Pulling Teeth

by Alan Ryker

  He rubbed over it, and realized it wasn't sore. He knew enough about tattoos to know a fresh one should be red and sore. The phone rang, startling him. Had they found him so quickly? How? He paid for the room with his debit card. No, they couldn't have even found her body yet. The clock radio by the bed said eleven. The front desk asked him if he wanted to check out or if he would like to stay another night.

  As he drove down I-35, he wondered where he should go. Shouldn't he get it over with and turn himself in? No, he should drive into an overpass support pylon and end it. He couldn't go to prison. Bullies had been able to scent out his fear his entire life. Walking tall, he still cowered. Murder meant the penitentiary. He'd probably go to Leavenworth and be ass-raped within an inch of his life, maybe past. Better to die now. But he couldn't do it.

  He pulled into a gas station and filled up, and then withdrew his daily limit from the ATM, three-hundred dollars. He could only think of one place he'd ever stayed that didn't require a credit card and a driver's license. The Winfield Motor Lodge. He had once let some friends talk him into going to the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival in Winfield. He'd expected the dirty hippies and twangy banjos, but he hadn't expected so many spiders that the tent roof sagged under their weight, or so many mosquitoes that they buzzed in his ears and mouth. The campground sat directly beside the river. So he'd took his friend's car, agreeing to meet up with them the next day, and managed to get a room at the Winfield Motor Lodge.

  It wasn't a solution, but it would provide breathing room until he got things figured out, or built up the courage to off himself.

  The motel was exactly as he remembered it: tacky, disgusting, and available for cash. He immediately stripped the comforter from the bed and threw it on the ground, not wanting to touch it even with his fingertips for all the dried human secretions that must have been encrusted in its polyester. At least they had basic cable. The newscaster made no mention of Psyche, though that meant little as these were Wichita stations, not Kansas City. Then he felt a flutter on his arm and looked down.

  A moth, dark and velvety, on his skin. But not on the same arm. He now had two, one on each arm, and he had distinctly felt the new one appear. He lightly scratched it, and felt only flesh. Looking in the phone book under the nightstand, he found a tattoo parlor in the nearby town of Arkansas City. He called. They were closing soon and were booked for the evening, but they'd see him the next day.

  ***

  Brian used the map on the phone book and managed to find the shop, Bright Line Ink.

  "Hey, I'm Bob. I wanted to talk to you about some tattoos." He didn't feel comfortable out in public, not knowing if they'd found Psyche's body yet and put his face on television and in the papers. He thought this tattooed piece of trash probably didn't watch the news anyway.

  "Hey Bob, I'm Rob. Ha. What can I help you with? Do you know what you want?"

  "I actually wanted to ask you about some I've already got. I'd like you to take a look at them."

  "Sure. You want a cover job? Here." He took Brian's proffered arm and put it beneath a mounted magnifying light. "Wow. Wow. You want this covered?"

  "Maybe. What do you think of it?"

  Rob pulled Brian's arm closer to the glass. "I think this is the most fantastic tattoo I've ever seen. It's like a photograph." He lowered the glass. "The detail keeps on coming. I can see the fur on the body, the scales on the fucking wings. Who did this? I've never heard of a needle fine enough for this sort of work." He glanced up at Brian expectantly, and then back at the tattoo. "It's amazing. Perfect, really. Photorealistic to an impossible depth."

  "So, you're saying this isn't a tattoo?"

  "I'm not saying that. Just not one done in any method I've ever seen."

  "It's a moth, right?"

  "Yeah. I've done a lot of butterflies. I do the damn things every day. Women always want a butterfly or a rose, or a fucking cartoon character. But about this tattoo—"

  "Have you ever heard of one just—appearing?"

  Rob snorted. "Just appearing? No. I rarely see moth tattoos at all. Women want butterflies cause they're prettier, and most guys wouldn't get one cause they think it'd make them seem gay. No offense."

  Brian raised an eyebrow but contained his scorn. "Do you know what they mean, what they symbolize?"

  Rob ignored his question. "You're thinking about getting this covered? I don't know if I can do that. This is the best work I've ever seen." Rob had examined the tattoo throughout the conversation. He spoke quickly, probably accustomed to talking to clients to fill the hours and to take their minds off the pain. Unfortunately, despite his obvious willingness to tell Brian everything he knew, it didn't amount to much. Brian pulled his arm away.

  "I don't think I'm going to get anything done today. I might be in touch later." He walked out as Rob tried to call him back.

  Sitting in his motel room with newly purchased groceries, Brian rubbed the tattoos and thought about what he'd learned from some research at the library. Despite a paranoia that everyone recognized him as a murderer, he'd felt compelled to learn more about the symbolism at work on his flesh.

  Many different cultures had folklore linking butterflies to the human soul, almost too many to be coincidental. The Aztecs, Mayans, and other Native American tribes, the Greeks, Germans, Japanese, French, Slavs, Finns, Irish. Butterflies were unborn children, fallen warriors, dead relatives, or souls working their way through purgatory. Butterflies and moths were usually interchangeable in these myths, but to Brian's dismay, in the rare occurrences when moths were singled out, it was always bad.

  The presence of moths foretold of pestilence, war and death. They were harbingers of dark times. Ancient people were terrified of them, and in some rural parts of Europe it was still considered bad fortune to find moths in one's home. And the way they seemed to commit suicide, throwing themselves into open flames… No wonder they weren't a popular subject for tattoos.

  Brian felt a tickling on his back and scratched it absentmindedly. Then he ripped his shirt off and ran to the bathroom.

  Twisting his head around, stretching, he could see two moths between his shoulder blades.

  What was going on? He'd have thought he was going crazy, but the tattoo guy had seen them, too. So he wasn't imagining them; they were really appearing on his body. No, that wasn't possible. But what then, someone was sneaking in and tattooing him when he wasn't paying attention? That was crazy. And Rob said these looked photorealistic, too good to be the work of a needle. So, what were they? And was it a coincidence that they started appearing on him after what he'd done to Psyche? What was the connection?

  Brian ate a cold can of soup. Tears began to slip down his cheeks. He hadn't meant to kill her. Now, his life over, he sat in a filthy motel room eating cold soup out of a can. Ever since childhood he thought he was meant to do something special. Maybe he would write a novel, or become an actor. He'd thought of the harassment he'd suffered in school as evidence. The losers could sense that he was exceptional and took out their jealous, impotent frustration on him. All that suffering for nothing. His future a blank, he would run until he used up his money or his luck, and he would end up in a federal penitentiary for the rest of his life.

  The slow tears turned to sobbing, and he eventually ran to the bathroom again, this time to wretch up his soup. Feeling so miserable that he just wanted to disappear, he pulled the sheet over himself and went to sleep.

  A tickling on his face drew him reluctantly from slumber. Night had descended as he escaped reality in dream, and he again awoke disoriented in a dark room. He brushed at his face, and when understanding burned away the fog of drowsiness, leapt from the bed and ran to the bathroom mirror.

  He was still shirtless, but it didn't look that way. Moths covered his chest and stomach and arms, more wings and dark, furry bodies than pale skin. But his face… He looked like a carnival freak. He tried to brush them away, achieving nothing. He raked his fingernails down his forearm, trying to pry the m
oths up, and the pain that filled him yanked his breath croaking from his lungs and dropped him to the linoleum floor as if he'd attempted to rip out his own soul. For a moment he felt his life grow loose. Moths tickled his back and he stood and could see almost none of his own flesh in the mirror. He felt them on his chest and turned, and they had filled the few remaining white patches. He looked down at his arms, now completely covered. The moths overlaid each other, most large and dark, a few small and pale. He felt movement on his forehead and looked in the mirror again. A huge moth spread its wings from nearly temple to temple. In the middle of its back was a human skull.

  Brian ran from the bathroom, unable to look at himself anymore. He picked up the phone and tried to dial his parents, but in his panic couldn't figure out how to place a long-distance call. Then he felt soft legs alight on his eyes, and the room went dark.

  He fell to his knees, feeling his face. He didn't need sight to know what had happened: two moths covered his eyes, rendering him blind. He felt tears welling, pressure building, but he couldn't cry. He crawled onto the bed and emitted a high, nasal whine. What was Psyche doing to him? He hadn't meant to kill her. He thought of the way she had laughed with customers, always happy as long as she could make others happy. Psyche had always been so kind to him. How could she do this? Didn't she understand he'd only wanted to be closer to her and didn't know how?

  He couldn't see them, but he felt all the tattoos rise up and begin to move. Their feathery wings batted his body, from his scalp to his toes; their tiny legs flitting across his skin restlessly. Repulsed by the sensation of thousands of delicate insects walking on him, he wiped a hand down one arm. The sudden jolt of pain knocked him back on the bed, causing him to open his mouth wide in a gasp and then a scream. Furry, dusty wings arising from his cheeks and tongue filled his mouth with beating and cut his scream short. He tried to breath through his nose, but fat, struggling bodies plugged his nostrils. He thought of incandescent Psyche, so full of life. She was his flame, and he hadn't been pulled, but had thrown himself in. She wasn't doing this to him. He'd done it to himself.

  Brian felt the moths fly away almost as one, and his last sensation was that as they departed, they left nothing beneath them.

  COLD

  Roger sat in his boxer shorts at a desk in the center of the chamber, trying to place the geometric shapes in front of him in the correct order to recreate the tangram of a cat. When he believed he'd found the correct place for a triangle or parallelogram, he had to consciously stop the trembling in his hands to keep from knocking the adjacent pieces about as he set the piece down.

  "I've got it," he said through clenched jaws. He felt the need to speak loudly to be heard over the massive fan blowing cold air over his exposed body.

  "Very good. Now open the folder on your right…"

  "We're not done?" Roger asked. His muscles contracted so hard he felt they were going to pull away from his bones.

  "No, I'm sorry. You knew what you were getting into when you volunteered for this study. It's very important."

  "Okay, okay."

  "Now please take the logic problems from the folder on your right and complete them as quickly as you can."

  The choir was to perform five songs during the Christmas service. Each song contained two soloists. From the clues below, determine the name of each soloist and which songs their solos occurred during…

  ***

  "I hate this. I hate clambering all over the mountain looking for a dead body. It takes the same effort to find a dead man as a live one, the same manpower, but you know in the end it won't do any good."

  "You want to leave him to rot up here? He was a good ranger."

  "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I wish we could have found him two months ago."

  "We all do."

  ***

  Roger couldn't complete the logic puzzle in fifteen minutes and was told to skip it. He was now performing a memory game in which two of each type of card were laid out in front of him, face down, in a box that protected them from the wind. He was having a little more success with this puzzle than the last, having already matched three pair. His thoughts moved slowly, crossing his consciousness like a glacier. He felt his brain freezing inside his skull, slowing as his once-liquid consciousness iced through. Though he struggled to concentrate, it was impossible. He was losing time. It kept disappearing, and though everything moved in slow motion, he would look up at the clock and see that several minutes had passed unnoticed.

  "We're going to drop the temperature another five degrees."

  He wanted to beg them not to, but he was ashamed of the weakness he'd already shown. He could see them, safe and warm behind the glass. His molars felt like they were going to explode from pressure and he tried to unclench his jaws, but they snapped back shut.

  "So—are you learn—ing anything good?" he asked. He tried to smile, but knew it was the peeled-back grimace of an arctic mummy.

  "We're learning so much. Thank you for your help. But please, concentrate on the puzzle."

  "It's hard to remember where the cards are—when my hand keeps knocking them around." He inadvertently shouted the last as a gasp of warm breath he'd been holding escaped his lungs.

  "Just keep at it."

  Where was the other anchor? He knew he'd seen it just a minute ago.

  ***

  They trudged over rocks that had been snow covered only a week earlier. They walked in an expanding circle. If the scenery hadn't looked so different not blanketed in white they would have experienced a sense of déjà vu as they circled the area where two months ago they had first searched for two missing mountain climbers. They had found the climbers, but Roger had gone missing.

  "For his wife's sake, I hope we can find him."

  "It'll be a poor consolation even if we can."

  "Erica thinks he still might be alive. She called this morning. She wanted to come out here herself."

  "Damn it."

  ***

  The mist of water hit Roger like electricity. He burst from the desk, nearly snapping the attached top from the seat.

  "It's too much!" he screamed, his dignity forgotten. He tried to curl into a ball on the floor, but the cold concrete was even worse. He sat on his haunches with his arms wrapped around his knees. He could barely see the people behind the glass. His vision was blurry and black around the edges.

  He couldn't think. Useless thoughts wordlessly trudged through his brain. The puzzles had gotten more and more simple. Across the floor were blocks of different shapes he'd been trying to fit through the holes in a wooden bench. It was so silly, a child's game, but he couldn't figure it out. And he didn't know why he should, as his reason for being there began to slip from him.

  "Please, I'm dying."

  "You won't die. We need you to keep going. We need to know the outside limit of a person's ability to operate in the cold. We won't let you die."

  "I'm—dying." The mist wasn't freezing on his skin, but naked and buffeted by relentless wind, he felt colder than he could endure, colder than he could ever remember being, though he couldn't remember much.

  "We won't let you die, Roger. Pull through. Keep fighting."

  "I'm dying." He rolled forward and put his forehead on the concrete. "Erica. Erica. Erica."

  ***

  "Here he is! I found Roger!" Bernie shouted.

  "Are you trying to kill us? He probably got trapped in here by an avalanche."

  "Sorry. God. You'd think he'd know better, being a ranger. He stripped down to his boxers."

  "Paradoxical undressing."

  "You'd think he'd know better."

  "The cold makes your brain stop working."

  Roger's frozen body was curled in the fetal position. He held a pen and pad in his hands, and his flashlight sat at his side. Bernie took the pad.

  "Theresa is singing Glory In the Highest and Oh Holy Night…"

  BACKGROUND CHARACTERS

  I used to leave hairs
in Dr. Haskell's bed. I'm blonde. His wife, brunette. I hid long strands under her pillow. I saved pubes I'd trimmed at home and sprinkled them in the sheets. I'm a natural blonde. I dipped her toothbrush in the toilet. Not because I thought it would get him caught. Just to do it. I would have done it to his, too, but I didn't want to kiss a toilet mouth. The human mouth is filthy enough already.

  As his dental hygienist I got used to calling him Dr. Haskell.

  "Dr. Haskell, Ms. Freedy's x-rays are done."

  "Dr. Haskell, Mr. Johnson gums look a bit inflamed."

  "Dr. Haskell, fuck me hard."

  He'd be plowing away, me going numb and dry, and I'd say, "Dr. Haskell. Oh, Dr. Haskell," to try to speed things along. He loved the idea of fucking his hygienist, so sometimes it helped. At first I was impressed by his stamina, but later I realized that his lack of sensitivity turned an hour long session of "lovemaking" into sweaty, grueling work for both of us. As often as not we ended when he had gotten so soft his dick wasn't going anywhere, just stretching and compressing like a flesh-colored stocking.

  I didn't want him to myself. I didn't even want to share him anymore, but I worked for him and didn't feel like finding another job. I just looked at it as overtime. And hid my hair in his bed in the hopes that his wife would find it and force him to break it off. Except I'm not sure that I wanted it over, either, or I could have just made an anonymous call.

  ***

  "Mr. Johnson, it looks like you're not flossing. Are you flossing?" I asked.

  He looked at me through squinted eyes, the light of the lamp blinding him. I didn't adjust it. He nodded carefully and said, "Uh huh" around the sharp tools in his mouth.

  "I don't think you are, or your gums wouldn't be so red and angry," I said. "Your mouth is a pit of rotting carrion," I mouthed behind my mask.

  I scraped at calcified plaque, occasionally jabbing his gums and drawing blood. He winced. "You don't like it?" I mouthed. "I like it." I jabbed. He squirmed.

  "It wouldn't hurt so bad if you would just floss daily," I said. "Next time, I want to see healthy gums."