The heart dentist

a short story of terror about a dentist and a hungry woman

Author’s note:

In this short story, I’ve drawn from the traditional image of the Vila in Slavic folklore — the culture I was born into — and reimagined it to serve the needs of the narrative. I hope you enjoy this deeper exploration of the lore.

---

photo from Pinterest

I’m a dentist.

My father was a dentist. My grandfather was a dentist, and then, the father of my grandfather, and his father, too. You could say it’s a family business. A legacy, if you will. Something being passed down from generation to generation.

Some families pass down their bloodline family jewelry, a noble title, a house or castle, land — not us.

We, the Newsgent family, pass to one another the ordeal of looking into people’s mouths, teeth flossed or not, breath fresh or not, and telling them just how many things are wrong with them: and not just their teeth, but their sleeping position habits, their diet, the nutrients they lack and, sometimes, the kind of sexual activities they participate in, as well.

And I must admit, sometimes it is fun to do so. Especially to the particularly anxious or worried ones: to see the panic grow in their eyes as I leave the room and let the assistant take the lead, as she tells them the exact price of all the procedures I have just listed as absolutely necessary for them to not lose the ability to bite down into their favorite ice cream with no pain. That’s how I know I got them, and that’s how I know I got my salary.

Maybe this particular tendency is something that’s been passed down the family line as well.

I do not hate my job, nor do I particularly love it. It’s a job, just like any other one: you wake up thinking of it, you go to sleep thinking about how short your free time doing something that wasn’t your job was. On the weekends, you wonder if you’d rather be doing something else, but then, that’s what you’ve always been doing, you don’t know anything else, and actually, you don’t remember your life before this job — a childhood or anything as arcane as that — nor do you know what else you would rather be doing, anyway. And it’s a family thing. So you just keep doing it. At least it brings in money; at least there’s parts of it you can learn to enjoy.

To be more precise, the quirks of my job are quite different from what my grandfather was used to, and a little bit different from the career my dad had started off on. In some way, it is more interesting and less mundane, less repetitive than what the vast majority of my lineage was used to: I cannot imagine doing this every single day of my life, ten hours a day, and always and only be looking at human mouths.

Thank God, there is some variety in this world! I had to learn much more than what my grandfather or his father ever had to, and it made it all a little bit more fascinating.

I was six when the Gates were officially opened.

On July 17th, year MMXVIII Extra-Dicio, I remember being in front of the TV watching the ceremony and not understanding much of it. My parents were more shaken by it, though the consequences of that day became clear to me only much later in my life; I remember my mother asking where would we keep all of them, and my father just sitting there, silently, not saying anything, but the air surrounding him, completely still and cold, being more effective in expressing his thoughts than any word he could have ever used.

Nonetheless, the Opening turned out to be quite positive for both of them. In completely different ways, of course.

My mother was jobless at that time, but absolutely passionate about fashion: she hoarded journals upon journals filled with notes, sketches and dreams drawn on paper of clothing, lingerie and swimsuit that seemed, at the time, too much of a thing of fantasy for them to ever become a real thing, to ever become real life.

But as the new races started to settle in throughout the States, and our city of Turnetbee, one of the major supporters of the Opening since the very beginning of the project, started welcoming more and more completely new and original citizens, and took on itself the responsibility of making all the changes and the accommodations needed for the new, golden era of co-existence that was approaching, a lot of things about our daily lives started changing, too.

Suddenly, one had to be careful of the small-sized faes at every pedestrian crossing, and signs telling everyone not to throw bread at the ducks in the local lake started popping up everywhere, not for the health and well-being of the animals, but because that had become the home of the nymphs, too; goblins and gnomes had brought in precious metals and crystals our world hadn’t known of before, and their small stores spread across the country like wildfire; one could never be sure whether a dog walking alone by the road was a lost pet, or a shapeshifter; by the beach, events of soothing mermaid concerts started taking place, and many people took so much pleasure in listening to them, a huge market of relaxing, before-going-to-sleep records was born — and that quickly became a new form of addiction, later on officially named as the sea blues, and mermaid music was soon labelled as an illegal form of hypnosis, but that’s a whole different story.

In many ways, the world started changing, day to day life started changing, society started changing. The parks, the bars, the schools, the shopping centres, the hairdressers, the nail salons, the barber shops, the doctors’ offices, the libraries, all the public places started filling up with new folk.

My mother met an elf man that saw a vision in her sketches and her drawings and she ran away with him.

He invested in her dreams, she remarried — one of the first interracial marriages in the country — and though they were never supposed to have offspring, as the issue of mixed races and a woman being pregnant of a fetus that would have unknown effects on her body was still unanswered at the time, she abandoned the goal she’d always had of having a big family and reached extreme success with her own line of clothing, lingerie and swimsuits.

To this day, I still see her maiden name on billboards, advertisements and stores across the city, along with that of the house of the elf that stole her from my father and me: the Elyra Feylock, EF for short. They actually sound pretty good together, better than my mother’s maiden name with my father’s surname; maybe they were always meant to be.

While she became rich and famous, me and my father stayed at the family clinic.

But things changed for dentists, too: maybe not as drastically as for a woman who was leaving her family behind and approaching a completely different world, a completely different race, but still, they were changing.

There were suddenly new things to learn, new ways of treating new patients, new teeth to learn about, new ways of taking care of them, new problems, new dental issues, new solutions. I witnessed my father learn through trial and error — because many of these creatures had never really known what a dentist was before stepping through the Gate, and it was already a miracle that they even bothered to put themselves under the dental probe of a bald man in a white coat — and I saw him try his best on dwarves, satyrs, orcs, trolls, centaurs, dryads, lizardkin, all of them.

Only elves were an exception. My father never allowed a single one of them to step into the clinic. He could easily justify this decision against accusations of racism: elves turned out to have an entirely different tooth composition, one so dense that no tool made from human materials could penetrate it. My father never decided to invest in the right tools other dentists were using: he didn’t mind drawing fewer patients than them, and something else, on the topic of elves, was more important to him than finances.

To me, as I was growing up, all of this was fascinating. My father was a hero in my eyes, consistently trying his best and learning new things no one could ever teach him; and I knew he was doing it partly because he would have to, in a few years, pass on all of the best knowledge he had to me, and I would have to, at my own time, continue the legacy and keep on learning even more.

It felt like there would never be an end to all the learning. I spent all of my time after school at the clinic, first only observing and taking interest in all the different species that came to my father. Since my father was one of the best skilled experts in the city, with the most accessible of prices, too, his fame had quickly spread amongst non-humans.

So I could sit there and observe endlessly, and often I would have my drawing journal with me — the one I hid from my father, because it reminded him too much of my mother, and as that was the only thing I had in me that was a remnant of what she had left of her own character in my life, I subconsciously clung onto that hobby of mine very fervently — and I would draw the creatures I saw sitting in the waiting room as long as he wasn’t checking on me.

Vampires were my favorite ones.

To accommodate them, my father would open up the clinic during the night once a week, and for that night, only vampire customers were allowed in.

I happily lost sleep to be able to sit in the waiting room and observe them, realising they were exactly everything I had read about in fantasy books before: the pale skin, the hypnotising eyes, the long nails, the elegant hands, the sharp teeth, and the stench of blood covered up by suffocating, flowery perfumes. The only thing that was different was their clothing, as they didn’t dress up in a gothic style like I had imagined them to do, or at least not all of them did.

But their teeth were particularly curious, and my father told me more than once how much he enjoyed treating them, how interesting they were to him, and how all of them deeply appreciated his care, so neither he or I would ever have to worry about getting into trouble with a vampire. I was protected from biting for life thanks to my father’s job.

I talked to a lot of the customers, too. It was easy, as a kid: even across other races, I was regarded as cute, especially by the ladies. I learned a lot about other worlds and other customs at that time, and I even made some across-the-races friends. I would sometimes meet those kids outside of the clinic, going to the cinema with their fairytale parents or being invited for lunch at their house on a Sunday (I missed homemade meals ever since my mother had left; no one in the house was skilled enough to cook, now, because the expertise was limited to teeth-related matters only). My father didn’t have anything against that, as long as I didn’t mingle with elves or kin similar to them.

Then, as I grew up and started assisting my father in his job, contact with clients became more professional and a little colder. My father passed down to me the knowledge he managed to learn, but there was still more to discover, and soon enough, as he became older and started saying that old brain of his could not handle any more new information coming in, I became the one to take over the clinic, allowing him to enjoy his well-deserved pension.

Years went by. I was good, I still am, and was getting even better and better. I learned all that there was to learn, I treated all kinds of new patients, even the ones crossing the Gate from galaxies away — though their reasoning behind that always seemed to skip me — and here I am, now, continuing the legacy as I was always meant to.

I don’t think about my mother that often anymore. I still don’t treat elf patients.

And sometimes, during days like this one, when my assistant tells me that everyone scheduled today will be human, and I can already envision just how monotone, how boring the day will be, I think back about my grandfather and his father, who only ever did this, every day, all day, seeing human patients with their silly problems and silly teeth and silly thoughts they can’t express with all differents kinds of tools inside their mouths — and I’m grateful, because now the job is a little more interesting, a little less monotone.

I’ve just said goodbye to the last client of the day, and I hear my assistant escorting the man to the reception for the payment as I close the door to the treatment room behind me. There, awaits my desk, my laptop on it, a book I haven’t touched in weeks by the side.

With coffee in my hand — it is 6pm, but caffeine stopped having an effect on me long ago — I walk closer to sit down and take a sip. I lounge back, I take a breath in, I look at the room.

The light comes through the window in between the venetian blinds in lines of bright and dark, as the sun will start setting in a few hours. It’s hot outside, but here, the temperature is optimal.

I glance at the small, round wooden table by the window. Jessica, my assistant, forgot to buy fresh flowers this week, as I ask her to do every Tuesday, so the skeleton of those of the past week embellish the vase instead. When my mother was still with us, our house always had a bouquet of fresh flowers on the kitchen table. I guess something about that has stuck to me; I guess I am still looking for familiarity in that kind of way.

I sip the coffee as I feel my gaze stuck on the dead flowers with no apparent reason. I’m not thinking about much; this happens often, after a day full of work, when I’m drained of all thought and any will to form one. I don’t dislike it particularly: there’s not much else I wish to be doing, anyway. Just to finish my coffee, and then get ready to go home.

But the sipping goes slowly, just how I like it. I let the seconds go by. The clock ticks on the wall, and I breathe in the scent of the air, and I still stare at the dead flowers.

I didn’t ask Jessica to throw them away. She’s had a lot on her plate lately, her younger kid being sick, the older one getting in trouble with some ogre children at school, and all. It is not the right time for me to be bothering her even further. I can throw out the dead flowers myself.

Suddenly, a sound awakens me from my slumber.

The intercom buzzes by my laptop. I blink at it like it’s foreign, surprised by the interruption. Only after a long pause do I press the button to answer.

Unrushed but surprised, Jessica says:

“There’s a lady that came without an appointment. She laments a particularly daunting toothache. Can I let her in, Doctor?”

I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s twenty past six. The clinic often is full to the brim up until 7pm, but today has been a slower day, and the lady, whoever she is, is lucky to have found herself in that kind of situation today, out of all days.

With no rush, I press the button on the intercom and I tell Jessica to let her in.

I stand up. Still looking at the flowers with a dead stare, I finish my coffee.

I place the empty cup back on my desk. I will most likely forget it there.

I go towards the door, but before I can get too close, it opens, and the lady Jessica was talking about appears in front of me.

Oh, but she didn’t say it was this kind of lady.

She is elegantly dressed. Much more elegantly than what is needed for this kind of visit, and much more elegantly than I’ve ever seen any other creature dress, but maybe that’s something that belongs to her kin. Her richly decorated dress has the color of deep forests, gold-threaded accents on the sleeves and a shimmering trim by her ankles, and it fits the shape of her body perfectly, leaving nothing to the imagination and underlining all that she has of the most seductive and alluring, including the breasts, made to stand out to the eye by a big, golden necklace in the shape of the sun right above them.

It takes all of my free will to not focus on it too much and look her in the face: a pale complexion, full cheeks, a tint of rose sprinkled across them, and two bright eyes, lined and shadowed with delicate precision, that make the second focus of her entire appearance. Her red hair is beautifully put up in an intricate updo I wouldn’t be able to give a name to, with jeweled hairpins nestled between the strands — diamonds and gold glinting in the light.

The woman is beautiful and she’s looking at me like she knows it. She is dainty and surrounded by an aura that makes her look like she’s disappearing now, and then appearing again, like behind a mist, or like she’s made of mist herself.

When I study her closely, I see a pair of small wings on her back, and I immediately know she’s a vila.

My heart skips a beat.

I swallow. I’m not used to the company of beautiful women — and I’m not used to having in front of me the undeniable, deadly charm of a vila.

She’s looking at me like she really wants to see me. Her scent makes its way to my nostrils, and I recognise in it something I’ve only heard stories about: between her sensual, magnetic perfume, I smell what I know to be her hormones, the biological marker of her kind. I find it strange — all of this for a toothache? — but her beauty immediately blocks all of my capacity to ask myself questions or form any doubts.

“Good evening, Doctor,” she says with a smile, and it’s only then that I remember that I’m alive, standing there, and supposed to be delivering a service to her.

“Good evening to you,” I reply, a little stiff, and I want to take a step back, but I’m unable to. I try to clear my voice. “What can I help you with, Lady…?”

“Issabeth,” she completes my sentence, and I notice that’s not a vila name, but I don’t comment on it.

“Lady Issabeth,” I repeat, trying to pronounce it correctly: her s is particularly whispery, and I can’t tell whether it’s a defect of speech she has, or it is the correct sound in her original tongue. “What can I help you with?”

At that question, I can notice the gaze of the vila morphing, as if she has been waiting for a man to ask her that question for her entire life. It makes me feel uncomfortable, yet at the same time — mesmerised, and I’m stuck in my place as she flutters her eyelashes, points her chin down, looks at me from below, and puffs out her chest a little.

I can feel my hands sweating. I don’t know what I’ve done, but I feel myself in danger.

Unknowingly, my eyes run to the door. It’s closed. Jessica is far away.

“I have a toothache, Doctor,” the vila coos, arms behind her and that innocent, child-like gaze offered to me like a gift I should be wary of. “Would you kindly help me with that, Doctor?”

I look at her and I find myself unable to say a single word. Therefore, to answer her, I only nod and then, feeling the resistance of my own body, I point to the doctor’s chair behind her, to the left of the door.

She turns around to look at it, as if surprised that that kind of thing would be found in a dentist’s clinic, and as she does, her green dress dances around her hips and her ankles, and her red hair moves as if she was underwater.

I cannot understand this creature or explain her to myself, the way she moves and the world surrounding her seems to move in response to her, all according to her, her scent almost being a tangible, real presence around her, and I can’t look away from her.

“Oh,” she lets out a small, surprised sound. She glances at the chair as if she’s suddenly both aware and scared of it, and her index finger rests against her lower lip, weighing the moment. But after a pause, she nods. “Of course.”

She makes her way to the chair, every single one of her steps light and elegant, like she’s following a tune playing only inside of her own head — but maybe, it is playing everywhere, and I’m the only one who can’t hear it? What a fool that would make out of me — and as she comes closer to it, she carefully lays down on it, turning once again to face me with those big, bright eyes that seem to be asking something of me, something I am yet to know.

I take a few steps closer. I don’t have my white coat on as I should, and that’s very unprofessional of me, but I don’t notice. For some reason, the presence of this woman, the way she studies me, the way she expects something out of me, make me feel nervous, distracted, unsure about what it is that I’m supposed to be doing exactly.

See her. I snap back out of it. See her. This is what I ought to do. Look for the reason for her toothache and help her with it. Tell her exactly what she needs, without telling her why she needs it, and then send her back to Jessica to talk about the payment and the appointment for each of the solutions of the problems I’m about to give her. Yes, just like with any other patient. This is just like any other visit.

“So, come again, what is your issue?” I ask as I come closer, hoping she will add something more to her previous sentence, something more illuminating, more useful, something that will give my brain material to work with, something else to think about, instead of her beauty, her face, her hair, her green dress, her scent.

But she doesn’t. She decides to leave me in my suffering, in my frustration, in my distraction. She just repeats:

“I have a toothache, Doctor. It started this morning, but I can’t bear it. That’s why I had to come, see you, quickly, Doctor.”

She speaks as if she’s out of breath, as if something or someone is chasing her and she’s been trying to run away from it, and she has chosen to come to me looking for refuge.

I try to not let her notice my difficulty at staying calm and collected, being in this proximity to her. I nod. I take a breath.

“Alright. Let’s see that. Open your mouth for me, please.”

I get closer, about to bend down to see what exactly is wrong, but the woman turns to me, weirded out, and does not move to open her mouth, so I get further away, not understanding.

“Miss Issabeth…?”

“Not my mouth teeth,” she says, and she says it almost laughing at me, almost calling me silly for ever having such a thought, almost telling me that it’s obvious that is not what we’re talking about. “My other teeth.”

I glance at her, still, and it takes me a while to understand. I let my brain work on it — and finally, as I do, I’m distracted away from all of the lethal weapons of her beauty and her allure that she’s been pointing at me, but it doesn’t last long.

When I realise, my face immediately goes red.

Oh God. Yes, it is so red, I bet nothing is able to hide this fact.

I’m so embarrassed. Is this what she wants me to do? Is this her plan? Is this what she came here for?

A vila doesn’t only have teeth in her mouth. She also has them in her heart.

“I’m sorry… Come again?”

She looks at me like I’m the biggest idiot on the planet. And maybe I am. She has the kind of gaze that could easily convince a man he really is, indeed, the biggest idiot this woman has ever seen.

“You want me to… check your heart?”

“My heart teeth,” she underlines like it’s obvious. “You’re a teeth doctor, a dentist, no? This is what you do.”

I nod uncomfortably. Yes, this is, indeed, what we do, but I’ve never visited a vila before, and I only know what that entails from stories I’ve heard from elsewhere. And it terrifies me. All that I’ve heard about it — it terrifies me.

What’s worse, I can’t say no now. Once one has invited a vila in, let her in… he better not be changing his mind, not be sending her back to where she has come from. If one cares about his life at all, he is never to do anything of that sort.

“Then please visit me, Doctor,” she insists, and this time I see a slight, sly smile on her lips. She knows exactly what she’s doing: she’s hungry, and she hopes for an easy victim to devour.

My heart races. I have to be stronger than what I think I am, in order to survive this. I cannot let her take over me; I have to bear whatever I am about to see; I have to not look away, to not shy away. I have to, if I want to live.

Keeping that same smile on her lips, she looks at me directly as her hands slowly go to her chest, where her green dress covers her breasts.

I swallow hard and I look at them, because I know I’m forced to look at them; I push through just how uncomfortable that makes me, just how wrong it feels, to be looking at a woman’s chest like that, even though she wants me to, even though that’s the whole point of it.

She pulls down the dress, revealing the bra she’s wearing underneath, a pale, flesh-pink color that almost matches the fair complexion of her skin. I get distracted by how many tiny freckles she has on that area, and I try to not look at them too intensely, focusing on what she wants me to see, instead: right there, between her two breasts, there is a rectangular mark, almost like a tiny door in her chest, a tiny bit to the left. Its borders are a darker color of her skin, a trembling line looking like a scar, almost.

“Open it,” she says, and her tone is frivolous, flirty, and it makes me feel unsafe. I study her eyes.

“Me?” I ask, hands trembling at the sole thought of touching her right there, right now.

“Yes, you, Doctor,” she confirms, moving around in the chair, and her movements making her breasts jump left and right slightly. I don’t look at them. I turn at her face. “You’re the one supposed to do it. You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”

As she asks me that question for the nth time, I nod, for the nth time. This is what one ought to do with a hungry vila: just nod, just say yes, just do whatever she asks, and pray that your reaction, your response, and the outcome will be the ones that keep you alive.

I come a little closer. I say a prayer in my head. I don’t know how to do what I’m supposed to do, but I hope for my own movements to guide me; she shifts closer to me, opening up her chest a little bit more, as I bring my touch nearer, drawn to it by instinct rather than knowledge. Uncertain whether it’s the right thing to do, I gently grab around the upper right corner of that little door in her skin, pinching at it and pulling it as if I was trying to open a door, hoping it doesn’t hurt her, but convinced that it does — but she doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t move, she doesn’t express any kind of discomfort, and so I continue.

I pull it and, to my surprise, that rectangle of flesh opens exactly as a door would.

I feel my throat tighten up and my stomach churns in revolt — I hope to not feel sick at the sight, because if I were to throw up right there, by her side, it would surely be the end of me — as it opens up and a thick, sickly smell of hot meat, blood and engorged vessels come out. It is a humid, cloying scent that immediately takes over the entire room, attacking my nose and my throat, and I fight against it with all my will, to keep standing there, to not pull away.

Yet I know the worst is yet to come.

I still have to look at it.

I do it, but I do it slowly, careful. I’m not sure if I could take it, to look at it in its entirety, suddenly and out of nowhere: I have heard about men who have never come back from it, men who have gone crazy, men who have died, even. The investigation of their deaths is still ongoing, debated by judges and politicians alike, because the world still lacks shared laws, common ethics, and a moral compass that would be shared among all races.

I don’t want to be one of them; I don’t want my death to be investigated, nor for it to be the last straw towards a restrictive law against the interactions between races; and so I look at it.

The heart of the vila is right there: there, behind the thick door of flesh, so close I could touch it with my own fingers. It beats a slow, steady rhythm — from what I know, it looks slower than that of a human being — and it has a glossy look, as if covered by some kind of transparent substance that protects it from direct contact with the outside world. It seems like a gel oozing over everything, and now that I’ve opened the flesh door, some of it drips down the vila’s chest, but she doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

My own heart races at that sight. I feel the need to throw up, and I push it down. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I will most likely never see anything similar to it ever again.

The heart bears a few dark blotches of various sizes, scattered here and there, and I wonder what they could be: a sign of disease, an indicator of some bad habit like smoking, or just a normal pattern in a vila’s anatomy? I don’t ask.

This is not what I came looking for: the object of my interest lies nestled just beside the heart.

The teeth surround the heart all around. I have read about them, and I know them to be twenty-four exactly, just a few less than those inside of a human mouth. They are tiny, placed tightly one next to the other, and look extremely sharp: if I were to compare them to anything I know about human anatomy, I would say they look similar to a mix of human incisors and canines, but daintier and sharper, much whiter.

I try to focus on them, and ignore the beating heart that’s right into my face, though it’s not easy, because in between the teeth, above them and by their sides, I can see blood running, circulating, and what I would usually call gums, but is actually just flesh of the vila’s chest, organs, and the heart itself, covered by a mix of that transparent gloss, the blood and the liquid of the unidentified, darker spots.

My hands tremble. I gather my courage.

“Where exactly does it hurt?” I ask, and I’m proud of myself, because at least my voice sounds calm and collected, though I am not at all.

“On the right side,” she says, moving her hand to point at the exact spot. I see the flesh under the heart move according to her arm movements, and I feel sicker in my stomach. I deny myself the privilege of throwing up. “Right in the middle.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t even nod any more. I feel the sweat on my brow, as I try to look closer at the spot she pointed at. The teeth there don’t look much different to the other ones at first, but then, I seem to notice some dark spots on the internal sides of it.

“I need some tools,” I say out loud, as if to justify the fact that I will be moving away from her: I have a reason for doing that, and I’m not running away, and she shouldn’t eat me up alive.

I shyly look up at her eyes, to see whether she has understood that, and then, only then, I allow myself to move away to the table where all my cleaned and sanitized tools are.

As I stand over there, I try to take a deep breath. The stench of the heart reaches me there, anyway.

I turn my gaze down at the table, at the tools, at my trembling hands, and I ask myself how the hell did I get myself in this kind of situation. Why is this happening to me? I know a vila never chooses her victims at random — and so I wonder what have I done to get her attention, what have I done to stand out, to become somewhat relevant to her.

I observe my tools and I feel lost. It’s as if I can’t recognise them; I don’t know what I need right now, what I should reach for. My mind is taken over by the fear for my own life, by the panic; but I remind myself, if I do this wrong, the consequences of it won’t be pretty, for sure. I need to do this right. I need to snap out of it.

I glance at my tools again. I take the one I need. I breathe in deeply. I try to ignore the smell. I put on a serious look, and then I turn around to face the vila again.

She’s still there, unmoved, looking at me and what I’m holding in my hand with curiosity.

Not saying a word, I get closer, and I do my job: I examine what I need to, assess the damage, interpret the signs, and determine the necessary course of action. I focus on my role as a doctor entirely.

But I can’t stop the thoughts from coming. The metal tool I’m holding is so close to her heart. If I were to push it into her flesh, would it kill her, or would it only hurt her?

It would be so easy to do it. I’m so close and she’s vulnerable. It could solve my problem instantly; it could save my life; it could prevent me from ever having to see her, ever again, and having to face whatever it is that she made up in her mind for me. I could do it. It would be so easy.

But I don’t. I’m a coward.

I pull back. I straighten myself. I look down at her, and she looks up at me, laying down, exposed and open, her heart beating steadily in her chest, the fading light of the day in my office making golden specks of light come alive on its surface. The teeth around it seem to be looking at me, too, and I breathe in, and I breathe out, and I wonder why it is so quiet. I wonder whether I did something wrong, or maybe I did something well, and I’m going to stay alive, and I’m going to be safe.

“You have two small cavities there,” I simply say. “You will need to get that fixed up.”

Usually, I’d explain exactly where the cavity is — something like, ‘distal side of the upper left second molar’ — but not this time. I don’t want to stretch any of this any longer than it’s supposed to be: I want to say goodbye to Miss Issabeth, and I want to know I’ve made it out alive. And I don’t want to think about the fact that I will have to see her again; to fill up her cavities and do my job for her; to take her money for it and do my job for her. Right now, I just want this to end. I just want her to go away.

The stench of her heart settles down on my clothes, on my hair, on my skin, everywhere.

“Oh, Doctor,” she springs up, an exaggerated exclamation of worry in her voice. I now know with an undeniable certainty she has not come here for the toothache: or, at least, not for that only. “Is it bad? Will it hurt when you do that?”

My heart starts racing again. What is she plotting?

I push my lips into a thin line and I shake my head slightly, keeping my gaze on her. She’s fixing up the top of her dress on her breasts and on her bra again, but the door in the middle of her chest stays open. For some reason, I can’t look away from it, though I want to. The sharp teeth catch the light as the sun sets, the gloss calls out to me, as if it wanted me to touch it, to put my hand over there. The more I study it, the more that fragment of her flesh looks like the mouth of a carnivorous plant.

“It won’t hurt,” I reassure her, though my voice is completely devoid of emotion. I can’t do anything but stare at that heart, at that mouth surrounding it, and have the impression that it wants to jump out to bite me, that it pulses just because it wants to seduce me, to reel me in closer, and that those two breasts were put by the sides of it for the exact same purpose. “It’s a simple procedure. If you want, my assistant Jessica will give you an appointment at the reception desk.”

The vila glances at me and scrunches her nose. She’s not happy that she won’t be talking more with me, clearly: and I wonder whether this will be the reason for my disappearing off the face of the planet, whether this will be the cause of my death.

But Miss Issabeth smoothes the green fabric over her thighs, then rises from the chair. The flesh door on her chest is still open, and she only realises a few seconds later — leaving me to wonder whether this is all an act or not — and closes it up again with a slight “oh” of surprise.

When she turns back at me, she seems entertained.

“Well then, I guess I’ll see you next time, Doctor?”

I have mixed feelings. It seems like I get to live for today, and I’m relieved by that, but at the same time, I know it’s not over, not just yet.

I try my best to put on a slight, professional smile as I walk her to the door, one hand hovering behind her, but far away from touching her. My gaze drifts to the tiny wings folded at her shoulder blades, similar to those of a dragonfly, and I am once again reminded of the danger of her natural instincts that are hidden so well and so deep underneath her deadly beauty.

“Yes, I’ll see you at the appointment, Miss Issabeth. Have a good evening.”

She obediently follows my lead up to the door, and I open it for her, and she walks out of it, and she almost makes it all the way to Jessica’s desk — I stick my head out of my office to look for her, but for some reason, I can’t see her anywhere — but then, she turns around again to face me.

And here it is, that sly, flirty smile again. I’m scared. I’m terrified, actually. She doesn’t want to kill me — maybe eat me, but that’s something slightly different — and I can read that off her face, that I have somehow passed the test, but still, my fear doesn’t subdue.

There’s something in the air, something mixing in with the lingering traces of the stench of blood, flesh and vessels…

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Doctor,” she teases, coy, her voice sweeter now than it has ever been before. “I’ve heard many good things about you, Doctor, many good things from the mouths of other women, faes and nymphs and vampires, and they all turned out to be true. Isn’t it beautiful, this sisterhood?”

She giggles at that, and the sound of it absolutely terrifies me. I have no idea what she is talking about: what women have told her what, exactly? What is all of this about? What does she want to say?

I’m about to open my mouth, to say goodbye again and send her off to Jessica, who is still not at her working position, but the vila is quicker than me to speak, yet she picks up the topic ever so elegantly.

“Actually, Doctor, I’ve just had an idea,” she lilts, and her eyes light up with golden glints. “I think we should get married.”

Silence falls deep onto me as my heart becomes as heavy as stone. My lungs crush down under the weight of it, and I get the choking feeling of oxygen no longer able to reach my bloodstream.

Her words echo in my head in a loop and I cannot believe them. No, it cannot be. This cannot be real. There isn’t any logical explanation for it.

The vila has marked me.

---

Thank you for reading. These publications are entirely passion-driven and every conversation started in the comments supports me and my work a lot.

If you’d like to give me a tip and show your appreciation for my work, consider buying me a coffee.

Find me on instagram and tiktok.