BooksBarbecue
Back Bad Apples
Chapters (65)
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  2. 2
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  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
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  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. Acknowledgements

He says something. I see his mask moving as he talks but I can’t hear him and I can’t read him. He pulls down his mask.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m going to open up the tooth itself now. Just let me know if you need more anaesthetic.’

I start to cry. I don’t want to give them the victory but I can’t stop myself. I jerk my body up and down, move my arms and hips as much as I can, tense every muscle in my body.

‘Easy,’ says Tobias. And then he replaces his mask and the drill grows as it moves closer to my wide-open mouth.

My jaw hurts.

The gums beneath my lower-front teeth hurt from the hooked-on suction tube.

The tooth he’s drilling into does not hurt. I can’t feel pain, but I can feel the drill probing deeper and deeper. Through the enamel. Through the dentine. The sound of it. Vibrations coursing through my skeletal system. The water vapour inside my mouth.

And then his drill hits my nerve.

58

My face twists and contorts with pain.

The intense misery of it. Like needles being pushed up inside my jaw, inside my sinuses, all the way to my brain.

He backs off.

There is a fine spray of blood on his pristine white mask.

Julia comes round to look at me and she says, ‘The doctor will give you a little more anaesthetic for the pain.’

She smiles. She actually smiles.

He injects me again. Further back into the gum around my wisdom tooth. I want to tell them to stop. I want to plead with them, strike some kind of desperate bargain. But my words are just noises and they would ignore them anyway. It’s like I’m still trapped inside one of the new virtual-reality games people play at Mind Games. Still have the headset locked onto my skull. Some under-the-counter extreme-horror game they bought from overseas playing on a loop. A world I cannot leave. Something so nightmarish that the twins argued with each other over whether or not they should release it to their customers.

Tobias works away at my hollowed-out tooth.

I lose track of time.

He consults the X-ray images on the ICA lightbox, and then he removes his mask.

‘That’s the worst part over. I hope it wasn’t too uncomfortable?’

He tilts his head on an angle.

I just stare at him. A snared animal caught in his trap.

‘I’m going to flush the hollow tooth with antiseptic, and then probe for the deep nerves in each of the roots. Would you like more music?’

Fuck off.

‘Okay, then.’ He puts on some kind of music. Wagner again, perhaps. I can’t tell.