Teeth

On the corner of Quinsy Boulevard and Adder Avenue, there lived a dentist. He lived just above his shop, where he worked all seven days of the week.

He was a normal man who lived his life like any other male his age. Some of the women even fancied him, believing the handsome young dentist to be a charming bachelor who would make a fine husband.

Outside his shop hung a sign, proclaiming his skill in dentistry, luring the passersby inside with his low prices. Unknowing customers walked right into his trap, straight into the dentist’s clutches.

He never killed his victims, oh no, that wasn’t what he needed them for. No, he simply needed their teeth. Small teeth, big teeth, he just wanted their teeth.

After extracting a tooth or two, he would allow his patients to waltz on out of his shop, utterly unaware that he had pulled out their teeth with no purpose other than to steal them. The patients never had anything wrong with their teeth, but they trusted him wholly because he claimed to be a dentist.

Day after day, he would collect various sizes of teeth from his clients. He did not merely collect them as a hobby, but collected them to make sets of false teeth. The false teeth were not made for his customers’ purchases, oh no, no, no. The dentist had a secret of his own.

As a young boy, the dentist had a very destructive sweet tooth. Everyday his parents would bring home confections of all sorts for their little boy to enjoy, enabling his addiction to candy.

Then one day, the little boy’s teeth could no longer handle the abuse and shattered. Every last tooth, broken into shards of cavity decayed enamel, leaving only his blood stained gums.

The little boy’s parents had panicked, taking him straight to their family dentist. Their dentist had done all he could, but the little boy’s teeth would never grow back.

The boy was forced to grow up toothless until the day he himself, became a dentist. Becoming a dentist meant he would have teeth once again and he did. He wore the sets of false teeth he created using his clients’ teeth.

But the dentist wanted more. Simply extracting a tooth or two from his victims was no longer enough. His fascination with the beautiful, white, enamel shell grew rapidly with each removal.

Slowly, he started by pulling out five or six teeth from every customer, exclaiming maniacally that they had a disgusting amount of cavities as he did so.

Then he started seeking out patients, walking up to people and demanding they show him their teeth right away. Upon seeing them, he would falsely proclaim that they had a rare gum disease in which the only cure was to extract several of their teeth before the disease spread completely.

Eventually, the dentist lost control, trying to pluck the teeth out of every person’s mouth that he came across. He tied women up in order to pull out all their teeth. He hit men over the head to knock them unconscious, and steal every last tooth in their gums. Completely ruthless, he went so far as to yank the teeth of little boys and girls.

The police had a hard time catching him, some of the officers even lost their teeth on the job, but in the end they caught him. The law enforcers declared him mentally insane.

It seemed the dentist had gone absolutely mad. Mad with teeth.

The dentist lived the remainder of his life locked away in a pristine, padded cell. The perfect resemblance to what he imagined the inside of a tooth looked like. And there he died happily, inside the enamel made cage, the world speedily revolving on without him.

However, late in the pitch blackness of the night, the dentist returns, seeking to quench his past life obsession. Slipping teeth out from beneath children’s pillows, he leaves a crisp, green bill in exchange for their kindness, and because the children show him sympathy he allows them to keep the teeth still attached to their gum sockets.

But before he leaves, he places a card to remind the children,