It’s no wonder people typically hate their dentists. Not that dentists have gotten a bad rap for their services, but in presenting them, they don’t exactly seem approachable. They hide behind masks, they lean over you as you’re panting in their chair, and they stick anything within their reach into your mouth. Not approachable at all in my opinion. I mean think about it, where else would evil doctors in movies have learned how to snap their latex gloves like that? They learned from dentists of course. Dentists don’t just put on their gloves; they sinisterly put on their gloves. There’s a difference of course. We normal people just struggle with putting our fingers into their designated “finger holes”. Dentists on the other hand pull the glove from the wrist, exposing their claw like fingers underneath the taunt latex before releasing their iron grip in a popping snap! It sounds like a bullet almost. Or the sound of a closing door and that’s when you realize there’s no escape.

I was forced to see my villain the dentist today. Scratch that, I had my teeth cleaned today by the same dentist I’ve had since I was five, a kid’s dentist. The dentist my mom likes there recently switched jobs but we still went anyway. I’m seventeen. I felt so…alien to the entire building. There were stuffed animals in the windows and cups with toothbrushes labeled “win me” with three exclamation points afterwards. I shuddered. There was a clock on the wall with a smiling giraffe. The pendulum of the clock was a tooth brush and it swung back and forth in every second, brushing the giraffe’s smile. I turned back to the windows.

“Sit here sweetie.” I stiffen at the nurse, who I would actually call the henchman, or henchwoman. While I was expecting someone a bit more…creepy, she seemed perfectly normal. Of course she had a perfect smile, which did not surprise me for someone working in a dentist’s office. She spoke to me as if I were five again. I slid myself onto the leather chair, the stench of Lysol wafted into my nostrils. There are many ways a dentist can potentially kill you. One of these is death by the poisonous fumes emitted by the dentist’s uncomfortable leather chairs. You don’t even need to strap down your victim if they’re already intoxicated by the pungent fumes. I gag. My eyes water. I almost see a blue fog of Lysol surrounding the chair.

“We’re going to take your cavity x-rays today okay?” As if I had any other choice lady. I follow the henchwoman cautiously into another room. It was like I was a crude Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes and I was being led to another torture chamber of the hideous Zorgs. The henchwoman straps the heavy lead apron on me after I froze in another potentially fatal chair. She didn’t get my hair caught in the Velcro thankfully; she could have easily killed me by twisting my neck with the hair-caught-in-Velcro contraption. But she was probably saving me for her master, the actual dentist.

“Hold still” she says. I whimper. She had her back to me. I try looking past her purple scrubs to see what she was doing, but I couldn’t see anything past her bulk. I hear the rustling of plastic though. My heart stops beating and falls with a thud into my stomach, stone dead it seemed. My blood froze in my veins. I think I turned frostbite white at that moment. The henchwoman didn’t notice, but turned around and held a small contraption that was covered in a clear plastic baggie.

Don’t you dare stick that in my mouth. Birds have died by choking on plastic. Don’t you dare stick that in my mouth. I picture baby seals lying dead on a beach, a piece of plastic that holds soda cans together sticking out of their mouths. Don’t you dare stick that in my mouth. This was how I was going to die. She was going to suffocate me and have me choke on the plastic.

“Open wide” the very last words I would ever hear. My mouth creaks open like a paleolithic door. I hate the dentist I hate the dentist I hate the dentist.

But I didn’t die. I just sat there, drooling and clenching a piece of plastic covered in plastic in between my teeth, looking like an idiot. America’s Funniest Home Videos really should set up shop in a dentist’s office. They’d find a lot of funny material in there as a dentist pulls people’s lips in every direction possible. Or the patient is told to make weird faces at the ceiling with the loose command of “open wide.” Better yet is when the dentist shoves some sort of plastic thing-a-ma-bob into the patient’s mouth. Why not take a picture then? Smile! Yeah use that in your next advertising campaign.

The henchwoman finishes the x-rays and leads me back to my chair. My sister is right next to me, oblivious to the peril around her. The henchwoman walks away for a moment. I try to lean back in the chair but my head hits the swivel lamp, resting at “normal height” for all the henchwomen. I’m seventeen, I’m at a kid’s dentist, and I’m a giant. The henchwoman comes back and lifts up the lamp. “Sorry.” She says clumsily before moving the chair into its horizontal position. I feel like I am at a therapist’s office. The henchwoman leans over me, almost gloating it seems. I feel as though I’m a corpse about to be examined, or a person about to be killed.

Henchwoman now puts on her mask. Oh yes touch your gloves before putting them on. It defeats the total purpose as she fondles the fingers to make sure they’re on right. I hope you washed your hands. Great, already contaminated. I sigh; let’s just get this over with.

“Mint toothpaste okay?” I shrug. As if I want any of the other flavors: bubblegum, orange, or chocolate. Who’d want toothpaste of those flavors? She preps her weapon, and then jams the infernal electric toothbrush into my mouth. That kind of hurts you know.

“Everything okay?” By now I noticed that the henchwoman is mostly speaking in two word sentences.

“Uh huh.” I sound like a caveman. I feel naked. Even though I’m fully clothed, wearing a hoodie and jeans because it’s raining outside, I feel naked. I’m exposing my throat, my life support system, to a potential murder. Who wouldn’t feel vulnerable?

Probably the most gruesome way a dentist can kill you is by “accidentally” dropping one of their metal probes down your throat and suffocating you. I could picture it now: my dentist, cloaked in all black with a cape to top it all off, holding, well more like dangling, the metal probe with the round mirror attached to it down the back of my throat. I would gag and whimper and try to scream. One hand would be on my throat and the other would be reaching for the dentist’s face. The dentist would laugh. Not a chuckle at all, but one of those laughs like in the movies where the villain cackles and roars with laughter. I would then collapse with death by suffocation. The dentist would pull out the probe, covered in saliva, and manically laugh over my cold, dead, corpse.

“Close please.” I shut my eyes and my mouth at the same time. Her hose that squirts my aching gums leaks. It drips down the side of my neck, just where my hairline is. “Oh sorry.” Her typical two word monologue echoes in my ears as she tries wiping my chin with a cotton round. You missed a spot lady. Once she finishes sucking all the moisture out of my mouth, she runs off to get the dentist. My lips are dry and numb. I feel like I have to halves of a flattened rubber bicycle tire attached to my mouth. Ugh. I swallow, but all I taste is my own saliva. Gross.

It is ironic that it is raining. I can hear the dentist walking over to my chair. Any second now I expect the lights to flicker, then go out, and the lighting outside to illuminate the room, revealing the dentist’s twisted face leaning over my own The typical hooked nose, the cocked eyebrows, piercing eyes, and of course, the malicious grin. Wait; let’s make your face a gargoyle. But the dentist already is a hideous human gargoyle, grotesque and…creepy.

But instead of the gargoyle I’m met with brown eyes, freckles, and brown hair with blatant blond highlights they look like the stripes on a candy cane.

“Hi I’m your new dentist.” As if I hadn’t figured that out. Already she’s feeling my closed mouth with her gloved hands. “Open…and close….and open…and close.” Is my jaw okay? I’m pretty sure it is but thank you for checking anyway.

She then peers inside my mouth. Chatting back and forth with the henchwoman, I feel like I’m in a sci-fi movie with all their dental jargon. “A cervical decal on 20…all good on 22 and 23…” Suddenly I’m a set of numbers. A set of numbers which I know can only mean my teeth, but I have no idea what a “cervical decal” means.

Finally, I am released. My gums have bled, I’ve been told the usual “floss at least twice a week” instructions. My mom however, stays to talk to the dentist. And I watch as the dentist, who I assumed was a hideous gargoyle, turned out to be an actual person. She talks about her children, how one of them has curly hair like mine and how it’s always tangled. Something inside me sighs.

The only thing that dentists and writers have in common is lying. Writers lie all the time to write stories. Dentists do the same thing with that whole “we’ll give you the perfect smile” drill. Why can’t both of us tell the truth? My dentist, who works with kids most of the time, is not a gargoyle, but a human being with children of her own. And dentists, well, they’ll give you the perfect smile, but first they’ll make your gums bleed, make you Ironman without the full surgery, embarrass you with head gear, make you drool in front of your friends with your retainer, and make you sound like a chipmunk with a lisp. Then you will have the perfect smile.