Stone Tooth

Content Warning: childhood physical abuse, self-harm, substance abuse

Evan’s father had rocks for knuckles. This was the reason why he won all the fights—both in the ring and at the bar. Because his father was always fighting someone, Evan was raised by uncles who weren’t really uncles, sitting in front of the TV as they watched his old man box another man down.

“Kid,” they said every night, mouths full of peanuts, “you’re going to be deadlier than your old man one day.”

It wasn’t long until Evan’s hands started getting hard. His knuckles he got from his dad, made of stone, but the rest of his hands turned to rock, too. Much worse than his father’s condition. His uncles were right—if he ever got in the ring, his dancing partner wouldn’t make it one round. Flesh can never beat rock.

But one day, Evan’s father—the Bull, they called him—started losing. The rocks in his knuckles turned soft, and when they became regular bone again, everyone realized that the Bull didn’t have any boxing skill at all—he simply hit hard. Flesh can never beat rock, but intellect—the ability to outthink one’s opponent—always beat brute force in the end.

They started calling him the Sucker after that.

The money ran dry. Evan’s father was no longer welcome at any of the bars, getting in fights he could no longer win and collecting tabs he could no longer pay. Evan was old enough now to start fighting his own fights—but that stint didn’t last very long, not when Evan proved to be a worse loser than his father ever was. Not because he had no skill, but because he chose not to fight at all. He stood there, hands lowered, knowing that a single right hook from him could end his suffering and win some money, but he chose to let his opponent knock him out instead. Thankfully, Evan only had to endure three fights before his father wisely chose not to put him in the ring anymore.

“Trying to make a fool out of me,” was the Bull’s reason for pulling him out—not because he had been concerned about Evan’s well-being, but because he thought Evan was losing just to spite him.

Both Evan and his father had been made to fight, and when neither of them could win at that, there wasn't much else they were good for. So Evan prayed for a miracle.

This was the worst it ever got: one night, the Bull came home, so drenched in alcohol, it would be a hazard to light a match near him. He took out a hammer and told Evan to sit at the kitchen table with his hands out. Evan obeyed because the opposite would be worse. He could smell the hatred coming off his father as strongly as the last drink he'd had—hatred for Evan for having what he lost, hatred for those who ridiculed him, but most pungent of all was the hatred the Bull had for himself.

Evan closed his eyes when his father brought the hammer down on his hands. He heard the rock shatter, but he didn’t feel a damn thing.

When he opened his eyes, he thought, maybe, his father had missed because what he saw didn’t make any sense.

His hands were unharmed—still grey stone, and in one piece. But scattered around the table like blood splatter after a bullet wound were dozens of grey pebbles, big and small. They radiated around Evan’s fingers as evidence that, even while drunk, the Bull never missed his target.

Evan ran before his father could continue what he started. He hid, but he could still hear his father screaming as he smashed open every single pebble left on the table.

That was the worst it ever got.

The next morning, Evan came out from his hiding spot to find his father passed out on the kitchen table, hammer still resting in his hand. Not surprising. But the alarming thing about the scene was what surrounded his sleeping father's head.

Every single pebble shard had transformed overnight. Instead of sharp grey slivers, each one had bloomed into an elaborate bouquet of crystals—iridescent, magnificent, achingly beautiful.

A miracle, Evan thought. This is going to save us.

The Bull thought the same thing. Without mentioning the events from the night before, the Bull gathered up the impossible crystals and sold them for more money than they had ever had in their entire lives. He told the buyers an abbreviated version of how these crystals came to be, and of course, Evan had to be there to provide a demonstration—one gentle tap of the hammer to loosen a pebble, a sharp crack to split it open, and a sobering silence as they all watched a crystal bouquet spontaneously emerge from the remains.

After the crystals were sold, Evan didn’t see his father for a week, but he knew where he was, and where all the money had gone. When the old man finally came back home, he was missing his front teeth—Evan initially thought, from a bar fight gone wrong. His father didn’t seem to care.

“My boy,” he said, giddy on the promise of more money to squander. “Let’s see those hands.”

Evan used the hammer on himself to save his father the trouble. As the old man collected the crystals, another tooth fell out of his mouth, but the old man barely noticed, spitting it out as if it were a loogie. With an armful of crystals and a mouthful short one tooth, the Bull patted Evan on the shoulder—the first and only show of affection he had ever shown his son—and disappeared again for another week.

#

Even with rocks for hands, Evan found a job working at a hardware store. Ever since the event with his father, pebbles started growing from his hands, bulging like tumors until eventually pinched off and fell behind him whenever he went. At first, he didn’t pay any mind, but then he thought of his toothless father, and concluded that the pebbles—or more likely, Evan himself—was cursed with bad luck. Worried some innocent stranger would try to sell the crystals and consequently lose all their teeth, Evan wore gloves to keep the rocks contained. At the end of the day, the gloves were filled with dozens of pebbles, which he dumped out and buried in the yard.

Working at the hardware store wasn’t difficult, nor was it a challenge, but it did have its perks. It was there in the gardening aisle that he met her—a girl he’d seen in the news, a phenomenon, or a freak, according to his dad. She was a girl who could grow flowers out of her head. Evan remembered when he first heard about her—Reyna was her name—and thought to himself, I wonder if she is anything like me.

A freak, according to his dad.

Reyna had come into the shop looking for garden shears to cut her flowers. He didn’t recognize her at first because she wore a scarf over her head, but when he finally realized who she was, she wasn’t anything like what he expected.

The most surprising thing about her—besides the flower thing, of course—was how sad she seemed. It wasn’t a thing he noticed immediately, but over time, he could sense it—in the deep sighs she exhaled when she thought he couldn’t hear, or how the corners of her eyes would droop from the burden of the weight they carried. Sadness seemed to live in her bones. Evan brought it up one day when they were lying in bed—why was she so sad? She blinked sleepily, marigolds silky against his shoulder, and said, “I didn’t know I was allowed to be happy. Sadness is something I inherited from generations.”

“And now?” he asked.

She smiled, a true smile as bright as the yellow flowers growing from her head. “You have to ask?”

That was when he knew he’d do anything to make her happy.

#

It didn’t start like that, however. When they first met, Evan was terrified, because something strange happened to his hand—a patch of rocky skin flaked off, revealing glimmering crystal underneath. Magic, Reyna had said. Witch, Evan had thought. Was the change permanent? Was it a trick? But most important than another of those questions was this one: Why her? He asked himself this question over and over and over because the answer never made sense.

But she kept coming around, never asking anything of him but his time and company, and he couldn’t help but want to give her everything she wanted. Not because she had put him under a spell, but because he wished she would.

One day, as Evan was emptying his gloves, Reyna picked up a pebble. As she held it, the geode split open like an egg ready to hatch, and the crystals bloomed like one of her impossible flowers. The pebbles were always doing that around her, spontaneously opening up without any force or effort. Even those stupid rocks wanted to give her everything she asked. Reyna put the newly formed crystals in the soil, and when she tended to the rocks as if they were plants, they grew larger, brighter, more radiant. That scared Evan, too, but for a different reason than before. What if his crystals brought her bad luck? What if this paradise was just a dream, and Evan would eventually wake up?

Every new day that he managed to stay in their bliss, Evan looked at his hands, now a patchwork quilt of rock and crystal, and he would remind himself that Reyna chose him, too. She had chosen happiness. His father was always fighting someone else to avoid the fight within himself, and Evan didn’t want to live like his father. Evan had never been a fighter, after all. So just like that time he was put in the ring, Evan surrendered. He put his fists down and just let the happiness in.

Soon after that, his rocky hands transformed more rapidly. They became crystalline, or perhaps diamond—strong, indestructible, smooth, geometrically aligned. Evan still wore gloves, not to contain the pebbles anymore because they had stopped forming, but to keep the shine of his hands from blinding people. Reyna was delighted. She took every opportunity to relish in how he glowed. Of course, because it was Evan, this sort of affection made him scowl in public, but in private, well, that was a different story.

#

On one of their walks, Evan and Reyna saw his father sitting around with some of the other men from the neighbourhood. He hadn’t seen his father in years, but according to his uncles, he was known as the Toothless Bull now. The old man’s hair was grey and sparse on his shiny head, but everything else about him was as Evan remembered. Even his grin was the same, sans his pearly whites.

When Evan and Reyna approached, the old man didn’t recognize him. He was too enthralled by the sight of Reyna’s flowers to pay his own son any mind. Evan pulled off his gloves. In the bright summer sun, Evan's hands reflected and shone, blinding the old man.

“I hope you find peace, Dad,” Evan said, putting a hand on his father’s shoulder.

By the time the old Bull got his sight back, Evan and Reyna were gone. He didn’t understand what had happened—had his estranged son returned?—but none of the others could tell him, for they had also been plunged into pure white light. No one knew what had happened, but whatever it was, they called it a miracle. A miracle, because when the old Bull opened his mouth, there, sprouting from those rosy gums, was a single tooth, rough and grey, made of stone.