03. Don’t go to the dentist, kids

Reality greeted me with grayness. It was night outside the window, but the light from the floodlights and streetlights stained the sky with a metallic color. I pulled myself up with a groan, pushing the blood out of my stiff muscles, my head spinning, the image in front of my eyes blurring, and I was insanely sleepy. Everything else in the world seemed insignificant and inconsequential.

I took off my lenses and headphones, shoved my shoes out of sight, and tiptoed barefoot across the dusty floor of our garage apartment. A normal house with all the comforts of civilization was five meters beyond the wall, but my father and I preferred to spend our entire worthless lives in this two-story barn. Our vault, treasury, and holy of holies of technological progress.

The rain was drizzling outside, and the spring air chilled my skin. I shivered as I climbed up the steps of the covered gazebo. It was dark and dry inside, and there was a checkered blanket on a chair in the corner. The upholstery on the couch was icy to the touch, but I overcame my disgust, hugged a pillow, covered my head with plaid, and lay on my back.

The first large drops rattled on the roof. I wiggled for a while, getting used to the noise in the garden. My eyes were watery and I wanted to fall into darkness, but my body, invigorated by the cold air, didn’t want to go into hibernation.

The weather was still raging outside the window. A branch of cherry tree banged against the glass. Thunder rumbled, and the neighbor’s dog barked in response.

I turned on my side, so I could see the outline of the clock through the slit in the blanket. The dial read 00:23.

Only 57 hours were left before the servers went down.

The thoughts and plans I was about to put into action tomorrow sent shivers down my spine and made a knot in my stomach. I was scared and sad, and the future was depressing, but neither my mind nor my heart resisted my final choice.

I already knew that at dawn, if I opened my eyes, I would not change my mind. My fate was sealed, I had made it myself. And I had the right to end it.

× × Death’s desire × ×

“All right, come in, the doctor is waiting for you.” The administrator smiled at me amiably and handed me a card with a magnetic key.

I indifferently held my precious ring up to the green circle in the center of the plastic card. At the same time as the short peak in my head came a ka-ching sound, like from old movies.

“The payment was successful,” the girl opposite me voiced the obvious.

I nodded, picking my backpack up from the uncomfortable leather seat. How did they ever take care of their customers? One of the most expensive places in the capital, but now my butt would be aching from the endless waiting in those inconvenient chairs.

I exhaled softly, returning to my unhappy thoughts as I walked down the corridor into the abode of childhood nightmares and fears.

I am selfish for life. That’s how our generation was. Adults didn’t care about their offspring, they only cared about satisfying their own needs. Raising children was definitely not at the forefront in our difficult times.

That’s probably what everyone says ‘difficult times’. Everyone thinks they live in these very, sad, rapidly changing, conflict-ridden and divisive times. And everyone probably thinks, deep down, that ‘yes, there have been dark ages and troubled times and world wars in the past, but here it is – the very moment I live in, the turning point that will be considered the most important one on the time grid’.

I, too, had sometimes indulged myself with such an egocentric idea. And I had always been curious as to what people would say in three or four centuries about our age of Virtul and reality-breakers.

“Have a seat, please.” The dentist nodded towards the chair by the window. He was sorting out his instruments, his long knotted fingers trembling.

“Are you all right?” I asked, dropping my backpack on the floor by the radiator.

Not that I cared how I would be treated (maimed) or what pain would probably follow. I was not afraid of physical abuse of the body. It was just that the trembling hands of the dentist did not inspire confidence in me. And I wondered if I should stop halfway through and get the hell out of that creepy dentistry.

“It’s perfectly all right.” The doctor, an older man, turned and gave me a nervous smile. “It’s supposed to be cold tomorrow. My hands are always shaking before the weather changes.”

I shrugged. Even if the man in the white coat had been blind and had no eight fingers, I wouldn’t have cared. There were only positive reviews about this clinic on the website and forums, so the main thing for me was the result, and who would arrange it for me was secondary.

The doctor stopped fumbling around the instrument table, finally walked over to me and put a special metal construction on my head to keep my jaw open at all times.

“Might be dizzy for a while,” he warned me before he sprayed the anesthetic under my nose.

Immediately my eyes glazed over, the picture blurred, and an unpleasant, quiet noise filled my ears.

“Let’s see,” the man mumbled, peering into my mouth. “Need a filling on the upper first molar.”

The dental probe clattered against the teeth and hurt the enamel, making me want to get out of here quickly and not to think about repairing my precious teeth for a very long time. But it was too late, the anesthetic had already taken effect, the brain went off, leaving consciousness hanging by a thread from falling into a black abyss.

I glanced up at the colorless sky outside the window, the clouds lazily parting after the night’s spectacle. The dullness of the buildings across the street, the smoke from the smokehouse, the glow of flames over the roofs of the blocks – that was the local police station and county court burning.

As I stared at the urban landscape, I reaffirmed my decision to end it all as soon as possible. I was selfish. I didn’t care about my father now, just as he hadn’t cared about me for fifteen years.

It felt right for me to leave a world that didn’t want me. Now I even understood my mother in some ways, I understood her terrible act that had turned my life upside down.

Now I even wished that on that fateful day she had poisoned me too.

Now, having lost meaning, having lost the ghostly hope of happiness, having lost Virtul, I was ready to face it, look into the eyes of death, embrace it and walk off into the sunset.

All the preparations were almost done. I was going to the netherworld in full dress, just as I had planned. Not for nothing did I spend the whole morning at the spa and beauty salon. The only thing left to do was get my teeth fixed. Well, you can’t go to the coffin with holes in them, can you? What would scientists say in two or three millennia, looking at my preserved skull? I wished that my jaws would be pleasing to them with flawless white teeth.

Yeah, I was going crazy. Death didn’t care if you were pretty or ugly, but I wanted to die perfect, beautiful. I was the daughter of a suicide. I was an outcast. I was a nobody in the real world. So what more could I want from life?

I chuckled at my own thoughts. My mind could barely discern reality, and I was approaching the edge which must have been so similar to death.

“Are you feeling well?” The doctor’s question was incomprehensible and came from behind the artificial water curtain constructed by my consciousness, exhausted with the anesthetic vapors.

I nodded faintly before falling into the void.

The next time the world came crashing down on me with the sounds of dripping pipes, the dim light of lamps in the basement room and the unique aroma of rotten fish, sewage and mint gum.

“Shit, shine the light, I can’t see anything,” came a gruff voice from somewhere above.

Gradually, with the recognition of reality, the tactile sensations returned. The cold metal burned my back and the skin of my hands. I was lying on some kind of bare table, judging by the height of the silhouette next to me.

The light of the torch hit my eyes. I squeezed and tried to cover my face with the palm of my hand, but my body was still struggling to obey my commands.

“Are you awake, dolly?”

I would have preferred the world’s worst alarm clock to that unpleasant voice.

“Who do we have here?” The other man’s voice sounded nicer, but I broke into a cold sweat at the sadistic pleasure that flowed through it. “A-a-gra-a, what a coincidence, eh? The developer’s daughter. The girl, I hope, will play her part well.”

“Why don’t we leave her out of this? Shall we find someone else?” The first voice, though it was scary, but here I was completely on his side.

“It is too late to change anything. And we’re running out of time. Let’s undress her.”

I started to resist when I felt someone’s cold fingers on my neck. My favorite scarf was unfastened and tossed to the pile of rubbish in the corner. When the buttons of my blouse were simply ripped off because it was too lazy to unbutton them, I screamed, thrashing in the strong arms that pressed me against the metal tabletop.

But my attempts to escape were soon crushed. A heavy rag smelling of mold and medicine fell on my face.

The sounds, the lights, the pain in my wrists – all faded into oblivion.

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