I’ve always hated the
dentist. Always. Ever since I was five and Dr. Thorpe tattled to my mom that I
hadn’t been brushing every night, and then my mom cut off my candy supply for
weeks. Why would he do such a cruel, unforgiving thing? Since then, I’ve gone
through five dentists, but none of them ever worked out for some reason or
another. I moved a couple times, got on new dental insurance, had a couple
irreconcilable differences with a few, and just never ended up having the same
dentist for more than a couple years. Sure, I might not be the best at brushing
my teeth, but it’s not like I was hurting anyone. Now I was going to my new
dentist, Dr. Jean, for the first time, and I had to admit I was quite nervous.
I’ve never trusted dentists, and Dr. Jean was no exception. Especially because
it was the first time I was visiting his office and he had already ordered me
to have a tooth pulled based on instructions from my previous dentist. They’re
probably all in cahoots trying to make my life miserable.
I walked into the
dentist’s office with my mom about ten minutes before my scheduled appointment.
I sat in the office, immediately feeling uneasy by all the animated teeth with
wide smiles that stared at me from posters on the wall from every angle. With
every passing minute, I more strongly considered bolting. Who even knew what
kind of weird drugs they would put me under for the surgery? I didn’t know much
about the procedure, but I knew that there were infamous YouTube videos of poor
individuals afterwards who don’t even know their own names and are bumbling
around, talking nonsense under the heavy depressants. In a whirl, I was called
into the office and put under the florescent lights on a tan cushioned
reclining chair with an unusually gleeful nurse smiling down at me with
unnaturally white, gleaming teeth. My mom stood by my side, reassuringly
holding my hand that was shaking in my nervousness.
“Now, this won’t hurt a
bit” the nurse gleamed at me, “but it might make you a little sleepy…” All of a
sudden I felt a thin needle slide into my arm and my vision blurred around the
edges before everything slowly turned dark, then black all at once. I was
floating up, out of the chair, out of the office, out of my life.
It was minutes later,
or maybe it was hours. As I regained consciousness, I realized I was no longer
in the tan reclining chair at the dentist’s office. But if I was no longer at
the dentist’s, where was I? I realized that I was sitting upright on a new
chair, this time with a dark blue soft covering. It was fancy and proper.
Looking around, I came to terms with my surroundings. I was sitting in a nice
seat next to a wide window, overlooking the dull countryside as we were
whirling by. I was on a train, plummeting to an unknown destination. In a
panic, I jumped out of my seat. There were other seats by the window, but they
were all barren. I rushed forward, jumping into the next car, looking for
somebody who could help me. Finally, I found the conductor, tucked up in the
front of the car looking perfectly calm and content.
“Excuse me sir,” I
scrambled to talk, “Where exactly are we going? I don’t remember getting on
this train, and I would like to get off.”
With a chuckle, the
conductor placed a large hand on my shoulder and said, “Oh, dear, you can’t get
off, that’s not quite an option here.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
I questioned. Nothing was making sense and the panic was starting to set in.
“Your dentists wanted
you here” the man replied evenly. “You’re going to see what happens to kids who
don’t brush their teeth.”
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