Teeth

A little girl sat on a park bench, hands in the pockets of her small double-breasted coat, feet swinging over the edge of the seat lazily. She was all rosy cheeks and pale skin in the breath of autumn. All around her, the park’s landscape turned a pinky-orange color with the sun’s fading light. Long shadows crawled across the neatly trimmed grass and sidewalks, one such shadow cutting the bench in half right over the girl’s frame. 

There were only a few people other than her in the park: two lovebirds strolling through the common, a runner and her furry companion, a group of university students crossing through the park to get their caffeine fix on the other side, and a lone man watching her. He had been watching her for quite a while. 

The best description of him was, quite simply, average. Though a little on the gaunt side, he was nondescript with a straight nose and frown lines and the sort of gaze one would shy away from. He walked up to her. “Hey, little miss, why are you out here alone?” he said, smiling at her with pearly teeth. 

“I’m waiting for Mommy,” the girl answered. She pushed her flaxen bangs out of her face. “She’s gonna meet me here after she gets done shopping, and we’re gonna go home and make dinner for my little brother. He’s home alone right now, so we’ve got to get home soon. I hope she doesn’t take too long. It’s boring waiting.”

The man noticed a bag of groceries at her feet. In it were some vegetables and a carton of broth. “Do you want any candy,” he offered, pulling a cherry lollipop from his coat pocket. 

The girl blinked and shook her head, “Candy’s bad for your teeth.” He smiled at her again, but this time it didn’t quite reach his eyes and a slight tic commenced in his left eye. 

“I can take you home, so your brother isn’t alone. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said. Her brows pinched together in a way that only a child’s can. “Mommy said to wait for her.”

 His tic worsened. “How about I call her then?” The girl nodded and enthusiastically listed off a string of numbers in a rhyming poem when he asked. The girl watched him press a few buttons on an old phone and caught a glimpse of his home screen as he put the phone to his ear. 

“Hello?” A pause. “Hi, I’m with your daughter and was wondering if it’d be okay if I took her home.” A longer pause. “Your stuck waiting in line and aren’t going to get here soon?” A shorter pause but still longer than the first. “It is? Great, we’ll just meet you at your house.” The man turned back towards the girl. “Your mother said to go ahead and take you home to start on dinner.”

“Okeydokey artichokey,” she sang sweetly and started swinging her legs in the same direction. When both legs were fully extended, she swung herself off the bench and grabbed the grocery bag. The duo started off towards the parking lot, the girl running and jumping between shadows giggling to herself. When they reached the tree-lined path that led to the exit, she skipped next to the man. 

A low whine sounded behind them, and they turned to the sound. The runner and her dog had come up behind them, but the dog had stopped. Tail between its legs and backing up slowly, the large retriever pulled his fighting owner away from the pair. The man frowned, but flighty animals weren’t his problem. He had much more important things to worry about. 

“So, mister, what’s your name? I’m Jane Margaret Bleeker.”

The girl, Jane, blinked up at him. He said simply, “It’s George.”

They walked for a little while in silence until they reached the car. She said suddenly, as if the silence spooked her, “Did you know that odontophobia is the fear of teeth? I can’t imagine being afraid of teeth. They’re just bones you can see.” She pulled on her lips and smiled wide so that Herny could see all of hers. 

George unlocked his van. The decal on the side read ‘H&O Drycleaners’ in a pleasant navy. Just like him, the van was something nobody would look twice at. In fact, George liked it that way. The man opened the back door and ushered Jane inside. Upon contact with the van’s interior, she wrinkled her nose. An unusually pungent smell of cleaning products pierced the air. 

The car ride was mostly filled with Jane’s one-sided conversation, her fantastical rendition of In the Hall of the Mountain King, and her giving landmark-based directions to the driver. After one particularly awful encounter with a construction worker whose machine was eating the pavement like a piranha with flesh, his radio, which had previously been spouting the news, became static. He turned it off, glancing at Jane through the rearview. She was smiling at him. The roads became thinner and less well-used. Fences pressed in from either side, corraling him towards his destination. After he took the last hairpin turn off the side road, George saw the house. 

It was made of grey stone and was vaguely thin compared to its height of three stories. Much love had gone into the making of the house, but now it seemed to be losing a battle to age. Adorned with elaborate bargeboard, high-peaked gables jutted out of the roof. An iron-railed widow’s walk topped the house with fleur-de-lis shaped spindles. Ornate finials decorated the gables of the house like sinner’s hands reaching toward heaven. 

Two large bare oaks with their bark mottled and splotched framed the gated driveway. Clumpy combs of wet moss dangled from the trees’ boughs while a single crow blinked owlishly back at George through the windshield. In the last vestiges of sunlight, they looked otherworldly. George shivered. 

When he parked in front of the large double doors, Jane got out of the car without any prompting from the man. She walked the path pebbled with white rocks shaped like shattered glass.

“So,” the man started, eager to get into--and out of--the house. “Where is your brother? I can go get him while you start unloading your groceries.” 

“Oh, he’s probably around somewhere. You should check his room, though. It’s the first door on the left when you go up the stairs.”

George got out of the car. “I’ll go get him. What are you making anyway?”

“Mommy’s gonna make meat stew when she gets home.” Jane opened both of the double doors. The darkness of the foyer seemed to swallow her small frame whole.

George stopped in front of the steps, “Do you already have meat?”

“Yes.” Jane looked down at him. “I’ve got it.”

The last lances of sunlight disappeared behind the knarled oaks, leaving only the faint glow of the moon and dim fluorescent lanterns to light up the house. No lights were on inside. George looked at her grocery bag and back up to her face. Her pale skin suddenly seeming far too pale. She was still smiling that crocodile grin. 

George backed up a few steps as she was suddenly right in front of him, but something small and fleshy in his way made him fall onto the sharp pebbles. No, not pebbles, more like shattered ivory. Like shattered bone. 

George scrambled to his feet, and a slow turn later, a skinny boy with flaxen hair and ghostly eyes gazed up at him. The boy grinned at him, shining teeth proudly on display. 

“You know,” the girl’s voice whispered. “It hasn’t been this easy to get a meal since the ’70s.”