you’re going to the dentist tomorrow

by Rick White

And you’ll be found out. Once they pry and weedle their way inside they’ll find the tiny souls of all the unsuspecting, wide-eyed creatures who daydream-dawdled into that crooked maw.

            The voles and cotton-rats and lemmings

            The skinks and the lizards

            They won’t let you keep them.

            They’ll anaesthetise your rotten brain but you’ll still feel the drills and the probes and the forceps, because there’s never been a downer invented you couldn’t take and you’ll take it all.

            They’ll tweeze out the oily hairs from your twitchy, twitchy nostrils and they’ll scoop out the gunk from your ears and they’ll scream what did you hear? Tell us more, tell us again. Make us believe you or it’s fingernails and it’s bones and it’s brain matter.

            Scoop it all out and scramble it.

            They’ll pour hot melted fat and pine resin into you and they’ll put you in a bog and the bog           will preserve you. 

            And the hawks and the buzzards will look down and they’ll see you, just below the surface of the bog.

            The way the strange bubbles still escape your stinking mouth. The way the stars still shine like frosted winter spiderwebs, in the dark dark jelly of your eyes.

Photo of Rick White

BIO: Rick White lives and writes in Manchester, UK. You can read more of his work in Trampset, Milk Candy Review, Maudlin House and X-ray Lit Mag. Rick’s debut short story collection, Talking to Ghosts at Parties is still available if you can find it, or head to Ricketywhite.com for more.