A penetrating fear gripped me as I stared at Doctor Cartwright's face, now twisted with cruelty. It was a fear that in other circumstances might be called 'paralyzing,' but I was utterly unable to budge even a single muscle. Unfamiliar sensations blanketed me – why does it feel like there's a crunchy layer of tissue paper underneath my dermis? Suddenly, the nurse Edie wheeled back into my field of vision with a motion like a door swinging. Her nostrils pulsed as she spoke.
“I'd definitely say this one's ready to go, Doctor,” she sneered as Cartwright slithered his long hands into a pair of surgical gloves. She moved over to the other side of the doctor, and the click of her shoes against the linoleum resounded in my skull like a mallet hitting a temple block.
“OK, prep his jaw while I get the apparatus into place,” Cartwright said as he walked back behind my chair again. His voice seemed to flange and oscillate as he spoke, as if some unseen person was messing with the tone control on his voice while moving a fan in front of his mouth, or something. My vision began to change in ways that were barely perceptible at first, but soon became profoundly disorienting. Staring up at the light which the nurse Edie positioned over me, I was suddenly unable to determine its distance away from my face. The doctor began making clanking sounds behind my chair, and when I looked at the nurse Edie, her lips had turned an impossible torrid red and were pursed into a smirk of anticipation as she looked past me at whatever he was doing. I thought I heard Cartwright chuckle softly as a pulsing, whirring sound began to emanate from just behind my head.
“Come on, Edie, I'm almost ready here,” huffed Cartwright.
“Oh sorry, Doctor – I just love to watch you work!” replied the nurse Edie as she pushed her shoulders back ever so slightly just barely licked her teeth. She bent over me to reach some piece of equipment, and came up with an apricot-sized contraption of metal and white plastic, along with a big tube of blue gel. She told me to open wide, which I instinctively did in spite of the terror. Placing the metal thing in my mouth, she clicked a few ratchets on it and it sprung into shape, holding my mouth open to the point of discomfort. Then, she began to slather the blue gel on the outside of my jaw. I can't deny that, through the fear, I felt a subtle flush of arousal as she did this. A profound numbness began to dominate wherever the gel had been applied, and she gave the metal device a last jarring adjustment.
The nurse Edie parted her obscene lips for an instant before cooing : “Doctor – he's ready.”
Doctor Cartwright abruptly hove into my view, his mouth now obscured by an operating mask, but his eyes still ablaze with malice. He swiftly brought the whirring machine in front of my face.
“All righty,” said Cartwright. “Let's get this show on the road!”
And with that, he plunged toward me with the noisy tool. I couldn't scream. (30,595)
OK, serial novella, LW-style. Finish this one up for me, cro-mags.
__
I had a horrible toothache, so I made an appointment to see the dentist. The rest of my work day was a living hell, as I tried to keep my face from screwing up into a mask of agony during meetings and snapped inappropriately at people on the phone. I heard that the boss was mad about my behavior but managed to sneak out of the office before he could chew my face off. My drive home was pockmarked with near-misses and roiling road rage as the tooth beagle kept gnawing away at my nerve. When I got home, my wife gave me a kiss on the cheek which sent swords of pain through my jaw and into my cranium. I took a bunch of Ibuprofen, cursed the fact that I hadn't saved any Vicodin that I had left over from my foot operation, and headed to to bed. Of course, sleep was impossible until sheer exhaustion overtook the machete sensation and I passed out.
When I woke up I was starving, but I forewent my customary bowl of "Kashi" brand cereal due to the blinding pain in my head. At this point, I was totally unfit to drive and couldn't even really speak, so my wife took the morning off from her job and drove me to the dentist. I signed my pathetic name on the sign-in sheet and sat twitching in the waiting room until the nurse called me.
I walked into the white room and sat down on a dentist chair so high-tech that I'm surprised it was declassified. Even through the pain I could tell it was really cool and was barely able to suppress an urge to bark Picard-style space commands. The nurse came back in and took my blood pressure, which I thought was odd for a tooth extraction, but whatever. The nurse looked pretty hot; her "Spongebob" scrubs were about a size too small and her short hair was tinted a kinky purple. This didn't really help ease my blinding discomfort, however.
The doctor came in, looking very much like a thinner Gene Hackman. He had a big bluish birthmark on the side of his cheek and I remember that he smelled like Tabasco.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Cartwright. Looks like you're in some pain, huh?"
I nodded gingerly.
"OK, Hank, you just hang in there. We're going to get you all fixed up. Edie, let's get Hank set up -- administer the anesthetic and get him secured."
The nurse, Edie, said "You'll feel a pinch" and inserted an IV of clear fluid into my arm and began to manipulate some apparatus behind my chair. Within a few seconds, the murderous pain had dulled to a throb and I was feeling more relaxed. Edie swivelled some metal pieces out from behind the chair and snapped them in place at the side of my head, locking it in place.
"Hey!" I drawled.
"Don't worry, Hank," Edie said with a wink. "This is just to immobilize your head so it doesn't move while we're working." In my peripheral vision, I could see that she was doing something with the IV.
Shortly thereafter, I felt a metallic chill and started to hear things in a weird, crunchy, amplified way, like as if I was listening to the world through a paper cup.
The doctor popped back into my frame of vision. He looked different. He said, "How we doing, Hank?" and his mouth curled in a sickening, inhuman smile. Behind his eyes I could see a bonfire of hate, and I would have screamed. But in fact, I couldn't speak at all.
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