"The Ache Beneath the Skin" by Jed Kent

The Ache Beneath the Skin

by Jed Kent 

Elicia’s teeth had been killing her for as long as she could remember. The ache wasn’t just in her mouth anymore, it seemed to radiate into her temples, throb behind her eyes, and pulse like a hammer against the inside of her skull. It had grown worse over the last few nights, the kind of pain that gnawed through sleep, leaving her curled up in a sweat-stained blanket, rocking, waiting for it to pass.

It never did.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Her heartbeat was a drum in her head, heavy and relentless, a war rhythm that made her gums swell with every pulse.

Pressing her tongue against her front teeth and feeling the sickening wobble, the way the roots seemed to strain against her flesh. Her mouth tasted rotten, metallic—like old pennies and sour meat. 

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Her father never cared. He could barely afford to keep food on the table. Food itself was a generous word—strips of meat from God knows what animal, stringy cuts wrapped in brown paper that he brought home from his drives back from the lumber mill. It was never the same meat twice. Sometimes greasy, sometimes gamey, sometimes sour and slick with slime. But Elicia ate it. She had to.

Her mother had been gone four years now, Elicia was only eight.  Her father never spoke of her. He just drank, drove to the mill, brought home meat, and stared at the walls when he wasn’t shouting.

Elicia had learned long ago not to ask questions.

Now, at twelve, she trudged through the back door into the leaning tool shed. The air smelled of rust, mold, and gasoline. The roof leaked when it rained, and the old wooden walls bowed inward, as if trying to collapse in on themselves. A cracked mirror leaned against the far wall, mottled with dark stains where silver backing had peeled away.

She opened a drawer of tools. Nails clinked against bolts, blades dulled with age, the wooden handles swollen from years of damp. Her hands shook as she dug through them, until her fingers closed around a screwdriver with a worn yellow handle, and beside it, an iron hammer flecked with old rust.

Elicia raised the screwdriver and lined it against her gums in the reflection of the mirror. She took a deep breath, gritted her aching teeth, and swung the hammer.

The sharp edge of metal bit into her gum. A white-hot streak of agony raced through her skull. She gasped as blood welled instantly, hot and thick. The screwdriver stood on its own now, embedded in her mouth like a flag pole.

Seizing the handle and pressing deeper, working it beneath the tooth’s base. Her knuckles whitened as she twisted. The roots fought her, pulling back, clinging. With a sickening crunch, the tooth broke loose.

She pried, levering against her jawbone, and struck the handle.

CRACK.

The tooth burst apart, enamel splintering into shards that scraped against her tongue. It was like nails on a chalkboard amplified inside her skull. She screamed through blood, spit, and relief. Relief. The pressure was gone. 

The tooth clattered to the floor, slick with red.

Elicia spat and coughed, the metallic tang flooding her throat. Her stomach lurched, but she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop. She could already feel the next tooth throbbing, waiting to be freed.

One by one, she dug them out. Front teeth, canines, incisors. Each wrestled from her gums with a symphony of wet pops and grinding snaps. The back molars were the hardest. She had to slam the screwdriver so deep that her lips split at the corners.

By the time she pulled the last molar free, her mouth was a ruin. Torn gums wept red and clear fluid, empty sockets like raw craters across her jaw. She raised her head to the mirror and smiled, trembling.

A grotesque grin.

The reflection showed a face smeared in blood, jaw quivering, mouth nothing but hollow wounds. A smile of nothing but suffering.

Then her jaw jerked. Not from her own muscles. Something beneath the skin twitched. A ripple moved through the flesh of her gums, as if something alive stirred beneath.

At first, she thought it was adrenaline. Then she felt the unmistakable squirm.

She angled the mirror closer, letting the sunlight catch her ruined gums.

And she saw them.

Tiny, white, writhing bodies. Maggots crawling out from the sockets where her teeth had been. They pushed through the blood and pus. Dozens of them, spilling over her tongue.

Her mind reeled. She remembered the meat. The rank, sweet stink of it. Sometimes it had fur. Sometimes it didn’t.

The flies. The roadkill. The scraps crawling with eggs before they ever touched her plate.

She staggered backward, gagging. Her stomach heaved, and she spewed thick gouts of blood and wriggling larvae onto the floorboards. The maggots squirmed in the sunlight, twitching toward her shoes.

Elicia clawed at her mouth, tearing at her cheeks with her nails. She felt them in her throat, sliding down into her stomach, wriggling between her gums.

She sneezed suddenly, explosively, and bloody mucus shot from her nose in ropes, studded with more of the writhing things.

She screamed, but it came out as a choking gurgle.

She stumbled into the forest, sunlight stabbing her vision. She coughed again, this time retching up a slurry of enamel shards and larvae that splattered across the dirt. Her eyes burned, watered, then burst open as maggots tore through her tear ducts.

Her final scream was muffled as her throat collapsed beneath the mass writhing upward. She toppled forward, skull striking the ground with a dull crack.

From her mouth, her nose, her ears, and finally her eyes, the larvae erupted in a tide, spilling over her face and hair. They writhed in the sunlight, a living river pouring from the ruin of what had been a child.

She awakened hovering above her body watching as the larvae fed.