My Life and Other Exploding Chickens

by Tristan Bancks

  ‘Hello?’ She pushes the door open. It creaks the way doors on creepy houses always do.

  We step inside a wide, dark hallway. Another toe-curling scream chokes the air. It’s a grown man, I think.

  ‘Can we please just go to another dentist?’ I whisper. ‘I’ll pay for it out of my own –’

  ‘Hello-o!’ Mum calls again into the darkness. This time the drill falls silent and the man’s screams die.

  A door opens on the right and a figure appears. He wears a bright headlamp, blinding us with its beam and lighting up dozens of animals’ heads staring down at us from the dark timber walls. There is a wild boar with yellow tusks and two glassy-eyed foxes, a particularly devilish Tasmanian devil and many, many more. Each animal has its teeth bared in a permanent snarl.

  ‘The art of taxidermy – just a little hobby,’ says the dentist. He is hunched, with a shock of orange hair and a rattish, thin-lipped smile. Two twisted front teeth poke from his mouth towards us, as though he is one of the mounted animals.

  ‘Welcome!’ he says. ‘I’m Dr Randalph Bent. You must be Tom Weekly.’

  Another man emerges from the doorway behind Bent. The man’s face is white and swollen up like a baseball mitt. He looks as though he’s been to war, like he’s seen and felt things that no human should.

  ‘That’ll be 27 dollars for today, Mr Francis,’ Dr Bent says, pulling an old-fashioned credit card machine from the pocket of his blood-spattered dentist’s jacket. My mother does not seem to see the blood. She only hears the price. No dentist has ever charged just 27 dollars for their services.

  ‘Put some ice on it, and remember Dr Bent’s golden rule: “Don’t be a baby.”’ He laughs and hands the man his card and receipt. ‘Next victim!’

  Mum grabs me by the elbow and steers me towards the open door.

  ‘Mum!’ I hiss in a razor-sharp whisper, but she ignores it, pushing me inside.

  It does not look like a regular dentist’s surgery. There are no diplomas or certificates on the walls. No metal trays with shiny silver tools. There is no TV on the ceiling showing gazelles galloping across the savanna to help take the patient’s mind off the pain. It’s more like … a kitchen. Dr Bent’s surgery is an old kitchen.

  There’s a single, buzzing fluorescent tube overhead and a dirty, yellow tiled floor. There’s a kitchen sink and an empty space where a dishwasher once was. There’s an old fridge with the cord unplugged and the door hanging open. It is filled with dental supplies – tubes and needles, pastes and scalpels.

  My eyes settle on the dentist’s chair in the middle of the room. Or maybe its eyes settle on me. I’m not sure which. I know that sounds strange, but the chair seems to be watching me. It’s not a nice, modern, electric reclining chair like a normal dentist might have. It is old with poo-brown peeling leather. It is shaped like the head of an octopus – narrow at the seat and ballooning to a large, round backrest. Its eyes are two leather buttons positioned near the top of the head, and its arms look meaty and alive.

  ‘Now, how may I help you?’ Bent asks.

  ‘Yesterday he removed one of his own adult teeth,’ Mum says, her jaw clenched. ‘This one.’ She hands him the tooth wrapped in tissue.

  Bent slowly unwraps it, turns it over and pokes at it with a dirty fingernail. ‘Hmmm, self-extraction with pliers … I admire your technique.’ He waves a hand towards the chair. ‘Sit.’

  I look at the chair. It looks at me. I will never, in my life, sit in that thing.

  Dr Bent wraps his arm firmly around my shoulders and leads me to it. ‘Don’t be afraid. Betty won’t bite.’

  He presses me firmly into the chair and snaps on a blinding white light. I shield my eyes. Bent cranks a winding handle on the side of the chair. Cogs turn and the back reclines. Springs stretch and pop, and I find myself staring at the ceiling. I go to sit up but the arms of the chair fold in, clutching me tight. Metal clamps lock my legs.

  ‘Just a precaution,’ he says. ‘Little ones can be jittery when they visit Dr Bent for the first time.’

  ‘Mum?’ I call.

  She is sitting on a plastic chair to my right, chewing her nails.

  ‘Just … do what the nice man says,’ she tells me in a singsong voice.

  ‘That’s right. Be a big boy,’ Bent says. ‘Mummy just wants what’s best for you.’ A dark cloud seems to pass behind his eyes and he bares his fangs. ‘Open up!’

  He leans over me, panting death breath, grinning with the most terrifying teeth I have ever seen on a human being. (I was once spat on by an alpaca at a wildlife park. Its teeth were slightly worse.) Dr Bent’s twisted fangs are pockmarked with decay. They reach out to me, like a 3D horror movie.

  I reel back in the chair and go to shout ‘Help!’, but the second I open my mouth he jams a plastic wedge in. I bite down but I can’t close my mouth.

  ‘Let’s have a little looky, shall we?’ He peers deep into my gob. I can see him in close-up now, the whiteheads on his cheeks look ready to pop. Hundreds of long silver hairs sprout from each nostril. His dull, green eyes roil with menace. He scratches at my teeth with a sharp tool and pokes it deep into my gum where the tooth once was, making me yelp.

  He turns to my mother. ‘Okay then, we’re going to make an incision in the gum, drill down into the jaw bone and screw in a steel rod. We’ll pop the tooth back in and it’ll be good as new.’

  I turn to Mum, eyes wide. Surely she can’t sit by and watch this maniac slice me up.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask, but …’ she begins. Oh, I love my mum so much. She’s going to save me. I will never be rude to her again. I’ll unpack the dishwasher tomorrow morning without her even making me. I’ll stop stuffing my dirty clothes back in the drawer with all the clean ones. I’ll brush my teeth every now and then. I’ll – ‘It sounds expensive. Do you know how much it might cost?’

  Bent grins and takes a small calculator from his jacket pocket. He stabs at the numbers. ‘It’s your first visit, so why don’t we make it an introductory offer of … 12 dollars and 50 cents.’

  ‘What?!’ I scream through the plastic wedge, but it comes out as ‘Yacht?!’

  My mother smiles and blushes. ‘Thank you, doctor.’

  Is she insane? This man isn’t a doctor. He operates out of a kitchen. He’s a butcher.

  ‘Take a seat in the hall and Tom and I will get down to business.’

  ‘Ugh-ugh!’ I say, which means, ‘Uh-uh.’

  Mum stands, hesitating. She looks nervous but forces a smile. ‘You be good.’ She disappears into the hallway.

  Bent clicks the door shut behind her and walks slowly towards me. He pulls on two grubby plastic gloves and holds up a drill. Not a dentist’s drill, but a Black & Decker cordless drill like Pop had in his shed. It has sawdust and blood spattered all over it.

  I spring my jaw wide and cough the plastic wedge out of my mouth. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘The jaw is the hardest bone in the human body. Sometimes we need something with a little more oomph to get through it.’ He revs the drill twice with his trigger finger.

  ‘Aren’t you going to numb the gum first?’ I ask.

  ‘Anaesthetic is for sissies,’ he says. He lowers his voice to a whisper. ‘Besides, I’m not legally allowed to administer it since I was thrown out of the Association for using horse tranquillisers on humans. And anyway, you’re a strong boy. You’ll be fine.’ He revs the drill engine once more.

  ‘What Association?’

  ‘Please direct all queries to my assistant, Lucinda,’ Bent says. ‘We must get on.’

  I look around the room but there is no assistant.

  ‘Lucinda!’ he calls. He puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles, which is a pretty rude way to call your assistant, if you ask me.

  A flap at the bottom of the surgery door flips open and a small, grey, vicious-looking dog with fluffy ears darts into the room.

  ‘Ah, Lucinda, deal with Mr Weekly’s queries, will you?’ Lucinda jumps onto the arm
of the chair and then onto my chest, barking, growling, drooling and baring her teeth in my face.

  Seeing the fear in my eyes, Bent says, ‘No questions? Thank you, Lucinda.’ The dog jumps down and sits at his feet.

  ‘Is everything okay in there?’ Mum asks.

  ‘No!’ I go to say, but Bent speaks over the top of me.

  ‘Hunky dory!’ he yells, and jams the wedge back in my mouth.

  I try to break free but the arms of the chair hug me tighter. Its fingers grip my wrists.

  ‘Ju-ust hold still,’ he says, lowering the drill into my trap. ‘This won’t hurt a bit. Well, maybe just a pinch.’

  I try to turn my head, but two padded restraints slide up out of the chair to prevent me. I try to move my arms and legs, but they are locked in hard. I try to close my mouth, but it’s wedged open. I can’t believe my mother’s bargain-hunting has led to this.

  The drill bit is inside my mouth now, whirring and zizzing faster and faster. It touches my jawbone, my skull explodes with high-voltage pain, and I feel a rush of superhuman strength. My arms strain at the shackles. Veins appear. Nothing can hold me down. I slip my skinny left arm out of the clamp, reach up and grab his overgrown nose hair between my thumb and forefinger, and pull down hard. Bent squeals like a baby. Tears shoot from his eyes, so I pull harder. He rips his head back, banging his head on the lamp, and falls to the floor. I’m left clutching a handful of silver nose hair.

  Bent’s assistant, Lucinda, barks like a wild thing.

  Mum knocks on the door, rattling the handle. ‘Tom, what’s going on? Dr Bent?’

  I strain and eventually squeeze my other arm from the clutches of the world’s most evil dentist’s chair. I kick hard at the leg clamps over and over again, then pry them open with my fingers. I leap from the chair and bolt for the door.

  ‘Noooooo!’ Bent shouts, jumping to his feet. Lucinda flies across the room after me, snapping at my heels. I grab an unlabelled body part in a pickle jar and hurl it at her. The jar explodes and Lucinda yelps.

  I tear open the door and catapult myself into the hallway.

  ‘Tom!’ Mum says, but I run right past her.

  ‘Get back here, you ungrateful pig of a boy!’ Bent demands.

  Lucinda, Bent and Mum chase me up the hall, but I’m too fast. They don’t have a hope. I run down the wide, dark corridor, past the parade of long-dead animals. I pull open the front door and leap down the five stairs in a single bound. I am flying through the air and I am free. I will never set foot inside Budget Dentistry again. I am Tom Weekly, master of my own dentistry. I mean destiny.

  I land and the second my foot makes contact with the path I feel it slip from beneath me. But it’s okay – my cat-like reflexes will kick in and I’ll save myself. I always do. The wet path, carpeted in soft, green moss, is speeding towards my face, and I am now suspicious that my hands will not save me before my head makes contact with the – SLAM!

  ‘Are you okay?!’ Mum asks. She rolls me over and I look up at her. Raindrops fall through the trees and into my eyes. ‘Oh no,’ she whispers.

  I touch my fingers to the roaring doughnut of pain that is my mouth. So smooth and wet. I sit up and see two small white pebbles embedded in the moss on the path. I reach out with a shaky hand and pluck the pebbles from the bright-green carpet. I rest them in the palm of my left hand.

  Not pebbles.

  My front teeth.

  They are slick with dirt and blood and moss.

  I slowly turn to Mum.

  She growls like a beast, and I know what she’s thinking: even at Budget Dentistry, this is going to cost a bit.

  Over her shoulder Dr Bent gives me a look of crazed joy. He revs the cordless Black & Decker drill and snaps on his goggles. ‘I’ll do this one for free.’

  Worst. Dentist. Ever.

  I’m not the only one with a dentist horror story. I’ve been speaking to kids in my class, and they told me things that will set the dental industry’s relationship with children back 40 years.

  ‘I got a needle through my tongue.’ – Montana

  ‘I had my gums lasered and they turned black.’ – Natasha

  ‘I nearly had my tongue sucked off by the sucker.’ – Alana

  ‘He had a tray of rotting teeth on the bench right next to my chair.’ – Lilya

  ‘The dentist went to the toilet in the middle of my appointment. It was right next door, and I could hear that he didn’t wash his hands. Then he stuck his fingers back in my mouth.’ – Jaala

  ‘I had to get five teeth ripped out in one sitting, with six needles for every tooth removed.’ – Nick

  ‘The trainee dentist took out my tooth. He accidentally dropped it and I swallowed it.’ – Xavier

  ‘The dentist got my lip stuck underneath my braces. Then he ripped my lip.’ – Nat

  ‘He sneezed a booger onto my face.’ – Thomas

  ‘He used a dirty mouth sponge on me.’ – Kai

  ‘I couldn’t feel the left side of my face. I tried to eat something when I got home and I bit off the side of my tongue.’ – Chris

  Got your own weird or freaky dentist story? I want to hear it at thetomweekly@gmail.com

  * * *

  WARNING: This is a head lice disaster story. It contains graphic scenes of nit extermination. Nit-lovers, do not read on.

  * * *

  Revenge of the Nits

  (Part One)

  Head lice scuttle across the bright, white scalp like lobsters on the ocean floor. They sink their bloodsucking tubes into Lewis’s skin and grow plump, turning a rusty orange colour; then they scurry on. You have not lived until you’ve seen head lice grazing on a scalp in close-up through a macro lens.

  ‘Quiet on set … camera rolling. And … action!’ I whisper.

  Jack pours my nan’s spaghetti sauce in a straight line from the back of Lewis’s hair, over his ear to his forehead. I watch the action unfold on the camera’s flip-screen. Hundreds of head lice are stopped in their tracks. Others are blown off their feet by the force of the sauce. A few manage to vanish into the undergrowth. In our movie, this attack is a bombing raid by an alien race called the Zoronites, using radioactive red sludge mined from deep underground on their home planet, Zoron.

  ‘And cut!’ I say. ‘That was awesome.’

  ‘Play it back!’ Jack demands.

  We are in Lewis’s bedroom. Lewis is one of my best friends, and he just happens to have the worst case of nits in world history. He’s had nits so long that he sees them as his pets. He says they ‘talk’ to him (which makes me worry about his mental health). He’s kindly letting us use his head as a set to shoot our disaster movie for Media class. The assignment was to make a short film about bullying. But that seemed kind of boring. And we figure nits have been pushed around, poisoned, combed out and squished to death by humans for tens of thousands of years, so our Nits vs Aliens story is a heart-warming call for the fairer treatment of head lice and millions of other bugs and parasites that call our bodies home. Or that’s what we’re telling Miss Norrish anyway. Really, we just want to make a cool alien movie.

  Lewis is kneeling on a sheet of black plastic we laid out on the carpet. The camera is on a tripod, hovering over him.

  I show Jack the footage and he whoops with joy.

  ‘One more shot,’ I say. ‘Just for good luck.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ Lewis groans. ‘You didn’t hurt any of them, did you?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘All safe and sound.’

  I feel bad saying this because, I’m afraid, insects have been harmed in the making of this motion picture.

  Lewis scratches his head where the sauce landed.

  ‘Don’t!’ I tell him. ‘It has to look the same in the next shot. It’s called “continuity”. I’m going in for a close-up of the nits’ reactions.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just kind of itchy,’ Lewis says.

  ‘Kind of itchy?’ Jack laughs. ‘That’s funny. Kind of itchy.’

  ‘Wh
at?’ Lewis asks.

  ‘That’s like saying Pluto is kind of far away,’ Jack says. ‘Or that Tom’s bum is kind of smelly. Or that Madonna is kind of old. You have more nits than everyone in our school put together – everyone in every school put together.’ Lewis looks hurt. Jack doesn’t notice. ‘You need to go to the doctor. You need to go to the zoo. You are the zoo!’

  Lewis looks like he is about to punch Jack in the nose. I’ve had to stop them from fighting a few times during our two-hour shoot.

  ‘Let’s just do this last shot and finish up,’ I tell them. ‘We’ve got to start editing if we want to hand it in tomorrow. Quiet on set … camera rolling. And … action!’

  We do it all again. Jack starts pouring a single line of sauce but, halfway, I see a wicked grin creep across his face and he dumps the entire contents of the jar onto Lewis’s head, causing mass nit destruction. Lewis’s wild blond ’fro flattens to his head. Sauce drips down his face and into his ears.

  ‘And … cut!’ I say.

  ‘What was that?’ Lewis screams, standing and knocking the tripod over. I manage to catch it before the camera hits the floor.

  Lewis lunges at Jack. Jack backs off. My arm shoots out to stop Lewis, but I’m not quick enough. He goes for Jack’s throat. I grab the back of Lewis’s shirt and pull on it like reins. Jack points at Lewis’s hair. ‘Dude, what’s happening to your head?’

  ‘Grrrrrrrr!’ Lewis bares his teeth and his eyes bulge like an angry marsupial.

  ‘Seriously! Take a look,’ Jack says.

  I look closely at the back of Lewis’s head.

  I see lumps. Lots of lumps. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them, each one about the size of a marble. They’re writhing and wriggling beneath Lewis’s sauce-coated hair. I let go of Lewis’s shirt and step back. ‘You better go look in the mirror.’

  Lewis goes to his wardrobe door, looks closely at his scalp, screams and drops to the floor.