Pray to god you never meet the man with crooked teeth.
Or more accurately; pray to god you never interact with the man with crooked teeth.
Those crooked teeth are, of course, not his only noticeable feature, but they may be the first sign of him you notice. Other signs that it’s him include: jaundiced eye’s (and I mean really yellow), cracked fingernails, and an extremally out of place washed and pressed suit. If it weren’t for the suit you would think him just another wandering homeless person, but he isn’t and you do not want him to prove this too you.
Getting on with how I met the man with crooked teeth. About 4 months ago I was running late for work. I live within a mile of work so I don’t see the need to waste the money on gas to get there. I always walk, which I will admit brings it’s own slew of problems. One such problem being that I don’t live in the safest part of town. Too somewhat mediate this, I make sure I am always carrying a knife whenever I walk to or from work. Well, that day I was focused on making sure I had everything I kept in my pockets, grumbling about having to go to work at all, and cursing myself for not remembering my knife, when I accidently bumped him right over. A stumbled a little myself before I apologized and helped him up.
That was when I got a good look at him. He looked like he was homeless and not in good shape. Among all things, what stood out the most was his crooked teeth and his out of place suit. Those teeth, I had trouble looking away from those teeth. It was indescribable, they were . . . almost monstrous.
As I apologized I instinctively went into customer service mode, asking if there was anything I could do for him and forcing myself to rip my eyes away from his teeth and talk directly to him instead.
” Oh ho ho, no need to apologize to me boy. Although if you do have some change to spare, I would be extremely thankful.” I froze. That voice that came out of his mouth was not one of an old man like I had expected. Instead it was a deep bellowing almost sultry voice. And it instantly activated my fight or flight response. There was something wrong here and I sure didn’t want stick around to find out what it was. But I was afraid to make him think I was being rude.
with shaky hands I reached into my pocket to grab my wallet. I quickly checked my cash pouch and found a five handing it to him. “Here you are sir!” I tried to give a friendly smile, “Sorry, a five is all I can spare.”
“What a kind boy!” With a wide grin, he grabbed the five and in a flash he was gone.
I breathed a sigh of relief and looked around to make sure he wasn’t still near me. Him being there was the last thing I needed. But not only was he not there, I was suddenly at work. I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and was just glad to be away from him and at work at the same time.
It only took me a moment to notice something was off though. It was eerily quiet. Almost as if there was nobody there. I raced around the office opening door after door trying to figure out where everyone was. There was nobody in any of the offices. That’s when I looked out the window and saw him.
I marched right outside to yell at him. “What the hell is going on?”
His grin grew bigger than I had seen it go before. “You were so kind to me to give me some change, the least I could do was be kind back by getting you straight to work!”
“Ok, but where is everybody?”
“It became quite obvious to me that you didn’t really want to go to work, you wanted a reason not to go to work. So, I decided to make work canceled for the day!”
“What did you do to everyone bastard?!”
He just grinned even wider.
Then I made the worst mistake of my life. I ran straight at him and swung my fist. If I thought his kindness was bad his anger was much much worse.
His smile drooped into an almost comically small frown. He caught my fist as it neared his face. “That wasn’t very kind of you.”
He snapped his fingers and I was back home. I sighed with relief, then remembered what had happened when I got teleported to work. I ran around my house looking for my mom or either of my two sisters. I was about to scream when I saw a note on the kitchen table. They must have gone out and left a note for when I got home from work.
I picked up the note and my heart dropped. All that was on there were three words “Unkindness for unkindness”.
Finally in the past 3 months I searched for message boards of others who had gone through similar experiences. I found a few, but most of them were taken down a day or two after they were created. I don’t know if it is him or others just being cruel, but from what I could gather from all the different message boards there are three main rules:
If you see him do not interact with him. If you bump into him simply apologize and say nothing else. Hope that he does not take the apology as a kindness.
Do not do anything he could consider kind. The cost of his return kindness is never worth it.
Absolutely, no matter what, do not do anything that he could consider unkind or rude.
I am writing this in hopes that it will save someone from him. It is too late for me I already paid my price.