Destiny Taken (Destiny Lost Book 1)

by Giulia Napoli

  They had to remove them all, of course. There was no repairing those wrecked teeth. She was actually a lot better off at that point; as soon as the swelling in her gums went down, she’d get dentures which would be infinitely better than the teeth she’d had. I decided I’d actually done her a favor. Unfortunately, the tribunal didn’t see it that way.

  I had no opportunity to adequately argue or defend myself to the warden, doctor and matron, who were judge and jury of this event. I was completely mute, of course, and I couldn’t write Arabic, even if they’d allowed me time to do it, which they didn’t. Their decision could have gone against me completely. In the end, they found Habiba and me equally responsible. I couldn’t believe it!

  They brought Habiba in with me to hear their decision. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She kept her mouth closed, her full lips tightly pursed, and only looked down. Because she had no teeth, her face appeared to be somewhat pinched, like a toothless old grandma. She had engineered this whole thing, of that I had no doubt. Given a chance, I was willing to beat her half to death. Certainly all the way to disabled. That’s how much the unfairness of the situation she’d caused had angered me.

  Maybe I’d have that chance later, but not now. They held us both at fault, and then it got much worse. Since Habiba had repeatedly hit me, and I had certainly kicked her, they decided we should both face what they called a “disabling” punishment for a month. The warden wanted to disable both of our arms and both of our legs. The matron said, in essence, that doing that would put a burden on the matrons themselves, because we’d be helpless cripples, and they would have to deal with that.

  In the end, the three agreed to disable our bodies from the waist down for three months, since that would affect our ability to fight, and not require our triples, groups or the matrons to take care of us every time we needed to eat. Apparently, they hadn’t thought about what that would mean to our ability to control our urination or bowel movements, in addition to not being able to walk. Regardless, that meant both of us would be wheelchair-bound.

  I was incensed over that decision, and I would have become violent, except for the fact that they weren’t done. There was more punishment, for me in particular.

  Over the matron’s objection – I think she knew the kind of bully Habiba actually was – the warden invoked the eye-for-an-eye maxim. I understood this when it was stated, but I didn’t know what the warden meant by it.

  “That isn’t necessary here,” the matron seemed firm in her belief. “Both have been punished equally in the eyes of the Kingdom.”

  “But they haven’t,” the warden stated frankly.

  “Meaning what?” The matron asked. I realized that she was my advocate, whether or not I’d seen her in that capacity before.

  The warden almost shouted at her. “Meaning that this inmate has no teeth! The other inmate shattered them to pieces!”

  “In order to defend herself!” The matron retorted. “Habiba’s teeth were rotted from years of using crystal meth!”

  “That’s irrelevant. You agreed to hold them equally at fault,” the warden said to the matron. “If this Habiba had torn off the ear of Karimah, wouldn’t you have demanded Habiba’s ear?”

  “Habiba’s teeth were garbage anyway!” The matron shouted. “Through no fault of Karimah’s!”

  “If Karimah’s ear had been deformed, and Habiba had torn it off, would you not have demanded Habiba’s ear, even if Habiba’s was not deformed?”

  “That’s not the same,” the matron pronounced.

  “It’s close enough. It is the Sharia way. Do you agree, Dr. Adonay?”

  The doctor looked like he simply wanted to get out of there. He answered, “Yes. It’s close enough.”

  “Then Karimah’s punishment is self-evident,” the warden said.

  “I’ll admit,” said the warden, “that doing this to Karimah will lower her value as an indentured servant. Nevertheless, we need to look beyond that, in the interest of justice.“

  I stood up, ready to run, because I knew what the warden was going to say next. A guard stepped up behind me and pushed me back down, onto the chair, holding me down by pressing against my shoulders.

  The matron didn’t respond to the warden’s pronouncement, nor to the doctor’s laissez faire agreement. I could see in her eyes, that what was transpiring was not what she believed was just. The warden looked at her. She stared back, then she nodded her head in submissive agreement.

  “Since Habiba has lost her teeth,” the warden pronounced, Karimah must lose hers. Sentence to be carried out following the lower body paralysis of both defendants.”

  HOLD ON! I thought. They were going to take my teeth? Not in a hundred years, I vowed! But I was truly powerless to prevent them from doing what they intended.

  Habiba and I sat there while the warden turned away. The doctor and matron stared at us impassively.

  The warden turned around, holding a controller remote, and pronounced the official sentence. “Habiba and Karimah, you are both sentenced to below-the-waist paralysis for a period of three months from today.”

  A moment later, I lost all feeling below my waist, and all of my ability to move anything from my waist down. Then I saw piss run out of my naked groin as I wet myself, unable to make it stop. I saw Habiba reach down to cup her pussy, and raise her hand back up, wet with her own urine.

  A couple minutes later, two matrons arrived with wheelchairs. Suddenly, I couldn’t move anything at all and I slumped down in the chair I’d been sitting on during the mockery of a hearing. Apparently they didn’t want me to put up any fight while they took me out to ruin my mouth.

  I was placed in a wheelchair and wheeled off to the infirmary in a paralyzed panic. They were going to remove all my teeth! My beautiful, straight, white, ideal-American-girl, perfectly-good teeth! I had beautiful teeth; they’d been perfected by orthodontia when I was still young. I had never even had a cavity! These monsters intended to take them out as part of an insane eye-for-an-eye morality – and for a crime that I wasn’t guilty of!

  I was wheeled into the same place where the matron had injected the controller into my head, and where I had videoed Tuba’s impersonation of a new inmate. They reached for me and I was unable to swing my arms or do anything to fend them off. Two male guards lifted my helpless, naked body into an already-horizontal, dentist office-like chair. A matron slid a diaper under me and fastened it in place. She strapped my arms and forehead down to the chair, I suppose to keep me from accidentally falling out of it. I certainly couldn’t get up from it by myself. Something was inserted to hold my mouth open. My entire body, from my head to my toes, remained paralyzed and useless. I could feel everything above my waist except my always-numb nipples, but I could feel nothing at all below my waist. Nothing would move except my eyes and eyelids, and I could only do that with intense concentration. Such was the power of the controller, which was now an integral part of my own brain.

  As I half lay there in the dental chair, staring at the ceiling, I realized they’d done something else with my controller, and I could no longer feel anything on my lower face, or within my mouth.

  A doctor or dentist, not the same person who co-presided at that mockery of a trial, entered the room, immediately sat on a stool and rolled up to me. He picked up a hypodermic needle from a tray next to him, stating that “This will insure that there is no pain, blocking what your controller is unable to manage.”

  I couldn’t move my head at all of course, and I couldn’t close my mouth. I couldn’t have moved it even if the spacers had been removed. Since I was already mostly numb, I couldn’t feel the needle as the dentist injected me over and over again, a series of little, deadened pokes all around my upper and lower gums.

  THEY WERE GOING TO EXTRACT MY PERFECTLY GOOD TEETH! AS SOME KIND OF SICK PUNISHMENT!

  I couldn't let this happen! In some ways, it was worse than being imprisoned. They were going to permanently damage my perfectly healthy, plump-but-still-a
ttractive body. They were going to destroy my smile and change my face forever! I was beside myself with panic. I had to do something!

  But there was nothing I could do! There was nothing I could do!

  After the injections, the dentist told me he would make impressions of my teeth for the dentures they’d have made. He filled a mouthguard-looking thing with some goo and shoved it up against my upper teeth. He held it in place for about a minute, then pulled it off, making a sucking noise when he did it. He repeated the impressions on my bottom teeth.

  Later, I was at least glad that I’d still look mostly like me when I got the dentures, made from impressions of my real teeth. At the time he took the impressions though, I was so upset that the only emotions I could recognize were my personal repugnance, outrage and horror at what they were going to do to me.

  After the impressions, they fastened my mouth firmly in place with additional straps, to prevent it from moving while the miserable excuse for a dentist worked. I was held firm by straps and controller-induced paralysis. My entire mouth, already totally numbed, was left alone for ten or fifteen minutes. My legs didn’t work anymore so I couldn’t run or even kick out. I couldn’t call out or beg because I had no voice! I was helpless. Drool ran from my immobile lips and down my face. Swallowing was almost impossible, and moving my numb tongue enough to clear my mouth was also out of the question.

  In the corner of my eye, I saw the dentist roll a different tray up next to him. It seemed to be loaded with all the most frightening implements of dentistry. Things designed to extract damaged or diseased teeth were going to be used to remove my perfectly healthy ones!

  Chapter 12 – Why Don’t You Smile Now

  The dentist picked up something that looked like a specialized pliers and I felt him tilt the chair and move my head back a little more. Then something entered my mouth. I heard a scrape and realized he’d grasped one of my bottom front teeth. My head, bound in place, didn’t move. I felt something being used to loosen a tooth and then a painless tugging in the front of my lower jaw. The pliers jerked slightly upward, the dentist turned, and I heard something hard land in a metal dish.

  Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! He’d pulled one of my perfect teeth!

  It didn’t stop there. Like ninety percent of the other young people I knew, I’d had my wisdom teeth removed some years ago. That had left 28 impeccable teeth in my mouth. There were only 27 now.

  With some difficulty I managed to close my eyes. I couldn’t look at him while he did this to me. There was another tug on my lower jaw and another clink in the metal dish.

  I could feel myself breaking out in a sweat. There was the intermittent tug followed each time by another clink in the dish. My mind was whirling in panic and I was unable to keep count. I felt him work around to the bottom right, then the left. I tried to feel with my tongue, but I could neither move it nor did it have any sensation, being numbed by the controller and the plethora of injections.

  Something else was placed in my mouth and I felt a pressure in front and a strong pulling in back. I assumed the dentist was leveraging against my front gums, while he extracted my premolars and molars in the back. I felt the pressure and tugging six times, I think, and then it stopped.

  My lower teeth were gone. All my perfectly good lower teeth were now sitting in a metal bowl.

  They sopped at my gums and sucked crap out of my mouth, but I kept my eyes closed so I would see none of it. I could feel the perspiration running down my bald head, and some of it got into my eyes in spite of me having them closed. It stung and that additional modest pain was apparently enough to push me over the edge and I began to cry, even though I couldn’t move.

  One of the nurses or matrons patted me on the shoulder in an attempt to sooth me, I think, but that just made me feel worse and I cried all the harder. I refused to even try to open my eyes. I didn’t deserve what they were doing to me in any way! This went far beyond the seven and a half years I was apparently going to be here, and would affect me for all of my remaining life. It was horrifying, humiliating and grossly unfair!

  I felt the dentist’s hand within my mouth again, apparently positioning some other wedges in the back of my mouth, I thought. It was hard to tell with everything numb. I didn’t want to even try to create a mental picture of what they were doing to me, but it appeared in my mind anyway. Though I couldn’t feel anything with my tongue, I was sure all my bottom teeth were gone now.

  I couldn’t even call out to beg them to stop.

  Something scraped against an upper front tooth. Oh God no, I pleaded. Dear God, please make them stop. But the tugging started and in a moment. I felt the dentist’s hand jerk downward, followed by the clink of my tooth in the metal bowl. Less than a minute later, it happened again.

  On and on it continued. Nothing was going to stop what they were doing to me, nothing until all my teeth were extracted. The worst part was at the end, as my head was jerked against its restraints when the dentist sought purchase and leverage to pull the molars in the back.

  I had never experienced, nor did I know anyone who had suffered permanent disfigurement and loss of function through an intentional act. Now I was a victim, and I’d be reminded of it all day, every day.

  Over the next half hour or so, the dentist apparently checked each former tooth socket and my gums for remaining nerves that might have been left. I suppose, over the long term, I should have been thankful for that, or I might have suffered chronic pain for years. He might have put in stitches here and there, I’m not sure. When he was done, they had managed to stop the bleeding in my badly wounded gums. They cleaned me up, rinsed me off, and transported my still paralyzed body to a bed in the infirmary for several days of recovery. The bed was raised to help keep me from choking on my own blood, if I started to bleed again. I was injected with something and in moments I was unconscious.

  I woke up later. It could have been ten minutes, an hour or a couple of days for all I knew. It turned out to be a couple of days. I was wide awake almost instantly, and I immediately recalled what they’d done to me. I felt within my mouth with my tongue which was no longer numb and immobile. I expected to feel my mouth full of crap, like secretions and cotton and all that stuff. But it felt clean and clear.

  I had no teeth. I could feel all along my vacant gums with my tongue. I would have moaned in despair if my voice had worked. As it was, I held my eyes tightly shut as I started to cry. I couldn’t stop feeling my gums with my tongue. They didn’t feel right, of course, and I worried them incessantly for many minutes, trying to come to grips with my empty mouth.

  I finally opened my eyes and was shocked to see Altaf and Erij sitting there next to my bed. I’d been so focused on my mouth that I hadn’t realized someone, Altaf, had been holding my hand.

  Erij stood and came to the head of the bed and gently ran her hand over my head in sympathy. I was suddenly anxious, realizing that I hadn’t shaved it, but it felt so smooth when she touched me that I realized someone had shaved it for me while I was unconscious. Altaf reached up and touched my cheek, turning my head toward her. She let go of my hand and her index fingers moved to either side of her mouth, where she pushed her lips up at the corners in an attempt at a smile that she could make no other way.

  I smiled at her in return. At least, I think I did. I could tell that my mouth was too closed because there were no teeth to keep my gums apart. I imagined I looked like Habiba now – like an old, toothless grandmother. That thought caused the tears to come again. I was wracked with silent sobs.

  I couldn’t decide how to hold my jaw. I didn’t want my face to be all pinched up because I had no teeth, but I didn’t want my lips to separate and show what was missing. The natural, life-long, closed-mouth position of my jaw was no longer instinctive or obvious to me and I found myself obsessing over it.

  Eventually, my triple sisters managed to distract me with a cigarette. Altaf put one in my mouth and lit it as I sucked on it hungrily. I got a substantial h
ead rush and a more important pussy rush from a couple days of abstinence, but I didn’t care. The creamy smoke sliding into my lungs felt wonderful. I felt my groin stir with the tempting but unfulfilled twinges of arousal. I thought it was the best thing that had happened to me since I was taken out of solitary, until I considered that these were the monsters who had made me a smoker in the first place. Then they’d tried to cover my need, my addiction, with the tiny sexual stimulation that they allowed cigarettes to provide to me, without even a dribble of climactic satisfaction. Be that as it may, though, at that moment I was glad for the sense of calm provided by the habit from the shot of nicotine, and the trickle of arousal my controller gave me.

  Altaf and Erij stayed, smoking with me. My arms worked again so I was able to smoke on my own. From the waist down, though, I was unfeeling and paralyzed. I’d be that way for weeks and weeks.

  I’d be toothless forever. I assumed they’d give me dentures once I healed, but it wouldn’t even be close to the same. Cosmetically, I thought it would be better, but I felt ruined and ugly. This had been a huge blow to my self-esteem, and I hadn’t even seen myself yet.

  With that thought, after I finished that cigarette and another, I tried to sit up more, and swing my dead, lower body over the edge of the bed. I couldn’t swing it, of course. I tried to move each leg separately and found them to be truly dead weight and difficult to move. Altaf and Erij realized what I was trying to do and helped me. Fortunately, the paralysis hadn’t affected my abdominal muscles, so I was able to sit, and not fall over. I was dizzy at first so sat I there for a few minutes and waited for it to pass.

  I motioned toward a wheelchair that was parked nearby and Altaf brought it over. Somehow, they managed to get me into it and I wheeled myself into a bathroom. I faced the mirror, my head just above the counter in there, and reached up for the light switch.