The Tooth Faerie

“Dad, what if it falls out?” The boy jams a finger sideways into his mouth and wiggles the loose one.

“Well, bud, that’s normal, baby teeth are supposed to fall out.” The father tucks the boy into his favorite Spider-Man blanket.

“No, I know that dad, mommy told me they have to jump out to make room for ‘big boy’ teeth. She talks to me like I’m a baby. I mean what if it falls out while I’m a sleep? ”

“Well, you’re always gonna be her little guy, even when you’re big. That’s just how it works… for her.”

“But not for you?”

“Sometimes you’re my little guy, other times you’re my big buddy. Depends how good you are.”

The boy yawns. “And what am I right now?”

“You’re my big buddy, but if you don’t quit yer yapping and go to sleep you’re gonna magically turn into my little guy.”

“I’m not being bad though!”

“No, I’m just messing with ya. You’re not bad, you’re a very good boy, and one day you’re gonna be a good man. But I can’t stay here chatting with you all night, big buddy. Your mom and I have things to do.”

“What things?”

“Just, uh… work. Boring work that’s just for grownups, that’s why we have to wait until you’re in bed.”

His eyes are drifting shut: “But dad you never answered my question…”

He whispers, “what question buddy?”

The boy opens his eyes, uses his whole forehead to do it. “What if my tooth falls out while I’m asleep? How will the tooth fairy now?”

The man looks at his son, and marvels. This boy-- insisting he’s a big kid now and complaining that mommy talks to him like a baby-- this boy clearly believes all her talk about the tooth fairy. What a magical age, and what a magical way to be.

“Well, she might not notice, if she’s too busy. She usually only collects teeth that fall out before dark, so she might have to pass you by. Depends on how full her schedule is. If we have to, we’ll just save your tooth for her to get tomorrow night.”

“Well what if I choke on it in my sleep?”

He feels a pang of stupid fear, because he supposes, that could actually happen. But he doesn’t let his fatherly anxiety show. “Buddy, you have nothing to worry about. There are billions of people on the earth, and most of them have already lost their baby teeth, and they didn’t choke. So why would you? If you lose that tooth while you’re sleeping, you’ll just spit it out.”

“How though? I won’t know to spit if I’m asleep.”

“Your body has reflexes that work even without you thinking— like how you breath. If the tooth goes towards your throat, you’d cough and it would shoot out like a nerf dart. Just be careful where you aim and make sure you don’t break the window.”

"Okay dad--" He says, in all seriousness as he rolls to his side, away from the window “--Okay, if I sleep like this, and I cough it out, it won’t break anything?”

The man chuckles, “yep, you’re a good kid. Goodnight big buddy.”

“Goodnight dad, wait before you go to do grownup work with mommy, one more question.”

“Okay, but last one! And then no more talking until morning. Or I'll tell the tooth fairy to skip our house!”

The boy lets out a massive, trembling yawn: “What if instead of coughing, what would happen if I swallowed it?”

The man grins and stands up to leave. “Well, then we won’t be able to save the tooth for the tooth fairy tomorrow night....”

“Why?”

“Because we’ll have to wait for you to poop it out for her to collect.”

The boy laughs then, a high, pure sound and he says “dad that’s disgusting!”

“Yeah, it is. But you think you’d have it rough, imagine how much worse the tooth fairy would feel about it!”

Finally, when the boy is done laughing he sighs, and says with a smile: “Okay dad, you can go now.”

“Okay buddy, goodnight, I love you.”

His eyes are wilting now, he’s barely awake. But the man hears a soft “I love you too dad. You can go to work with mommy now.”

The man pulls the door shut, turns towards his own room and chuckles to himself, “more like go to work on mommy. Ba-dum-tsss!”

***

The boy, already fast asleep, begins to snore.

He stirs from, from the sound and rolls around.

He grinds his teeth, just a little bit.

The creaking sound fills the room, and the loose one pops free, in his closed mouth.

It tumbles towards his throat.

***

It teases her nose and wakes her from her long slumber.

She can smell it from a hemisphere away— a loose tooth on its last root— and more than that, a double first tooth, first to erupt and first to fall!

She can smell it's history-- from years back when the child was still nursing! She can practically taste the mother's pain, as the child chewed for milk.

This tooth!

A double first is one in a million, she cannot wait to cradle it beneath her nose— feel it's weight in her palm and to breath deep it’s story!

The Tooth Faerie smacks her empty gums together and grins, her wrinkles parting and flapping like a curtain in the breeze.

She draws a rasping, gurgling breath.

And tests her ragged, dusty wings.

She’d intended to hibernate for a much longer while.

She’d gotten too greedy, taken too many teeth in the Middle Ages, people had grown to fear her. They hadn’t known what they had feared, none had ever seen her and she’d never even done them any harm!

Not at first, anyway.

But they had noticed lost teeth disappearing overnight, and they’d started to lay traps, and attempt ambushes.

These were only minor annoyances, she evaded them easily.

But the real atrocity came from those superstitious fools burning their teeth or crushing them with rocks!

All to stop her collecting them.

And why?!

Why waste such perfect joys?

Why deprive her?

She had heard their whispers— they believed witches were taking their teeth, to cast spells on them, to curse them, to control them.

She was no witch! What care had she for control?

The humans, or rather: their little lives, had never mattered to her.

Like any other animal, they were good for one thing only: their teeth!

And not their healthy, functional teeth. Just their spent teeth!

But humans, they'd refused out of stupid, blind, territorial greed.

That was when she started to truly resent and finally to loath humanity.

No other animals denied her their discarded treasures!

Any other animal lost a tooth, it left it aside for her to collect.

She looked on the piles that filled her cavern— tusks, needle sharp canines, big grinding molars…

But humans-- such meager creatures compared to saber-cats and wolves and the huge, thundering plant eating lizards-- tiny, little humans gone to such lengths to deny her!

So she’d watched them and learned their system of exchange. She'd watched to learn what they valued, and what they might barter for their unwanted teeth.

Then she'd started leaving them little trinkets, and treasures and especially their stupid metal discs-- their coins, for she understood that humans blindly valued them for some strange reason.

She'd left them as little favors, little bribes. A treasure for them, as fair exchange for a treasure of theirs. Neither party at a loss!

Those human people, they’d taken to the bribe like greedy little vermin. Unwitting mothers and fathers had started to play into the exchange, inventing a legend around her and painting her out to be some sort of fairy.

But, ah!

While some of those mothers and some of those fathers simply tossed the teeth out, no harm done, others went on destroying the teeth!

And she went on leaving behind coins, hoping to shift the balance away from that weird human greed.

But then, one night many decades later, she finally cracked. She'd smelled a double in Alberta-- and then, seconds later, she'd smelled the violence. Some superstitious parent had taken that precious tooth between two rocks, pulverized it....

Her rage had boiled over: she shrieked through the night to find them, then she lashed out!

And it wasn't for her own pleasure or satisfaction.

It was because the humans, the worst among them, needed to be taught a lesson: their parts-- their basic matter, all was on loan from the earth itself.

And she, a Spirit of the Earth could not abide the smell of earth's creatures behaving so selfishly. So she snuck into their home, perched over their beds....

Then she pried their jaws open and thrust her groping fingers into their pleading mouths and tore their teeth right out of through their gurgling and their screams.

She felt no guilt over teaching them this lesson. But she did regret the child alive!

The child tried to spread the story. And she knew if she slipped up again, it would have gained credence. Instead of being laughed down, that story would have gained traction, and the humans-- for all their stupidity and their superstition-- they would have set to stubbornly hunting her.

And so she'd taken to her lair, and entered into a deep hibernation. She'd laid there among the teeth of ancient lizards and deep-sea fishes and medieval princes and peasants.

She'd meant to keep sleeping, until the child was long dead and the rumor of her had faded into the ages.

But this double first simply jerked her awake.

This tooth is too potent to ignore!

She rakes her claws through a pile of coins, looking for the right currency.

She needs to retrieve the tooth-- despite the risk.

Yen and pesos fall away from her groping fingers, she tosses a useless British pound out of her bank-pile, it lands beside Spanish doubloons.

Euros now, euros.

But that’s wrong.

This tooth isn't in Europe. It crowned in Europe, but it felt out in a different hemisphere... This tooth smells North American, the smell is making her giddy.

She can hardly think straight!

She plucks up a loony, and grins and beats her leathery wings, the must of her own odor swirls about the billions of memories that she’s collected over the eons— but these are stale!

This new, Canadian tooth is all fresh and all promise!

Wait!

No!

No!

This tooth is further south, but only barely.

A New Yorker’s tooth, she’s sure of it now!

She snatches an American quarter dollar from pile— then she sees a glint of brass and thinks better of it.

She’s feeling generous.

For such a tooth as this, why not a Saqajaweea?

She crawls her way up through dark tunnels, up from her subterranean lair, and into the humid, moonlit night.

She races between between wind-bent junipers, her claws tearing at old world moss and clattering over gleaming white rock.

She slavers in her glee, in her haste, as she leaps from a precipice and soars into the dark morning.

The Dolomites are 6 hours ahead of the New York tooth. So she won’t have time to get there and back before the Italian dawn.

She’ll either have to find the darkest spot beneath the child’s bed— a place to curl up and admire the tooth— or race away from the rising sun, ever west, until she makes a full circuit around the globe.

Well that’s later and this is now.

She races through misty skies, a shadow in the night as she takes to the Atlantic— she knows she’s overdoing it.

She knows she's pushign too hard after only just waking up.

No matter, a tooth this fine is worth the effort.

***

It tumbles towards his throat and the boy swallows the little baby tooth on reflex. He turns into his pillow and begins to dream, blissfully unaware of the double first lying in his stomach acid.

***

She smells it so plain it hurts her nostrils-- the precious tooth is being exposed to something terrible-- something caustic. The enamel is already being etched and it makes her blood boil.

***

She slides into the room, and pulls the window shut behind her. After such a long flight she wants the comfort of a closed space. And the dark of this child's room, it's almost as comfortable as her cave.

She can smell it thick as fog now-- the tooth is in his stomach! It hasn't been in there long enough to have any damage noticeable to the naked eye, but it is quite literally in the first stage of being digested.

This stain on the tooth's history-- this contamination on the smell of this fine treasure is unacceptable.

She sniffs and shudders.

The beauty of the double first is now spoiled; the scent of bile, it wrinkles her nose.

She leans in closer, close to his mouth and smells anyway.

She forces herself to endure the pain of this wasted beauty.

She forces herself to confront the moment and...

... she lets herself feel that honest rage.

***

The boy feels air on his face and stirs-- is his window open?

He opens his eyes but all he sees is two distant lights, yellow and orblike.

On instinct he prods the loose tooth with his tongue, and it's gone!

He perks up-- his eyes open all the way and he sees those orbs are not lights-- they're other eyes. They're reflecting whatever dim light is creeping in though his window, and they're looking at him.

But they're not human.

They look angry.

And that breeze on his face, is too warm to be from the window-- something is breathing on his face and its breath smells like clay and dirt and old chicken bones.

The boy's heart is slamming against his ribcage.

His first impulse is to scream-- but he stifles that. He's not a baby! He's a big boy-- he even lost his first tooth to prove it. He tries to speak, through his dry mouth.

"I know who you are. My mommy-- my mom I mean-- she said the tooth fairy would come for my tooth."

He smiles, a proud smile. Not only proud to have been brave, like a big boy, but proud to have finally lost his tooth. He's also proud to have seen the tooth fairy and, he thinks, if his luck continues, one day he might meet Santa Claus too.

Past his fear, he feels grateful. He starts to feel around under his pillow, for the tooth, he wants to give it to the tooth fairy himself, he's so excited he has forgotten all about the money-- he couldn't care less.

***

The Tooth Faerie sees his gloating grin and it makes her sick with fury. She sees the inky black gap, where that perfect double tooth once sat. And she knows, this brat of a child has swallowed the tooth deliberately.

To deprive her!

To deny her what should be hers by right!

She remembers the child she let live, the mistake.

And she burns with certainty, she'll never make that mistake again.

She clamps one stale hand over the child's leering, boastful grin.

She will take all those teeth-- pluck them from his mouth in turn.

But first, she will retrieve the treasure he tried to destroy: this ruined beauty, this double first will be the chief prize in her collection.

A double first, denied-- but she'll take it back: bile and blood and all!

This will be her trophy-- and she'll treasure the scent and the memory and the wholeness of its history.

The child squirms and the Tooth Faerie flexes her claws above his straining abdomen.

***

Authors note:

I just really liked the idea of a B-movie style tooth fairy monster feature for this vocal+ challenge. I know it's silly, I know it's kinda too ridiculous to be a legit horror story. But whatever, I had a lot of fun with this one, and I hope the absurdity got a laugh for ya.

And maybe if you like creature features and b movie monsters, this could have been fun for you too :)