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horrors & dread #17: This one is about hyperdontia which appears to be a real thing that can actually happen...

These online meetings are killing you. Hours whizz by and decisions get made, then an email comes out to confirm the decisions, then someone who couldn’t attend pops up to say they disagree with the decisions, and so another meeting is booked, and so on. Today though you’re already flagging after your first call. Your jaw feels tired somehow; fatigued from rattling off pleasantries and playing polittricks with stakeholders.

Yeah, your tongue feels heavy, it’s an effort to even speak today. You wriggle it around in your mouth and bristle when you hear it make an audible and unfamiliar click-clack. Impossibly it feels like you’re straightening out a plastic watch strap when you attempt to lay it flat.

Instinctively your fingers go in expecting to find a sore or ulcer to squeeze but no, your forefinger pads down on a firm molar. The ridges of the tooth are rough to the touch. You flinch gagging back vomit and slide your finger up from the tip of your tongue to as far back without retching. Your brain tingles from the shock of what you’re feeling. There is a straight row of teeth growing out of your tongue, housed in-between the other two on either side of your jaw. A calcium column. An exoskeleton for expression.

You need to see it. You open your next meeting to trigger the preview video on your webcam and stick your tongue out. You emit only a single yelp when the white glimmer of mountainous teeth appears clearly on screen poking out of the soft pink muscle.

Your fingers go back to your lips and into your mouth. You expect a ringing dental pain when you apply any force but there’s nothing. It just feels like you’re pressing a hard candy onto your tongue. It gives you confidence for your next move. The fingers and thumb curl around the first foreign fang and firmly you begin to pull. You fight your own tongue from lifting up, forcing it to stay still in the gutter of your mouth as you wrestle with the growth.

There’s a welling of blood that taints your tongue, a taste of sweet copper, and the tooth comes free. A little rush of suction as it pulls free and thin strands of nerves tickle like tiny threads from an unravelling jumper. You hold the glistening tooth up to the light. The nerves are a blue purple and squirm like a time-lapsed fungus, almost as if they are reaching out to latch onto something else. A bead of blood runs down the smooth side of the tooth and blots into the bundle of tentacles before splashing onto your desk. You drop the tooth which bounces twice and rolls to a stop in the carpet.

It doesn’t take long to extract the others. Seven in all. Lucky seven. Each you discard like you would a chewed-off fingernail, flicking them away. While there isn’t any pain, the blood continues to pool. Your fingers go in again and push into the jagged craters left from the yanked teeth. It’s like someone has dug a trench into your tongue. Bloody, you pull a tissue from the packet on your desk and stuff it into your mouth to staunch the flow.

After a minute or so you pull the paper out, now a lump of gory red, and slop it onto the table alongside some of the fallen teeth. The bleeding hasn’t stopped but as you go to reach for another tissue you notice your monitor and all the people staring at you agog. Somehow you’ve logged into the call! One of the dropped teeth must’ve fallen on the Enter key maybe? It’s worse than the growths you’ve found, the embarrassment of it all, the horror of witnesses’ stings much deeper, brings it home.

‘Sorry?’ You manage, as a pulpy cocktail of blood and drool runs down your chin.

There’s a moment’s silence before someone says, ‘You’re on mute.’

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash