The Smile in the Spare Tooth
A dental technician makes a replacement tooth from an unidentified donor. Every night her client smiles in a language the rest of his face does not understand.
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How it begins
The smile arrived before the patient.
Beth found it in the morning's delivery, a white plaster impression wrapped in tissue.
Seventeen upper teeth.
She counted again.
Nobody had seventeen upper teeth.
The label named Simon Vale, who had collected his replacement incisor yesterday and thanked her three times for making it look ordinary.
Beth held the cast beneath the lamp.
Between the molars, tiny ridges formed a pattern.
Not damage.
Letters.
She turned the cast around.
The letters changed.
At the front door, the bell sounded.
Simon stood outside with both hands over his mouth.
Beth let him in.
"Pain?"
He shook his head.
"Loose?"
Another shake.
She guided him to the examination chair and switched on the smaller light.
When he lowered his hands, he was not smiling.
His tooth was.
It leaned forward inside the line of his mouth, a small white shape that seemed to understand the expression better than the rest of him.
"Since when?"
Simon wrote on the pad beside the chair.
Three fourteen.
"Did anything happen?"
He wrote again.
I dreamed about a hospital.
Beth looked toward the donor file.
The hospital named on its cover had closed before Simon was born.
She reached for a mirror.
Simon caught her wrist.
Not hard.
Desperately.
On the pad, his handwriting became smaller.
It likes the mirror.
Beth set it down.
Across the room, the plaster cast clicked.
Once.
The extra tooth had moved.
From Simon's mouth came a sound too precise to be a groan and too patient to be accidental.
Beth did not know the language.
She recognized the rhythm.
Someone was counting.
She looked at the donor file again.
In the space marked identified remains, somebody had written a word and crossed it out.
The word was complete.
Underneath it, in fresher ink, stood a number.
Sixteen.
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Outline and characters
- Beth receives a smile impression with an extra pattern
- Simon reports movements he cannot control
- The tooth's donor record leads to the closed hospital
- Beth discovers matching casts hidden in storage
- Simon hears instructions when his reflection smiles
- A former technician reveals a failed identification project
- Beth refuses to implant the second prepared tooth
- They trace the physical relay carrying the voices
- The hidden remains are identified and the relay is broken
- Beth preserves one unexplained cast under independent review
Characters
- Beth Crane, 35. Dental technician confronting an untraceable donor tooth
- Simon Vale, 41. School caretaker whose replacement tooth speaks without him
Series possibilities
- Beth receives a dental cast that changes whenever someone speaks near it.
