It rained harder than I can recall yesterday. A flood ran down Oak street, gushing over my sneakers, leaving me with soggy socks as I splashed through the cold, pelting drops. I made it to an awning of a coffee shop to wait out the downpour and glanced in the window. My eyes immediately locked onto those of a woman in her twenties with an odd smile on her face. She was staring directly at me while fidgeting with her arm. I was about to look away instinctually but I felt a wave of dread ripple climb up my neck as soon as I saw her fingertips. They were glossy and red with fresh blood.
My eyes were pulled to the woman’s arm, tattooed with some now unrecognizable image as it flapped openly and jiggled from torn flesh. I lost my breath and everything else seemed to mute. The man at the counter, the person in line for the bathroom. This woman was staring at me with a quivering smile as she scratched furiously away, rending her flesh and spattering the countertop with amassing droplets of crimson.
I turned away, trying my best to see anything but that. I heard the muffled clamor and yelling for help from behind me. I wished the loud hiss of pattering rain would drown it out. I walked into the rain, eager to distance myself from the grim scene. That woman’s struggling, staring eyes and that god-awful smile stuck on her face as she maimed herself rattled the core of my being and I wanted nothing more than to forget it. I waited until the ambulance sirens wailed in the distance then entered a restaurant to dry off and call Laura.
Voicemail. I sent a text.
Love you babe, just saw something awful and I’m in a bad headspace. Text me when you can.
I walked into the dimly-lit vestibule, then into the empty dining area. My hands were shaking and I nearly jumped when the hoarse voice of a man called to me from my left.
“For here or picking up?”
“Sorry?” I asked, looking up to a dark-skinned man with a salt-and-pepper beard. The word ‘picking’ put my mind right back to the fingernails thrashing the exposed meat of that woman’s arm.
“Are you eating in or picking up?”
I was nauseated by the thought of food but needed to collect myself. Some tea might help calm my nerves.
“For here, please. Thanks” I barely was able to get out the words. I took a few deep breaths to try and regain my composure. I followed the short, bearded man to a booth, only then realizing it was an Indian restaurant from the smell of curry. He led me to a table by the window. Flashing red and blue lights scattered on the wet street out the window. EMTs must be attending to the self-harming individual.
I lifted the bound menu and flipped to the beverages section.
“I can’t get it out” a voice pleaded from the kitchen. “I can’t get it out, I can’t get it out.”
“Excuse me for one second,” the bearded host—or perhaps owner—spoke to me in an apologetic tone before quickly walking off, through the doors to the kitchen.
Words tinged with anger and concern came from the kitchen and that deep, unshakeable dread came back over me in a wave. The menu shook in my hand and I had to place it down. I had to stare at the words on the page in a vain attempt to distract me from the unseen panic and yelling coming from the kitchen door.
“What the fuck is going on” I muttered to myself, hoping not to find out. A cracking sound from the kitchen stopped the bickering for only a second before the yells of horror began. Though it came from behind a closed door, I knew very well it was the sound of cracking bone.
I stumbled to the entrance of the restaurant. I stepped out into the dying rain, glancing at a homeless man lying on his side under an awning. His eyes stared ahead at nothing, though he had a wide, toothy smile was on his face. His right hand was splitting open his belly with a broken beer bottle, and his left hand was plucking out jiggling innards from the open wound. His aimless eyes wandered slowly to mine, and he spoke with a raspy breath that would be one of his last.
“I…I almost have it. I alm-most have it”
Rain drenched my clothing through, but no cold water could sober me as I watched the man relax still, dead where he lay. I ran fast and far through the downpour. Street signs and pedestrians blurred as I ran. I pretended not to see the bloody child and the screaming mother on the other side of the street and I ran.
Sirens echoed and wailed and I felt them in my teeth, as peculiar as it seemed. It felt like when a toothpick gets lodged in between your front teeth and your tongue flicks away at it eager to get it out, but far more intense. And it wasn’t my front teeth my tongue was poking away at but my back teeth. My molars.
Suddenly all fear and anxiety focused away from the horrors around me onto the foreign objects skillfully molded within my teeth by my dentist’s hands. The fillings seemed to swell inside their dentin casing until pain shot out in agonizing, pulsing flashes. Never in my life had I felt an impulse so strong as mine to remove the source. Removing those metal fillings was paramount to my existence, and I plunged my fingers into my mouth, tugging away helplessly, eager to make the pain subside.
I spotted a few rocks by the edge of the sidewalk. I only faintly remember the vibrations in my skull as I ground my teeth upon the rocks with my jaws. I remember the pain becoming everything before finally subsiding. Nothing else. When I regained awareness, I was on all fours, staring down at fragments of my own shattered teeth. Among the debris I saw the small metal fillings that had been the most threatening thing to my survival just moments earlier. It was over.
Sixteen people died from self-inflicted wounds, and the reports have been flooding the news cycle of dozens of more cases of self-mutilation throughout our town. People ripped surgical screws from bone, hip replacements, fillings and in one instance, a metal plate from one’s own skull before the individual died. The rain had brought something in that day, of that I am positive. Some instinctual and overwhelming urge to purge our bodies of foreign objects.
I’ve been in the process of researching dental implants before I even consider returning to work. My mouth is a mess of shattered nubs of teeth, and I’ve been taking pills to cope with the pain. Laura has been doing her best to care for me, luckily she seems fine and unaffected. I just hope answers come out soon and the death toll slows as I continue to search for answers that seem impossible to find.
I did make the mistake of looking at the six-day weather forecast, however. My insides squirmed and that feeling of dread returned as I scanned the week ahead. It’s going to rain again Friday. It’s going to rain all day long.