Author’s Note: The Tooth Fairy’s stories are not required to be read in order. But if you’d like, you can read chapter one, The Teeth, here.
It was as crisp as an early summer evening, one late September Saturday, when Rick Lancaster got off his shift later than he’d told his wife to expect him. He walked into the corner gas station, a welcome bell chiming over his head like a death knell, and was immediately struck by how empty the place was - there was no clerk in sight, no other patrons, not even the sound of music to fill the lonesome dread of the place and its putrid plastic contents.
Nothing, except for her.
A lone figure in the back of the store, an elderly woman standing looking into the glass display cases. He approached her slowly, then stood there for a moment, observing her. She remained still, unmoving, not even a blink under the bright buzz of the fluorescent lights.
White ringlet curls softly fell under a maroon pillbox hat like his great grandma used to wear to church, and she had a Jansport tricolor zip like he wore in high school zipped all the way to her chin.
She was holding a brick of Maytag blue cheese, peeled open, staring at the crumbling cottage white flesh of the thing like an oracle - or, she would have been, were her eyes not almost completely whited out from cataracts. It almost looked like she was sniffing for it - like something that had emerged sightless from the earth, old and young, ageless and ancient.
The woman stood there, still as a statue, just looking at the freezer doors. Rick looked around again once more for someone, anyone. There hadn’t even been another car in the parking lot. Was her aid in the bathroom?
“Hey, ma’am, are you all right?” He reached out as if to touch her, maybe to startle her out of her daze, but it so unsettled him that he drew it back. By trade, Rick wasn’t known to be a particularly helpful person. The only reason he’d spoken to her at all is because he noticed the jacket.
He assumed she must have gotten out of the local senior citizen home and wandered off. But dressed like that? Poor old girl. Doesn’t even have someone to help her dress right.
He spoke to her again, “Ma’am, do you need some help?” And still, she didn’t look up at all.
She just stayed still, silently staring into the pebbled blue cheese.
Rick had finally started to get frustrated, turned and walked away from her when he heard a low, croaking voice from behind him:
“Like you helped Tim at the Crick that summer?”
He turned slowly to face her, not sure he heard her right.
And watched as she took the cheese, brought it to her mouth and took a bite; chewing it slowly, contentedly. What the fuck?
This crazy old bitch has dementia or something, he thought to himself, rattled, but trying not to show it. She must have just got out of the nursing home.
“Okay, ma’am, I think you’re confused.” He gave a hard, wet swallow. “My name’s Rick. I don’t know any Tims. I don’t know a Tim.”
She gives a hollow bark of a laugh, a switch slapping against a tree. “Well, no, you sure don’t. Not anymore. You saw to that, didn’t you?”
It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice over his head, and lit every cell on fire at the same time.
He didn’t even speak, he just turned and ran, making a beeline for the front door. He knocked over an endcap of fresh boxed doughnuts and plastic cups on his way out.
But as soon as he saw his truck, Rick saw her.
She was already standing in front of it, twirling her hat on the front of her finger - except, it wasn’t her - was it? This woman was easily 30 years younger, maybe in her 50s - but he knew it was. The same woman - still wearing the same coat, twirling that fucking hat. Holy Shit. Its a fucking demon.
The demon was prancing around in front of his truck, looking at him with something like desire and sport. She stood in front of the front grill of the truck, eye fucking him while she twirled her little pill box hat, and he stood there like a deer in headlights. Finally it spoke:
“What’s the matter? I thought you wanted to help me.”
“Holy Mary Mother of - “
She yawned, bored, checking her nails. “Mary stayed back with the flock. I’m more of a big bad wolf kind of a thing.”
Rick took off running across the parking lot of the Casey’s, hearing her laugh and calling out to him as he ran. He sprinted across the one lawn of the neighboring lot and towards the tree line to the woods. If I can just get to the other side of the trees, I can get home.
And just when he hit the tree line, there was a pillbox hat hanging off a branch, waiting there like a warning. But no sign of her.
He saw it hanging there and didn’t stop, just swerved, and started running a different direction- not stopping until he disappeared into the thick brush of the tree line. Rick had run all through college. He lived for the moments of endurance where he had to push himself and hear his heart roaring in his ears trying to beat his best time, his best distance. He wished for it now - help me block it out. All he could hear her yelling in the trees:
“You can’t outrun what you did, Rick. You think Tim didn’t know? You think he didn’t know his best friend poisoned him like a cowardly woman?”
Dusk had seeped down into the forest, and he couldn’t see in front of him. Running blind, he ran into a tree branch that knocked the wind out of him.
Before he even had a moment to catch his breath, he felt the weight of her crawling on top of him. He tried to scramble away, but she was too heavy, and he didn’t have any air. When she came face to face with him, he could see they were similar ages now - she looked to be in her 30s. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck -
Her jacket had come unzipped at some point during her hunt in the trees - dangling above him were either side of the windbreaker jacket, and her rotted, half-skeleton frame underneath; pulsing and dead- dripping on his clothes.
She nuzzled in close and up to his neck and close to his ear, while all he could process was the rotting smell of her. And the cool feel of the zipper of the jacket touching his chin when she got close.
“Is that why you can’t get it up at night, Rick? Because the guilt’s just eating you up inside.”
All he could do was close his eyes and look away.
And then she was gone and he was alone, laying on the forest floor. He quickly stood and started running again, but now he knew. She liked the hunt.
Rick stopped and broke down by a tree “I didn’t know it was going to kill him! I just thought he was gonna get really sick. I didn’t know. I loved him!”
Suddenly, there she was again, hanging upside down from the backs of her knees like a kid on a grotesque jungle gym, casually taking a bite of the blue cheese. “If you loved him so much then why did you do it?” she asked, her mouth full and a few crumbs spilling out.
Rick screeched and ran, pine needles digging into his hands as he scrambled across the forest floor for cover. He didn’t stop until he hit a small cluster of trees. Fuck it. Just as good of a place to die as any. He collapsed against it, panting, blue eyes darting like daggered stars in the night.
“My mom made me go over there every FUCKING day. I just wanted a life! I wanted to have my own fucking life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You know the only time I ever got any time to myself was when he was at the hospital…and I just thought if he got sick enough for a little bit that he you know would that I could go hang out with some of my other friends for a little while, you know? She always… I don’t know. She was always sending me over there to be his babysitter or something. You know I was 15 and he was 10 and I wanted to do my own thing sometimes. I don’t think that makes me a terrible person.”
“No - it makes you a killer.” Her voice slithered across his ear, just behind him.
Again - he took off like a shot.
“Oh - so it’s not just as good of a place as any to die?” Her cackle rained down from the trees. What the fuck.
He stopped running at the edge of a small clearing, almost at the opposite end of the woods. This time when he collapsed, he knew he wouldn’t be able to rise again. The indignant defense began again, pointed at the treetops.
“I didn’t think he was gonna die. Jesus Christ. So I’m supposed to just give up my whole goddamn life because I made a stupid mistake as a kid? Does that seem fair to you? Doesn’t seem fair to me. I didn’t fucking mean to. I think about him every day….”
This time, she didn’t bother to announce herself as she came flying at him from the side – no longer his age, maybe in her twenties now. She grabbed him by the hair, and shoved his face into the face of a pale, silent dark haired boy of about 8, who had appeared out of nowhere.
With the chapped lips of a chemical burn.
“And is this how you remember him?” She sneers “Everyyyy dayyyyy???” She laughs and tosses him aside as if he were a doll, bored.
“Well I have excellent news for you, Rick. The Great Wide Open has heard your lonely hearts pleas. You won’t have to remember him anymore. I’m here to give him back to you.” She gestured toward the edge of the trees for him to look, and terrified, he did.
Out of the woods walked an old woman, hand in hand with Rick’s two sons, Jeremiah and Evan, ten and nine, walking hand in hand with her, complacent as goats as she led them towards the clearing.
After a moment, Rick recognized her as Tim’s mother. She was wearing the pink pillbox hat.
The demon said to Rick: “I propose a trade- what you miss so much, for what you spend so little time on. And I won’t even take both. Choose.”
It was so ridiculous an offer he almost laughed. “No. I won’t. Me instead. That’s what this is about right? Punishment? Just take me instead. You can’t take my kids from me.”
“Ah. I do love a good bout of heroism in the end. But sadly that was not an option presented, dear. You’ll have to live with the consequences of your decisions and look them in the face every day - in the face of the son you saved. Choose.”
“No. No. I can’t. I can’t choose!” His voice snapped, a piano wire pulling free from the frame. “Please, I’m begging you - don’t make me do this. I’ll do anything. Anything else. Please.”
She didn’t need to snarl, raise her voice, or do any tricks. There was just a small, imperceptible shift in the air when she spoke again, that let him know it was her last time being patient. She stood behind the boys, one of them on either side of her just ahead, standing between them. How had he never noticed how beautiful they were before now?
“I recognize that these things can be difficult. But either you choose, or its both of them- and your wife, your sidepiece, your parents, your siblings, your best friend, your dog - really just anyone within a blast radius of my fucking irritation threshold. And still - you, Rick, will live a long life in the aftermath to feel it all. Choose. A. Child.”
Weeping now, Rick looked between the boys, watching her whisper to them in their ears. What could she be saying to them? Will they remember this?
“Only one. The other will only remember a bedtime story.”
This elicited a new series of cries as he doubled over onto all fours on the ground. He didn’t even have the courage to look up when he pointed.
If you asked him now, he might say it was random, he had pointed and fate chose. But he knew that night when he pointed his finger it was pointed right for -
The boy dropped dead instantly, crumpling like a bath towel to the forest floor. Rick scrambled towards them and cradled the limp figure against himself, still warm, patting his face. “Jerimiah? Jer? Wake up Jer. Wake up, wake up Jer. Come on Jer. Come on.” But the figure never moved, never responded to the touch.
Never called back to the sound of his own name ever again.
The screaming sob he’d been sheltering against his ribs ripped through him as Rick held the limp body “What happened? Where is he?”
The demon simply shrugged her shoulders and gestured to the trees around them. “The Great Wide Open.”
She turned to the ghostly figure Tim, and touched his face gently. For a moment, he appeared to be healed, an alive child- but he too, dropped dead onto the dirt.
Rick could only sit there, shell shocked and shivering, whimpering and gasping for breath.
“I thought - “ he swallowed and tried again “but you said,” he stopped to double over, clutching Jerimiah to his chest. “- you MADE ME CHOOSE! There was never any fucking point!”
“No, there wasn’t because you killed that boy in the dirt 25 years ago. So all you were ever gonna get today was a body to bury in the ground. That’s how you measure a set of scales.” It’s Tim’s mother, finally speaking. She was slowly stepping forward out of the shadows, taking her pillbox hat off her head.
Rick blinked. He’d forgotten she was there.
“And do they feel balanced, now?” The demon asked her.
She looked down at the hat in her hands, the bodies and nodded. “I just can’t believe you came. When I found the way in my grandmother’s attic, I was so scared…but I had to try.”
She glared at Rick, a final accusation, and turned back to the demon. “Do you get them from him, or me?”
The demon laughed. “Don’t worry dear- you’ve suffered enough.”
Post Script:
The Weirdo and the Wackos Crime Blotter - September 20th, 2002
Rick Lancaster of Suffering, IN was placed under arrest on early Sunday morning, September 19th, 2002. He’s been placed under arrest for the murder of his son, no cause has yet been identified, but foul play is suspected. Most notably because he was found in possession of his son’s body while caught in the act of grave robbing his childhood friend’s grave.
He is currently to set himself up for an insanity plea in one of the most clear cut cases I’ve ever seen - but I have to say, I respect the commitment. He pulled out all his teeth while he was on the run and according to my inside source, will only talk about a version of events with a woman the cops have started calling the Tooth Fairy based on how bullshit the story is. Apparently she can fly, change her age, bring dead kids back to life. The only known sighting of her is a little old lady buying blue cheese on her way to bingo, losing her hat in the parking lot.
