The Holes in My Teeth

I woke up with holes in my teeth last Sunday. No, these weren’t, like, cavities I just happened to see or chips in my teeth. They were perfect holes, big enough to fit a thin toothpick through, in all of my teeth. Every. Single. One.

I don’t remember very much from last Saturday, except that I was very tired that evening after my I had my customary glass of red wine. Unusually tired. But, me being me, I brushed it off as just being the result of having a long week. It was a tough week at work and the kids had lots of school projects they needed help with as well. I was finally getting a chance to wind down and really relax. I didn’t have work that weekend and the kids were gone at my ex-wife’s house. That night I went to sleep early, around 6. I think I was asleep before I even hit the bed. I don’t say this as some kind of metaphor to explain how tired I was, I think I literally fell asleep before I laid down. I don’t remember getting under the covers or anything.

I woke up early on Sunday as well. Probably somewhere around 7. I felt a little dizzy when I sat up, and my jaw and mouth hurt. I rubbed it thinking I had just slept wrong even though that seemed more than a little odd. Usually when you sleep wrong you wake with stiff legs, arms or neck. I shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom. I could feel pain on the left side of my mouth and jaw but my right side was kind of numb. Saliva would work it’s way out of the corners of my mouth and it felt like it was drooping. I hoped I hadn’t had some kind of seizure or stroke.

I stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes examining my face. There was a slight drop in my mouth on the right side. I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out my toothbrush. I slathered toothpaste on it and ran it under the faucet. When I opened my mouth, I felt it. The pain was intense and my whole face instantly started throbbing. The cold air on my teeth made it feel like I bit down on a slab of ice. I instantly closed my mouth. What the hell was happening? I waited for the throbbing to go down before I slowly opened my mouth to try to see what was going on.

My heart jumped and my stomach dropped. I brought my right index finger up to my front teeth and lightly touched them. The pain was excruciating. Where did these holes come from? I didn’t have them yesterday. And they were so…perfect. Small and perfectly round. I moved my tongue around and could feel small sand-like grains in my mouth. I could taste something too. It tasted like earth. Dirt.

I guess I should have gone to hospital or called the police but I waited until 9 when my dentist’s office opened. He didn’t do dental work on the weekends but his secretary was always there doing paperwork. If a patient called with an emergency she would notify the doctor. This was definitely an emergency. I arrived at the dentist’s office a few minutes after the doctor did. He helped me in the door, my legs were shaking from the pain. I couldn’t make it to the back room so he had me sit in the lobby while he went and got some gloves and a light. When I opened my mouth to show him, he gasped.

“Oh my god…” he said quietly. I could feel tears stinging my eyes. I couldn’t speak and so I wrote down what I had to say.

I scrawled my questions on a legal pad the secretary brought over, “What is this? Can you fix this? These weren’t here yesterday. I woke up this morning and they were just there.” My doctor read over the note and sighed.

“I…I don’t have an explanation for this David. Give me until Monday to figure this out. I’m really not sure what exactly I need to do to be honest. Now, I know you’re in pain. I’ll prescribe you some pain meds and first thing tomorrow morning, we’ll take care of this.” he put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a sad, reassuring smile.

All day I alternated between one aspirin every 2 hours and one pain pill every 6 to 8 hours. I kept myself pretty well medicated and by 9’o’clock that night I decided to head back to my bedroom and get comfortable. I switched on my TV and got into bed. I fell asleep within the hour while watching some show on Discovery channel. Even with all the pain medication and aspirin I still had a dull throb in my mouth, so I tossed and turned all night. I woke up around 2am and sleepily tried to roll over onto my side. But I couldn’t move. Thinking I was still half asleep and in some kind of state of sleep paralysis, I shook my head a little bit to fully wake up and tried to roll over again. I still couldn’t move. By now I was wide awake. My arms were above my head, I usually sleep on my back with both my arms folded under my pillow. I went to move my arms and that’s when I noticed I was secured to the rods on my headboard. I shifted my torso a little bit and I could feel metal grinding into my wrist. I wasn’t just secured to the headboard, I was handcuffed.

That’s when I saw the shadow at the foot of the bed. My feet were partially obscuring the top of what looked like somebodies head. I tried to move my feet a little bit, but no luck. My ankles were tied firmly to the feet of the bed. I could feel the tough rope burning into me as I tried to move. Whoever was working at the bottom of my bed stood up. They were standing in front of the television so they were kind of shadowed, but I could tell it was a woman. I couldn’t make out her facial features but her hair was slightly frazzled and she was well dressed. The main thing I noticed was the way she smelled.

Her body odor was so extreme she smelled like burnt hair and mold. Her head snapped towards me as I shifted my torso again. She quickly straddled me. Her scent was so overpowering, I started to gag. My whole head was pounding at this point. My heart was beating so fast I could feel the vibrations in my mouth. I tried to yell for help and she shoved her right hand into my mouth.

The taste. Her hands were dirty and her long nails scratched my tongue. It tasted like the smell of a dead animal. I’m not sure if that’s the right way to describe it but that’s exactly how I remember it. Like raw meat left out to spoil in the hot sun. I could feel the vomit start to rise in my throat as my stomach heaved, but it never came up. I tried to bite her but her left hand had a firm grip on my jaw, holding my mouth open. She moved her right hand around my mouth, touching all my teeth with her long, rotting nails. Pain shot through my gums and seemed to bounce around inside my head. When she removed her hand, my mouth remained held open by some kind of crank. I could taste the rusted metal mixing with the putrid taste of her flesh. I was still heaving, waiting for the vomit to come up, still nothing. I could feel hot tears running down my face. She produced a medium sized needle from her coat pocket. She gently thread a thick wire through it. I started to shake and moan, trying to tell her to stop.

She stuck the needle through one of my back teeth and pulled the wire through. I could feel the thick, coiled wire grinding inside my tooth as I cried in pain. It was like someone had taken a red hot branding iron and shoved it into my mouth. I tried to move my head away but she held my face in her hand, her grasp almost crushing my jaw. For 20 minutes she thread long, individual pieces of wire through each of the teeth. I fought to stay conscious, shaking, shivering and gagging the entire time. When she had finished pulling the wires through she secured them all together in the middle. She begin to get off of me while wrapping the wires around her left arm. When she was at the foot of my bed, she placed her right had just below where she had secured the wires together.

And then she pulled.

Slow at first and then she gave a powerful tug, so forcefully she almost knocked the TV off its stand. My head jerked forward violently, I thought my head was gonna be ripped away from my body. Not all of my teeth came out at first and I could feel some of them crack and break. After gently pulling the wires and noticing not all the teeth were out, she pulled from left to right. She walked around to my left side while pulling the wires up and down. And then, there was no more pressure, just a hot and agonizing pain. She held the wires up and admired the teeth hanging from them. I could feel warm blood and saliva hitting my face as she shook the wires. She gently removed whatever she had placed inside my mouth.

I turned my head away from her, coughing and gagging. Thick saliva and blood seemed to pour endlessly out of my mouth. And then finally, I vomited. I moaned in pain while spitting vomit out of my mouth and onto the bed. Tears didn’t stream down my face anymore, my eyes just seemed to dry out. I could feel her loosening one of the handcuffs and feeling around under my pillow. I was so weak and in shock I couldn’t grab her. I tried, but my fingers just slid off her arm.

She gathered up a bag from the bottom of the bed and made her way to the bedroom door. With a cheerful voice she simply said, “Thank you!” And then she left. I could hear her walking down the hallway. The way it sounded, I assume she was barefoot. I could hear the skin of her feet slapping the tiles in the hallway. The front door opened and then shut. She was gone. I tried with everything I had left in my body to not pass out from the pain and was able to retrieve the phone from the nightstand.

As the 911 operator answered, all I could do was mumble and cough, and then I blacked out. I woke up in the hospital the next morning.

My recovery has been slow. Not only did I lose all my teeth, but my jaw was damaged from the way she pulled them out. The police were able to lift finger prints from my house, but they still haven’t found her. They don’t know if they ever will since I wasn’t able to give an accurate description of her face, just her scent. Hopefully they find her before she does this to someone else.

While the whole experience was traumatic and terrifying, the most chilling thing was what the police told me a few days later.

She left 28 dollars under my pillow.

Credit: abcwho (Author)

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