Blind Date

A blind date goes horribly wrong.

"You want to hear about how I learned to not bite my cheeks?"

She turned to look at the driver. He hadn't spoken much since picking her up. The sound of the rain hammering against the windshield had filled in the gaps between her attempts at conversation. She always liked the sound of rain against glass, a comforting rhythm.

"Sure!"

She sounded a overly excited, and she realized it. The truth was that the awkwardness that started in her gut had been growing throughout the last twentie minutes of the drive. What started as nervousness before a blind-date had been spreading from her belly up to her chest, through her shoulders and down to her elbows and out of her bright red fingertips. Her muscles tightened, she did her best to control the trembling in her hands.

Okay, she thought to herself, He’s a total creep. I’ll just wait until we get to the restaurant, make an excuse to get out the backdoor, and call for a ride home. No biggie, right?

She had been attempting remain in control by picking at a loose thread on her new red sweater. She hadn't admitted it to herself at the time but what started as nervousness had become an overwhelming fear of the man.

He remained silent, and she wondered if he even heard her. His gaze hadn't left the road since picking her up. He had introduced himself as Kyle, He was older, probably in his forties. He had military haircut, the kind a highway patrolman might wear. He stared forward as he began driving away from her apartment complex, and fell silent while she attempted to start a dialogue. She tried the basic stuff, "Where are you from?" "What do you do for a living?" "What kind of music are you into?" All had fallen on deaf ears.

At first she chalked it up to bad hearing, but when louder repetitions didn't work, she had just sat there contemplating her situation. She reminded herself over and over about the .22 handgun hidden in her jean pocket. I have nothing to worry about, I have NOTHING to worry about. Her father handed her that gun on her 18th birthday, telling her to remember how dangerous the world was, that he loved her, and to always stay safe. She thought back to that day as she played with the red thread of her sweater and stared at the passing trees out of her window. She had almost forgotten the man had said anything when he spoke again.

"I couldn't have been more than nine at the time. My mother had taken me to the dentist's office, I couldn't tell you exactly why on a count of I was so young, and I didn't quite understand and she didn't care to explain."

What the f**k is he talking about? She moved her hand closer to her pocket to calm her nerves. He kept his eyes pointed to the front.

"They took me in the back, sat me down on one of them rotating chairs, the kind you can pump up or down with your feet, ya know?"

"The kind in a barber shop?"

She tried to sound cheerful, but he ignored the question.

"One of the dentists looked at my teeth, probed my gullet with a hook and mirror as he spit out some numbers and letters to his assistant to write down in my file. I clenched my fists and waited for him to finish so I could go home and play with my toys. I always hated the dentist, but I am told most people around here do so I guess it's not unusual. Anyway, when he got to the last couple of teeth I winced in pain as he stabbed at them with his hook. His eyes widened and he said something I don't remember to his assistant. She left the room and he reversed his rolling chair away from me and took his gloves off. She came back in a few minutes later with a big needle and handed it to the dentist."

She sighed under her breath. What the hell was he going on about? This was the last time she ever went on a blind-date, and certainly the last time she ever did a favor for a co-worker. She planned on giving Kim hell when she saw her again. To not even give a slight warning about the creepiness of this guy was unacceptable.

"He gave me the shot, right in my cheek. He backed away and told me he would be back in a few minutes, that we needed to give the medicine time to work. When he left I was alone. I sat there looking around, wondering about all the instruments and the shiny metals. Everything was either a crisp white or reflective. It's funny how you remember stuff like that."

She continued staring at the pines. They had been traveling down this road much longer than she thought they should be. Come to think of it, she had no idea of where they were headed. She slipped her hand into her pocket and put her thumb on the safety of the gun.

"After a few minutes I noticed a tingling in my mouth. I poked it on the inside with my tongue and on the outside with my fingers, but it felt gone. It was like they had removed my cheek and replaced it with cold rubber. I could feel it stretching as I played with it, but I couldn't quite understand why I felt this way. I realized I couldn't feel it when I bit on it softly. Not a twinge of pain, not a thimble full of feeling, not a pin's head worth of response from the dead skin. It was as if it wasn't there AT ALL."

He ended the sentence with such an abrupt increase of volume- almost a yell - that she instinctively clicked the safety off of her gun while moving closer to her door, farther away from the man. She stared at him as her finger reached towards the trigger. It was loaded and chambered, all she had to do was point and squeeze, if it came down to that. She stifled her tears and hoped it wouldn't. She hoped they would arrive somewhere with a lot of people any minute, she hoped she had misjudged the man and that he was just socially awkward, she hoped he didn't hear the sound of the safety being released, she hoped she wouldn't start crying.

"I wondered how much pressure my fingers would need to exert for me to regain the feeling in my cheek. I pinched it harder and harder, and when that didn't get anything, I had an idea."

He turned his head to look into her eyes while he drove. It was the first time she had seen his face so clearly. Nothing unusual about it except his eyes. They were sunken and dead, with dark moons under them as if he hadn't slept in a week. His pupils were tiny, so small she could barely see them. His gaze went on unbroken as she heard the engine moaning louder and louder, the car moving faster and faster, all the while his eyes locked on hers. She broke, and started to cry, sobbing loudly. He continued, calmly.

"I realized... why pinch them when I have teeth?"

He smiled a broken tooth smile.

She pulled out her daddies gun and unloaded two shots at his chest. The blasts were deafening, even for a 22. The flash blinded her for a moment, and in that few seconds she couldn't hear a thing. Her ears rang as she grabbed for something to hold onto while before the car began to swerve. She had to make sure she wouldn't get launched through the window when they crashed. To her surprise the car maintained its path and when she regained her vision she found herself looking at the man's face still staring at her with his sunken eyes, that black toothed broken smile unwavering. The gun was still in her hand and there were two streams of blood beginning to pour from the man’s breast. He paid no attention to the gun or his wounds. He continued staring, the car continued on its path, the engine continued screaming, and she continued to cry.

"I started biting it, softly at first, and hard and harder as I progressed. I felt the soft flesh crunching between my teeth, and still I felt nothing. Chunks came off of it, tasting like copper and feeling like silicone. I kept chewing, ripping more and more off until I could feel the cold air on my tongue. I began to play with my cheek again, pinching the lacerated strips between my fingertips, and only when I looked and saw the blood did it occur to me I had hurt myself. I began to scream- oh boy did I scream! -screaming for my mother. MOM! MOM! MOM!"

He mimicked the cries of a child. Sweat was beginning to appear on his forehead, and blood was pooling in his lap. He made no reaction to his wounds, or to the road, or to the fact that he was going 90 miles per hour down the highway in the dark, and still accelerating. He only stared at the crying woman, hysterical and blubbering, saying words that couldn’t be translated to the English language.

She aimed the gun again, this time at his head, and fired three out of the last four shots. Blind again, in the dark and deaf. Panic increased. Where is he!? When the smoke cleared he was still staring, unblinking, with a hole through his right eye, and two going through his right cheek. The engine screamed. Blood poured. His smile widened. She pointed the gun at her temple, and put the last bullet into her brain.

~~~~~~

“You were there when it happened?”

Kyle stared past the police officer, as if they were 50 yards farther apart. Tears covered his young pale face. He wasn’t shaking anymore, he was in shock. He sat on the guardrail of the side of the highway, his long styled hair in his face. His pickup truck sat a hundred yards away, surrounded by police and ambulances, the strobe lights blinding him. He stared and remained motionless. After a moment he quietly spoke.

“She...kept going on about her dentist… a root canal or something.”

“Just take it easy, I want you to calm down and we can talk about this at the hospital.”

He ignored the officer.

“Kim said she was… was in the mental ward a while ago… I think she went crazy… she just… she just pulled out a gun and...and….”

He trailed off. The cop patted him on the shoulder.

“Try to calm down, son. You don’t have to give us the details now, just calm down. We will get this all figured out in due time, until then I want you to just calm down.”

Kyle stared into the dark. The red and blue strobe lights flashed patterns across his vision. Occasional flashes of pines interrupted the light show, reminding him of where he was. Everything was fuzzy, no fine detail. Where am I? His confusion grew the more the lights alternated. Red " Nothing " blue " Nothing " red " nothing " blue " nothing.

He had forgotten about the cop when he felt the heavy hand fall on his shoulder again, forceful this time. He looked up. In the officer’s face sat sunken eyes with dark moons. Tiny pupils, almost invisible. He was smiling, a broken toothed smile. His cheeks were ripped into shards, dripping blood down his uniform, revealing the blackened broken molars below. As Kyle began to scream, the cop held his hand forward, offering Kyle the handle of his 38. service pistol. While Kyle howled the cop’s smile grew wide and wider.