‘The Gold Tooth’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

The Gold Tooth

Poor clumsy Alan resembled a gray shaggy carpet stuffed under a baseball hat. He was the saddest and meanest looking creature, his droopy nose was probably broken more than once because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.

Alan usually felt miserable but today, he felt charming and handsome as he basked underneath Madison’s blue eyes. She was one sexy woman in black tights, shoulder-length blonde hair, and her face sparkled at him like a diamond and she smelled so fruity. He enjoyed watching her pretty fingers fondle the apples.

Alan spread his mouth into a bad breath grin at Madison. A foul stench of onions and booze should have made her turn away except it was the yellow canine. The yellow canine beamed like a neon-light beside the rest of his rotten teeth. It was gold. Alan, the old man who had managed to almost drop all the apples from the produce display had a golden canine.

In the gaze of her attentive eyes, she noticed his old blue eyes had yellow polka dots. It might be her day off from the nursing home but she was still stuck in her lilac scrubs and examining patients, she really tried to stop herself. But Madison knew those yellow spots meant pinguecula or his liver was dying from an overload of liquor. She opted for the later version.

She handed him his bag of apples and was about to go find those overpriced raisins and maybe she would need butter that would be priced at an arm and a leg. It would save money to buy the pre-made stale butter tarts. But she really wanted to make them for her fiancee, she promised him.

“Thanks Blondie.” He chuckled and grinned.

She wished he never grinned, that contagious gold-feeling, that golden canine – one tooth – one cap of gold in his scummy mouth.

For Alan’s sake, Madison’s frozen smile and her stoney-blue eyes were so charged on him that it should have scared him but he was so enamored by this young-thing being so kind to him. It reminded him of the old days when women would be lined up to make time for him. That was really a lie, but that’s how he remembered them. In reality, Alan only picked up two women in two different decades and both of them divorced him. All the other times, the police were called to pick him up because he was harassing women at the bar or he was fist-fighting about politics.

Meanwhile in Madison’s mind, she was already twirling around her gold collection, her pretty things: chains, hearts and crosses. The gold tooth was so bewitching that Madison had to have it.

The shrill voice of her conscience preyed on her to do the right thing: make those butter tarts, you promised him. Madison knew that she should walk away, and she was in Lulus and maybe go to the gym and then bake those butter tarts. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t resist that pretty gold tooth stuck in his horrid mouth.

“Mads, It’s so pretty,” Granny whispered in her head. “Don’t you worry, you won’t get caught. Who would even love a man like that? Remember Audrey? Her bottle collection and fruit flies, and a couch with a small fortune of ten thousand?” Granny could spend all night listing off everything that she had taken and she was never ever caught.

When Madison was only four, she awoke to a dozen swirling red and blue butterflies except she knew now, that it was police lights spinning on the wall.

That night Granny wrestled with the policeman before they successfully handcuffed her and they left behind her Elizabeth Taylor wig on the floor. And then her mother disappeared into the pitch black night like she never existed. After that Madison lucked out on a foster family adopting her but somehow her life fluttered onto the fringe of disaster...

On her very first graveyard shift at the hospital she was in charge of Lillian Page. Mrs. Page was a lonely soul and she didn’t have anybody to come and visit her, and she didn’t sleep too well; she loved to talk until her voice just gave up. She had cancer from smoking since she was twelve so she knew that she going to die so she wanted to stay awake as long as possible even though the other nurses couldn’t stand her, Madison had a sweet-spot for this unwanted curmudgeon.

Madison gave her a nightly dose of temazepam and the old lady gobbled down the red and blue pills like they were her happy time.

When Madison picked up Mrs. Page’s chart she saw the wispy black-ink scribble that somebody already had given Mrs. Page her nightly dose. To Madison, an alarm went off and she had just double dosed the patient. She had given Mrs. Page a fatal dose. She had murdered her. Madison felt the room spin and the butterflies, the sirens she saw it all coming to an end with her in cuffs and nightmares.

Mrs. Page wasn’t bothered by Madison sticking around. In fact, she grinned at Madison as she felt the warm-drowsy feeling of sleep falling over her and she even called her by her daughter’s name: Lisa.

Madison was tumbling down a hole and she knew she should go and get help but that’s when she felt Granny’s old ghostly scratchy hand hold her around her wrists so tight and Madison could taste that bitter-tasting milk at the back of her throat.

“It’s going to be okay. You don’t move a muscle, child.” Granny coaxed her with the sweet words. Madison disappeared and she let Granny help her clean up this horrible accident.

Mrs. Page went into cardiac arrest. She never ever could remember how Mrs. Page’s gold necklace got into her pocket. All she remembered was Granny’s haunting goodnight-wishes:“I love you to the moon and back.”

The gray house, Alan’s home, stood not straight but not completely crooked. Once Alan died it would destroyed for a million dollar home. The ad would boast as being super private with a natural garden of hedges and gigantic mature cedar trees. Plus, a block away from the beach. Close your eyes and imagine your dream oasis.

As of now the property was anything but dreamy. The huge trees had uprooted the grass, broken the cement path and dishevelled the front stairs. An assortment of blackberry vines crawled their way out of the cedar bushes. Their thorns cutting into the air, seizing hold onto anything that would give them a speck of sunlight.

“My two wives are resting there. They were all sour bitches in life but now they’re sweet. The best berries for wine.” Alan bursted his gut into laughter.

“My husband makes a perfect pie.” She gave him a wink.

“Where’d you bury him?” He asked her.

“With the rhubarb.” She teased him into another blast of laughter.

The home was ugly, ugly by the fact that a white smudged fridge was at the very back of the house separating the kitchen and the back door.

An unhappy feeling of death was in all corners of the home for poor Alan. Alan could be dead in so many ways: Alan sleeping on his favourite chair while a fire from the tiny fireplace roasted him into a gooey ash, or him being crushed and beaten to death by all the books and bookshelves by the nasty Queen Charlotte Fault earthquake.

“It’s cozy.” She reflected as she shrugged her shoulders with the friendliest of smiles at Alan.

“Would you like tea, my dear?” He asked her as he rested his back against the fridge.

“No, thanks.” She sneered at him, how she wished she could just pry his mouth open and take that gold tooth rather than suffer a game of pretend with him.

“But Alan.” She paused to get all of his attention. “Let me spoil you. Let me make you a drink.” She volunteered and right away his frown of disappointment turned upside down and the golden canine winked at her.

The kitchen was narrow with just enough squeezable room for a round table with two seats. The sink was filled with a stack of smeared plates and ancient tea bags hanging off the faucet. In the corner was a zillion stack of fliers, and she was sure that she saw a mouse’s tail at the very bottom.  Mice or any rodent with snaky tails scared her. But Granny was right there with her sweet words. “It’s alright. He needs a friend. He needs your help, Mads.”

Alan eased into the wooden chair and she could tell that he had a sore back: it could be a deteriorating disc or cirrhosis. It made her back hurt by just watching him.

Madison took charge of putting the groceries away as she also searched the cupboards that were filled with more books than cans of food for a pair of clean glasses.

Granny stood beside Madison, she could only see Granny out of the corner of her eye: Granny was like a dark blobby shadow. Deep down Madison was also frightened that it might be a torn retina but it was better to believe that Granny was always with her.

“It’s colder today than yesterday. I’m going to have to start a fire tonight.” Alan rubbed his arms.

“A whiskey will warm those old bones too.”

“Old? Who says I’m old.” Alan barked as he liked to leer at this young-thing scooting around his kitchen. He felt so lucky today.

“I got your poison, Alan.” It was so corny but he loved how she wiggled the whiskey at him.

Alan grinned. She made him feel so young and important and like a king of his own castle.

“Alan, my dear, I thought I was the only one that kept books in my kitchen cupboards too.”

“You collect books?” his silver eyebrows peaked into a point as she handed him his drink.

“Yes.” The truth was she didn’t collect books but Alan liked to think that they were soulmates or something that was totally impossible. “So where do you keep these fine first editions?”

“In my bedroom.” He told her as he took a big gulp. His lips glistening with booze.

Madison peeked into the inky dark room. The walls were armoured with oodles of books and shelves; she could see the kitchen light reflecting off the shiny spines of hardcovers.

“You mister Alan, have such a charming smile.” His gold tooth rattled at her and she noted how he couldn't leave his glass alone until it was empty and her’s was still seventy-five percent full. “Where did you get that gold tooth?” She asked.

“My darling, Maddy, I panned for that gold.”

“Really?” She asked while she poured him another whiskey behind him. Then she sprinkled the fine white powder of crushed temazepam. Instantly, the powder dissolved like it never happened. Vamoosed into the ambers just like all her fathers that Granny had poisoned. Each one dead and striped of his gold chains or rings and Granny always wore at least five gold chains underneath her turtleneck tops.

Madison coughed and it didn’t sound good. She could feel that yucky taste of a germ bug swimming down in her throat.

“Are you getting a cold?” His face squinted into a grimace.

“No, allergies. I’m one of those people: dust, hay and alder trees and pollen too.” She took a sip of the whiskey. “So, when I went panning for gold. I collected nothing. Not even one tiny speck.”

“I have five vials of gold in my bathroom.” he told her as he took a big gulp and his soft grimy hand pressed her hand. “You are so sweet, Maddy, my dear.”

Granny’s white hands slithered around Alan’s neck and he shivered.

“Oh, Alan, cheers to you and all your million successes.” Madison cheered him on.

He wheezed into laughter. “Maddy, you want to know something else?” He wanted to impress her and to have her stay a little longer; he enjoyed her company.

“What is it, my dear?” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m a millionaire too.”

“In gold?” She asked.

“Nope, American and Canadian. I sleep on it every night. Sweet dreams every night.” He laughed up a storm as he took a mouthful of whiskey.

Madison wiggled comfortably into her seat as she waited for the temazepam to kick in. The temazepam metamorphosis began with the dilation of the pupils, then their speech became slurred followed by their gross motor skills: it became harder for them to walk or to move. Then soon enough they were knocked into a coma followed by a cardiac arrest. And they were dead. She never waited for their last breath before she went hunting for their treasures.

And Alan’s tiny pupils were blooming into black holes.

“You are a devil.” Madison told him quite frankly. “But a charming one.” She knew that was Granny talking she would never say anything like that.

Alan loved it and begged to hear her story and Madison thought it was only fair that she give them a little story as they gradually cease to exist.

“I’m a nurse. I’ve been working for about six years. My parents named me Madison after the mermaid from Splash. So every Halloween, I dress up like a mermaid. I call that my fun fact.” Madison crinkled her cute knob of nose at him as she stared deeply into his black pupils.

“A mermaid?” He asked amused and he liked to see her in a bikini. He wished it was still summer.

“Mmm, yep, and in my lifetime, I’ve met like ten other Madisons all named after the same mermaid. It doesn’t seem so original when you’re a millennial.” She took a sip of whiskey. “Ugh, this is so gross.” She wiped her lips on her sleeve. “It makes me want to hurl.”

“You’re a virgin.” he barked at her in good humour.

“Alan, you’re so silly.” She hissed at him. “I am engaged. I met my fiancee in detention in high school. It’s kind of funny when I think about it now. My fiancee, he lived in detention, but you see, it was my first time at detention in high school.” she yawned.

“What did you do?”

“Oh, it was meant as a joke. I bought a bunch of wild mushrooms to cooking class. Panther Cap. Amanita pantherinoides. It’s a mouthful but they are these beautiful spotted brownish mushrooms. So, I just bought them in as a stupid joke. I wasn’t going to poison anybody for real. So, I got detention and that was the day I met him. He was the kind of guy who pretty much lived in detention. A real hands on kind of guy. He’s a paramedic now.”

“Your fiancee is very lucky to have you.” Alan told her.

“Thanks. His step-mother tells me that I am lucky to have him.”

Alan laughed and he asked for another drink but she didn’t hear him and she didn’t care. Even though his movements were slow and clumsy, she knew in about five minutes he would be dead and forever resting in his own piss. And in her mind, she was already thinking about the mattress behind her in the dark room and she couldn't wait to have all that money along with his gold tooth.

An iron-fisted knock pounded at the front door, it almost sounded like they were going to tear the door down. The pounding knock hurtled her out of her cash fantasy and then she heard Alan repeating her name like a dog.

“Are you alright, Maaaddddyeee? He squeezed her hand. “They’ll goooo awwwayyy.” He grinned.

In spite of Alan’s words they didn’t go away, the pounding knock turned to the doorknob being wickedly twisted and turned.

“Who is it?” She asked horrified that they could just barge in during the day.

The door banged open and it was like all the air in the house blew out the front door. She sat there clutching her throat and then she heard two feet stomp inside and she knew she was being cornered.

“Father, I’m home.” The stranger shouted from the living room.

Alan dragged himself to the living room as Madison almost tripped over the kitchen chair.

“Youu, geeet ouut!” Alan yelled at his son.

“Drunk in the afternoon. Classic, pops.”

Each beat in her heart felt like those butterflies caught in her throat and twirling in her head. She knew this wasn’t part of her plan. She could hear both of them yelling and shouting and it was all gibberish to her.

 The darkness in the bedroom eclipsed over her, leaving the light behind her. The kitchen and the glasses of whiskey became farther and farther away, and the fear fluttered around her like mad butterflies and their wings had teeth and they were lashing at her - trying to tear her apart.

Then something stubbed her toe and she almost screamed but then she saw it was a book, just a book and a horrible feeling came to her that maybe she had poisoned herself. She didn’t want to believe it. That Granny had poisoned her. It was even a more horrible thought than the stranger. The bitter-tasting milk that Granny gave her every time she put her to bed. “I love you to the moon and back.”

Madison groped at the dark air trying to find her way out. Her hands stumbled upon a bookshelf and then another bookshelf and then another bookshelf.

In the pitch black, she searched for a halo of light that framed a window. A horrible thought that the window was behind the bookshelves. She was trapped and death was right there just like in Alan’s whiskey glass.

“Where’s the window? Please help me.” She whispered into the dark, hoping that Granny or some angel would help her. Would take her blind hand and show her the exit.

She didn’t want to die yet. She didn’t know where she’d go. At that moment she knew she wasn’t an atheist or even a Buddhist anymore; she was too terrified with fear of what else was hidden in the dark when she died.

Then she felt something a cold musty fabric between her fingers and she yanked it back to reveal a single window. Her only escape was covered by a thick knobbly cedar bush and streaming blackberry vines. High above the towering cedar she could see a few black crows flying in the free gray sky.

She opened the window and the cedar bush and the vines bounced into the room and the crows she could hear their cawing-howl that felt so close that it sent a shiver down her spine.

The moist air breathed onto her face and she could taste the salt of the sea on her lips that was a block away. The crows howled and it sent a tremor of cold chills.

That crazy-hurling howl wasn’t the crows, it was Alan howling from the living room.

Madison squished herself onto the windowsill and all she had to do was jump into the cedars and the dark thorns; her skin prickled with anticipation of all the blood-trailing scratches.

She pushed off from the ledge and and instead of thorns the curtain snatched her away from escape.

Madison screamed and squirmed and did everything to stay alive and try to get away from the man who held her in the folds of the curtain.

She could hear him yelling at her to shut up as his hand pressed down on her mouth wanting to crush her. Suffocating her under the mushy fabric. The yucky fabric she could taste all the bitterness of the pee, the nicotine and the dust heavy with failure and she became so afraid that she was going to die. She could taste the bitter-milk: chalky and so bitter that the cinnamon on top only made her lips spicy.

Abruptly, Madison was chucked onto the floor. She curled herself into the folds of the curtain like it would protect her from any harm that was going to come her way.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” He told her but she didn’t believe him even though she heard his footsteps move away from her.

Underneath the curtain she could just make out through the weak weave Alan’s son underneath the kitchen light. She watched him pace back and forth and then she saw Granny. Granny standing beside him as he drank down the two glasses of whiskey.

Inch by inch the curtain slipped away from her head and then she sat there like a doll spying at him. She knew him. He was the butcher. Usually, his long black beard was stuffed underneath a hairnet but she recognized those mingy eyes and his giant stance and all those tattoos of Vikings and Celtics and fiery flames on his arms, hands and neck.

“He’s dead.” The butcher told her and she knew she meant Alan.

Madison sat there and the room became lighter and she could hear just the crows and the mist turning into rain and Granny words on the wind telling her it was going to be alright.

“I am sorry.” She wasn’t that sorry for him, she was sorry that she had ended up here with him. “If he’s dead and you called 911. They won’t be out here for at least an hour.” She kicked off the curtain. “I know because I’m a nurse.”

“A nurse?” he still didn’t recognize her and that made her a little bit mad.

She stepped underneath the light and his face turned friendly because he recognized her. The young lady around his age buying steaks or a whole chicken. He had even given her a recipe for roast chicken with a beer can in the summer.

“Madison.”

“Corey.”

She picked up the two glasses. “I should probably be here when they arrive.” She invited herself. “So, maybe, we should have a drink as we wait.” She told him as she poured the whiskey.

His head was weeping between his hands as she sprinkled the rest of temazepam that was left in the pouch. She hoped it would be enough.

“Yeah. I did everything to save him.” He turned around to face her.

“To save him?” She asked as she passed him a drink.

He really didn’t want the drink but he took it anyways. He didn’t like to look at her too long because he found her fake eyelashes creepy.

“I think he had a heart attack.” Corey informed her.

“A heart attack?” She questioned it like he was an idiot. “Well, he wasn’t well, you do know that. He was in a lot of pain. His liver was practically killing him. Not much you can do.” She grinned but he didn’t smile back. “We should drink.” She took one of her tiny sips while he downed the booze in one shot.

“Miss, can you check on him?” Corey stood there. “To just make sure. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Sure.” The living had a hard time when death finally came and all they had was something lifeless whether they loved or hated them. It was all the same. They wanted her to check one more time to make sure that they were really dead.

He followed behind her like a little puppy as she approached the old man who was sprawled out like a bear rug except he rested on his back and in a pool of his own piss. His mouth was wide open and his golden canine so shiny.

Madison kneeled down and took his pulse, pretending that there was a half chance of life in him. Her two fingers pressed against his neck, where the pulse would be, and then for real theatrics, she picked up his hand and checked his wrist.

“I am so sorry, Corey.” She told him even though her eyes never left the gold tooth.

“We were arguing.” Corey said. “He fell over. I didn’t know. I didn’t think.”

“I heard.” She silently said as her finger touched the gold tooth.

“He just fell down.”

“Were his eyes open and his eyelids fluttering like this.” She showed him, and she didn’t read the horror on his face. She had no idea, that he knew, that she had the taken and hid the gold tooth in the palm of her hand.

Corey’s hands went numb as he watched her face smirk at him. Her blue eyes were like glass and her face glared at him like wax. It was like she wore a mask and a wig of blonde locks.

“Are you okay?” She held his chilly hands as her warm hands fell over him checking his vitals. “You’re ice cold.” She giggled at him. “Maybe you need to sit down?”

The liquor, and he had just a little bit, he’d been sober for about two years and now, he could feel the poison in him and he could taste that vile part of him erupting. After one shot of whiskey he was a cheap date but back in the day he drank like a fish. Corey didn’t like having her clammy hands on him.

Madison moved like she was in water, swimming around his legs, until he caught and squeezed her by her neck; she felt like quicksand in his palm.

Nothing ever worked out for him except the job he had, the butcher, packing up the meat and he was good at that. He liked butchering and then packing it up for people for dinner, or his meat recommendations if he got asked about a good cut for steak or a roast, or reserving their turkeys for Christmas. It was like he was right at the table with them.

Corey did feel bad for burying her in the back with the cedars and he felt even worse when he saw her missing person poster. A family missing a loved one. It was a horrible feeling. He didn’t like to think about her but he couldn’t erase the last memory of her. After Madison died her eyes twitched and twitched and her fake-lashes quivered like caterpillars. It freaked him out a couple of times as he dragged her body away from his Dad’s body before the ambulance arrived to see his dead father.

The blue house, Corey’s home, stood straight and sturdy with beautiful tall hedges that he trimmed on his days off. With his dad’s inheritance, he got a new truck that he drove from work to home but one day he would take a trip to some place less gray.

Veronica Gardner lives in Red Deer, Alberta (Canada). She has moved around the globe from NYC, LA, and then to Comox Valley to find gold, and then for a summer, she watched David Blaine live in a box for 44 days in London, England. Her poem "A Cat With Wings" has been published in Poet's Choice: Poems Now and Forever edition.