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| Next | Back | Home | Fiction | Non-Fiction | Poems | Book Excerpts | Fiction by Grant Brandon It was around 1:45 p.m. I had another appointment with the orthodontist. It's usually no big deal, band changes, bracket replacement, rectal thermometer, although I swear the old fart does it for a kick, quack. But today, something was wrong. Sure I woke up covered in a pool of my own vomit, and my hair wasn’t straight, but who ever wakes up feeling good? Me, that's who. Like I was saying, same old day, same old school, all in all, same old crap. But, something was different, different, but not apparently so. I couldn't put my finger on it, the eleventh to be exact. Yeah, so I'm weird, it happens. I woke up that morning five inches closer to death, that and the bugger was changing my sheets, which is scary to say the least. So I pile into the trusty, and durable 95 Ford Windstar. This baby is the king of mini-vans, it can kick from zero to forty in three minutes flat, no lie, kids, this van is the stuff. I'm almost confident you would see one of these in a Mad Max movie, had its budget been any lower, that is. As I hop in I turn on the CD player, and to my disgust a musical is playing, so I wait for the bullet to hit turbo speed, and take a leap of faith out of the sliding door to my right, luckily the pavement was soft and cushiony, like some jagged rocks, or maybe a bed of nails. Ahh, memories. Ok, so I didn't pull a Jackie Chan out of the van, but had I the choice, it woulda “Been on like pampers.” I quickly change the CD to twelve, turn up my bumpin tunes and the world speeds by, I close my eyes and try to envision myself far from the realm of mortals, somewhere divine, a place where happiness reigns, and good times are all but common. Thanks to my mother asking me if she should buy me a toothbrush before we go, some reason we didn't have time to stop by the house, it being out in the boonies. After her question I heard Death giggle at my embarrassment. I shot him a dirty look, so dirty Jerry Springer would have served up some fresh cookies, straight from the oven (Not actual cookies, think- vomit). This did little to stifle my good buddy back there.. jerk. My mom swung by McDonalds to feed herself and my little sister, God bless her, I'm her brother. She asked if I wanted anything, I replied I only wanted a raw, onion, make those clowns at the orthodontists work for their paycheck. Little to my surprise no onion was served, I handed a happy meal to my sister, and an extra one. I turned around to see Mr. Reaper opening his toy. Needless to say, if I had been in direct contact with the glance he shot at me, my head would have exploded into chunky soup, speaking of which, my eloquent cafeteria lunch was coming trying to fight its way up for round two. As I almost fell asleep on the way to the orthodontists, a whole 3 minute drive, the bullet slowed to a screeching halt. That's no exaggeration. I looked at the sign from the corner of my eye, as I walked to the glass door, I saw the tortured souls of what used to be people who received the curse of crooked teeth. Their eyes and mouth open with maggots within, eating the regenerating flesh. The black mist that shifted through brought a queasy feeling to my stomach, round three. As I opened the door, it returned to normal. Its gotta be that ham.. I'll speak of that at a later date though. I walked over to the desk and signed in, found the latest issue of Xbox magazine and began reading after becoming indulged, I was violently ripped away from my world to one much darker. I was summoned to the back of the room, as I was walking the lights flickered and a brief moment of pain and distress choked me off from the mortal realm. After this brief encounter with the unknown, I sat down in an actually comfortable seat, some what like one's last meal before fatal poison is released into the blood stream, slowing the breathing, stopping the heart, and killing the body.
As I slumped down in the chair one of the familiar oral hygienists approached me, we went through the usual ritual of this scripted conversation. Something having to do with my day. Who do these clowns think they’re dealing with!? Where do they get off, asking me all this personal information, sheesh, I might as well give the mongrels my social security number while I was at it. I’m sure they could make some right nice havoc with that little piece of info! Heck, why don’t they just go ahead and kill me off so they can steal my money and my soul? Who knows, it could inhabit a nice mindless corpse they no doubt store in meat lockers for their little entertainment! Followed with my most charming smile, reserved only for those who wish to shower me with money, or have the authority to rip every tooth out of my mouth until the roots show and I’m left for dead, bleeding in a nice and comfy chair. The one thing I’ve learned is to never speak your mind to psychopathic corpse hoarders, who are readily armed to the ‘teeth’ (excuse the pun) with enamel cleaning scrapers and handfuls of horrid, mouth concrete. A smirk escaped through the granite like teeth of the ethereal hygienists, that’s odd, are they permitted to have emotion? Does a soul inhabit these machines of suffering, and torture? Does something else dwell deep within? Perhaps they are magnificent angels, trapped in the shells of these grotesque monstrosities, surely they feel remorse, surely they have a conscious of their own, surely they too can love others.. Shortly after these thoughts flowed through the eternal river that is my mind, I was assured of what I had previously been pondering by one simple thing, that many people on this plane of existence don’t notice, something we pass by day by day, something.. horrendous! As I quickly wrote off the bullcrap I had been processing, I saw the shadow of the beast warp and mutate into a being more hideous than previously imagined, my view was obstructed for a slight moment by a ray of light, maybe I was being spared this torture, this never ending tooth scraping, gum gashing, sub-level of hell.. then again, maybe A hulking woman-beast just sat down beside me with a grin that could break the stained-glass windows of any righteous God fearing church on this planet. The meaning of the words didn’t frighten me, although a thin spell of some cult-like ritual was most likely imbued upon me, I felt fine.. as fine as lying in a chair, staring at an iridescent light, while a Jabberwocky like creature stooped over my currently breathing body, note: currently. I didn’t expect to keep up this breathing business for much longer. Yet.. I continued. Inhale.. Exhale.. Inhale.. Exhale. How rhythmic, how dependent, how.. how could I possibly have eaten that slop they threw on a tray and forced down my open mouth? I’ll admit, when it comes to food, my standards are all but scraping the ground, but they don’t include seven month old swine, slop, that the lunch ladies no doubt scraped right off the underside of one of these mud loving beasts. Round four- knockout by Grant. As I returned back to this thing called reality, I saw a gleaming metal instrument approaching the threshold of my mouth, it might be just me, but a thing such as that was hardly a natural occurrence. As the demons pitchfork inched lower and lower to my opened mouth, it also inched closer and closer to my sporadically beating heart, the inevitable was coming closer to just plain ‘evitable’ it could not be stopped.. then all of a sudden, my heart skipped a beat-
Grant Brandon, age 15
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