by Jeff Strand
But he didn't have any floss or string. Maybe threads from his shirt? Shoelaces?
No, he was making this too complicated. Why use string when he could use an old-fashioned porcelain sink?
He knelt down to align his jaw close to the left corner of the sink. This was definitely going to hurt. Probably a lot. But it would be worth it to get rid of those annoying, unnecessary teeth.
Or should he just visit a dentist...?
Nah. Dentists were generally evil. It would be much safer to knock his teeth out by himself.
He'd do it on the count of three. One...two...
Perhaps he was being too hasty. What if his friend the parasite was giving him poor advice?
How could he think such a thing? That would almost be blasphemy, if the parasite were a god instead of a buddy. Benjamin knew he was doing the right thing. There was no question. The vicious teeth had to go.
He rapped his knuckles against the sink. Yep, this would do the trick. One solid blow and he could get rid of six or seven of the front ones.
One...two...
Maybe he'd do it on five. Give himself more time to build up momentum and enthusiasm.
One...two...three...four...
Five!
Benjamin bared his teeth and then bashed them against the sink. He immediately regretted it. He blinked tears from his eyes and rubbed his lips and chin. They hurt, but he'd wimped out at the last second and hadn't struck the sink with enough force. All of his teeth remained intact. That was no good.
Okay, he couldn't think about it. He just had to do it.
He smashed his front teeth against the sink. At least two of them succumbed to the blow. He slammed his hand over his mouth to muffle his scream. What had he done? What the hell had he done to himself?
He spat a pair of bloody teeth onto the floor, then grabbed the edges of the sink and pulled himself up to a standing position. He looked into the mirror and opened his mouth. His top two front teeth were gone, and one of the lower ones hung forward, almost horizontal. There might have been other damage, but he couldn't see it through the blood.
Teeth gone.
Yeah. Not good enough. Too many teeth left.
He gripped the loose lower tooth between his fingers and tugged. It wouldn't come free.
So he twisted.
He turned the tooth in three complete rotations before it popped free. He peered at it closely, wondering how that cavity had gone unnoticed. Must've been from all that chocolate. Good thing he knocked it out before it started to hurt. He tossed the tooth aside, turned on the faucet, and scooped a handful of water into his mouth. He swished it around and spat red water into the sink, then grinned at himself in the mirror.
He looked way worse than his senior high school photograph, and that was saying a lot.
Deciding to stick with what worked, he knelt down by the sink again. He took a deep breath, tilted his head back as far as it would go, bared his remaining teeth, and smashed them into the porcelain again. A tooth struck the back of his throat, and he spat out three more. No, two and a half—one was broken. He wiped blood onto his shirt-sleeve and rinsed his mouth out some more.
His smile faded as he suddenly realized what the parasite had made him do, and Benjamin collapsed to the floor, screaming.
* * *
Please let those be screams of emotional turmoil instead of physical danger, thought Julie as she pounded on the bathroom door. "Open up, Benjamin!" she shouted. This is why she kept the damn handcuffs on him. Every time she let him out of her sight, something terrible happened.
She gasped as Benjamin opened the door. His mouth was hideously swollen, and blood trickled down his chin like a vampire who'd made a fresh kill.
"What the hell happened?"
"Broke my mouth." Julie could see that all of his front teeth, except for one that was broken in half, had been knocked out.
"How did that happen? Did you fall?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
Julie pushed past him into the restroom. "I think we should." She quickly turned the handle of the paper towel dispenser. Empty. What a surprise.
"No, I'd rather forget about this," Benjamin said, wiping still more blood from his mouth. He was a little hard to understand, but his diction was still pretty good for somebody who'd lost all those teeth. Must've been his years spent lecturing to a classroom full of students. "But we have to get this thing out of me. Fast."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"Have you ever flown in a private jet before?" asked Mr. Smith. He took a sip of his Jack Daniels and gave Cindy a polite smile. Margaret thought the smile looked like it hurt his lips.
Cindy continued to stare into her lap. "No, sir."
"I'm glad you're here, then. It's an experience everybody should have at least once before they die."
Margaret wanted to pull Cindy closer to her, but a narrow aisle separated their seats in the back of the six-seat jet and she had to settle for placing a reassuring hand on her knee. It was a nice jet, to be sure, but the circumstances of their travel weren't exactly relaxing. At least Pedro and Joey had stopped pointing guns at them.
"You must be pretty rich to have a private jet," she told Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith shrugged. "Interval ownership. It's essentially a timeshare for planes."
"I didn't know they had that."
"Now you do."
"Let me kill one of them," Joey begged. "The daughter. Let me kill the daughter."
Mr. Smith shook his head. "Not yet."
"Every second they're alive, Clyde goes unavenged!"
"You don't give up a tactical advantage for emotional reasons."
"I want them all dead," said Joey. He pointed at Margaret and then Cindy. "I want her dead, and I want her dead, and I want Benjamin dead, and I want that other lady dead, and I want those old bastards in the motel dead. All of them. Dead."
Pedro, who was watching the proceedings from the front seat, rolled his eyes.
"They will die if and when it suits our purposes for them to die," said Mr. Smith. "Getting the specimen is the most important thing, even more important than avenging your brother."
Joey squirmed angrily in his seat. "As soon as we get the bug, they're dead. Pedro let them go, but that's not gonna happen again if I have anything to say about it."
Pedro looked as if he very much wanted to respond in a negative manner to that comment. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a big gulp from his alcoholic beverage.
Margaret was absolutely petrified on the inside, but she sat up straight and tried to put on a brave front. "Why should we help you if you're going to kill us anyway?" she asked Mr. Smith.
"Because your death will hurt more if you don't cooperate."
"Oh."
"Anyway, despite the babblings of my son, we might not kill you. It all depends how things work out with your husband. If he chooses to behave, we can all leave satisfied. If not, bloodbath. I'm hoping for the former."
* * *
"So why isn't it coming out?"
"I don't know. Maybe it knows you've got scissors."
Julie lowered the dull scissors. A pair of garden shears would've been better, but this was the best thing they could find in their search of the truck. The plan was to lure the parasite out again, grip it in the scissors, and pull it out of Benjamin's throat, hopefully not taking his internal organs along with it.
"What if I punch you in the stomach?" Julie asked.
"That might work."
"Of course, it might also motivate the specimen to take a shorter route to the exit."
"Maybe it can't break through my stomach. Don't you think it would have tried it already if it could?"
"Not necessarily."
"Then don't punch me in the stomach." Benjamin leaned out the window and spat out some more blood. If they did get the parasite out, it was going to be very difficult to resist the temptation to yank its tiny teeth out, one by one.
Julie glanced at her watch. "It's been an hour. May
be I should call this time."
"No, I'll do it." Benjamin got out of the truck. Julie followed him as he walked over to the pay phone, inserted a quarter, and dialed the number written on his arm.
"Hello?"
"It's me."
"You know," said Pedro, "if I didn't already know who was on the other end of the phone, 'It's me' wouldn't be much of an identifier."
Benjamin ignored his comment. He wasn't really in the mood to discuss the wacky foibles of modern communication. "How's my family?"
"They're fine. We're all just hanging out."
"Let me talk to them."
"No. But if you don't screw anything up, you can see them before too much longer. If you do screw up, you can still see them, but they'll be dead. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I understand."
"You're a smart guy, Benjamin Wilson. That's a rare thing in these circles. Just stay put. We'll be there soon."
* * *
Benjamin sat alone and miserable in the parked truck, wondering if Margaret and Cindy really were okay. Granted, it would be difficult for them to be worse off than he was, but he still worried about their safety.
"Come on out," he told the parasite for the twentieth time. "I'm sorry I tried to chomp you. It's not like you didn't bite me from the inside. I'm not going to hurt you. You'd make this a whole lot easier if you'd just come out of there instead of making them cut you out. We don't know these people. They could slip with the scalpel."
That logic didn't seem to convince the parasite, which remained motionless inside Benjamin's stomach.
Benjamin glanced in the rear-view mirror of the truck as a small black car with tinted windows approached. It parked about twenty feet away, waited for almost a full minute with the engine running, then shut down. The passenger's side door opened and Pedro got out.
Benjamin was not at all surprised to see that Pedro was holding a gun, which he pointed at the truck. "Step out and put your hands in the air," he said.
Benjamin got out of the truck and put his hands in the air as instructed. Pedro looked at Benjamin, grimaced, and then glanced around suspiciously. "Where is she?"
"She left."
"What do you mean, she left?"
"She said she wasn't going to hang around just to let you kill her, so she left. I couldn't stop her. Don't worry—she didn't take the specimen with her."
"If she's hiding somewhere with the intention of shooting me, you should know that your family isn't close by, and you'll never see them again unless I'm around to take you to see them."
"Understood."
"Where'd she go?"
"I don't know. Did you think she left me a printout of MapQuest?"
"Don't be sarcastic while we've still got your family. I'm not in the mood." Pedro walked over to Benjamin, keeping the gun pointed at his face. "What happened to you?" he asked, looking disgusted.
"We had a really unpleasant detour."
"Seriously, what happened? You look horrible."
"The parasite made me knock my teeth out."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The parasite made it sound like a good idea to bash my face against a bathroom sink until I'd knocked a few of my teeth out. It's not a fun parasite."
"Are you kidding me?"
Benjamin shook his head.
"That's just crazy." Pedro glanced around as if checking to see if anybody was eavesdropping, then leaned closer to Benjamin, speaking confidentiality. "If you want me to put you out of your misery, I'll do it. I'll get in trouble, but I'll do it. Nobody should have to live like that."
"I appreciate it," said Benjamin, "but no."
Pedro shrugged. "The offer stands. I have a strong stomach, but seriously, you're absolutely gross. If your wife stays with you the way you're looking now, you've got one hell of a strong marriage. I envy you. My ex-wife would've left me for dead. I wouldn't have blamed her."
"Will you shoot me if I call you an asshole?"
"Nah."
"You're an asshole."
"Yes, but I'm an asshole who has all his teeth and isn't covered in disgusting sores."
* * *
Benjamin sat in the back seat of the car. He'd apologized in a non-sincere manner for getting goop on the upholstery, and Pedro had assured him that it was okay, that it was a company car. The driver, an elderly man with a ponytail, fidgeted a bit at this but didn't speak.
"How'd you end up working for the Smith brothers?" Benjamin asked.
"I don't work for the Smith brothers. Are you kidding me?"
"I thought you worked for the one who was still alive."
"No, I work for his dad."
"Oh. But you work for somebody who procreated those kinds of sons."
"Basically, yeah."
"Must suck."
Pedro chuckled. "You're not going to make me feel any worse than I already do, so save the psychological tricks. You know what makes me feel better? Riding in this car with you. In fact, I wish I had a camera with me, because I'd take your picture, and whenever I'm feeling a little sorry for myself, I could just take out the picture and realize that no matter how bad things might seem, there's some deformed guy named Benjamin who has it worse. See what I did to your attempt to piss me off? I turned it around."
"I'm not deformed."
"Disfigured, then. Either way, it sucks much more to be you than to be me, and that makes me happy."
"Yeah, I see your point."
* * *
About fifteen minutes later they turned off onto a side road, which led to a field with a runway upon which a small jet rested.
"Are Margaret and Cindy on board?" Benjamin asked.
"They sure are," said Pedro, as the driver pulled the car up alongside the jet and turned off the engine. "No sudden moves." He got out of the car and opened Benjamin's door. "Get out. Slowly."
Benjamin got out slowly.
The door to the jet swung open and a tall, gray-haired man leaned out. "Well, well, well. Benjamin Wilson. You look...worse than I expected."
"Your man-servant already used up all the good insults," Benjamin informed him.
"Then let's not waste any time with chatter." Mr. Smith waved to the car driver to send him on his way. "Step aboard."
Benjamin shook his head. "No. Let them go first."
"Why would I do a silly thing like that?"
"Because I told you to."
"I see. So what advantage have you acquired that I should know about? Bomb strapped to your leg? A dozen sharpshooters surrounding the area?"
"No," Benjamin admitted, "but that would be nice. I'm just saying, let my wife and daughter go or I'm not getting on the plane."
"Do you really think we can't force you?"
"Do you really want to put the specimen at risk?"
Mr. Smith chuckled. "Look at yourself, Benjamin. If the parasite is still alive, I think it's fairly resilient. I'm not concerned about damaging it."
"Let them go."
"No, I don't think I'm going to do that. I'm sure we can get you into the plane without too much trouble, if that's the way you want to handle it."
"I'll kill it," Benjamin warned.
"No you won't. You would have done that a long time ago if you could. And you wouldn't do it with your family right inside the plane. Think of a better bluff. Yours is something my son would say."
"I need proof that they're alive," said Benjamin.
"Now, see, that's a reasonable request." Mr. Smith turned toward the open jet door. "Say something!"
Silence.
Mr. Smith frowned. "Benjamin's out here. Say something to show you're alive."
Still no response. Benjamin's heart stung. If Margaret and Cindy were hurt, he would go on a killing rampage that made the mess in the redneck cabin look like the food preparation area of a germaphobe. Many heads would be ripped off.
"Everything's cool," said Joey a moment later from inside the jet. "I, uh, didn't let them get away."
"Jesus Christ," Mr
. Smith muttered.
"We're okay," Margaret announced. "Cindy and I are okay."
"See?" asked Mr. Smith. "Everything is fine. So why don't you make it easy on everybody and surrender yourself?"
"Let one of them go," Benjamin said.
"What?"
"Let Cindy go."
"Now you're just irritating me," said Mr. Smith. "Nobody is being set free. You have ten seconds to get into the jet before I tell my son to kill your wife. And he's stupid enough to accidentally kill both of them."
"I'm not getting in that jet unless you let my daughter go," said Benjamin, keeping his voice as stoic as possible even though he fully intended to cave in as soon as Mr. Smith started counting.
"Ten...nine..."