Prose

Little Teeth

by John Louis Koenig

“Isn’t she cute?”
Brenda Black held out a hideous, deranged-looking doll for Billy to admire.
It was an old, victorian looking thing, in decrepit, violet silk and lace, with a dementedly frozen smile on a cracked porcelain face. The parted lips revealed tiny, little pearly teeth. They were disturbingly real looking teeth, as if stolen from an infant’s cadaver.
“Um… yeah,” said Billy Brady, with a look on his face that said, Keep that thing away from me.
“My friends collect Living Dead Dolls,” the girl explained, “but I wanted something unique and one-of-a-kind. I found her on Ebay. Someone in Maine was selling her. That’s Stephen King territory, you know. I call her Morticia.”
It was an awkward first meeting for them both. They’d met online. She was BiteGirrrl666 and he was KewlDude88.
She was a goth, and he was just horny.
Her parents were away on vacation. His parents didn’t hear him sneak out. It was just a short ride on his bike to where she lived on Chandler Street.
Brenda had immediately invited Billy to her bedroom, a gesture that he took to portend his imminent salvation from Teenage Virgin Hell.
“Want to watch a movie?” Breanda asked.
“Um… sure,” he said, following her around the bed like a puppy dog to several stacks of DVDs that stood on either side of her little television.
“Let’s watch this, ‘The Bride of Chucky,’ have you seen it?”
Billy shook his head distractedly, following Brenda onto her black velvet covered bed. He leaned back into a pile of mismatched pillows that reeked of Nag Champa incense and stale pot smoke. Brenda pointed her remote at the TV and navigated quickly past the trailers and the disc menu to start the movie.
Morticia the Doll sat facing them, propped against one stack of DVDs beside the TV, seemingly fixed upon Billy with a glassy stare. He was finding it harder and harder to focus either on the movie or on Brenda laying beside him.
“Do you mind if we move the doll?” he asked.
Brenda seemed offended. “Why, don’t you like her?”
She hopped from the bed and gathered the antique doll under her arm, returning to lay beside Billy.
The boy repressed a shiver and pretended to watch the movie, all the while imagining scenarios, one after another, to seduce his new-found friend, while the eyes of Morticia continued to seem trained upon him.
Then as Chucky made his move on Jennifer Tilly, Billy made his. Summoning all of his teenage cool, he rolled over onto Brenda, who sighed compliently and let the scary old doll fall beside her.
Billy looked down at Brenda, intending to kiss her, but her sheer strangeness was beginning to affect him. Being so close to her, he began to see things that had escaped his notice before.
The slenderness that had appealed to him at first now seemed disturbingly frail and skeletal. Her delicate hands seemed rat-like and her pale skin appeared waxen. Her scent seemed sickly sweet.
The boy let his weight pin the fragile girl to the bed, but she made no move to resist. Billy was going to try to go through with this, despite the fact that he could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He buried he face against Brenda’s shoulder and tried to get her skirt up and her panties down, trying to ignore his sense of the girl’s growing impatience at his awkwardness.
Suddenly Billy felt a vicious hickey being applied to his neck. He jerked back, sending Brenda’s doll tumbling off of the bed where it fell against the nightstand, staring up at him.
“What the fuck!” cried Billy, clapping his hand to his neck and feeling the sticky wetness of blood. In his shock, he imagined that Morticia’s lips looked a brighter crimson than before.
He scrambled off the bed, zipping his pants as his feet hit the floor. He heard Brenda’s voice behind him, pleading with him to stay.
“Don’t go, Billy! I’m BiteGirl, remember? We like to bite!”
But Billy was already to the front door, banging it open and stumbling down the steps. He bruised his crotch as he leapt onto his waiting bike and pedalled frantically, craving the safety and normalcy of his room.
Brenda picked Morticia up off of the floor. She sighed as she sank back against the pillows, turning her and the doll’s gaze back toward the television where Chucky and his Bride were electrocuting someone in a bathtub.

*** Back at home, Billy lay in bed for hours sleeplessly, imagining the night’s events. Still a virgin, he thought to himself. He wondered how he would explain the extreme hickey on his neck. He hadn’t looked at it yet, but he was sure his parents would notice it in the morning.
In the comfort of his bedroom, Brenda didn’t seem so bad – kinda sexy, in a strange way. He could have had her!
If he could just get that creepy doll locked in a box somewhere. He had stopped considering the bizarre thoughts he had had about the thing, but he still didn’t want to have to see it ever again.
He got out of bed, turned on his computer and logged on.
There she was: BiteGirl666. She couldn’t sleep either.
He typed her an instant message.
KewlDude88: hi
BiteGirrrl666: hi
KewlDude88: sorry I left like that
Billy waited a full minute for an answer.
BiteGirrrl666: com,e bacjk
KewlDude88: are you sure???
Another long pause.
BiteGirrrl: yess come bac
This time Billy paused before answering.
KewlDude88: you seem different
One last pause…
BiteGirrrl666: thisss iss mmorticia
Billy snatched his hands way from the keyboard as if it were the hateful doll itself. He jabbed a finger onto the computer’s power button, shutting it down cold. Before the monitor had faded to blackness, Billy had already leapt back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.
Meanwhile, Brenda sat at her computer, laughing gleefully as she saw Billy instantly log off.
Billy didn’t move a muscle as a swarm of ‘what if’s’ swirled in his head.

🙝

Frankenstein: Chapter 5. The Monster.

Frontispiece to the 1831 Bentley & Colburn edition of Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst
BY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY,
first published in 1818

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful.

Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.

I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.

He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs.

I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!

Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view.

I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky.

I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

🙝