Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Badlands Dentistry Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

BADLANDS DENTISTRY

Bag in hand, the dentist rushed between the loose mounds of sand. Through a yellow valley, sweat pouring under the midday sun, the dentist spotted his target. The clapped together home had all the markings to suggest trouble. The dentist worried that he’d chased this boy into another bad situation. Always on the run was no way for a dentist, or his family, to exist.

“Come on, Mama’s got it bad.”

It was 1915, and the town of Drumheller had a doctor, a sheriff, two deputies, and two saloons. A Catholic church had room for the devout as well as all those who might make it next week. Thanks to the Frog Lake tribe outside another sleepy resource town to the north called Lloydminster and an unfortunate incident involving shock after taking care of an abscess, Drumheller also had a dentist.

“Mama’s got it real bad.”

Unconventional was something a dentist with a good reputation and coins jangling in his pocket had the opportunity to ignore. Mr. Daniel Lewis shut his mouth and followed the boy.

The door of the tiny rundown home had a tin sign for White Rose Motor Oil tacked to its surface. Below, spider web cracks reached for edges. Door open, the dentist staggered a step. The lived-in stink of summer was everywhere: body odor, bacon grease, and old coal.

The woman lay on a threadbare sofa, a damp towel over her head.

“Have you got a lamp?” Lewis asked, setting his bag on a kitchen table cluttered with dirty dishes and candle nubbins.

“Pa don’t like us to waste it during daytime. He’ll be back any day now.”

“This is important, and fetch me some fresh water in a clean bucket. Get your brothers to help.”

“They’s girls,” the boy said and waved to the trio standing in a shadowy corner by the fireplace. They dressed identically in ruddy shirts and short pants held up with twine suspenders. Heads shaved.

“Oh,” Lewis said.

The mother, Laura Wilman, said, “Had lice.” It sounded as if she had a mouth full of acorns.

“Come on up to the table and let me have a look.”

She sat up, letting the cloth fall. Her expression was agony, her mouth in a continual low-level yowl. The strain had her eyes bloodshot.

The dentist helped her to a seat and ordered an open mouth. Swelling bubbled in a great yellow bulge out from her lower gums. It was another abscess. His sweat ran. In dentistry, it was the shock of pain that killed folks as much as anything else, supposing a body didn’t wait out an infection to kill them in slow torment.

Morphine was an option, but that was trouble. It was also expensive and running low. However, if ever there was a time to use it, this was it. He pulled the bottle from the bag.

“Don’t gimme none of that!”

“This is for the pain.”

“I know what. Kill’t my father.”

The kids charged back into the home with a steel bucket full of cloudy, yellowy water.

The mother saw this and said, “Where’s the well bucket?”

One of the three girls said, “Fell in the well after Mary let loose the rope.”

“Was you!” another said.

The boy stepped in next with an oil lamp.

“Boy, you stand right here,” Lewis said, moving the boy in place, “and hold that lamp steady. Girls, bring me that water and fetch me some clean rags and cloths.”

“Mama ain’t done no wash,” the boy said.

“Clean-ish will have to do, now hurry.” There was a lip-smeared water glass on the table. Lewis dunked it in the bucket, set it aside full. The girls returned with cloths in various stages of filth. “Thanks.”

The cleanest of the cloths, faded red checkers, went into the bucket and came out sopping. Lewis then retrieved a scalpel from his bag.

“Open wide. This will sting something terrible.”

Tears began to fall, but Laura dutifully opened her mouth. The blade pierced the swelling and yellowy fluid poured free. The woman screamed, her hands white-knuckling the sides of the chair seat. As he pulled out the scalpel, the woman’s jaws snapped shut.

“Open!”

She did and while she swallowed the horrid stuff, Lewis dabbed the rag gently against the loose, harried flesh. That done, he straightened up. The woman looked better already. In fact, she looked almost too much better.

Lewis leaned forward, fearing shock. “Ma’am, you still with me?”

“That’s wonderful. I can’t feel a thing in my mouth, still tastes bad. Can I drink?”

The dentist straightened and nodded to the glass. She drank it back and smiled further.

“I can’t feel my mouth at all.”

“What?”

“It’s gone, so is the pain.”

She was smiling. Odd. The dentist ordered her to open up and prodded the worrying spot. She did not flinch. A fortunate man might complain of the mystery of good luck, but Lewis knew better.

He explained cleaning with salt and soapsuds. He explained the importance of brushing and that the kids needed their teeth cleaned too.

She nodded. The dentist was her god right then.

Before Lewis left, he said to the girls, “Show me where you got that water.”

Back a path, into the bush, through a wall of blackflies, they came upon the sandy opening in the forest. “Well, I’ll be.” It was the most incredible thing Lewis had ever seen.

The skull was bigger than any animal to ride Noah’s Ark. It was complete and imprinted nearly flat in stone, the eyehole of the petrified dinosaur; the orifice was the size of a covered wagon. Like a liquified eyeball, water pooled. It was the same water that was in the bucket.

A finger went in, it was warm, and then touched his tongue. Almost instantly, the dentist’s tongue numbed at the source point.

Word got around of a dentist named Moody practicing on the west coast, using sedatives and numbing fluids. When word of a dentist gets anywhere beyond the outskirts of his practice, good chance it’s because of a breakthrough. Breakthroughs equalled handsome pockets.

Lewis returned to his tiny rental home and told his wife, Emily, of the peculiar situation. Her cogs turned after he’d summed up the fame of the Vancouver dentist. The children gathered round while their mother told the tale of how their father would have them living in a real city, with dress shops and candy shops, living how they should be living, and soon.

—

“Hello there,” Laura said. “I didn’t think I needed you to come back, little pained, but not too bad.”

“Ma’am, is your husband home today?” Lewis said.

The woman stepped out and closed the door behind her. “That man went north for gold and ain’t never coming back. The kids don’t understand and—”

“Say nothing more. I have a proposition for you.”

They worked it out and Lewis tested the water on the children. They did not squirm or worry, did not move a bit as he scraped and scratched the crud from their teeth. That water was a miracle.

It was a week gone and the dentist poured the last pennies he had into paper and ink. He and Emily wrote flyers, one hundred in all.

Free general dental check-up

Avoid costly repairs later

Teeth cleaning 50¢

Minor surgery $2

Major surgery $5

Teeth cleaning free for children with adult cleaning

One day only 5AM to 10PM in the office of Mr. Lewis: Dentist

The children helped hand out the flyers, but only one flyer came to matter. Mr. Alvin Welling was not a man of dental luck and he knew the pain and the time that it wasted. Workers with happy mouths equalled managers with happy bosses in the city. He ordered the mine employees to take the day and tend to their oral hygiene.

There were a dozen or so heads more than three hundred in Drumheller and every last one of them showed up. Mrs. Lewis and the owner of the magic well helped with cleaning. The townsfolk swished and rinsed the magic water.

By the end of the longest day since escaping the torments of the Frog Lake tribe—long in all the right ways this time—Lewis’ pockets jangled heavily. His business partner, as limited as her share was, was happy. Most importantly, his wife and kids might just meet those pipedreams.

The following day, he put in an order for new tools from the hardware store and a new horse wagon to take his practice on the road. The wagon was royal blue with silver lettering. Lewis had eyes every bit as big as his wife had, though tinted differently. He’d be a supreme provider and a celebrity in his capabilities and discovery.

—

“Don’t you think you’d best do the kids?” Emily said two days after the big day.

The family had good clean teeth, but they could always be cleaner. Lewis splashed the magic water into their mouths one at a time and got busy. They smiled wide, numb.

“How about you?” Emily asked, she was a great assistant, but when it came to the dentist himself, her wielding the tools meant something else. “Want to try it with the stuff?”

He shook his head, that single dab was all he’d ever have. There was a reason dentistry took his heart at a young age and a big part of that was the agonizing erection he’d had while his childhood dentist yanked a sideways molar from the back of his mouth. He’d begun to look into things, testing if it was the images, the touch, even pain in general, but it was none of that. The invasive under layer ache of dental work was an elixir to his loins.

Eventually it was Emily who had helped hone this knowledge. She closed the door, lowered her knickers beneath her dress, picked up a scraper, opened Lewis’ pants, and sat on his lap to clean his teeth.

—

A full week after the big day, the Lewis family sat at the base of a natural upraising of Earth’s crust. Emily explained that the different colors in the soil meant different centuries. She explained that the porous stones might not be stones at all and that scientists collected them to put them together. “Dinosaur bones, from before God put people on the Earth,” Emily said as she bit into a piece of raisin bread. “Now, dinosaurs were enormous, so each bone you fit into your hand might be the same kind of bo—Ouch!” A seed had connected with a weakened spot of an eyetooth. She held her face.

“Uh oh,” Lewis said. “Open up.”

On the yellow knit blanket, amid the swarming blackflies, and the dinosaur bone pieces, from particle to whole, the dentist assessed a patient’s mouth.

“You’ve cracked it. We’ll need to watch it. Does it hurt?”

Emily nodded.

“Susan, fetch some of that magic water.”

—

Thirty-three days after the big day, and forty-one days after the initial discovery, the dentist and his wife stood in the office, looking at a map. The idea was to make the biggest bang possible on a much grander scale than Drumheller had to offer. Calgary was good, but Vancouver would be better. Better yet would be south of the border: Spokane, Seattle, Portland.

“Calgary first,” Emily said, using a red pencil on the map. “Then see, we go south and west. The radio talk is heavy bad for drought in the middle states, but these ones have fishing to rely on, meaning they can pay.”

Lewis kissed the part of hair on Emily’s scalp. She was ambitious and knew what she wanted. It was his job to be the gateway for her journey. His becoming famous didn’t hurt if it happened along the way.

—

Twelve days prior to the scheduled leave, he stared in the mirror, looking at the tip of his tongue. A spot twice the size of typically enlarged papillae. It was like a stone, but seemed to weigh less than other parts of his tongue. There was no feeling in the spot. He chewed it, off and on.

He had a job on a horse. It wasn’t the norm, but the water worked on equine as well as human, and money was money. The horse had a broken tooth that had made it irritable and a risk to ride. The tooth came out of the numbed mouth and a boy came running around to the back of the office.

“Mr. Lewis, it’s Mama!” he said and broke away.

The old woman holding the horse’s reins rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I’d have the patience for your occupation, good sir.”

“Excuse me. If you’d like to settle up, my wife is inside.” The woman nodded and Lewis climbed atop the bare back of his own horse.

The boy was at the side of the home, hopping up and down, excited. His eyes terrified. “Come, quick!”

Much as it had been on his first visit, Laura lay flat on the sofa. Her arm dangling to the floor. Two things were different: There was no cloth over her face and the texture of her flesh was wrong.

The protrusion on the tip of the dentist’s tongue clicked against his teeth. And a second time. And a third, as if offering a clue. He approached and touched the woman. She was cool, dry, and pale yellow. The skin was papery, stretched over clean, thick bone.

Lewis shook her, trying to connect the sense and impossibility into a notion of reality. “Wake up. Wake up.”

The dangling arm fell off and the girls screamed in harmony. The boy leapt onto the dentist’s back, roaring, “I’ll kill you, you hurt Mama!”

Spinning, Lewis sent the skinny child rocketing against the water-stained wallpaper by the fireplace. “Calm now, and let me figure this out.”

Through a slight gap in her throat, the dentist pushed a finger, tearing the papery flesh. Beneath, it felt bone-like. She wasn’t a skeleton. Her body had become bone, the muscles, the tendons, the fluids. Bone.

He picked up the arm and clicked it back in place like a key in a keyhole. “See, all better. She just needs rest. But it also needs to remain a secret.” The hard nub on his tongue clicked again, nailing an idea that he didn’t dare express just yet. “So, you, boy, go tell my wife I need to spend the evening with a sick patient, but tell her not to panic. Got it?”

The boy stood, rubbed his elbow. Tear streaks uglied his dirty cheeks.

It was a night long and difficult. When the sun arose, the wait continued. The children whined and moaned, asking relentlessly how long until their mother awoke.

The eldest girl came first. One minute she was a nagging bundle of tears, the next she was a stiffening visage. Her face wore a scowl of discomfort. She slipped sideways. The boy started abrading the dentist, not connecting that he was next.

A fist connected with Lewis’ face. The dentist latched on and hugged the boy, whispering, “It’s not my fault. How could I know?”

Once the boy turned, Lewis apologized, leaving the last two girls in the living room, wailing and cradling their boney siblings and mother.

—

“A vacation, right before you leave?” Emily asked, willing but curious.

“Sure, out of town before we hit the road for pure business. Be a secret getaway.”

They took the wagon, loading the camping gear alongside the dental supplies. They slept in the woods, had campfires, sang. The dentist and his business muse made love.

They returned to Drumheller to find a ghost town.

“I want you to stay inside. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

—

Home after some clear thought while standing over the yellowy pool at the center of the eye of a hundred million year’s dead beast. He dipped a cup and stared deep into his cloudy reflection, imagining a future.

—

“Everyone’s sick. A flu, many dead. All’s shut-in, we ought to do the same. Can’t leave lest we’re carriers.”

Shocked and terrified, Emily said, “Gosh, we should’ve stayed away another week.”

Lewis played with his kids and held his wife. Time was so very short.

—

Over the course of a too short day, the kids became bone renditions of themselves. Laura wailed and thrashed about the home. Her time was not far off.

Lewis cut the tip of his tongue off. Then Emily understood. “When did you know?”

“When Laura went. It’s fifty-two days from impact to metamorphosis.”

“What?”

“The magic water.”

“But I… Dear God.”

“It’s not my fault,” he said and believed it too. If he didn’t believe it, he would’ve drank his fill from the pool.

—

People hid valuables all over homes. The office at the mine was slim, unfortunately. There wasn’t enough to take off, start anew in the lap of luxury, have the kind of life he deserved.

He’d considered contacting the government, sell the water to the Allied Troops and solve the Germans once and for all. It was a noble thought, but suggested complicity in the demise of an entire town.

He’d had a vision. With a shovel and spade, with a chisel and hammer, Lewis got to work. Just in case his idea was a bust, he filled thirty-nine emptied liquor bottles with the yellowy water and headed east.

—

The dentist was no longer a dentist and the last time he was this nervous was watching a Frog Lake elder succumb. Sweat ran, soaking into the crisp collar of his Oxford and the wool collar of his suit.

The room hushed. The thick red curtain rose and the lights shined on the stage. The symphony in the shadows between the crowd and the show came to life. Lewis looked at his family; they danced beautifully on strings. His wife dressed in finery she’d never known before, finery she’d imagined about in wistful daydreams. Big city finery, like she’d promised.

The music changed and the dancing became erratic. Stomping out from the wings were abhorrent conglomerations, abominations of awe: bone people with incredible prehistoric claws and long skulls like shark mouths. The crowd gasped in delight.

Lewis grinned and cried as his ruined family danced, click-clacking like sprinting horse hooves on a stony shelf.

XX