The Teeth

Some people are all bark and no bite.

Suffering, IN - 1997

Sue had spent most of her life telling anyone who would listen she’d been having a rough time lately.

And lately, it seemed those hard times she’d been advertising all these years had finally come to catch up. For too long, a few extra pounds had sat across her hips in such a way that men didn’t stop her on the street anymore, but they’d still stop her at last call. She kept her hair cut short and no nonsense, just like her attitude, most of the time.

Unless, and this was a big unless, somebody decided to let her have some whiskey. Whiskey never let the word “no” feel quite right in her mouth on a night out. Never let her eyes focus too steady on the lock on a stranger’s front door; melting away in her hands.

She was her father’s daughter, after all. She could only be expected to do so much with what he taught her.

Never turn down an easy lick, kiddo, he used to say. It’s a sin to be wasteful.

Taking that advice was how she found herself a guest of the state of Indiana for 68 months and 4 days, at the Gunnison Correctional Institution for Women.

And now, she was their guest again every other Tuesday afternoon under the thumb of Mr. Bertram Heller, her parole officer. He was a slender, gaunt-faced man with sandy-colored hair and dead eyes who always looked like he would rather be anywhere but there, talking to her.

He looked like he probably had a nice wife and children at home, and she wondered how he had drawn the short straw of being a case manager instead of a cop. Sue checked herself- he had signed up for this job. No, he must have signed up for this job because it paid well.

Well, he’ll certainly earn his keep with me, she thought. He’ll certainly earn his keep with me.

He sat across from her, eyeing her down, asking about a recent shift she’d called in for at the plant.

“What was that about?”

“I was sick.” She shrugged her shoulder. “Time of the month,” she wiggled her eyebrows, daring him to challenge her. Sue was in her early 50s and hadn’t bled in almost 10 years. She knew somewhere in that file of his, it must say that somewhere.

Bertram sighed, and Sue saw him fight off a twitch. She enjoyed getting under his skin.

“I’ll test you.”

“I’m clean.”

“I’ll do random pop ups again.”

“No one comes over.”

“I’ll put a monitor on you.”

“I don’t go anywhere but work, home, and here. I’ve been good!” She did her best to flash a genuine smile, one of her real lookers her mother called them. “I was just sick, I promise.”

He grumbled, but signed off on the paperwork, pausing before adding an extra line after his signature.

“I’ll see you next week, Sue.” He smiled at her as he handed her the sheet. “Be sure to turn this into Peg in reception so she updates your file.”

Sue glanced down at the paper, and knew better than to fight him on it. A month or two back to weekly check ins wouldn’t kill her.

Heller couldn’t prove anything.

Sue handed Peg the form, and practically stomped out of the building.

When she made it home, a tiny one bedroom half of a duplex she rented from a slumlord in town, she dropped her stuff off on the couch, turned around and walked right back out into the night.

Anita’s was a little corner place two blocks from her she walked to every night after work. Most of the time she made it home. Occasionally, she woke up two or three lawns away at sunrise, looking up at the sky instead of her ceiling. She didn’t mind it so much. Bertram would though if he found out.

The people at Anita’s were great.

They liked that Sue was the life of the party that never went down. They liked her prison stories.

“So that’s why it’s important to always have as many bars of soap as possible on hand,” Sue said, wiping the salt from her mouth after a shot, eyes glassy. “You never know what practical uses you could use it for.”

The man she’d been talking to stared at her for a beat longer, took his tray of shots, and walked back to his table. She shrugged, took her drink, and walked over to her single booth to sit and watch.

Not long after some local high school kids she recognized came in and stopped by her table. Jake, who lived up on Luse, just outside of town, led up the front.

“Hey Sue! Sue! I was hoping you’d be in here! Glen didn’t believe me when I told him your story from the other night.”

“What story?” She feigned, wanting him to beg for it.

He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Sue.” he looked around and lowered his voice slightly. “Your ‘secret identity’”?

“Oh,” she said, laughing and waving her hand as if he were distracting her. She leaned in closer so they could hear her over the music of the bar. “The Tooth Fairy!” She snapped back into her normal voice again. “I told you- I’m too old now, I had to get out of that life. I can’t settle other people’s scores anymore.”

“So it’s TRUE?!” A blonde girl hissed at her. “You’re a murderer?” She turned to look at her friends, horrified. “And you all just want to talk to her like she’s cool? The Tooth Fairy’s killed kids!”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Sue admonished the girl. “Some things they just can’t solve and they misattribute.”

Blondie looked back at Jake. “Are we done here?”

Jake looked at Blondie, and back at Sue. “Bye Sue.”

“Later, Jake.”

When the kids left through the front, Sue got up to get a refill on her beer. When she got back to her booth, she found a woman sitting in it. Young, about 25. Dark hair. Pretty, if stern faced. Insistent, like she was seeking something out.

At first, Sue tried to think of what animal she looked like, peering out of the dark at her. But then she realized, she was the dark peering at her around the animal, using it for cover.

She was a looker, as her mother would say.

“Sue, isn’t it?” The woman asked, extending her hand to her.

Sue set her drink down and took it, shaking it and nodding. “And you are?”

“Honored to meet you,” the woman answered gushingly, taking her hand back. “I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation just now. Was any of that actually true?”

Sue paused, eyeing the younger woman. She appeared to be friendly, a little buzzed, maybe over interested in the story. She could play the game a little longer. What would it hurt?

“I mean, I embellished it a bit, sure.” Sue said in a conciliatory tone. “But yeah, they used to call me that before I went to prison.”

She thought back to the day she first heard the story of her while she was in, only a few months down. The women inside had barely been speaking all day, voices barely rising above a whisper when they did. Usually, only one word was exchanged:

“Tonight.”

In the dark, there had been some quiet crying. For a moment, a wet, sucking sound and a pained yell. A hushed voice.

Then, came the quiet.

The next day, word came that the husband of a young woman convicted of killing his lover was dead. She had insisted the entire trial he had framed her, and the state had denied all her appeals. She would die in prison.

Smiling with one less tooth.

“And that’s how I established the reputation- doesn’t matter how little money you have - if you can’t pay me, I’ll take it out of your head.” Sue said, swallowing the last of her beer.

“Wow.” The girl replied, taking it all in. “I can’t believe you really did all that.” She leaned forward, smiling slightly now.

“What about on the outside? How does a client get a hold of you?”

A small chill ran up Sue’s back. Fuck.

“Like I said kid, I’m too old - out of the business. I better get home.” She slid out of the booth, and tossed cash down on the table. “This one’s on me.”

The younger woman raised her drink in a toast. Sue left her mug sitting there, and walked straight out the door and down the street.

Probably time for a break from Anita’s…and running my big mouth so much, Sue thought.

Stumbling through the neighborhood, she passed by all the familiar houses she liked to pretend to live in. She’d write a new story for herself in each one like she was a Barbie doll coming home to a different ending.

When she made it inside, she didn’t need to turn on any lights until she reached the bedroom so she could change. But what she saw when she did stopped her cold.

A single molar tooth, sitting on her pillow case.

Sue held herself in position for several seconds, panic coursing through her body. Hands still poised to remove her shirt, it was all she could do to put them back at her sides.

Her hands shook as she reached out and picked up the tooth. The rough porcelain feel of the enamel was unmistakable. It was definitely real, animal or human. Neither option sitting on her pillow was stellar.

She tossed it into the trash, thought better of it, took it out of the trash and tossed it out the window, and threw the pillow on the floor.

“Next time I see you Jake, you’re dead.” She fluffed up one of her other pillows to use overnight. “Thinking you’re so funny”

The next morning, Sue prepared her morning coffee, and went to work. On the drive, she suddenly started hearing noises in her coffee mug. Three teeth had appeared.

This trend only continued throughout the day.

When she pulled into work at the factory, her eyes were playing tricks on her - all the little bits of gravel as she walked in looked like teeth. She kept having to take her safety goggles on and off walking into the building.

At the end of her shift, when she was getting ready to punch out, she opened her locker to find a small pile of them in her work locker. She’d had to turn the padlock herself to open it. Sue tossed them into the trash can and left without saying anything to anyone.

Driving home, she blasted her car radio, trying to drown out the anxiety that threatened to seep into her chest. In the old days, she would just hit the Fuck It button, pack a bag, and hit the road. Start over. But now - if she leaves town limits, those five years turn into forty, and she’ll be drowning in teeth before she can see this side of a coffin.

You can outlast some high school kids and their stupid pranks. You can’t die an old lady in prison. Don’t run. Don’t. Run. She told herself.

The next day, Sue went to her favorite diner in town and ordered the blue cheeseburger, her favorite, to get her mind off things. She couldn’t believe that Jake was playing this trick on her. It was mean-spirited and frankly unlike him. Blondie must have put him up to it. But Sue knew the greasy goodness of the burger would be just the thing to make her feel better.

As she settled in to eating the burger, and took her third, fourth, fifth, sixth bites, she looked down and she saw it: the shining pearlescent glow of a tooth looking back at her, nestled within the meat. She threw the burger down on the floor, and started screaming.

“Tooth, tooth, it’s a tooth! There’s a tooth in my burger!!” Sue was practically wailing as the waitress came running over, scooping up the offending sandwich immediately, picking through the contents with her bare hands, showing it to Sue.

“Sue, no, what are you talking about,” she said. “It’s just the blue cheese, look.”

And when Sue looked again, she could see that it was.

The next day, she got a call out of the blue from Bertram while she was at work.

“Remember when I said I do drop-ins? Time for a drop-in. You’re coming in for a test,” his voice crackled over the line.

“When?” Sue asked.

“Right now,” he answered.

“Why?” Sue’s boss was already ticked about her going back to weekly Tuesday visits. He was really not going to be happy about this.

“Is that a real question?” scoffed Bertram. “I heard about your performance at the diner yesterday. If you’re not on something, I’ll eat my left shoe with no barbeque sauce.”

Her boss gave Sue an earful about leaving, but she promised to make it up to him with some overtime over the next few weeks. He knew she was good for it.

When she climbed into her car to drive across town to take a test, she looked into her center console and saw there were four teeth sitting there. She scooped them into her hand and threw them out the window one at a time as she drove.

When she got there, a nurse who introduced herself as Tina said she would be the one administering the tests: a urine sample, and a blood draw.

“I guess he really wants to be thorough,” Tina commented.

“Well, I can’t blame him,” Sue answered. “I’ve been acting a little strangely, I suppose.”

“Look, it’s none of my business,” Tina answered “but it seems to me like you need some rest. It doesn’t sound like you’ve been sleeping much, and I’m sure that doesn’t help with this transition.”

Sue smiled at the girl. “You’re probably right, kid. Thanks.”

The next three days passed by with no teeth in sight. By the time Thursday night rolled around again, Sue was ready to hit Anita’s again the next day when she got paid.

She walked through her front door at seven after eight, after working a double at the factory. She walked straight to bed, flopping down on it like a dead man, her head hitting the pillow like a gavel.

It was the pain that made her shoot back up, but it was the instant unnatural clicking sounds that came with it, the scrapes against her head and the back of her hair, and the dense, solid connection that her head felt when it hit what was supposed to be softness, and instead had found a pillowcase filled to the brim with teeth.

Sue tried to scream, but found she could not. Found that her voice, her throat, all of it was filling up with the same scratching sensation that had covered the back of her head. A feeling like the pinpricks of teeth, scratching.

And with a great rush, there they were, a fountain of them: teeth, pouring from her mouth as if an endless supply, not her own, from some unknown portal, ripped in time to punish her.

It was then that a figure emerged from the corner of the room, a woman she recognized. The woman from the bar, who had been asking questions that night.

Those burning eyes were looking at her in the dark again- no, they were the dark again - and the woman spoke to her:

“You think that my motives are the petty vengences of men? That I would ever stoop so low, to be paid in money? I take my payment from the root, in blood and bone - I take my payments in teeth.”

Postscript: Parole Report (Postmortem Addendum: 4/13/1997)

Subject was reported as a no call no show by shift manager two shifts in a row after signing up for overtime. Upon entering the residence, there was an overwhelming smell of both alcohol and blood. Subject was discovered deceased in back bedroom with what appears to be teeth (to be determined if human or animal, her own or someone else’s) strewn around the room and over her body.

There are no signs of foul play.

Author’s Note: If this particular creature of vengeance seemed familiar, it’s because you’re reading the prequel to Incarnation, a story I posted a few weeks ago.