Teeth

by Owen, Kelli

  Madison was buried in her thoughts about Dillon when she walked in the back door of her house. Normally she would have announced herself, but between her panic about her teeth keeping her quiet in the house lately and the strange thoughts of Dillon rolling around her mind, she didn’t even think about it. She dropped her backpack by the dining room table and left her jacket on the chair next to it. She took the steps two at a time toward her bedroom, heading for her old yearbooks to see what activities Dillon had been photographed in over the years.

  She wasn’t expecting to find her mother in her bedroom, squatted down by the bed, looking under the mattress she currently held several inches up in the air.

  “What are you doing?” Madison’s lip curled up in disbelief.

  Her mother was visibly startled and dropped the mattress as she jumped to an upright position. “You got home quick.”

  “Mom. What are you doing?” She held her hands out in front of her, palms up, and indicated the room at large.

  “I’m…” Her mother struggled to find the words. “I’m trying to figure out what drugs you’re on.”

  “What drugs? Are you serious?”

  “Madison, you’re acting all crazy lately.” Her mother took a step near her and Madison braced her footing defensively. “You don’t smile or laugh anymore. You look down at the ground all the time. You’re quiet.”

  “So I’m quiet. So what. I’m thinking.” Madison felt the lie fall from her mind to her tongue. “You know, school is harder this year. I have honors classes. I have things going on.”

  “Are you and Tamara still fighting?”

  “What? No. Tamara and I—” She huffed, she had to get her mom out of her room, her face, her business. At least until I figure out this tooth situation. “This has nothing to do with Tamara.”

  “Well what then? Are you taking some sort of drugs or diet pills or something? You don’t eat with us. You take your plate upstairs and I find most of it in the garbage the next morning.”

  Her mother took another step toward her and she could almost feel the forced hug coming. Madison stepped back into the hallway.

  “Mom! Jesus. Just leave me alone. I’m not doing anything. Stop overreacting.”

  Madison turned and ran back down the stairs and out the door. She couldn’t deal with her mother on top of everything else right now.

  “Madison, you get back here!”

  She ignored her mother’s cry for obedience.

  Christ, because puberty isn’t bad enough, I need a snooping mother and a loose tooth?

  She turned and walked toward Tamara’s house out of habit.

  Damn it.

  Madison turned at the corner and headed for the small neighborhood park instead. She’d found herself there a couple times over the years, swinging as high as possible to try and be nothing but part of the wind for a while. It always cleared her head, or at least distracted it long enough to calm her down.

  The rumble of an old truck stopped her before she could cross the street and she paused, waiting for the vehicle to stop. As it got closer, she saw the occupants—some football player she recognized but whose name she couldn’t remember, and the school slut, Brittany. They laughed and carried on between each other, unaware she even stood there. Unaware of the world around them in general.

  Madison watched as they paused for a brief, rolling stop and then kept going, not even letting her cross before they carried on. As they drove away, it looked for a moment as if they were both covered in smears of bloody makeup, with a gaping wound on the side of the football star’s head leaking brains and blood.

  She shook her head. It was too early for Halloween parties, so she could only imagine they were up to no good. She watched the Ford Ranger as it drove past and squinted at the reflection of Brittany in the side mirror. In the dirty glass, it looked as if all the blood had been wiped off and she had returned to her normal, if not overly heavy, makeup.

  “Whatev—” Madison’s disdain was immediately countered with a gasp and she raised a panicked hand up to her mouth. The single word had used just enough force between her lip and teeth to knock the loose canine free.

  Using her tongue to find the nugget against her bottom gum, she rolled it out to the front of her mouth and spit the tooth into her hand. She stared at the truth in her open palm—tiny and white, with the smallest bit of blood and tissue still attached. Her tongue immediately went to the empty socket she could no longer ignore, as silent tears of panic welled up in her eyes.

  I’m officially a monster.

  — FOURTEEN —

  Andrea had spent the last four days trying to justify the lie she’d spun to her two oldest friends, in hopes they would see the vampires, the lamians, as evil on a whole. She didn’t feel bad about making up a story about a neighbor who didn’t exist. She wasn’t upset about trying to convince them to side with her, to blindly give her permission to take care of a situation for which they didn’t have the real details. But she felt horrible for lying to the two people who had always been there and never failed her.

  Especially since it did no good.

  When they parted ways from Ruby’s the previous Sunday after church, they’d suggested she be the better person. Instead of rallying around her anger and need for action, they’d instead tried to convince her to forgive her attacker. To be kind and Christian, and to understand they’re not all bad.

  “No more than all humans are,” Lynn had said as she hugged Andrea goodbye.

  With nobody on her side, and the only voice of reason coming from the sources she trusted in the media, her conflicted thoughts were starting to consume her every waking minute. She weighed the pros and cons of taking action as she flipped the channels.

  She would listen to what everyone had to say. One last time.

  Even the lies of the far-left crazies.

  She knew they’d all have different takes on the topic, differing opinions, and they’d use different statistics. But she hadn’t realized how insane they would sound. How far each side leaned from the opposition, as if it were a tug of war over a mud pit and no one wanted to land face first.

  Fox & Friends had a guest on the couch—a senator from down south—who argued the death penalty was completely appropriate if the lamians were caught in the act or proven guilty. He claimed the life expectancy should play a part in sentencing.

  “If you sentence an eighty-year-old man to life, he will serve maybe ten years. The same sentence to a lamian would be one hundred. That’s a long time for the taxpayer to take care of a criminal. Life was defined on the law books long ago, which is why they say fifteen to life, or twenty to life. Life is the outside mark. But their lives are so much longer. If they’re guilty of something horrible enough to keep them off the streets forever, then why waste a jail cell on them?”

  Andrea understood what he was saying. But heard in that context, she thought it was harsh.

  The punishment should fit the crime, not the criminal.

  She couldn’t remember where she’d heard that, but she thought maybe it made more sense than the man on her television. She found herself agreeing with it, and acknowledged the notion was about as left as her thinking wavered.

  CLICK.

  CNN was sounding off about social equality and giving all lamians the benefit of the doubt, believing you should deal with the problems when they arise rather than presuming they will and preemptively taking action. “They’ve been around as long if not longer than us. If they had wanted to, they could have killed us all at any time.”

  Andrea dismissed her as a bubble-headed blonde spouting off an obviously practiced phrase. Who wears pearls before noon? And those dark roots? Have some self-respect before you demand it from others.

  CLICK.

  The news channel, with too many letters for Andrea to ever reme
mber them in the correct order, had a panel of self-proclaimed experts arguing the definitions of genetics and race.

  “It’s not a recessive gene in everyone. It’s only in those whose bloodline has been mixed at some point. Like whether or not you have Italian in you. That doesn’t mean you automatically like spaghetti or mob movies.”

  The other two men on the panel blinked at the obviously stereotypical sweep at an entire nationality and Andrea could almost hear them mentally tsking the man.

  “At some point, far back in our lineage, the occasional lamian and human mating happened. Perhaps not even that far back for some families. And thin as the gene’s chances may have diminished over the years, it was still there. So if you have the gene, and it never triggers—your teeth remain, you die before one hundred—does that make you human or lamian? How blurred is the line that they should have different rights?”

  “Perhaps a percentage? Don’t you have to have X amount of Native American in you to receive any benefits from your tribe?”

  “Are you suggesting if you might have the gene, and it never wakes up, that you should be treated as a lamian because you could become one? How do you expect to control who signs up for benefits?”

  “It’s not about benefits. It’s about acceptance. Eighty percent of the developed world has a statistical chance for carrying the gene. That doesn’t mean it will trigger. It doesn’t mean they’ll change on a genetic level. But you never know who could be carrying it, and should treat everyone with the same modicum of respect.”

  “Eighty percent? Where’d you get that number? It seems awfully high. And before the Treaty? Before they came out of hiding. Where were they all?”

  “They haven’t been physically hiding for years. It’s not like they lived in caves. They were right here the whole time—they just didn’t tell you what they were. Do you know how many teenagers run away each year? It’s exponential to the population. As there are more people, there are more runaways. And I’m only talking bout the teens. The ones going through the change, the ones who are suddenly scared and confused, and it has nothing to do with their sexual hormones but with their teeth. They run and they settle elsewhere. And when their age starts to make people wonder, they move again. They found each other and helped without going public. Hiding makes it sound like they were out of sight. Did the homosexuals hide in caves before we rudely demanded to know their preference? No. They were doctors and teachers and lawyers and no one knew otherwise.”

  Andrea could understand and agree with some parts of what they were saying, but found she couldn’t agree with any one of them completely. She shook her head at them making things more complicated than it needed to be.

  It’s simple. If you grow new teeth, you’re a lamian and you fall under the laws set up for and because of lamians. Period.

  CLICK.

  A commercial for a talk show featuring a lamian with a weakness for blood, currently serving time for attempted murder, was louder than the programs had been and forced her attention. The victim had lived. But instead of going after her attacker, she sided with him and was sitting and fighting alongside him, trying to get the public to agree he wasn’t murderous, but rather had a sickness. She said it was a condition like alcoholism and should be treated as such.

  The host of the talk show smiled at the camera and asked, “Can attempted murder be considered a disease, a condition to be treated, or a common weakness? Should he be treated and released or locked up with common criminals?”

  “Wouldn’t he be a danger to them, then?” Andrea questioned the television as she changed the channel yet again.

  CLICK.

  A middle-aged man was wrapping up his program by leaning forward and talking directly into the camera, as if it were a personal conversation with the viewer.

  “Before they came out, before we knew, they were among us. Your lawyer, your teachers, even your doctors, could have been one and you didn’t know. But they knew. They had an underground. They had their own businesses and laboratories. They were secretly making the enzyme supplement for years under false documentation and borrowed grant funds, and passing it out to known vampires. To those they’d found, those on their register they say they don’t have and won’t share as they continue to indoctrinate us with their lies. But what of those they didn’t know of. How many crimes, murders, were committed by lamians who didn’t know what was wrong with them? Who didn’t have the medication to help them? How many prison escapees and suicides were simply lamians who knew what they were and were trying to hide their aging abilities? Trying to hide their secret from us.”

  The man offered too much speculation and no direction, even for Andrea. She needed answers, not more questions.

  CLICK.

  An overweight man with headphones and a thick mic in front of him spoke loudly and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. His oversized voice boomed as he spewed his conspiracy theory.

  “The government’s been doing it for decades. Taking them as soon as they change, as soon as they become deadly. They’ve been training them. Training them to look and act human, to slip into anywhere they want, anywhere in the world. Their secret vampire assassins.” He looked at the mic and almost panted in excited exhaustion. “You think a stupid rivalry took Tupac out? People, pay attention! He had a message they didn’t want you hearing.”

  Oh my God.

  Andrea was considering the rapper’s death. She remembered it vividly. It had been all over the news. She didn’t listen to his music, but she shared the general malaise of the country—saddened we would shoot our own for no reason. Assassins though? She was looking at the big picture.

  Vampire assassins? They could slip into any country, anywhere in America, and look and act just like us. Play the part and wait for the proper moment, and WHAM!

  She froze with the remote out in front of her, as she thought about the repercussions of an assassin squad. The government could use them, but citizens would be forever looking over their shoulders. Even more than they do now.

  They could use them for more than just taking out problems. They could use them to start a problem. Start an uprising to declare the need for force.

  The television and all its horrors faded, the sounds of the angry man’s solo argument slowly being blocked out as Andrea’s thoughts twisted further, searching for examples such as hers.

  What if Hitler’s mother had known what he’d become? Or Charles Manson’s? She thought about the great monsters of history. Would they have raised them knowing the outcome? Would they have waited and watched and let it happen? Or would they have taken matters into their own hands?

  Can I take things into my own hands?

  Am I strong enough to kill him?

  “Mom!”

  Andrea spun her head, startled by Dillon’s sudden voice, and worried for a second she’d spoken out loud. She blinked at him, unsure what to say.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “No. No, hon. What?” She hoped her eyes weren’t truly as wide as they felt, that they didn’t betray her fear of her own son.

  “I’m going to need lunch money tomorrow. My balance is under five.”

  “Oh, okay.” She relaxed a bit. He hadn’t been paying attention. “I’ll go online and make a deposit.”

  “Thanks.” He spun and headed for the door, casually looking back at her with a concerned face, “You really should watch something less, um… angry.”

  — FIFTEEN —

  Henry woke up with a sore mouth. The glue he’d used had irritated his skin, but not as much as pushing the caps tight enough against his teeth to cause them to slide under the edge of his gum line. Tight enough to look real. The teeth were secure, but making them so came at the cost of several nicks, scrapes and a general ache. On top of that, his new teeth were longer than his natural canines had been, and they rubbed against
the tender skin inside his lower lip all night long. Once awake, he left his mouth partially open and mostly avoided the sore spots, but the damage was done. Through his morning routine, his tongue constantly flicked across the sharp points of his new teeth, and when he bit down softly, he’d poked his tongue enough to cause a raised bump.

  When he had habitually returned a greeting from the school maintenance man, it had been the first time he’d spoken out loud since gluing in the caps, and he hadn’t been expecting his speech to be slurred. Gary paused and looked at him, but Henry put a hand to his mouth as if he were in pain and excused it as dental work from the day before.

  Whenever he found himself alone throughout the rest of the day, Henry talked to himself. Not anything of importance, and sometimes only listing the items he could see in the immediate vicinity, but enough to practice speaking with the new teeth and not sound like he had a fresh tongue piercing. He found certain letters and words much more difficult to say than others.

  He’d been daydreaming off and on all day, flicking his tongue at his new teeth, and hadn’t even cared about the overtime he now had to put in because of after-school football practice.

  Teen boys can trash a bathroom faster than a white uniform on a muddy field.

  Now that they were gone and it was quiet, he was cleaning up the field bathrooms on autopilot so he could go test his new teeth. A vehicle in bad need of a tune-up rumbled outside and snapped him back to attention.

  He turned off the light and opened the door to check the noise. A Ford Ranger had pulled into the area at the end of the bleachers, easily visible from his location in the concession area underneath them. The window on the truck was down and he could hear their voices.