HauntedMTL Original – Applesauce for Life – Kristen Seikaly
Applesauce for Life by Kristen Seikaly
Susie began to pull her teeth out as
soon as they grew in. One by one, her pearly whites would emerge from her gums
and one by one, she would yank them out. No one ever saw her do it, but if they
had, they would have grimaced reflexively. Susie pulled out her teeth in the
most gruesome ways imaginable.
The first time, she simply
yanked it out with her pudgy little fingers. It hadn’t required strength so
much as brute force. After the second one, this method grew dull, so Susie
found a pair of her father’s pliers and tugged and tugged until the third came
out. When she released it from the pliers, it turned to dust in her hands,
crushed by the force. She smiled her toothless smile as the dust scattered in
the wind.
Her favorite method of removal
became the tug on the door. She heard a mother suggest it to her young son, a
son older than Susie whose teeth were ready to come out. The boy wailed at the
prospect. Surely his mother must be joking? Susie did not think the mother was
joking. She thought the mother was a genius. So when tooth number nine came in,
Susie waited as long as she could for that little sucker to grow. Then, she
tied one end of a string to the pebble of a tooth and skipped to the door
handle to tie on the other end. Stepping away from the door, she slammed it as
hard as she could with a broom to make sure the distance was just right. She
could not stop smiling at all the blood and gore.
Susie’s parents, after a bit
of time, grew concerned about the absence of their daughter’s teeth. Surely she
should have grown some by now? They took her to a pediatric dentist, a
specialist they never knew existed and asked what was wrong while clasping
their sweaty hands to Susie’s dry ones. He took an x-ray and could not fathom
what he saw.
“It looks as if those
teeth did appear because they’re not in her gums anymore,” he said while
scratching his chin. “See the adult teeth in there? And see how some baby
teeth have yet to come up?” Susie’s parents nodded at the news, while
Susie’s eyes widened. She’d get a whole new set of teeth? What a delight!
That night, her mother tried
to comfort her daughter who did not seem distraught enough at the news.
“Your teeth will
come,” she said, not at all convinced. “And when they do, the Tooth
Fairy will come and bring you money!”
Susie had no interest in
money. So, as far as her parents could tell, her teeth never came, and they
brought her back to the pediatric dentist once more.
“That’s odd,” he
said, scanning the fresh set of x-rays. “See how there had been baby teeth
here before? They’re gone now!” He pointed to the old x-ray, then the new,
while the parents sat and puzzled with him. Susie licked her gums, then smiled.
The pediatric dentist glanced over.
“May I have a moment to
speak with Susie alone?”
This made Susie’s parent’s
uncomfortable, yet everything about the situation made them uncomfortable. So,
they left the room. The pediatric dentist sat in his chair and stared down at
Susie while she laid on the patient chair.
“Susie,” he said,
“do you know where your teeth went?”
She smiled her gummy smiled
once more and pulled out a baggie she kept hidden in her pocket at all times.
Inside were seventeen lumpy, bloodied pearls of teeth, one for each she had
pulled (minus the one that had turned to dust). Some were too small to have
fully formed. The pediatric doctor had never seen anything like it in his
thirty years of practice.
“But Susie… why? What
have you done?”
Susie shrugged her shoulders.
“Haven’t you ever wanted
to control your own body?”
The pediatric dentist had
nothing to say to that. He sent Susie home, telling her parents he would think
over her case a little bit more.
That night, the pediatric
dentist stared in the mirror, lips sealed, until finally, he bore his own teeth
to himself. Each one immaculate and cared for, he had never once considered
doing to himself what he had done to others. His teeth were fine, he thought.
Or were they?
He clasped one of his dental
tools in his hand. Meant for a child, it felt small for the first time. Then,
he brought it to one of his teeth and pulled. Blood gushed everywhere as he
examined what had been a perfectly healthy tooth. He smiled.
“Ah!” he cried.
“I understand now, little Susie.”
THE END
Kristen Seikaly is a Michigan native who lives on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Thrice Fiction, Story Seed Vault, Lost Balloon, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her piece “Planetary Disappointment” was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50.
This is the kickoff to a new series exploring nature that is kind of horrifying, at least in ways. Our first subject is Vampires Among Us. There are lots of animals named for vampires, sometimes due to folklore and sometimes for their appearance (like the Vampire Squid), but most of these animals don’t have blood sucking tendencies.
Bats & Birds
There are legit vampire leaf-nosed bats in Central and South America that drink blood. They feed on mammals and are often shown to feed on livestock. They’d be kinda cute if they weren’t so creepy. There are also vampiric birds: some finches in the Galapagos have developed the taste for blood of other birds, mainly seabirds that flock to the islands to raise their young.
Leeches & Lampreys & More
And then you get into leeches and lampreys and other denizens of the water that are known to attach themselves to larger creatures and drink their blood. Leeches were even believed to have medicinal value (and still are in certain circumstances). And there are also numerous plants that are known to be parasitic and feed on other plants, wrapping their roots or vines around others to steal nutrients.
Spiders
Now I’m going to drift off into the realm where this becomes truly horrific. Spiders. Now, spiders aren’t vampires per se, seeing as how they actually kill their prey – they don’t just feed off of it while it remains living and wanders about its business. But because of their structure, they cannot eat solid foods, so they have to inject their prey with enzymes to liquefy it so they can slurp it out like a protein shake. That’s sort of vampirism on steroids if you ask me, just the kind that no one is coming back from.
Bloodsucking Bugs
But let’s get back on topic. Now let’s consider mites and ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and the like. Some drink blood for their survival; others do so as part of their reproductive cycle (like mosquitoes which otherwise eat fruit and nectar but need the extra protein from blood to grow their eggs).
Ticks need to feed on blood once at every stage of their life cycle and can pick up diseases along the way (like Lyme Disease) but don’t always do so. Different ticks are more likely to come in contact with different things and often humans are not their preferred meal but they are opportunistic and will feed on whatever is available when necessary. Symptoms of illness from tick bites may take years to develop and can have really weird side effects (like the allergy associated with Lone Star Ticks which makes a person unable to consume mammalian flesh).
Anyway, here are some brief glimpses of vampirism in nature. Thank you for joining us for Nightmarish Nature and may you avoid getting bitten by any true vampires among us… And I still think spiders take first place in the creepy eating category here, even if they aren’t technically vampiric.
This story came to me in a sort of roundabout way from a rather unusual source. So I thought I’d share it with you, dear readership, and see if you can make heads or tails of it. – Jennifer Weigel
Dread Pirate Rum Tum Tugger could tell this was the right spot.
The site, beneath the sweeping limbs of the Live Oak, Spanish Moss swaying gently in the breeze, was a perfect match to the crude map he had bought off that soothsayer Deuteronomy.
The earth moved easily, as if it had been excavated previously. He dug in with greater fervor with each swipe. The sandy soil gave way to reveal something hard. He scooped and smoothed the remaining detritus from the surface as he uncovered a box.
The carton was simple.
No markings; no ornamentation; no writing. Just a plain cardboard crate, brittle from having been buried for so long but still sturdy. He hoisted it from its burrow.
“Ha HO!” he shouted to the passing breeze, rousing a small cloud of birds that erupted from a nearby thicket. They captured his attention for a moment, but he quickly refocused and returned to his task.
The box was locked but no difference.
Any self-respecting ruffian like himself could pick a lock in seconds. And he did so with panache, as was his way. He pried the lid open and licked his lips.
Inside was the legendary Kernel of Eternal Life, a small sparrow’s heart, still beating.
Artwork description: Myself as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty wearing black bell sleeve shirt and black vinyl skirt with strapping leather belt over leopard print shirt and tights, with strapping leather boots, pirate head wrap and leopard cat ears.
Image text reads: Purr! Avast ye mateys, Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty invites ye to check out her booty stash and dig ye up a dungbie prize. Seek ye some buried treasure! Just grab ye a plastic litter scoop and dig… dig… dig… to ye heart’s content.
I created this image for a promotional poster for a performance piece in a charity art show in which I, as Dread Pirate Queen Miss Kitty, hawked a carnival sideshow style sidewalk installation. For a mere $5 donation to the animal shelter the show supported, gallery goers could dig around in a kiddie pool full of litter to find a prize: a cheap plastic trinket from the dollar store. I had some takers, including one kid who seemed to really enjoy the digging and whose parents were all in, saying “You know, you can totally do that at home too.”
For more cat antics, we invite you to read C-2747’s logbook here on Haunted MTL. Feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
Happy Mother’s Day to the Queen of Everything… nothing gets by you.
Artwork description: A Happy Mother’s Day card featuring a picture of a Nefertiti doll with swooping hair, glitter makeup, and elaborate gold and blue headdress and evening gown.
Image text reads: Happy Mother’s Day! You are the Queen of Everything and you shimmer brighter than the twinkliest star in the sky. Stay sparkly and shine on in your magnificent glitter bombasticness. You ARE truly everything everywhere all at once and you’ve seen and heard it all. Eyes in the back of your head and superpowered hearing mean we can’t get away with much no matter how hard we try. So Queen on and rule over home in sparkly sentinel.
And may this be a testament to why us kids shalt never get you out of bed too early or run amok while you are getting ready to start your day… Because being the Queen of Everything takes planning and preparation…
Feel free to check out this Mummy Dearest Mother’s Day card from 2021 here on Haunted MTL.
