THE VIOLENT DENTIST

short story

The sun comes up, the coffee is made, the newspaper browsed. It is a normal morning for him. The time is 6:37. He has a long day ahead, nine patients, yet another new hygienist, the fifteenth in his career. He stands at the bathroom mirror and stares. He notices that his face seems droopy.

He is a maker of canes and fashionable walking sticks. But he doesn’t call them walking sticks. Canes, yes, for the canes. But the walking sticks he calls pikestaffs. He makes a lot of pikestaffs, displays some of them in the lobby. People never buy any. They are priced out of reach. He really doesn’t want them sold. Most will admire them, maybe lift one from the corner where they are lean-stacked, make a comment or two. “These are nice,” some will say. He says nothing, just stares, as if sedated.

Patient number nine. Hank Forrester, age 67. Time for a regular cleaning. Teeth in pretty good shape. Plaque behind the bottom incisors, typical for anyone, all that saliva buildup, a little cesspool there, in time becoming an oral sewage dump.
“What’s new Hank?” He always starts this way with the patients, just change the name to fit the face. Forrester holds the white plastic drain wand in a corner of his self-imposed gaping mouth. “Weh-y uh,” he says.

“Good, Hank. I’m glad you’re pretty good. I’m pretty damn good, too.”

The new hygienist needs instruction. She has missed some of the incisor plaque and evidently forgot to floss the upper molars, especially the ones farthest back. He wants to call her in, embarrass her in front of Forrester. He wants to make her take her clothes off and dance a jig. He wants to shine a light up her nostrils just for kicks. He wants to smear-paint her face pink and green with his thumbs and tell her she looks like a circus clown on ludes.

He doesn’t pay her for not doing the job, for missing the plaque that is so clearly visible, she does it every time, he has to clean up the mess she leaves in the mouths—the paying patients’ mouths; who does she think is, she should remember why she’s here, that it’s he who pays her bills, why can’t she get the gunk out of each and every mouth and all the hidden crevices, why does he have to be the one to do the thing he pays her to do; but this is the way it always is, isn’t it, he can’t get a good one to save his life, he’s got to screen them better.

He finishes the job and pats Forrester on the shoulder. “All done,” he tells him. Forrester nods and rises from the chair. “No cavities?”

“Nope. Not a one, Hank. Keep up the good work.”

The weekend is his. No more Saturday cleanings. He loves the weekends. He’s worked hard and long to get them for twenty-five years. He deserves them.

He gets home, clicks on the television. It is habit. The drone keeps him believing he is not alone.

There is a long hallway. It leads from the kitchen to the rear bedroom. In a closet in the hall he keeps the remainder of his pikestaffs, about fifteen of them. He opens the door and takes one, rotating it so the metal spike is within a foot of his face.

Time to make another one, he thinks to himself, knowing that blood stains never vanish unless the blood itself is never shed.