Toothache by Xueyi Zhou
Associate editor Zoa Coudret on today’s bonus flash: Xueyi Zhou’s prose is as sharp and forceful as a set of hungry teeth. This story made me feel the narrator's hunger, and I couldn't look away as it reached a terrifying climax.
Toothache
There was a hole in my molar where I hid the things I had stolen. Bad teeth are hereditary, I was told by my mother, and that’s why we don’t have snacks at home. The teeth you wear are the dentist money you don’t have. To self-discipline my sprawling front teeth, I pinched them every day, my fingernails being the straightening pliers. What I ended up with were stubborn crooked teeth, fragile peeling nails, and a loud hunger gnawing at me.
Another thing I had failed to discipline was the craving, so I lifted ring mints in the grocery store, before I grew tall enough to be considered a weirdo around the candy section. It was easy—HD surveillance hadn’t come, and all the tools I needed for my crime were long-sleeves and long pants. I grabbed a fistful of mints and dropped them back to the pile, leaving one pinned to the palm by the pinky. Then I withdrew my hand into the sleeve like I was just pulling up my pants, the plastic packaging traveling down my leg and stayed along my ankle. I only allowed myself one candy before I slept to quiet the echoing hunger. A sweet dream.
What started as fallen sprinkles of black dust continued to expand into a strong wound, strong enough to hurt me. It grew as my hunger grew. The blue mouthwash I spat out turned into a cloudy light purple. Listerine, Crest, Colgate, or the supermarket brands—as long as the liquid came in blue. Blue neutralizes yellow; blue accentuates white. The mouthwashes didn’t help, but they appeased my mother’s interrogating looks. I concealed my sin by performing the efforts.
The hole was getting bigger and deeper, its appetite flaming. I told my mother I was waiting in the bank when I devoured two Big Mac Combo meals. I apologized to my friends that I had overslept and skipped breakfast, so no one would say, wow, you eat like a hungry ghost, like, you have multiple mouths to feed. I answered, I do have more than you can see. Then they raised their eyebrows and voices. You’re not pregnant, are you? they asked. You surely look like you are, and you really need to stop eating if you want a date. Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever kissed?
I was afraid to kiss anyone, because I didn’t want tongues other than mine excavating my secret, until I saw a boy whose eyes collected stars. His name became a mantra, the tyrant of my mind, so I kept it inside my tooth-hole. I only referred to him by alias. Every time I invented a code name, I licked my hole, ensuring the treasure I’d buried there was still safe.
The hole demanded to be fed, or it would begin to feed on me. The blackness had bled to the teeth next to the molar and soon it would dye through my mouth. I had to tell him and kiss him before the gravity of the black hole pulled away my tongue to forever silence my voice, returning me back to a tail-wagging, scavenging animal. I called.
I didn’t eat much at the dinner, trying to leash the desire I kept in the hole. The moment I said it, it sharpened into a blade: either it would slit him into my meat, or it would slash me. So when the boy said that he had never loved me, that he was only trying to be nice, that no offense, but he could only kiss girls with perfect white teeth, I knocked him out and ate him piece by piece. He was trumpeting his complaint like a cicada, but he didn’t taste crispy. His fingers looked nice but chewed like soggy meat fries: boneless, easy to swallow. His lips were twitching in my mouth as I savored the coolness of his minty lip balm—that’s how we kissed. When I was sucking the last drop of his blood off my finger, I heard his lips speak in me again. I see all the crumbs in your tooth hole. Of all the things you’ve stolen. I know all your secrets now. I crouched down and covered my mouth, choked by a toothache.
Xueyi Zhou is an emerging writer in mainland China. A native Chinese, she enjoys the challenge of writing in English, a language out of her parents' reach. More importantly, she enjoys the eye-rolling of her family when they demand to know what the words say but can't. She currently works full-time in a stainless-steel company in Foshan. She is on Facebook and is figuring out Twitter @xueyizhou.
