The Night Dentist | Mel Lake

It was a shitty closing. Derek was so high he kept fumbling boxes and his screw-ups affected everyone else on hardlines. No one wants to still be working in the store when the lights go to half and it's not like we get overtime. 

I forgot my keys inside. Because of course I did.

“Go on ahead,” I said to Dave, who usually walks me out. “I’ll be fine.”

The look on his face said “whatever,” but he didn't say it out loud.

The empty store is filled with shadows of things that aren’t quite where they should be. The decorative votive someone decided they didn’t need so they set it down in the soap aisle. A lone banana in the bread aisle. Me.

Only the algorithm can turn on the lights and it doesn’t know I’m here. It wouldn’t care if it did.

I slammed my locker shut, keys in hand, and jogged back out the door. Dave and the rest of the closing crew were long gone. I gripped my keys in my palm so they stuck out of my fist like Wolverine claws. I thought as hard as I could of Hugh Jackman, ignoring the likelihood that I’d break my hand if I got in a fight holding my keys like this. 

By the time I heard footsteps, off cadence from mine, it was already too late.

“Dave? Not funny,” I yelled, swinging my claw-keys wildly at nothing.

The handkerchief was wet. It smelled like flowers, then nothing at all.

I woke up with a mouth full of cotton balls. My hands weren’t tied to the chair but I couldn’t seem to move anyway. I’ve seen enough Saw movies to know I should check my surroundings before trying to get up but it didn’t seem to matter anyway because my body felt too heavy to move.

“Filling on 18,” the man hovering above me said, “and scaling for the upper right quadrant.” My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the bright light shoved in my face, so the person in the corner taking notes was just a shadow. From his direction, I heard a pen scratching against a paper pad.

“Mthrfhgrrr,” I tried to say. The man clicked his tongue and shook his head. He removed the cotton from my mouth with gloved fingers that felt enormous. The cotton stuck to my front lip, stretching it out and reminding me how I lost my good chapstick a week ago and hadn’t replaced it yet.

With my tongue released from its cramped position in my cheek, I licked my lips and swallowed. The residue of whatever had knocked me out coated my throat and made my mouth taste terrible. By the time I remembered to scream, the man’s finger was already on my lips.

He peered down at my face, impassive behind a surgical mask and safety goggles. All I could really see was his nose. The man’s nostril hair was thick and black. The rest of him was indistinct in the glare of the spotlight.

“Add a cleaning, too,” he said.

Realization hit like the bucket of ice water I’d had dumped on my head the last time I’d been on a softball team.

“No, no wait!” My arms didn't want to move but the panic rose in my throat. I hadn’t had a cleaning in years and my eyeglasses are ancient. Where was Dave? Did the security camera in the parking lot capture any of this? “Stop, wait! Please!”

The man cocked his head to the side. One part of his jawline became visible in the weird lighting, shifting the puzzle pieces of him around.

“Please,” I said, pleading. The words were slurred, like I'd taken too many two-dollar shots at the sports bar across the highway from the store after a close-open. “They don't give us insurance and I only have forty dollars in my checking account. Whatever you’re about to do, I can't afford it, please. Please!”

I started to cry and I knew exactly how pathetic it was but couldn't stop. My nose started to run but I couldn't wipe it because my arms still felt like those really heavy ropes they use at the Crossfit gym I also couldn’t afford. 

The man smiled. He took off his surgical mask and his teeth glowed in the strange light of wherever we were. His smile was perfect. 

“Add fluoride.”

The person in the corner scribbled on his notepad. The pen scratching at the paper sounded like my roommate’s damned cat trying to get in the bathroom while I took a dump.

“Who are you?” I yelled, but the night dentist just smiled.

When I woke on the asphalt, a layer of thick minty goo coated my teeth, and my jaw ached. The tang at my gum line felt like I’d flossed thoroughly, the way you’re supposed to but no one does. Daylight peeked its nose over the concrete barrier that blocks the highway noise from reaching the parking lot. The rent-a-cop who opens the store with the morning crew was crouched on the ground with his phone out, looking annoyed.

I held tightly to a wrapped lollipop.

Mel (Melodie) Lake is a writer and editor who lives in Denver with her partner and a very good dog. She’s a comics nerd and always forgets to tweet @melofsometrades.