"Angel’s Teeth" by Joshua Ginsberg

Angel’s Teeth

by Joshua Ginsberg

After the last of the molars you’ve pried free finishes clinking around the blood speckled porcelain basin to join its mates in silence, and you have laid the pliers on the lip of the sink, only then do you permit yourself a brief moment for reflection.

You rewind to the start of the nightmare, just a couple months ago, when you and your two siblings were bequeathed a gift (neither expected nor desired) from your ne’er-do-well and recently late uncle, whom you have reconstructed in your mind entirely from your father’s disparaging comments. Did you ever actually meet him in person? You’re not sure, and your sisters Alec and Meg are, of no help in the matter. Meg didn’t want anything to do with whatever was inside the triple locked and chained iron box inlaid with incomprehensible symbols and letters of no language you’ve ever seen.

“Hard pass,” she said. Whatever it is, it’s worth more to her as potential future leverage, because, unfortunately for everyone, that’s how Meg operates.

So, it was just you and Alec then. The two of you unlocked the outer box, then broke the seal on a second, interior box, then removed a pouch and poured out the contents into your palm.

“Jesus, Tis, what the hell kind of an angel would have teeth like those?”

You were wondering the same thing. That’s what your uncle called them, anyway, in his letter which accompanied the box. Angel’s teeth. But they look more like a cross between saber-tooth tiger fangs and serrated shark teeth. 

The very same ones laid out on a washcloth before you now.

You pause in your reminiscence to begin the next part. You start with the central incisors, two on top and two on the bottom. You press them into the bleeding gaps in your gums and blinding starbursts of pain explode inside your skull as those stolen, ancient teeth sink fresh roots into your jaw.

The pain is unlike anything you have ever imagined, bone grafting hatefully to bone. 

While you wait for the agony to subside, you resume your replay of events.

Your uncle had become blacker than a black sheep the moment he’d fled the family business and joined a circus sideshow. Your grandparents never once to your knowledge spoke his name again. Apparently, he became a seeker and collector of oddities and wonders, most of which were frauds and humbug of the faux shrunken head and Fiji mermaid variety. But the teeth, he claimed, were the real deal. It had taken most of his life to acquire a full set, but he had done it. And now they were your responsibility.

Others would come for them, his letter warned, but under no circumstances were you to relinquish them. Not for any reason or offer on Earth, he emphasized. Such promises would only prove to be empty anyhow. 

You decide it’s time to install the four lateral incisors. Each one feels like the site of a new miniature supernova as they bind themselves to you.

Shortly after you and Alec signed off for the ghastly relics, you both received an email from a Mr. Armaros, who carefully, conversationally, but firmly explained that the teeth belonged to him and that he was willing to make a more than reasonable offer for their return. He proposed a sum with so many zeroes at the end you had to count them three times.

“Maybe we should just do it,” Alec suggested. But you held firm.

The next email was less polite. More of a threat, really.

You said no. Alec erupted like the violent, hot head she can be. But it didn’t change your answer.

Then you both received a series of legal nastygrams on fancy paper with the name of a large, fancy law firm embossed at the top. But still, you reasoned, it’s just the same threat wearing a more expensive suit. So, you did nothing.

You open wide and plug in your four new canines. A whole pack, you think. You might chuckle if you believed the pain of doing so wouldn’t send you over the dark edge into merciful unconsciousness. 

A pair of almost comically mafioso style goons showed up and nearly banged down your front door. You let the business end of your colt ask them to kindly see themselves off your property. Alec no doubt received a similar visit, but the teeth stayed in their box with you, under your bed.

Then Alec failed to show at work. Didn’t return your calls. So. you went there, found the carboard box on the kitchen table waiting for you, bleeding. How depressingly predictable, so very Se7en of Mr. Armaros, you thought as you lifted out your sister’s severed head and plucked the baggie clenched in her dead jaws. It contained a slip of paper with a date, GPS coordinates, and a time. 

You put the head back in the box, and the box into the refrigerator. Both of you and she now numb, but only you were left to appreciate it. Eventually, you knew, that numbness would thaw into a raging inferno.

And now, as you screw the premolars and molars into your head, it has.

You stand back to examine your handiwork and smile, if that’s what you can call the shape your new mouth is making, crammed as it is with burning blood and flesh-rending razors. Your grin becomes exaggerated, then impossible, and still it keeps going until it winds all the way around your head, again and again.

You spread your arms wide unfurling wings on top of wings. Leathery, not feathery; brown and veined like dried tobacco leaves ready to be rolled tight and ignited.

You’re going to bring Mr. Armaros those teeth he wanted, alright.

Because now you know the answer to that question Alec had asked. You know exactly what kind of an angel has teeth like yours…

The avenging kind.