Carol's Teeth

Carol’s Teeth

I once dated a girl named Carol. A girl named Carol with yellow teeth. They were crooked too, which is why her smile was always a cute half smile. At first her yellow teeth quite startled me, but I grew to accept her yellow teeth and be turned on by them. At first her bulging blue eyes freaked me out a little, but they too started to have their way with me. One day Carol called me on the telephone.

“Come over to my house right now!” She said. “I have a big surprise to show you.”

I sprinted right over, a la Usain Bolt, because with Carol there were never any surprises. I thought that this must be something pretty big. By the time I got to her doorI was gasping so hard that I didn’t even have enough stamina to lift my arm to knock. But I didn’t have to because there was my gawky Carol waiting, brandishing a straight happy white Vegas-style smile.

“So what do you think?” She said. “I did it, I finally did it, I finally fixed my crooked yellow teeth!”

“I actually liked your yellow teeth, Carol”, I said, with deep regret.Carol just stood there bug-eyeballing me, and her eyebrows began twitching like dueling caveman clubs. She bent down and gave me a big hug-lift like I‘d won a prize. She let me down and ceremoniously ripped from her mouth fake plastic teeth, revealing once again her genuine crooked yellows. She placed the fake white teeth in the microwave and we proceeded to do the dirty on her green leather divan, but not before we watched them melt from the inside out.

~John Walter

Carol’s teeth was published in Thieves Jargon, an online journal, a few years ago.