The Beauty of Death Vol.1

The Carp-Faced Boy-3

“It will be all right.” The dentist placed two large hands on Tetsu’s shoulders. Something like a wasp’s sting ignited in his chest. Spread, numbing. He was guided to the floor. One sweeping hand in red, back and forth in front of his eyes. A blur. His eyes too heavy to keep open.

“Ever since,” Grandpa Tetsu said, finding his mouth harder to move. But his hearing remained keen, woosh woosh woosh the robes busied about him. The sweet, clean scent of camphor filled his head. “I poked him when he came too close.”

“You poked him?”

“With the hot end of my pipe.” The old man wanted to explain better, but he was tired, sleepy. He needed to warn the carver-dentist. “He kept coming around, after me. Fish-faced, evil.”

The stranger Nakanishi sat silent, his presence smothering.

“I don’t know where she got him.” The old man’s own voice was too loud in his ears, the words malformed by his softening tongue. “He’s the reason her husband sent her home. Found another woman. A woman who had normal babies.”

“When you’re ready, we can begin.” The dentist’s voice was very near. Three cool fingers touched his cheek.

“The embarrassment,” Grandpa Tetsu said. “You must be careful.” He gave in and opened his mouth, let the spin take him. Plummeting.

Teeth and Truth—

The western sun drove hot into the old man’s back, waking him. He was on his side, a bundle of cloth pushed up under his head. The sticky feel of recent sweat uncomfortable and clammy on his skin. His slow heartbeat a heavy hammer in his temples, in his mouth.

He remembered.

From down the hall he heard the familiar sounds of his wife and daughter in the kitchen, the rhythmic cleaving of a knife through daikon. The gaspy air pumped from the billows into a crackling fire. A giggle and talk he couldn’t quite hear. There was the smell of grilling sea bream, the unmistakable sweetened soy sauce aroma of boiling konbu seaweed. Earthy root vegetables. His stomach growled. A feast, they were preparing a feast? Maybe for him and his new teeth?

With effort the old man opened his eyes, puffy and crusted and nearly sealed shut. The carver-dentist was gone. His bags and bundles and the box had also vanished. The ceramic jar of saké, though, still stood on the table. A squeeze of his hand told him that he continued to hold the tiny cup, it moved in his grip, and he realized he’d probably broken it at some point during the procedure. A shame. It was an expensive cup.

He tried to sit up but there was only more pain. His chest felt bruised as if someone had been kneeling there for a long time. A whimper sounded in his throat. The puddle of drool in his mouth overflowed. Grandpa Tetsu used his swollen tongue to carefully feel for his new teeth, but found his mouth had been packed entirely with wet cloth. He rolled slightly and spit and gagged and pushed the blood-soaked material onto the floor with his tongue.

For a moment he allowed the viscous liquid to drain onto the cloth under his head. Since he couldn’t seem to find the strength to get up, he rolled over onto his back. Some saliva ran down his cheek and filled one ear. His right arm, the one he’d been lying on, had gone completely numb. It was going to hurt like hell in about five minutes.

Grandpa Tetsu’s tongue set out again prodding the places where the broken and cracked teeth had been. But there was nothing. For a second he thought maybe the dentist hadn’t put them in yet. But his tongue slipped all around the inside of his mouth, over the raw, ragged gums, up and down. And he understood.

There was the unsteady patter of feet hurrying down the hall and Grandpa Tetsu tensed. A small hand found its way through a hole in the paper and slung the door open. The toddler came into the room clapping his hands and bending excitedly at the knees.

The old man’s stomach heaved and he turned his head and threw up what little saké he had left in his stomach and quite a bit of blood that he must have swallowed. With much effort, he brought his left hand up to wipe at his inflamed, toothless mouth with the back of his sleeve. It fell heavily across his chest. He wanted to reprimand the child, to yell at him to get out, but he couldn’t find his voice either. This was it, he thought. He’d finally been caught.

The child toddled closer. The old man gripped the broken cup tightly. But something was wrong. He twisted his wrist and opened his hand, craning his neck to look down. He opened his fingers. It wasn’t a cup at all. There he saw the upper and lower plate of false teeth the dentist had shown him earlier. The one with the four teeth pried from a dead crazy Otsubo embedded in the wood.

“Horsey,” the child called and tottered straight past the old man to the open window. There was the faint rustling of long strands of willow, and then in answer, the neighing of a horse, a bray with a very distinctive deeper voice buried underneath. It was telling him something. The carp-faced child laughed and cooed.

So they didn’t sell the horse after all. Why would they sell a creature the child loved so much? Instead they’d paid for the old man’s surgery with his own teeth. His own perfect teeth. And they must have made a small fortune. Enough to have a feast, he thought.

A squeal from the child brought his attention back to the room. Grandpa Tetsu closed his eyes tight. He wouldn’t cry. He never cried. It sounded as if the carp-faced boy had dropped to the mat and had started crawling, slithering actually, closer and closer to the pained and mostly paralyzed man. All he could do was squeeze the fist on his chest, the one with the teeth in it, over and over, and wish for the boy to leave him alone. His eyes screwed shut, he listened as hard as he could. Hot tears escaped his swollen lids.

There came a neighing, the horse’s final rebuke. It seemed to call: I told you so.

The old man heard the pop, pop, pop of a hungry mouth opening and closing, moving closer. And then his right arm suddenly jerked. Again. There was a pulling sensation, a sense of pressure over the tingling that told him the limb was waking up.

Pain.

A smell, yeasty and fetid, enveloped him. Grandpa Tetsu gagged. He tried to scream but only managed a strangled cough. He attempted to roll away from the shooting pain, but something pinned his right elbow to the floor. That’s when he opened his eyes and gazed down.

The carp-faced boy sat with his back to him, heavy bottom planted firmly in the crook of the old man’s arm. The child stopped what he was doing and turned to look over his shoulder, red-smeared cheeks accentuating his toothy grin.

“Please, no, no, no,” Grandpa Tetsu croaked, trying to find the strength to swat with his other hand, to kick or pull away. To scream.

But the child ignored the plea. And instead he smacked his lips, and held up the old man’s hand for him to see. The thumb and forefinger were already stripped of all their skin and meat. The bones—the black bones—had been licked clean.

The horse whinnied. Grandpa Tetsu sobbed. And the carp-faced boy thrust the old man’s middle finger into his mouth and began to gnaw.