[quote=]DENTISTRY WITH A SLIPPERY SIDE OF SLAW
by SAM COOLEY
In all his years of study to become a dental physician and all his years of having his own Dental Centre in downtown Boston; Sledge Oktakokh was never late. He was a man ruled by the clock. Sledge recalled his first day as a university freshman.. He had an emotional breakdown in the closest bathroom because he forgot his wrist watch at home. Maybe that was why, thirty years later, Sledge sported a $1500 Rolex capable of telling the time, the position of the moon and the level of ocean tides in seven different time zones while submerged 150 metres under water.
So why was it that this morning, Sledge awoke to glance through crusted eyelids at his digital clock to see that he was fifteen minutes late? The bright red sticks of light stabbed at his dark eyes, screaming at him. Fifteen minutes late-- a whole quarter of an hour! Sledge let out a long sigh and jumped out of his bed. For an ageing man of his stature, he was quite agile. Some said that it was the wild Cherokee blood that was in him; aboriginal genetics passed on from an unfortunate native woman who was raped by a drunken European sailor in the second half of the eighteenth century.But now was no time to think of that kind of stuff. No, he was a quarter of an hour late for work, and he had to hurry. People were waiting on him. He had cavities to fill, wisdom teeth to pull, and an office full of mouths that he was supposed to analyze.
He ran to the bathroom and began filling the sink. While the squealing tap filled the bowl with hot water, the Dentist began doing up his work clothes, starting with a newly ironed white shirt. Sledge had a method that he followed but he knew that on a day like today, sacrifices would have to be made. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he duly noted the dark stubble which was beginning to form on his face and neck.
“A little stubble will have to stay for today,” he thought to himself as he began stuffing a dry towel down his shirt. When the Doctor turned the tap off, he dunked his head inside the sink basin and began sloshing his neck back and forth, trying to cover all his hair in water. He looked like a drowning mental patient. When he reeled back, water flew in every direction. Some airborn droplets hit the mirror and began rolling down in long streaks. Near the edge of the counter, puddles formed from the violent hair washing. Without further hesitation, he squeezed a handful of shampoo on to his drenched scalp and began scrubbing his hair while still submerged in the sink. He knew he didn’t have time to shower, so his improvised method of hair cleaning would have to do.
Before skidding out the door, the Dentist filled his mouth with a payload of toothpaste and stuck his toothbrush into his front pocket. He grabbed his briefcase and slipped out the front door with a pinched cheek filled with toothpaste. When the Dentist turned on the engine of his Land Rover, the digital display on the dash reminded him that he was still running late by twenty four minutes. Without thinking twice, the Doctor threw the vehicle into drive and peeled out of his driveway. He flew through his subdivision, neglecting to stop for stop signs. The intersection at the end of the subdivision proved to be an obstacle. The light ahead showed it was green, but by the time he made it to the intersection it was yellow and fast on it’s way to being red... Traffic began moving on the other streets and people began to slowly coast towards the centre. Most people would have slowed down given the awkward circumstance, but Sledge was far too punctual to wait five minutes at the stop light. He shifted his car into fifth and blasted through the intersection. Not even an aggressive driver would challenge the roaring of his Land Rover’s six cylinders. The sound held the other drivers back, keeping them far from collision with the Dentist’s impressive vehicle. Once past the dangers of the intersection, the drivers’ seat window of the land rover rolled down. The tinted glass retracted, revealing a frantic middle aged man scrubbing at his teeth with a toothbrush while going miles over the speed limit, weaving in and out of lanes of traffic to make his way to the office on time. After spitting out gobs of toothpaste scum out the window, Sledge noticed a peculiar set of flashing lights in his rear view mirror. It was a police cruiser trying to get him to pull over. He wiped his mouth free of tooth paste and pulled over on to the side of the road.
The police car rolled to a stop and the stiff body of a tall, young officer could be seen emerging from the vehicle with a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.
“Shit! He’s probably writing me up right now,” said Sledge, uneasily gripping at his steering wheel, g:owing more and more agitated. Jimmy Flinn was the name of this officer. He was fresh out of college and doing traffic patrol for his home town. When Sledge laid eyes on Jimmy he flashed him a sparkling white smile, recognizing the boy.
“Oh.. Doctor Oktakokh! I didn’t recognize you there,” said Jimmy. He tore the ticket off the clipboard and began crunching it up.
Oktakokh continued smiling.
“Ahh Jimmy, I’ve been in your mouth before!” he said, not realizing his awkward choice of words.
A strained silence transpired between the two for a moment, and then Jimmy nodded to his Dentist and told him to have a good day. Sledge threw his car back into drive and took off towards work once more, thankful for his reputation as a member of the dental community.
Regularly Sledge would have eaten something before work, but he couldn’t bring himself to anxiously hover over a toaster-- which would have been a waste of time. A sound escaped from his guts. Sledge felt his insides churning. Growling and gurgling, his stomach was screaming to him to fill it with something. It had been hours since he’d eaten. He reached into his back pocket but his pocket was empty. The wrinkled lines of his sharp brow lowered and tightened into a scowl as he realized what he’d forgotten at home. His wallet was sitting on his bed side table, right where he’d left it the night before. He could see the grinning silhouette of Colonel Sanders off in the distance, beckoning him to scrape money out of his car and purchase some grease coated goodness before stepping into the office just across the street.
When Sledge parked at the KFC parking lot, he began his search for some money. He searched through his glove compartment first, preening through dusty jewel cases of Compact Discs that only his wife listened to. He only found a few quarters in there. Sledge unclipped his seat belt and began moving around the inside of the land rover, peering underneath the seats. He noticed the glint of some coins behind a patch of garbage. Holding his breath, the frantic dentist plunged his hand into the dark hole underneath the drivers seat, clawing though age old beer caps, petrified french fries and empty packets of salt. He kept digging further. Eventually his hands clasped a crumpled up five dollar bill beside a pile of quarters.
“There we go,” he said to himself, grinning for the first time in a while. He got out of the vehicle and ran inside, wiping the slimy filth on his fingers on the sides of his pants. By the time Sledge made it inside, he had very little care for what he ordered. Without even looking at the menu he said, “I’ll get the chicken bucket. Don’t mind the drink. I just need something to eat!”
He turned around, still leaning on the counter. His mind was going a mile a minute. Sledge wasn’t used to this type of stress. Being hurried was not a feeling that came often to this man, so it put him on edge. He had forgotten his wallet at home, he didn’t shower or shave, what next? He started wondering what his patients would say when they saw him burst into the office holding a bucket of chicken under his arm. The kid at the cash register began filling the deep frier with an assortment of chicken, the sounds of frying grease could be heard from the other side of the counter. The fluorescent lights lit up the ugly mustard yellow walls. The other employee was standing in front of several bags--orders from different customers. He had a strange look about him, his long hair was pulled behind his ears. His ear lobes were stretched down to the level of his chin with huge gaps in between, big enough to fit a baseball through. He had a large nose festooned with piercings. All the while he was shuffling around boxes of food inside the bags, moving them, opening them, looking inside.
Sledge took little notice of the employees, and even less when his cellphone started ringing.
“Hello?”
It was his attractive new secretary on the phone, Jane. She told him very briefly that a lot of patients were filling up in the waiting room and asked when he’d be arriving to work.
“I’ll be there very soon, Jane.”
He flung his phone into his pocket and spun around, dumped the money on the counter and grabbed the bag nearest to him and took off into the parkinglot. As he was slipping out the door to the restaurant, one of the employees was in the middle of saying: “Sir, wait, sir you--” but it was too late; Sledge was already outside. He walked across the street and into his workplace.
Once inside, he immediately locked himself in his office, telling his secretary that he’d be ready for the first surgery after he’d had a bite to eat. Jane was good at stalling patients and relaxing them while they waited. And besides, Sledge thought, she was a treat to look while on break. It was nice to stare at her shapely legs every once in a while; surely a break from the warped and twisted teeth that surrounded him at his workplace. She was always a mood lifter for the middle aged physician. None of that was on his mind now, though. Sledge sat down and opened the bag of fast food. He was anxious to sink his teeth into the grease soaked ridges of fried meat, but what he found inside the bag made his heart sink and his stomach shriek. There was no sign of his chicken bucket anywhere. He tore open the bag and looked for a bill. There was none. The only thing in the bag was a large styrofoam bucket of glistening neon green coleslaw. The white face of Colonel Sanders was laughing at him now.
“Those bastards,” he yelled, “Can’t even get a goddamn order of chicken right!”
Sledge let out a sigh as he stared at the cylinder of pickled slop. He was too hungry and too late to bring back his order, so he sucked up his pride and began lapping up the coleslaw like a starved dog. Half way through the meal he started to actually enjoy the taste. When there was a bit of coleslaw left in it, he walked to the corner of the room where his pet parakeet was kept.
“Let’s see if you’ll like this,” he said to the bird as he dropped the bucket into the cage. It was regular for the dentist to feed his pet Parakeet what he was eating. It was a habit that he’d picked up years ago and continued when the bird showed no signs of discomfort. It appeared to like the coleslaw. Sledge smiled to himself as he placed his surgical gloves on. It was time for work.
It was a rather simple surgical process that he had to undertake. All he had to do was make a small incision and pull a rotten tooth right out of the patient’s mouth. Just like any other day. Mid way through the surgery, Sledge noticed that something was wrong with him. Beads of sweat started to form his brow, and every couple minutes he’d have to wipe them off. What was wrong with him? Why was he having trouble focusing his vision? At first he thought it to be the first signs of a migraine headache, but he was not in pain. By the time the surgery was finished, Sledge was sweating profusely. His jaw was involuntarily clenching, and his pupils had dilated to twice their regular size. Staring at himself in the mirror of his office, he knew something was wrong. He clicked on his intercom:
“Jane.. turn the air conditioning on full power. This is important. It’s so damn hot in here.”
His chin was shaking as he spoke. The deranged dentist began pacing back and forth, fidgeting with his hands and messing with his soaked hair. His mind began to race. A thousand thoughts a minute. What the hell was going on? What were people doing outside? All these questions assailed him as he walked around the perimeter of his office. He was losing his mind, he knew he couldn’t see any more patients in this condition, but what could he say? Sledge fumbled through his desk and swallowed a couple aspirin, but he knew it was futile. Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen weren’t meant to deal with a sweating freak like him.
The more sledge stood in that office, the less he cared for what was going on outside. As his body temperature rose and the room temperature decreased, he grew frustrated with his clothing and tore it all off, everything except his socks and his black tie. It dangled from his neck and slapped against his sweat covered chest and stomach. Now he was entirely naked. He began to feel at peace with his manic actions, even with himself. He beat his chest in front of the mirror like a wild animal. Nevermind the sweat or the racing thoughts, he felt pretty damn good. Flying high. Then he heard a knock at the door.
“Doctor?”
It was Jane, he thought she wanted inside.
“Is everything alright Doctor? You’ve been in there awhile,” she said in her graceful voice, “There’s a lot of patients out there.”
Sledge reeled around, unable to think coherently anymore. This was no longer Doctor S. Oktakokh, this was the human animal.
“Come in for a minute Jane, I need to tell you something!” he spat.
When she entered the room, her usual muted facial expression turned to distress and worry.
“Doctor..,” she said in a grave tone, “Is there something wrong?”
“Jane. I think I’ve been drugged. Now come over here, sweetheart,” he whispered while slinking towards her with a wide smile outstretched across his face. Her distressed expression turned to fear as he began to make lewd gestures while walking. He neared closer to her-- groping at her. Jane returned his fondling with a slap, then she turned around and stormed out of the room, tears rolling down from her eyes. Sledge turned around and jumped on to his desk, laughing hysterically at the entire situation. He kicked at the desk ornaments. He smashed the picture of him with his wife and his children. He flipped over a table, and turned the volume up on the radio; the twangy sounds of mandolin meeting rock music in Led Zeppelin’s folk song “The Battle of Evermore” began to fill the room. The music kept him going. It was the only narration to his twisted thoughts and actions. Free of judgement, free of terror or worry.
That is when the parakeet in the corner of the room began to squawk. He ran over to the cage and tore it open. The bird continued to squawk and jump in terror. Sledge reached his hands inside and grabbed the bird by the neck, screaming: “Don’t worry little birdy,” he said through gritted teeth, “Today you’re going to FLY," and then, “You’re going to FLY HOME!!"
He struggled with the bird inside the room, gripping at the base of it’s neck, trying to get control of it. He tripped over a floor lamp and it smashed against the tile floor. Sledge walked over to the window behind his desk and slowly opened it with his free hand. He peered outside for a moment, and then grinned sardonically. Then he threw the bird out the window, smiling all the while. From outside the window, the scene was sickening. The window opened, and the bird cascaded across the open air for a moment, and then began to sink towards the ground at a good speed. The bird’s wings were clipped. Flightless, it plunged towards the ground, defenceless to the rigid laws of gravity. It hit the ground with a sickening crack. The whole right hemisphere of its body shattered at once. It continued to groan and weep as it’s body began to internally bleed. Blood began to seep out from its beak and its eyes as it slowly died. And all the while, it squawked and chirped; desperately trying to tell the world its sad story. And then it stopped.[/quote]
Started off as a minor creative writing assignment that I figured worked better as a hastiyl written short story.
That was a great read, but I wanted to see how the patients reacted as he came into the building.
Yeah I'm thinking of increasing the size of the story in order to make it read better, especially the 2nd half of it.
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