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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Max-Voynich on 2023-06-27 21:10:01+00:00.

lateral incisor, upper left side.

When I was a boy we played a game called Toothless.

The rules were very simple.

If you were to lose a tooth, as children do, you would try and hide it where a friend might find it; a pocket, a school bag, a shoe. Once they found the tooth, they would have to track down the original owner of said tooth, and then hold it proudly outstretched on their palm, shimmering and white, and say in a clear voice:

‘I want to play a game called Toothless, and the rules are very simple.’

It was then their job to return the tooth to you, before one of their own teeth fell out. If they failed at that, well. I’m not sure we’re quite there yet.

I was very good at Toothless, because I kept my milk teeth for a long, long time. This meant I had all the time in the world to return an errant tooth, that might find its way into my cup of juice, or my water bottle. That being said, it also gave me a strange smile. My teeth too small for my mouth. Little white squares set in pale unstretched gums.

I was a little scared of the game, if I’m honest. Scared of the way these teeth would appear, and, scared too of something beyond that I could not name. Perhaps the way they felt in my palm, warm and certain, like the first hot day of summer. The kind of day you think will never end, thick with flies, a smoggy evening turning white then grey then growing so close you cannot breathe. And at the end of that, you know, as night falls. A limping figure on a tarmac road. Little desperate knocks at your window.

I digress—

When I was ten, I woke to find a tooth in the centre of my mouth. I spat it onto my pillow, and searched with my tongue to find the guilty party. But they were all still there, innocent. My teeth, that is.

I went downstairs, and told my mother what had happened.

She was silent. My mother’s eyes, I should tell you now, were like that of a horse. They were large and wet and unblinking. She was sat at the kitchen table, still dressed in what she had been wearing the night before. Behind her the dawn light was uncertain, faltering. A cigarette had burnt to the filter between her two long fingers, a grey flaccid pillar of ash that still gently smoked. The ashtray was plastic, I remember that, because it would turn yellow at the edges when my mother got like this, and let her cigarettes burn to the filter.

I told her what had happened again, and she nodded as if she had just heard it.

‘It sounds like,’ she said, ‘you are playing a game called Toothless.’

I nodded enthusiastically. She smiled, so I could see her browning dentures. Her gums had receded, and near the top the dentures had gone almost furry, like unvarnished wood left in water.

She beckoned me close with a single finger, ‘the rules,’ she said, ‘are very simple.’

Outside children were starting to play. A large bird tapped its beak against the window, slowly, rhythmically, as if counting something out. I was late for school. I said ‘goodbye, mother’, and gave her a kiss on each powdered cheek. She tasted of sugar, and brandy.

Whoever gave me that tooth never showed themselves at school. Not that day, or the next, or the next. In fact, I still don’t know, exactly, who gave it to me. Although, if I tried, I could hazard a guess.

The game was banned shortly after, after Tom Shepherd snuck into the headmaster’s office and crouched behind his office door, lips peeled back, baring his teeth like a horse champing at the bit, waiting for Mr. Abbot to swing open the door, hard, before Friday assembly, as he always did.

Mr. Abbot did, of course, swing open the door, hard. Tom Shepherd lost all his teeth at once, and some of the nerve endings in his gums died. He was never quite the same afterwards. He had a sad lisp, and his breath smelt of rotting meat. Which is, as you can imagine, not a fantastic combination for a young man.

second molar, lower left side.

We told girls about the game when we were teenagers. Drunk off cheap cider, holding crumpled plastic bottles, we told them:

‘We used to play a game called Toothless, and the rules are very simple.’

I was never quite sure if they were impressed. But amongst the high summer grass they watched us bicker and argue, and sometimes if the sky was particularly beautiful – you know the kind, open and distant and forgiving – they would let us kiss them.

They smoked cheap cigarettes and you could taste it, acrid, new and exciting, and they would tell us long droll stories about their classes at school, and their father’s girlfriends. We were never much interested.

Of course, that only lasted a summer or two. Summer came to an end for good when Jack Shepherd climbed to the top of the hay bales, drunk, probably, and tried to dance with a cigarette in his mouth. It slipped from between his lips, and nestled between two bales, which went up instantly in flame. The effect was somewhat hypnotic, calming on some profound level. The girls did a lot of screaming, I remember that, and one was even sick on her new buckled shoes.

Jack was identified by his teeth, of course, beautiful pearlescent things, almost soft to the touch, unnaturally rounded at the edges, roots far longer than they should have been, whiter than the porcelain on a new toilet. I heard someone say some were capped with gold, although that may have only been a rumour, you know how boys are.

I managed to find one, pressed into the mud by some clumsy policeman’s foot, a few months later, and sucked it clean, all the walk home.

first premolar, upper left side.

At University, in the clean unflattering light of lecture halls, amongst the warm and crusted sheets of dorm beds, I would tell people in whispers, when we were very drunk, about a game I wanted to play.

‘I want to play a game called Toothless,’ I would say, ‘and the rules are very simple.’

They would always laugh, roll their eyes. Some were even asleep by then, and so instead I would just whisper it in their ears, over and over, until I felt them stir. I liked climbing so I was facing their sleeping face, and getting as close as possible, and saying it until my tongue felt numb.

Then, of course, as is polite, I would stop.

A girl called Charity took me aside, once, at a party. Her eyes were like a horse’s, I should make that very clear. Unblinking, and startled. She said, ‘I used to play a similar game.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding, ‘and the rules were very simple.’

We slept together for a few months after that. It was awkward, and clumsy, and we would both practice saying I love you as the sun rose, though we never meant it much. Still, it was thrilling to say, to sound the words out one by one, the wrinkled pink ring of your mouth growing smaller each time, shrinking into itself, drawn closer and closer, like a purse string pulled tight to breaking. Try it now, if you like. Say those words, the way the phrase ends with just enough space to feel the cold air on the inhale, the sudden cool breeze against your teeth.

She would press her tongue against my teeth when they were stained by wine, and we would stay up late together, taking recreational drugs and looking at affordable dental tools on the internet.

We broke up, eventually. I discovered she had been making small crosses in her palms, with a box cutter, and as they bled, pressing her hands hard against my walls. This left little dry brown crosses everywhere, which, as you can imagine, was less than ideal. What she told me was that sometimes, after I had gone to bed, she would awake to see a little tooth slowly blooming from the centre of her palm, tearing the skin, until she would pluck it, and place it in her mouth, where it would dissolve like a sugar cube overnight.

I don’t know about that, really. I don’t think I believe her. I mean, I doubt you would. If we’re both being honest here. If we can manage that.

cuspid, upper right side.

When I am twenty four I am very unwell. I do not wish to talk about it any more than that. I take a hammer to my fingers, and crush the fingers of the other hand in an office elevator. This is, of course, so I do not take a hammer to my mouth. I never lost my milk teeth, I am not sure if I made that clear enough to start. I had a very horrid smile and men did not like and women liked it even less.

Anyway, the woman who found me, Miranda, I think, although I cannot be sure, I only know I did not trust her, started crying a great deal. Her face got all red and hot and kind of sweaty. I told her to keep her voice down, and walked out the office, down the soft carpeted corridor, the hammer neatly propped up against the beige walls, my hands two bloody messes. I had put one in each pocket, for safekeeping.

‘But,’ she said, through the tears, ‘you don’t even work here.’

central incisor, lower right side.

I have been finding teeth for a long time now. Waiting, expectant, on an empty seat on the tube. Floating in my cappuccino. Between the pages of a book I get from the library. My mother is long dead. Charity sends me long, rambling emails from time to time, with grainy, distorted pictures of her family. I imagine they will die in a gas leak, or something similar. I imagine their bodies piled one on top of the other with perfect clarity. It is a calming and awe-inspiring image.

I used to play a game, I think. And the rules were very simple.

Sometimes I go to the country and let horses nibble at my useless purpled fingers. I find t…

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