Skip to main content

Of Teeth and Dreams (a short story)

My eyes, riddled with rivulets of red, burst open.

"What a dream..."

Relief washed away the terror like ocean waves bathing a battered shoreline.

I have long been given to dental nightmares, but the dream that haunted me that night was abnormally vivid.  There I lay, reclining in a dentist's chair, bright lights scorching my corneas.  Over me stood a menacing figure, liveried in white.  Embroidered on his chest was "Dr. Butcher, D.D."  He forced his metal implements into my mouth, extracting my teeth one by one.  With each groan and gush of blood, another tooth fell to the floor.  My cries went unheeded as he plucked away in his ruthless rage.

Now awake, I slid out of bed, grateful to be back among the conscious.  I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed some water onto my weary face.  Something felt amiss.  Having left my glasses beside my bed, I squinted as I leaned into the mirror, my mouth agape.

"No..."

I rubbed my eyes and leaned in still further.

"Noooooooooo!"

I pulled at my gums as a I pressed my face against the mirror, but I could not find them--my teeth--they were all gone!  I ran a wary finger along my vacuous gumline, the evidence of sutures still detectable.  A thousand questions flooded my brain simultaneously, the obvious "How?  When?" and "Why?" at the front of the pack.

They had all come true--all those dreams from which I was so happy to awaken.

I let out a primal yell as I my clenched fist shattered the mirror.  Shards of glass exploded around me.  Blurry-eyed, I looked down to see blood dripping from my still-clenched fist.  My head began to spin.  The room went white.  I collapsed to the floor, my skull striking something blunt as I fell.  Lying on the cool floor, shards of glass piercing my cheek, I was surrounded by professionals wearing slip-resistant footwear.  White turned to black.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I awoke on what I could only assume was the next morning.  I tried to pull the covers back, but I found my extremities were bound--straitened, if you will.  I lay bound on a rigid bed in the center of a plain room.  This room was different--padded walls encompassed me.  I struggled to free myself, my failure sinking me into a sullen stupor.

A knock at the door.

"May we come in?" a voice asked.

"Do I have a choice?" I replied, my speech incredibly awkward and deliberate.

The door crept open and a middle-aged woman in scrubs appeared in my room, a tray of multicolored poisons in her hands. 

"You have a visitor," she said enthusiastically. 

"Oh?" I said, my left eyebrow arching. 

"Would you like her to come in?" 

I nodded.

Into the room stepped my wife, her face sympathetic, yet scared.  She sat down on the bed beside me, squeezing me tightly. 

"How are you?" she asked, afraid to hear the answer. 

I maintained my silence, peering over my shoulder at the nurse who was keeping watch from the corner of the room.  My wife followed my eyes and asked her to leave us alone.

As she complied, my wife turned to me again and asked, "How are you, baby?"

"I'm...I'm not good," I admitted.  "Look what they did to me!" I said, opening my mouth widely.  Her response took me aback.

"I know," she said calmly. 

"You know?" I said incredulously. 

"I know," she said again, her voice low and guarded.

I stood and backed away from her, my incredulity fading into paranoia.  "Did you let them do this me?" I asked.

She stood and pursued me cautiously, her trembling hands reaching out to calm me. 

"No one did this to you, my love.  You did this to yourself...you pulled them all out."

I backed into the wall and dropped to the floor. 

"No...that doesn't make sense.  Why...why would I do that?"

She joined me on the floor, our shoulders touching and tears pooling in the corner of our eyes. 

"I don't know...no one knows..."  She wrapped her arms around me and rocked me maternally.  "I don't know, but I'm here for you.  We'll get through this."

"No," I muttered, mostly to convince myself of my own innocence and sanity. 

"No...it doesn't make sense..."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Real Presence & Paedocommunion: A Deeper Rift Between Reformed Churches

You're going back to Rome! Theological disagreements within the Reformed world, especially those of the last half century, often devolve into these sorts of accusations.  As controversialists like Doug Wilson and Peter Leithart began to break away from the larger conservative Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, it became clear that the rift was deeper than semantics and systematic minutiae.  Much like the Reformation four centuries before, the Table was a primary point of conflict.   What does it mean?  Who may partake?  What do we call it?    These questions, along with a few more, divided Reformed brethren as the physical elements of our religion reflected deeper conflicts.  Good men began to understand that the problem wasn't just in our logos, but in our pathos and ethos, as well. Paedocommunion (hereafter PC) has been one of the hottest points of contention.  PC has always been normal to me as I grew up with it.  I underst...

Anglicanism, Paedocommunion, & Being Reformed

I consider myself Reformed.  I was baptized as a baby in a PCA church.  I grew up in a Reformed microdenomination that allowed its member churches to subscribe to any of the Reformed confessions (we subscribed to the Three Forms of Unity).  In many ways, whether I like it or not, I still think and act like a Reformed Presbyterian.   Some, however, would seek to deny me that label.  I suspect there are many reasons for this, but paramount among them is that I hold to Paedocommunion (hereafter PC), which, for some reason, is absolutely the worst thing ever to these people.  Some would go so far as to say that PC makes me a heretic, but they all agree that I am certainly not Reformed .   My recent engagement with these opponents of PC has caused me to reflect on what it means to be Reformed and what it means to be a Christian.  This online jousting has dovetailed well with some of my recent study, particularly  An Apology of the Church...

Some Thoughts on the 2024 Election

So, we had an election earlier this week.  Perhaps you heard about it. I have done my best to remain mostly silent on political issues this time around because I have found that fixating on such matters does little for my mental or spiritual health.  Also, no one cares what I think.  Nevertheless, here are a few thoughts on our recent election. 1) I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not glad he won.  To be clear, that says more about Kamala Harris than about Donald Trump. 2) This election seemed much cleaner--much less suspicious--than the sordid affair we had in 2020.  This election didn't feature any poll workers tallying (discovering? conjuring?) votes behind closed doors in the wee hours of the night, messy mail-in voting, or voter turnout beyond plausible expectations.  The 2020 election had me convinced that we would never see another peaceful, uncontested election, but, as contentious as things were this year, it seems like...