I can feel it, inside my head. In the back of my mouth.
I just wanted a wisdom tooth removed. Not wanted, needed. No one wants their gums numbed with an injection, then hear the cracking sounds of a bone being wrenched out of their jaw. It’s a thing you get done when you need it. I was out drinking with friends and ate a cashew and the moment I bit down on it I winced so hard I knocked a beer off the counter. Someone recommended the dentist, I don’t remember who. I need to remember who.
I called up the number I was given and the Indian woman who answered the phone (I think she was Indian, she could have been Pakistani, I don’t know how you can tell) told me to come in the same day. Which dentist is available on the same day? Any questions I should have had were punched back by explosions of pain and I went to an office in a place where I didn’t know there were offices and sat in a room with a TV playing the news from a part of the world I didn’t recognise or understand.
The dentist had a mask on when he came out, which I should have found weird, but these days we’re used to masks and so I thought that’s all it was. He didn’t sound like the girl behind the counter, but he didn’t sound like you or me either. He giggled when he asked me how bad my pain was, which I did notice and found weird, but you don’t ask questions about something like that. Even if the giggle was strangely high and childlike. When he got me in the chair he told me not to worry and it would hurt but only for a moment and then he giggled again and I don’t know if I ever remember seeing him blink. Just those eyes, too wide, too pale, too filled with curiosity as he told me to open my mouth as he took out a syringe.
I don’t remember anything. There was a needle, and that giggle and then I was walking down the stairs, my jaw clamped down on a wad of cotton in the corner of my mouth, a copper taste in my throat. I just went home, still slightly dizzy, but without any pain where there had been so much before.
But now, I can feel something. Inside my mouth. In the top, in the corner where the cotton was which I pulled out a few hours later and it didn’t have any blood on it but there was something yellow and grey smeared through it. It feels like its inside my gums, in a hole where there was a tooth, but now there’s something moving. Sliding. Slithering. When I touch it with my tongue, there’s an acid sting, like licking a battery. I tried looking in the mirror, stretching my jaw wide, and shining the phone light in there. There was something. With eyes. When I screamed and clacked my jaw shut, I heard a small, high sound, inside me but not mine.
I just swallowed two teeth. I’m not opening my mouth. I don’t want to look inside again. I can’t. But where those teeth were, I can feel more things moving, growing. Giggling.
About the author
Sami Shah is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, journalist and broadcaster. His urban fantasy Boy of Fire and Earth was published by Picador, and he’s published horror and fantasy short stories in several anthologies. You can visit his website or follow him on Twitter. He had a wisdom tooth removed recently.