mercy he terrorized him with tales of cancer and surgical jaw removal because of his neglect. For ten straight minutes he railed on him until the kid was a blubbering mess. He then handed him off to his hygienist so he could go grab some lunch.
* * *
The confrontation with Bobby actually made him feel better. That “tooth-fairy” was nothing more than a dream. A nightmare.
“He can go to hell, anyway,” Smith said then laughed as he swung his car into a parking spot on Main Street and headed into Frank’s Café for a burger to go.
Frank, an elderly gentleman nodded at Smith’s entrance. He took his order and Smith sat at one of the stools to wait. Several patrons occupied the counter and booths and although in this small town where everyone greeted one another, no one acknowledged Smith. He wasn’t liked and he didn’t care. He’d rather spend his time alone than to associate with the likes of these losers.
After five minutes, he heard, “Order up!”
Smith looked toward the kitchen where the cook placed a waxed paper wrapped item on the pickup window. It wasn’t Marty, the usual cook. It was a new guy. Shaggy hair, five-o’clock shadow. He stared at him through the window and grinned, showing rotten teeth.
Smith began to shake.
Frank handed the wrapped burger to him who took it, cast one last glance at the cook and made a hasty exit.
“Couldn’t be. Couldn’t be. It was a dream,” Smith said over and over again, willing his brain to believe it.
He opened his car door and sat down, placing the burger next to him. His hands shook as he started his car. Next to him a small raspy, scratching sound came from his burger. Through the wax paper, Smith could make out the squirming maggots.
Grimacing, he snatched it and threw the whole thing out the window where it fell flat on the asphalt.
“Hey, there!” A voice bellowed.
The tooth fairy in a policeman’s uniform approached.
Smith smiled weakly.
“There’s a five hundred dollar fine for littering, boy!”
“I . . . I . . .” barely a whisper.
“Speak up boy, I can’t hear you!” The tooth fairy leaned down and close to Smith, making him cringe back from those greenish-black teeth and putrid breath. “How’s Bobby Jensen doing?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I warned you didn’t I, you little prick. I warned you that I’d come back.”
“I’m sorry!” Smith wailed. “I’m sorry, give me another chance! I’m sorry!”
“You had your chance you little piss ant!”
And then to Smith’s amazement, the tooth fairy in the policemen’s uniform walked away.
Smith left all the lights on that night. And even then he only tossed and turned. He’d doze off for a few moments only to jerk awake from the slightest sound. At four-o’clock he finally slipped into a restless sleep accompanied by disturbing dreams.
When his alarm went off at seven, he immediately knew something was wrong with his mouth. Curiously, there was no pain, but when he attempted to run his tongue across his teeth, it only met his ragged gums. Disgust and fear washed over him and he looked down. On his blood drenched pillow lie 28 teeth. His teeth.
Although Smith hadn’t kept up to date on orthodontic studies, he was pretty sure there was nothing in the books about sudden tooth expulsion. Not all teeth from a healthy mouth.
He called the dental office in Penn City and spent several minutes trying to tell the receptionist he needed to speak to the dentist. But his attempts at being understood through his mush mouth were futile so he hung up and headed out to his car. They’d just have to see for themselves.
In Penn City Smith waited in the dental chair for a Dr. Franklin to arrive. The hygienist took one look in his mouth and hurriedly left to fetch the doctor. A Tupperware container held all his teeth. Every time the container shifted, the teeth clattered dully against each other, making his stomach roll in disgust.
“Well, look who’s here,” Dr. Franklin said from behind Smith. The voice sounded familiar.
I warned you that I’d come back, you prick!
Oh, no.
Dr. Franklin came around the side and Smith saw him.
Shaggy hair, five-o-clock shadow, rotting teeth . . .
“Open wide.”
Thanks for reading my short story, The Toothfairy Comes a Knockin’. I wrote it after a conversation with my dentist and how dental instruments could be part of a good horror story. He said those ideas had all been done, so I wanted to try to write something different. This story turned out with more dark humor that horror, but it was pretty fun to write. My dentist got a kick out of it. Thanks again and best wishes. Deb Krider