Tim Frank
“What a prick,” said Dr Bell, my dentist.
“What?” I said.
“I mean, just a prick. The anaesthetic—we’ll have your tooth out in no time.”
There were etchings of barb wire skulls on the mantel piece, and soon enough they were charging towards me like snarling, irate cats.
“You like those, Daniel?” Dr Bell said, leaning into my mouth wielding some kind of metal skewer.
“They’re by Tracy Emin, a patient of mine and a good friend.”
“That’s incredible, I love her work,” I garbled, as my tongue was pinned to the side of my mouth.
“That’s it, all over. Now I’ve got to run, I have to go to Banksy’s birthday party.”
The painkiller was really taking hold. Things were becoming bendy and the sunlight had transformed into an otherworldly purple. Despite the vinyl floor flooding with mouthwash, soaking me up to my knees, I was dazzled by my dentist’s great taste in modern art and jealous of his jet-set lifestyle. What a bloody interesting guy, I thought.
But before I could ask him more about his impressive connections, Dr Bell swept out the room in his big puffer jacket and a handful of bloody tissues. Something didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t just that my head was a deflated rugby ball.
I looked in the mirror and flashed my most seductive smile. Such a good-looking boy. But then in horror, I noticed instead of removing the aching rotten molar at the back, Dr Bell had pulled my precious gold front tooth. I’d spent all my savings for this visit and now I looked like a malicious goblin. So, I followed my dentist and raced out of the central London clinic, where the super-rich scoffed swordfish in rooftop restaurants, and sped through red lights in Tesla Cybertrucks.
Dr Bell had entered the underground and squeezed himself onto a crowded train.
I managed to slip on board just in time, too, but he was several carriages ahead.
I stepped off the train ten stops down the line, slowly gaining on him, but then a small pack of commuters blocked my path, arms crossed, furiously chewing their lips. Each of them opened their mouths with their fingers, revealing grotesque and grotty teeth. Of course, I thought to myself, we are in East London now, where people never brush their teeth and they sleep with their mothers.
I barged past the mob and caught sight of Bell exiting the station, rushing into a rundown clapboard building. Meanwhile, dogs were standing on their hind legs by streetlights, wearing orthopaedic braces and flossing their fangs. Opposite, there was a child waiting for a bus, ripping out her milk teeth with a hammer claw. There was no doubt about it, I had lost my mind. But I was coherent enough to realise this was not the kind of place Banksy would throw a birthday party.
Before I followed Dr Bell into the building, I took a cigarette break to calm my nerves and watched the intergalactic UFOs sweeping around the fluoridated sky as they rained sultanas and cashew nuts down upon me.
I stubbed my smoke, stepped into the ramshackle two-story house unopposed, and climbed the splintered staircase towards a room that echoed with gruff, unrestrained laughter. I swung the door open, almost knocking it off its hinges. I saw a group of men in white lab coats, circling a green felt table, playing cards.
One of them was Dr Bell, who was cupping a bowl of popcorn dripping with tomato sauce, giving me his best shit-eating grin.
“So where the fuck is Banksy, then?” I said, rocking to and fro like I was surfing a tubular wave.
“Daniel,” said Dr Bell, “I can explain.”
“Go on then, cos I’d really like to know. Things can’t get any stranger than the last forty minutes.”
It was at that point, in a moment of lucidity, I realised the popcorn in tomato sauce wasn’t popcorn in tomato sauce at all. It was a mountain of gold teeth dripping with blood.
“Daniel. We are dentists. Poor dentists, who gamble with patients’ gold teeth. Please be understanding, you wouldn’t believe the cost of running a surgery in the centre of town.”
“So you’re a crook. You don’t know Banksy, and Tracy Emin isn’t your friend?”
“No, never met them.”
“You’re a sick bastard Dr Bell, and to think, I wanted to be your friend. Now give me my tooth back.”
“I’d like to be friends, Daniel.”
“Dr Bell, that ship has sailed.”
Bell sighed, then tipped the bowl of teeth onto the gambling table and, soon enough, he found my sticky, glorious tooth.
Out in the street, the effects of my anaesthetic were wearing off. My gums were beginning to throb, and reality was becoming steady and concrete. The sky was lined with dull grey clouds, no UFOs or weird kids and dogs. Normality had resumed.
I fingered my gold tooth, my precious gold nugget that gave me an aura of genuine class, allowing me to seduce fine women with expensive tastes. I slipped it in my top pocket, alongside my popping candy, my lemon sherbet dip, and my Snickers bar.
Now all I needed was a new dentist to fix my tooth back in place. And this time I’d keep the relationship professional—I wouldn’t even talk about the football—and I’d skip the anaesthetic, too. I think I might be allergic.
Tim Frank’s work has been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Metaworker and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. His debut chapbook is An Advert Can Be Beautiful in the Right Shade of Death (C22 Press ’24) and his second chapbook of poetry is Delusions To Live By (Alien Buddha Press, ’25).
X: @TimFrankquill
Featured photo by Kelcey Shotit (Pexels)
