Woodsmoke/Goes to the Dentist

The heated rays of sunshine piercing through the burn holes in the black-out curtains over the windows spent hours slowly creeping towards the bark-like skin of Woody’s face as he slept. The light finally reaching its destination worked as a relatively effective alarm clock for a schedule-free heathen who didn’t even own one. As Woody awoke from his slumber and sat up in bed, several empty bottles of liquor rolled off of him and onto the floor. For a brief moment, Woody idly pondered his reasoning for being awake before finally reaching for his phone.

According to the phone’s screen he had “1 New Notification(s)!” that he missed late the night before. Although he wasn’t really in the mood for conversation, Woody decided to go ahead and check his messages to see who the hell tried to contact him on a weekend.

“Hi! This is Tabatha calling from Pearly Whites to confirm your appointment with Dr. Langston for tomorrow, Friday, at 1 PM. Please show up 15 minutes early!”

Wait a minute, it was Friday? Woody closed his voicemail and looked at the clock in the upper right-hand corner, which read 12:10 PM. Panic began to bubble inside of Woodsmoke’s stomach as the gravity of his situation started to fully sink in. His drunk ass got the date mixed up, and he was getting dangerously close to missing his dentist appointment. He had no desire to go through the hassle of paying the no-show fee, so he forced himself out of bed and out the door towards the dentist’s office while wearing nothing but the same pair of pants he wore the night before. Most clothing didn’t fit him after all, so most days were pants-only days anyway.

It was well after 2 PM by the time Woody stumbled in the front door of the dentist’s office clutching a half-empty handle of gin. “You’re late, Mr. Woodward,” chimed Tabatha, the gleeful receptionist. “We’re going to have to reschedule your appointment. Our next available spot would be next Friday, one week from today.”

“Reschedule? You gotta be kidding me,” Woody complained. “You guys are open for like three more hours. Just squeeze me in before the next one!”

“Sir, we can’t just--”

“Oh, spare me the bullshit, Tabatha,” interrupted Woody as he drove a wooden spike from his hand into the counter out of frustration. He leaned in so that she could feel the heat from the flames where his eyes should be. “If you don’t let me back there right now, I’m going to take it very personally.”

Leaving the spike embedded firmly in the countertop, Woody stood straight up and took a step back to get a quick look around the waiting room. When he felt assured that other people would be within earshot, he proclaimed, “I didn’t realize this was an anti-mutant establishment. It’s 2019! You can’t discriminate like that!”

Tabatha immediately bolted up from her desk with an alarmed expression on her face. “Uh, r-right this way, Mr. Woodward,” she stammered as she opened the door for him to head back. With an air of smugness, Woody brushed by Tabatha and tossed his empty gin bottle towards the bin at her desk, which shattered when he missed. He then proceeded into a room where he waited for someone to begin his appointment.

After a few minutes, a young hygienist enters the room. Woody, who was ready for the entire visit to be over with by this point, was already laying back in the chair they used for the dental cleanings and oral examinations. The hygienist, who introduced herself as Vicky, sat down next to Woody’s head and prepared to start his cleaning. When Woody opened his mouth, a burst of flame billowed out and Vicky fell backwards off of her stool in surprise.

“I… I don’t think I can do this,” admitted Vicky, who sounded absolutely defeated by the experience before she bolted out of the room.

A few more minutes passed before another knock at the door welcomed Dr. Langston himself, who was dressed from head to toe in heavy-duty protective welding gear and wheeling in an industrial toolbox. Vicky must have given him a heads up.

The dentist got to work right away. His toolbox was full of dental supplies, as prolonged exposure to the elevated temperatures inside Woody’s mouth cause them to melt out of shape after a while. He’d work with a tool until it was no longer usable, and then he’d replace it with a brand new one to continue.

“Well, I don’t exactly know how this is even possible,” began Dr. Langston as he switched out a melted tool for a fresh one. “All of your teeth seem to be made out of wood, which already doesn’t make much sense with all of the fire you’ve got going on in there. But somehow, you’ve managed to get a cavity in one of your rear molars.”

“Wha ha hehh aya--” reacted Woody, whose mouth was being held open by a retractor device that was secured in place. He reached up and pulled it off of his face so that he could actually get his words out. “What the hell do you mean I have a cavity?!”

Woody, with his head covered in flames that seemed to be gaining intensity as he stirred, pulled himself out of the examination chair and knocked over the dentist’s toolbox with a dramatic kick. “Do you think I’m gonna pay extra for something as stupid as cavity repair? You guys know I don’t have insurance.”

He stood towering over a cowering Dr. Langston, who was still sitting on his stool next to the chair. The dentist was speechless, unable to process the leaps in logic of Woody’s defensiveness. This moment of hesitation was all Woody needed to convince himself to drive a spike through the dentist’s sternum, pushing him onto the ground and impaling him to the floor.

“Ha! Now you’re the one with a cavity, Doc,” taunted Woody as Dr. Langston bled out onto the floor of his own practice. Woody casually ignited the contents of the room around his rapidly dying dentist before heading back the way he came in, making sure to ignore Tabatha’s requests for payment as he passed by the front desk. The building’s fire alarm started going off right when Woody reached the exit.

As he stood on the sidewalk outside the building amid the growing frenzy caused by his act of arson, Woody reached into his mouth to feel around at his rear molars. It didn’t take long for him to find the cavity in question. With a hard tug, he snapped the charred wooden tooth out of his mouth and chucked it onto the asphalt of the parking lot in front of him.

“Boom. Problem solved. Dentists aren’t shit,” Woody said to himself as he departed towards his home with absolutely zero self-reflection on the events that just transpired.