Sunday Dentistry
by Steven E. Wedel

Jarrod Golding woke slowly. The phone was ringing. It rang and rang and rang and wouldn't stop. It hurt his head. Too many martinis. Too many beers. And he was alone in his bed. Dear God, his life was like a bad country and western song.

"Hello." His voice was thick and yeasty. The red lights of the digital clock said the time was 7:13 a.m. Yesterday was Saturday. The party was Saturday night. It had to be Sunday morning. Now it was 7:14 a.m.

"Dr. Golding?"

"Yeah."

"I have an appointment scheduled for you at nine o'clock." Female voice, young, pretty. It belonged to a middle-aged fat lady -- his answering service operator.

"Today?"

"Yes, doctor." The pretty tone vanished. "That's more than the thirty-minute notice you required."

"Yeah, yeah, it is," Jarrod admitted. He felt as if his head was expanding like a balloon. He wondered when the clown would twist him into an animal shape. "Listen, will you call Katie for me? Ask her to meet me at the office."

"Yes, Doctor, I can do that." The woman's tone was sweet again.

"Who's the patient?"

"William Tanner. A new patient. He says he broke a tooth on a steak bone."

"New patient. Great. Thanks." Jarrod hung up the phone and rolled over in bed. He pulled the covers over his head, then threw them off. If he was going to have any coffee, he had to get the machine going now.

The cold shower was like a slap in the face from God. But, Jarrod felt much better when it was over. The smell of the coffee was filling the apartment. Life wasn't so bad after all, he admitted before he burned his tongue on the black
liquid. He sipped slowly and chewed delicately at a piece of light toast, his stomach not making too much of a protest over the food.

At the age of 27, he knew he was really too young to have his own dentistry practice. He should be officed with an old saw who was already established. He could wait the old man out, then take over a steady practice. But, when Jarrod's
parents had died in an auto accident during his last year of residency, he'd decided to use the inheritance to skip ahead and open his own office in the small town of Windy Acres, Oklahoma. He was the only dentist in town; everyone
had been forced to make the drive to Enid to have their teeth worked on until three months ago. Enid had good dentists, and several bars that made decent martinis.

Making his services available for emergencies had been Jarrod's idea, too. He'd wanted to establish goodwill with the people of his new home. As the hands of the kitchen clock reached for 8:23 a.m., he regretted the goodwill decision.

His Fiat convertible wouldn't start. He'd parked it in the garage with the lights on when he'd returned home from Ollie's Pub in Enid last night. Jarrod ripped his keys out of the ignition and sat in the car for a moment. The headache that
had threatened to claim him since opening his eyes was looming large and close, ready to swallow his thoughts. He got out of the car, went through the house, locked his front door, and walked the mile to his downtown office.

The lights were on, the fluorescence hurt his eyes. He smelled Katie's Avon "Candid" perfume and realized he'd forgotten both deodorant and cologne after his shower. He looked around the waiting room and found his patient, Mr.
William Tanner, sitting in a plastic chair, filling out the new patient paperwork with one hand while holding the left side of his jaw with the other.

Tanner looked to be in his late thirties, early forties. Not too well off, judging by the torn and grass-stained khaki pants and old Black Sabbath concert T-shirt. He wore work boots that had never been polished. Probably worked in an oil
patch, Jarrod decided, so maybe he was okay financially, just dirty.

"Hello, Mr. Tanner," Jarrod said, smiling his friendly-dentist smile.

The patient glanced up and groaned a greeting.

"I understand you broke a tooth on a steak bone," Jarrod said. "That's gotta hurt. I'll go get ready. When you're done, Miss Hubbard will bring you back."

The patient groaned again and Jarrod hurried to his first examination room -- a square area with heavy crimson drapes for three walls. The wall of the building was the fourth wall; a counter with a sink and some cabinets were mounted on
the solid wall. He turned on the faucet over the sink and splashed several handfuls of cold water on his face, just to wash the last of the grogginess from his eyes.

As he dried, Jarrod glanced toward the reception area and saw that Katie Hubbard, his dental hygienist/secretary/sometimes lover was wearing a T-shirt, high, tight shorts and flip-flop shoes. Her natural blonde hair was pulled back in a pony tail and held with a pink scrunchy, as she called the thing. She felt his eyes on her and
turned to wink at him. He smiled back just as the patient wobbled up to the counter, still holding his jaw. Katie glanced over the information the man had provided then led him to the closest dental chair. Jarrod pulled on a pair of latex
gloves, snapping them as he did, and handed Katie a pair that she put on quietly. She kept her eyes and a sly smile on him as she did it.

William Tanner had not brushed his teeth this morning. Jarrod became sickenly aware of that fact all too quickly. His toast and coffee swirled in his stomach as he leaned close to look into the small mirror he held in Tanner's mouth. It
smelled as if the steak Tanner had been eating had stayed in his mouth long enough to become putrid. Jarrod drew back and sucked in some untainted air.

"Okay, Mr. Tanner, it's not broken, but you've got a nasty cavity in an upper molar. When you bit down on that bone you must have stabbed the cavity. Don't worry, though, we can fill it and you'll be just fine."

"Just pull it, Doc," Tanner said, his voice strained but deeper than Jarrod had guessed.

"Oh, now, there's no need for that," Jarrod said. He reached for a mask and hose attached to a tank behind the chair. "We almost never pull teeth anymore."

"Doctor Golding is very good," Katie piped in. "He's going to give you some nitrous oxide gas and it'll relax you so he can work and you won't feel a thing."

"I'll give you a shot of Novocaine to deaden your gums around that tooth, too," Jarrod added. "You just relax." He fitted the gas mask over Tanner's face and turned on the nitrous oxide. Tanner's eyes were large and round, brown and
bloodshot.

"Please, Doctor Golding, just pull it," Tanner said.

"You don't really want that," Jarrod said. "I know it hurts and right now all you want is for the pain to stop. I understand you think just ripping it out at the source is the way to go. Trust me, it's not. You need that tooth and I intend to see that you keep it."

Tanner was quiet. Jarrod checked the gas and saw he'd had it a little strong. He turned it down. No harm done, and it had calmed the patient quickly, which Jarrod admitted had been necessary. Tanner mumbled something. Jarrod leaned closer to the patient's bad-smelling mouth, lifted the mask a bit, and asked him to repeat it.

"...sillllllver..."

"Something about silver," Jarrod said, meeting Katie's eyes as he lowered the mask again. "He's asleep now. How's he paying for this?"

"Cash. He gave me a hundred already, said if it cost more he'd pay when you were done. He peeled the hundred-dollar bill from a roll as big as three of my fingers." Katie held up so many of her delicate fingers as a testament to Tanner's
wealth.

"Fine. Good."

Jarrod went to the drawer where he kept his tools and removed a small drill.

"What did you do last night?" Katie asked from behind him, putting her hand on his butt and sliding it around to his crotch. She gripped his penis lightly.

"Went to Enid. Had a few drinks. Thought about you."

"Yeah, but you didn't offer to take me along."

"It was just guy stuff. A bunch of boy dentists watching baseball and getting drunk. That guy's breath is horrible." He motioned at Tanner with his head.

"You sure he's out?"

"He better be," Jarrod said. "I doubt he'd like to know he's paying the bill for you to stand here and hold my dick when you could be giving him a shot of Novocaine."

"Fine. Somebody's got a hang-over." Katie let him go and went back to the patient. "He really is out. Stone cold. Dear God! His mouth reeks."

"Told you."

A few moments later Katie said, "He's still out cold and his gum is numb."

Jarrod came back to the patient, giving his assistant a small pat on the butt and a wink. Katie smiled, the reprimand she'd received moments ago likely already forgotten. Big boobs, little brain. Gotta love her, Jarrod thought.

"Hold his jaw open." Jarrod took a deep breath and leaned over Tanner's face. He squeezed the trigger and the drill in his hand buzzed to life. "I wish he was awake enough to open his mouth. Can you hold it open a little more?"

"Eww. I'd rather hold open the stink glands of a skunk," Katie said, but she spread Tanner's jaws further open.

The drill hummed and vibrated as Jarrod finished the prep work. Within a minute or so he had all the infected and decayed bits out of the cavity.

"Suction that out for me, will you?" Jarrod backed away from the patient. He took another deep drought of air, wanting to inhale something that didn't hold the scent of Tanner's breath.

As Katie sucked the bits of decay and powdered tooth from Tanner's mouth with a small vacuum, Jarrod removed a plastic capsule of amalgam from another cabinet. He bounced it in his rubber-gloved palm. "You asked for silver, you got it," he said. "Sixty-five percent silver in this baby."

Jarrod put the capsule in his triturator and turned it on. The machine shook the capsule vigorously for about six seconds, mixing mercury with the silver, tin, copper and other metals of the alloy tooth filler. Jarrod took the capsule out of the triturator and returned to his patient.

"We are giving him a toothbrush before he leaves, right?" Katie asked.

"I'll give him a dozen," Jarrod answered.

He opened the capsule as Katie bravely opened Tanner's mouth wide again. Jarrod took his amalgam carrier from a tray of instruments and began transferring small amounts of the alloy into the reeking hole of Tanner's mouth. Jarrod
grinned as he noticed how steady his hands were. No trace of a hang-over while he worked. It was good
to be young.

"Can you hand me the condenser and my mirror?"

Katie reached over Tanner's head and retrieved the instruments. "Wouldn't it have been better to use the composite for filling?" she asked.  "I mean, the silver never looks very good."

Jarrod took the condenser and gently packed the amalgam into Tanner's cavity, watching his movements in the small round mirror on the end of another long steel rod. "The man said silver."

"I hope he didn't mean he didn't want silver," Katie said.

"This molar's far enough back no one's going to see it without crawling into his mouth," Jarrod answered, his voice shorter than he meant. He forced himself to sound nice. "God knows, with breath like this, no one's going to do that."

"That's for sure," Katie said. Jarrod judged she wasn't mad about his tone.

"This is really a pretty bad one," he said. "Bad shape. I'm not looking forward to burnishing it.

"How bout if I take you to Molly's for lunch when we're finished here? Then we can drive over to Enid for a matinee, mess around, have a nice dinner and come back. Maybe you could stay over tonight."

"Maybe," Katie said. Jarrod heard her smile and knew it would be a lucky night for him. Those long bare legs of Katie's could hold him tighter and squeeze him emptier than any woman he'd known.

He was still packing amalgam and thinking of the pleasure he'd have atop his assistant when Tanner began to convulse. The man's body jerked wildly and without warning. Jarrod was so startled he dropped his mirror into Tanner's mouth. His hand shot forward and grabbed the handle of the tool. Tanner's jaws clamped shut, tearing through the thin layer of latex glove and ripping into Jarrod's thumb and forefinger.

"Dear God, get him off!" Jarrod shrieked. "Get him off! Make him let go!"

"Calm down, Jarrod, stop pulling. You're bleeding. It's bad, stop." Katie was struggling to pry open the patient's jaws.

Jarrod saw blood -- his blood -- staining the whites of Tanner's teeth. Then he saw that Tanner's eyes were open, wide open, and glaring at him. "Let me go, you psycho son of a bitch!" Jarrod screamed.

Something reached up and grabbed Jarrod's shirt. It should have been Tanner's hand. But the thing that held him was covered in gray and black hair. Jarrod stared at the limb and watched it lose all human proportions. It was the
forearm of an animal, a huge dog. He looked back at Tanner's face.

The man's face seemed to swell and suddenly pop out of human form. Jarrod stared into the savage eyes of mammoth wolf. With an almost casual flick of its head, the animal got a better grip on the dentist's hand and sank more teeth into it. Jarrod screamed again.

The transformation of the beast was not completed. Or rather, Jarrod saw that the animal was still having convulsions. The hind legs were kicking and scrabbling at the exam chair, shredding the imitation leather of the seat. The boots and pants Tanner had worn had slipped or been torn off and lay on the floor.

Katie had backed away from the struggle. Jarrod looked to her for help just as she became entangled in the drape separating them from the next examination room. She fell backwards and pulled the drape off its rod. She
screamed as it fell over her, covering her like a blood-soaked shroud.

Suddenly, the clamp on his arm released. Jarrod looked back to the thing in his chair as he pulled his bleeding hand close to his chest. Tanner was in the chair again, slumped sideways, blood and drool running from his perfectly human
mouth. Short, thin hairs -- wolf hairs -- were drifting from his body to the floor. His chest was not moving. Jarrod could hear no breathing.

"Is he dead?" Katie had returned to his side.

"I think so. Check his pulse."

She hesitated, then took a limp wrist between her fingers, keeping her body as far away from the chair as she could. After a moment she put it back in the man's lap.

"He's dead."

"A werewolf." Jarrod said the name, then looked at his bloody hand. "He was a werewolf."

© Steven E. Wedel

Steven Wedel's fiction has appeared in several print and electronic magazines, including The Midnight Zoo, Terminal Fright, DeathGrip, Frightnet, and Short, Scary Tales. He works as a reporter and columnist for The Daily Oklahoman and has won several journalism awards.

Steven Wdel's web site can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/moon_howler

June 2000 HofP