Thom Hawkins &&& Michael Yowell

Dr. Berry had a set agenda: watch the empty chairs. On Wednesdays, people experience pain of increasing intensity—transhumans with foul tofu intestine soups where a dentist pulled a phantom tooth. The dental practice prices doubled after extracting the uncultured—before altars level up to bend, pirouette tuxedoed wrestlers use their limbs for a seat. 

Berry slouched into the corner he used to schedule patients. They could afford only eighty-five percent of a dental surgeon, let alone a receptionist. But now here was Russell, and with him the drugs. “Hmm. You know, I used to have a plaster head with leopard offspring. Well, in it, there is a mirror bisecting a slaughtered rabbit (beheaded), and a bladder bag’s roast package-hoard, held back by insurance for lack of information. 

“As his body dolefully worshipped a set of corns with no physical cause,” Russell continued, “he refused to take a satiated brunette to a topiary (or, as said brunette insisted on calling it, ‘a decorative garden topology’).”

At the assemblage, tobacco-stained feet booked an urge. Lost limbs procrastinated on the corner, opposite close range. “A Dubuque dental lab,” Dr. Berry explained. 

*          *          *

Back at the office, Russell began to regain consciousness, brushing off the baraka mold chains around his brain. A burst pluribus unum a reminder—a sudden, stabbing pain. He noted the troublesome tooth gap left behind after the pain. 

“I haven’t heard about how the gas affects the poor,” his voice distorted by fur and frequency. “If I tell you his tooth was oversized, you would feign disinterest in the message,” he heard Dr. Berry’s voice coming from the corner behind him, rinsing his attention. 

Dr. Berry continued, “Like limbs, teeth are thinking appendages.” As Russell continued his pain—there must be cruelty—Dr. Berry pursued his conversation with an invisible interlocutor. “I’m afraid of his mouth. It’s beset with brown eyes.” This as Dr. Berry toweled off tortillas bearing a selection of saint’s relics. 

Russell immediately draped himself below the chair, fracturing his skull gratis to dull the sound of Dr. Berry’s local conferences: “I’d like him to be checked in.” Russell’s skull tingled where he’d dinged it. Dr. Berry brandished the user manual for recycled souffle rice bowls, at least verbally. “I’m imagining a pram laced with untried shoes.” 

Even the best doctors sweat.

THOM HAWKINS is a writer and artist based in Maryland. His stories, plays, and experimental fiction have appeared or are scheduled to appear in Always Crashing (Pushcart Prize nominee), Bloomin’ Onion, Encephalon Journal, Excuse Me Magazine, Gargoyle Online, New Myths, Oyez Review, The Scop, Shoegaze Literary, Slippery Elm, Variant Lit, and Verdant Literary Journal.

MICHAEL YOWELL born July ’71. Not fully conscious until age 7. Passage through school, University completed in due course. Off to Asia to quell torments. Teaching, beer. Returned to states nearly 30. Married, daughter. More overseas employment. Originally from Baltimore, currently in Riyadh, predict heavenly ascendancy soon.