Brenda sits in the mint-green dentist’s chair and blinks her eyes as she looks deep into the light that shines above her. It’s positioned directly into her eyes. She wishes the nurse had given her the sunglasses like she usually does.
Brenda is in the room alone. This entire office building smells like a new car. The nurse left her at least fifteen minutes ago. She is getting very anxious. Her stomach turns as she thinks about leaving.
Her mind begins to wonder and with the edge of her squishy tongue, she outlines the sunken divots along her gums. She sticks the tip into every hole where a tooth should be, one after the other. She hits a spot on her gums that is still sore. The blood drips down her tongue and into her throat. She leans over and throws up into the small sink that is positioned next to her. She wipes the vomit off of the side of her face with the paper towel that the nurse clipped around her collarbone.
The doctor quietly walks in and makes slow circles around her chair. Brenda never moves her head, but her eyes follow him closely as he rotates around her. His creamy, sagging skin adds layers onto his face and the back of his neck. His chin dips so far down it looks like it is sliding off of his face. Brenda wipes the side of her mouth one more time.
The dentist’s icy hands pull the skin on her cheekbones tight. Brenda’s eyes widen as her mouth does. Shivers run down and across her body. Blood and drool collect at the tip of his finger as he traces her gums.
“Mmhmm,” his decrepit voice carries. “I’m sorry about what happened, Brenda.” His head looks to the ceiling, but his eyes look down towards her in the chair. “It’s really disgusting,” he speaks slowly trying hard not to put his foot into his mouth. “It’s just really disgusting what some people can do.”
Two years and twenty-three days ago, when Brenda was still with her husband, they had gone down to Chicago. Brenda’s sister’s husband had just left her, and Brenda was summoned down to comfort her. They stayed at her sister’s place, along with her brother and his wife, and her mother.
She remembers that Saturday night like it was yesterday. Her sister had given them a gift certificate to some pub. Brenda was standing outside of the bar near some street that she didn’t, and still doesn’t, know the name of. Brenda can still feel the paper of the receipt from dinner glide across her skin as she moved it from side to side on her hand.
Her mooch of a husband stood ten feet from the doorway, talking to some blonde that he knew in high school. He was drunk and so was she. Brenda, on the other hand, wasn’t drunk enough. Her husband had thrown his arms around the blonde and kissed the side of her face. Brenda’s not a jealous person; she had grown to dislike her husband greatly.
“Hey Hun,” he said as he looked over his shoulders at Brenda. “Take my wallet, will you? I’ll meet you outside in a minute.”
A minute turned into two, which turned into three, until finally Brenda couldn’t take it anymore. She stood at the edge of the sidewalk and tried to look for a ride. It was close to bar time so the street was littered with masses of girls in stilettos and men with too much cologne sprayed near the collar of their shirts.
Brenda pulled her short, black skirt down towards her knobby knees. A few blocks before, she had seen a shopping area with extravagant hotels. She decided that that was the area that she was going to get a cab. Instead of walking with the rest of the crowd in that direction, Brenda opted to cut through an alley.
Her heels clicked in the alley as she pushed her feet one in front of the other. She had borrowed her sister’s red pea coat that night. Its wool fabric itched against her delicate skin. The alley smelt of musk and smoke. Brenda sneezed loudly and cursed her husband under her breath.
Exposed in the darkness of the alley was a small door at least thirty feet from her. One blinking light hung from above the top of the door’s frame. A small cement step sat wedged underneath the frame. The door was a faded white with the paint peeling right off of it. It swung open, and Brenda stopped in the darkness on instinct. At this point in Brenda’s memory, everything turns to black and white and red.
A small, yet fierce, man flew out of the door and onto the pavement. He nearly kissed the ground. He stood up hurriedly. The man stumbled over himself again. He wasn’t drunk, only slightly on rage. His face was red with anger. He began shouting slews of sentences in some language that Brenda couldn’t understand. She wasn’t sure if it was actually another language or if she was just too far away to understand him. His hair looked plastered to his pin-shaped head. Brenda thought he looked ridiculous yelling in the alley like that.
A minute passed and another, much larger, man with a tattoo of a striking angel covering his arm came to the frame of the door. Brenda inched closer slowly and began to make out what they were saying. Her curiosity grew stronger with every word. It was nice to get caught up in drama that wasn’t her own.
“I built you,” the small man shouted. His mouth poured out more slurs all layered with words that used to make Brenda’s mom say, “I’ll wash your mouth out with soap, young lady.” The man was so hard to understand.
The larger man was clearly saying things, but he was speaking much too softly for Brenda to even know what his voice sounded like. She walked a little closer to make everything out. She could see that the man behind the door had a hat pushed to the side over his chubby face.
Then suddenly, the large man shut the door forcefully. The smaller man kicked the ground, sending a cloud of dirt up to his knees. He spun around in a circle. His tongue was still slurring.
Brenda’s first reaction was to lean back farther into the darkness of the alley to hide. There was a plastic garbage can to her right and she etched closer to it. Her heel got stuck in a crack in the pavement and made an echoing snap. It was too surreal to believe.
I’ve seen this movie, Brenda thought to herself.
“That best of been a stray cat,” the man said as he approached the area that she was occupying. “Who the hell are you?”
His strong hands held the back of Brenda’s neck tightly. She was entirely speechless. Her mind was blank. She was terrified; she couldn’t even remember her own name. She felt the clamminess of his hands as he pulled tighter around her. Brenda’s neck became as red as his face. Her hand lost grip of the wallet and it dropped down onto the pavement.
She tried to move forward, but he put his foot in front of hers and sent her to the ground. The man bent down and snatched the wallet. As he was rising to his feet, a small group of drunken college girls passed across the street that Brenda was trying to get to from the alley. A nearly inaudible moan escaped from her mouth. Her jaw clenched, her teeth grinding together.
His foot moved so slowly and so quickly at the same time. Water leaked out of her eyes, vomit out of her mouth, and blood out of her face. Her body was curled tightly together.
His foot made contact with her mouth and her face sunk in with his shoe. He pushed the wallet farther into his pocket. He looked at her and what he had done to her. The blood that he was standing in soaked through the thin souls of his shoes. His socks squished as he wiggled his toes.
As he pulled his foot back, her teeth littered the pavement. One was ledged into the leather on his shoe. He whined like a child as he ran his shoe on the pavement to remove it. As hard as he scrapped, it wouldn’t come out. He lifted his foot up to his waist and pulled it out with his fingers. He began breathing heavy. He ran out of the alley leaving Brenda in a sea of her own blood.
“All set here, Brenda,” the dentist says standing up. “It’ll take us a few weeks to take more x-rays of your mouth and get things in order, but soon we should be sending them off to the molder who will make your new teeth.”

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