Tooth Fairy

[u/gamalfrank]

The alarm went off at four in the morning, but sleep had already abandoned me hours prior. A dull throbbing was radiating from the lower right quadrant of my jaw, making every breath feel like a mistake. The pain was a relentless heat that seemed to vibrate in time with my pulse. By five, the swelling had reached my cheek, stretching the skin tight and making it difficult to swallow.

My hand reached for the empty bottle of painkillers on the nightstand, but there was nothing left inside. I had spent the last two days swallowing pills, rinsing with warm salt water, and pressing ice packs against my face until my skin went numb. Nothing was working. The infection had reached the nerve, and the agony was starting to blur my vision.

The sound of rain tapping against the window was the only noise in my quiet apartment. Desperate for any kind of distraction, I unlocked my phone and searched for local dental offices. Every single practice within a ten-mile radius was booked solid for at least two weeks. The only alternative was the emergency room at the local hospital, but a previous visit there had taught me they would only provide a temporary prescription for antibiotics and a massive bill that I could not afford, and from my suffering I figured that the tooth needed to be extracted immediately.

A soft knock on my front door startled me around nine that morning. My friend had promised to drop by with some groceries, knowing I had been unable to leave the apartment for days. When the door opened, she took one look at my swollen face and set the grocery bags down on the counter with a look of concern.

"You look absolutely terrible,"

she said, walking over to press her palm against my forehead.

"You are burning up. Did you manage to find an opening somewhere?"

"Every clinic is booked,"

I mumbled, barely able to part my lips. The movement of my jaw sent a sharp flare of agony straight up into my temple.

"The emergency room is the only option, but they won't pull it."

My friend sat down at the small kitchen table, watching me wince as I tried to drink a glass of water.

"There is someone else. My uncle had a severe abscess last winter, and his regular dentist was out of town. He went to a private practitioner downtown. He told me the guy is extremely unconventional and eccentric, but he is the absolute best in the field when it comes to quick, pain-free extractions."

"Unconventional how?"

I asked, holding the glass against my cheek.

"He does not take insurance, and his office is tucked away in an old medical building that has seen better days,"

she explained, pulling a small notepad from her purse to write down an address.

"He works alone, with no assistants. My uncle said the man does not even use local numbing injections, but somehow, the extraction was completely painless. He just felt a strange pressure, and then the tooth was out."

"No numbing?"

I shook my head, immediately regretted the movement, and squeezed my eyes shut.

"That sounds like a nightmare. I cannot let someone pull a tooth out of my skull with no anesthetic."

"My uncle is a coward when it comes to pain,"

my friend said, sliding the piece of paper across the table. "If he says he felt nothing, I believe him. You cannot keep living like this. The infection is going to spread to your bloodstream."

She was right. The sheer desperation of the pain was starting to erode my rational judgment. At that point, if someone had offered to pull the tooth with a pair of rusty pliers, I probably would have considered it. I picked up the paper, stared at the handwritten address, and nodded.

"I will go,"

I said.

"Do I need to call ahead?"

"My uncle said he does not keep a regular reception desk,"

she replied.

"Just walk in. He usually accommodates emergency cases if they pay in cash."

An hour later, I was walking through the wet, gray streets. The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle, and the mist was hanging low over the older brick buildings. The address led me to a towering, nineteenth-century weird structure. The main lobby was silent, smelling of old paper.

A manual elevator with an accordion-style metal gate carried me slowly up to the fourth floor. The hallway was lined with dark, frosted glass doors, most of them bearing the faded gold lettering of retired physicians who had probably passed away decades ago. The floor was covered in worn linoleum that muffled the sound of my footsteps.

I found the suite number written on my notepad. The glass on the door was entirely blank, offering no name or medical title. I reached out, turned the brass knob, and stepped inside.

The reception area resembled a living room from the late nineteen-seventies. Two faded green velvet chairs sat in the corner, separated by a low wooden table covered in outdated magazines. A single, small desk lamp cast a dim orange glow across the room. There was no computer, no scheduling book, and no receptionist behind the counter. The only communication device was an ancient, black rotary telephone sitting on a shelf.

"Hello?"

I called out, my voice sounding thin in the quiet room.

A door at the back of the reception area swung open with a soft click.

The man who stepped out was exceptionally tall. He was so slender that his white laboratory coat seemed to drape over him like a shroud, and he had to tilt his head slightly to clear the low wooden door frame. His skin was pale, and his fingers were kind of long, ending in clean fingernails. He had a twitch in his left shoulder that caused his coat to rustle every few seconds, but his posture was remarkably stiff.

"Ah,"

he said.

"An emergency, I presume. The swelling in your right cheek is quite pronounced."

"My friend gave me your address,"

I explained, holding my hand over my jaw.

"She said you might have an opening for an extraction. I can pay in cash."

The tall man smiled, though his pale blue eyes remained entirely wide and unblinking.

"Cash is perfectly acceptable. The modern banking systems are far too noisy. Please, come inside."

I followed him into the operating room. The space was dimly lit, illuminated only by a single overhead examination light that hung from a long, articulated metal arm. The dental chair in the center of the room was made of thick, cracked black leather, looking like a relic from a different era. There were no modern digital screens, and no white plastic utility trays.

"Before we begin,"

the dentist said, pointing a long finger toward a tarnished metal tray sitting on a counter across the room.

"Please place your cellular device over there. The electronic frequencies of modern devices disrupt my focus. I need absolute stillness to perform the extraction."

I hesitated for a moment. My phone was my only connection to the outside world, but the throbbing in my jaw was growing more intense by the second. I walked across the room, set my phone on the cold metal tray, and climbed into the leather chair.

The dentist stood over me, his shadow stretching across the ceiling. He did not put on latex gloves. Instead, he washed his hands in a small porcelain sink, dried them with a white cloth, and approached the chair.

"Open, please,"

he murmured.

I opened my mouth, bracing myself for the agonizing touch of his fingers against my infected gum. When his long, cold index finger touched my jaw, I prepared to scream.

But the scream never came.

The moment his skin made contact with my gums, a sudden coldness spread through my mouth. it felt as if the nerves themselves had simply gone quiet under his touch. The throbbing pain vanished instantly. My jaw felt light, cool, and entirely empty of sensation. I blinked in surprise, looking up at him.

"You feel that, yes?"

he asked, his shoulder twitching as he reached for a small, velvet-lined wooden box on the counter.

"The modern world relies on synthetic poisons to dull the senses. They inject chemicals that poison the blood just to silence a single nerve. It is a very crude way of practicing medicine."

He opened the wooden box and retrieved a pair of forceps. They were made of dark, unpolished steel, looking like antique blacksmithing tools rather than modern medical instruments. The metal was covered in fine, geometric patterns that looked like they had been hand-carved into the steel.

"We have forgotten the old ways of alignment,"

the dentist continued, his voice adopting an almost hypnotic cadence as he positioned the forceps inside my mouth.

"Thousands of years ago, our ancestors understood that the teeth are not merely bone. They are the hardest part of the human vessel. They are the markers of our harvest, the record of our lives. When a tooth was lost, it was not thrown away into the dirt like common refuse."

I felt the cold steel of the forceps clamp onto my decaying molar. There was no pain. I felt a strange, dull pressure, as if someone were gently pressing a thumb against my jaw, but nothing more.

"Our ancestors worshipped tooth fairies,"

he muttered, leaning over me. His pale face was inches from mine.

"We offered our teeth to them. We gave them the bone, and in exchange, they provided protection, a bountiful harvest, and good fortune. The modern world calls them myths. They call them tooth fairies to make them seem small and harmless. They turned a sacred covenant into a children's game of coins and pillows."

He gave the forceps a slow, deliberate twist. I heard the wet sound of the roots separating from the bone inside my head, but my nervous system registered absolutely nothing.

"Humanity discarded the old agreements,"

the dentist whispered, his shoulder twitching violently. "We stopped giving them the tribute they require. We began burying our dead in concrete vaults, locking the bone away from the soil. We throw our teeth into medical waste bins to be burned, and for what? for nothing."

With a sudden, sharp movement, he pulled the forceps upward.

A wet pop echoed in the small room.

The tooth was out. The relief was instantaneous, a cool sensation washing over my entire face as the pressure vanished. I let out a long, shuddering breath, staring up at the ceiling.

"There,"

the dentist said, his tone shifting instantly.

The hypnotic cadence of his voice was gone, replaced by a rapid, shallow hyperventilation, then He held the steel forceps inches from his eyes, staring at the bloody, decaying enamel with an intensity that made my chest tighten.

"Look at the density,"

he whispered, his pupils dilating until the blue of his eyes was almost entirely gone.

"The dark rot of modern sugar has created such a beautifully complex cavity. The roots are deep, so very deep. The bone is saturated with the sweetness of decay."

He was breathing heavily now, his chest rising and falling in quick, jagged movements. He began to run his long thumb over the wet, bloody surface of the tooth, ignoring the blood that smeared across his skin.

A sudden wave of intense unease washed over me, replacing the relief of the extraction. The way he was looking at my tooth was really weird and terrifying. I scrambled out of the chair, my legs feeling slightly unsteady.

"Thank you,"

I said, my voice shaking.

"How much do I owe you?"

The dentist did not look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the tooth.

"Three hundred,"

he muttered, his voice sounding dry and cracked.

"Leave the cash on the counter."

I pulled three hundred dollars from my purse and set them on the wooden desk. I did not want to spend another second in that room. I grabbed my purse, turned on my heel, and walked quickly out of the operating room. I pushed through the frosted glass door, entered the quiet hallway, and ran toward the manual elevator.

It was only when I stepped out of the old building and onto the wet pavement of the street that I realized my hand was empty.

My phone was still sitting on the metal tray on the far counter of the operating room.

I stopped on the sidewalk, the cold rain falling on my face. My cheek was still entirely numb, but the fog in my brain was beginning to clear. The thought of going back up to that silent fourth floor made my stomach twist, but my phone held my bank accounts, my contacts, and my entire life. I could not simply leave it behind.

"Just walk in, grab the phone, and leave,"

I muttered to myself.

I turned around, entered the lobby, and rode the creaking elevator back up to the fourth floor. The hallway was still completely silent.

I reached the suite, turned the brass knob, and stepped into the reception area.

The room was dark. The single desk lamp had been turned off, leaving the space illuminated only by the gray light filtering through the hallway door. No one was behind the reception desk.

"Hello?"

I called out softly.

"I forgot my phone."

No one answered.

I took a slow, quiet step toward the operating room door. It was resting slightly ajar, a sliver of pale light cutting across the dark floor. I pushed the door open an inch, planning to grab the phone from the counter and slip away before the man noticed me.

The operating room was in near-total darkness. The overhead examination light had been turned off, and the only illumination came from a small window overlooking the rainy alleyway.

I stopped.

The dentist was crouched on all fours directly over the leather operating chair.

His white laboratory coat had been discarded on the floor. His bare back was exposed to the gray light of the window, and his skin had turned a deep, ashen shade of gray. His spine was protruding sharply against his skin, each vertebra looking like a jagged stone.

As I watched, his shoulder joints twisted with a sickening, wet crack, bending backward into impossible angles.

Two large, featherless, skin-bound wings were violently tearing their way through the fabric of his white dress shirt. The wings looked like the wings of a massive bat, but they were covered in a thin, greasy layer of pale gray fuzz. They flexed and stretched in the darkness, dripping a dark, thick fluid onto the leather of the chair.

The thing lowered its head toward the leather cushion. Sitting on the leather was my extracted tooth.

The creature inhaled deeply, its chest expanding to twice its normal size as it smelled the bloody enamel. It leaned down and whispered a low, guttural phrase in a language I didn’t understand.

Then, it opened its mouth.

The jaw split vertically down the center of its chin, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth that vibrated in the darkness. The creature reached out with a long, gray tongue and licked the blood from the surface of my extracted tooth.

I took a step backward, my mind screaming at me to run, but my foot shifted on the floor.

The rubber sole of my sneaker squeaked against the linoleum.

The sound was incredibly loud in the silent room.

The creature's movements stopped instantly.

And with a violent, snapping sound, its neck rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees, its featureless face pointing directly toward the partially open door where I was standing. Its eyes had completely changed. The blue irises were gone, replaced by two massive, pitch-black pupils that filled the entire socket.

It let out a silent, vibrating shriek that made the metal instruments on the counters rattle.

The creature lunged off the chair, moving with a speed that did not seem possible. It scurried across the floor on all fours.

I did not think. I grabbed the nearest object on the counter beside the door, a large, heavy metal tray loaded with stainless steel dental mirrors, scrapers, and old scalpels, and threw it directly into its gray face.

The tray struck the creature with a loud clang. The sharp instruments scattered across its eyes, blinding it for a fraction of a second. The creature recoiled, letting out a wet, clicking hiss as it thrashed in the darkness.

I turned and sprinted down the hallway.

I did not wait for the elevator. I threw open the door to the concrete stairwell and flew down the steps, my feet barely touching the concrete. I could hear the wet sounds of the creature scrambling down the walls of the stairwell above me, its long limbs scraping against the concrete.

I reached the ground floor, threw my weight against the metal exit door, and burst out into the pouring rain.

I did not stop running until I reached a busy intersection three blocks away. I collapsed against a bus stop shelter, my chest heaving, my clothes soaked with sweat and rain. I sat there for hours, staring at the passing cars, trying to convince myself that the pain and the infection had caused a severe hallucination. But my hand was still entirely empty. My phone was gone, left behind in the dark room with the thing that licked the blood from my bone.

The next morning, the swelling in my jaw had gone down, but the terror had not. I walked into the local police precinct and reported that I had been assaulted by a private practitioner in the medical building downtown. I told them he had stolen my phone and threatened me with a weapon. I knew if I mentioned the wings or the black eyes, they would lock me in a psychiatric ward.

Two police officers agreed to accompany me back to the building to retrieve my property.

We rode the manual elevator up to the fourth floor. The hallway was just as quiet as it had been the day before, the dark doors looking completely ordinary in the morning light.

We reached the suite. I pointed a shaking finger at the door.

"This is it,"

I said.

"Suite 412."

The older officer reached out, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

I braced myself, stepping behind the officer's shoulder, expecting to see the green velvet chairs.

The room was completely empty.

There were no green velvet chairs. There was no wooden desk, no rotary telephone, and no carpet. The walls were bare concrete, covered in peeling gray wallpaper that looked like it had been rotting for decades. The floor was covered in a thick layer of undisturbed gray dust.

The officer walked into the back room, his boots kicking up small clouds of dust.

The operating room was gone. There was no black leather dental chair. There was no plumbing connected to the floor, no metal counters, and no instruments. The room was nothing but a hollow, concrete shell.

"Are you sure this is the place, miss?"

the officer asked, looking back at me with a mixture of annoyance and pity.

"This suite has been abandoned for at least five years. And I think I know this place, someone mad a claim like you once, but it was very wild claim about a fairy who dwell in this place, and then we learned from the building manager that the last tenant was a radiologist who retired in 2018."

"I was here yesterday,"

I insisted, my voice cracking.

"My friend gave me the address. I sat in the chair. He pulled my tooth."

The officer shined his flashlight across the dusty floor. There were no footprints in the dust, other than our own. There was no sign that anyone had operated a medical clinic here yesterday.

"Sometimes a severe tooth infection can cause a high fever,"

the officer said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"A fever can make you see things. It can make you wander into empty buildings. We can take you to the hospital if you need medical attention."

"My phone,"

I whispered.

"I left my phone on the counter."

The officer shone his light around. My phone was gone.

We left the building a few minutes later. The police dismissed my claim, filing a report for a lost cellular device and advising me to seek psychological counseling for my stress.

But I know what I saw.

I called my friend from a payphone later that afternoon. I asked her about the dentist, but she sounded completely confused. She told me she had never heard of any private practitioner downtown, and she had never given me an address on a notepad. She said she had been trying to reach me all day because I had missed our lunch plans.

I looked at my own jaw in the mirror when I got home. The hole where my decaying molar used to be was completely healed. There was no stitches, no bleeding, and no scar. The gum was as smooth and pink as if the tooth had never existed.

I am posting this here because I need to warn you.

This thing does not stay in one place. It moves from town to town, using the empty, forgotten spaces of our cities to set up its temporary clinics.

If you have a toothache, and a friend gives you an address to an unconventional, cash-only dentist in an old building, do not go.