One hour left: The Dream.

I had a dream about a tooth I lost. I wanted it back so bad, I almost forced it back into its socket, but the tooth looked smooth and perfect like a first-timer bride’s wedding gown. I could see pearly root-canals under the translucent sheen of its surface. The ache in my jaw was unbearable, but I couldn’t bring myself to put back the freed tooth.

 

Forty-Five minutes left: The Mad Mailman.

The Madman Mailman bangs at my door. I open the door. There’s this vague familiarity to his wavy curls, cinnamon scented cologne mixed with the whiskey smoke of his breath. He’s not a mailman, a madman maybe. He has a package nestled under his armpit. I wonder if I should invite him to my home/dental office. He hands over the package that now smells of his whiskey sweat, he wobbles and nearly throws up. I close the door behind him after I extract a confession. Someone bribed him to deliver my package, or was it You in another of your camouflages. You’ve always loved your masks, your masquerades.

 

Thirty minutes left: X-raying ghosts.

The package is a slim gift-wrapped box. I wear sterile gloves with the intension of untying the ribbons, but first thing first. I give it a good shake, hear the unmistakable clatter inside. Was there a note, too? I hold the rattled package like a baby, and look for the proper-sized film to place on top. I hurry backward after I position the film right; press the button on the extension cord and beep! In the Darkroom’s nightmarish light, I remember how you used to x-ray everything: jaws, molars, books, flowers, condoms. To capture the aura, you used to say, the soul of things. I wondered if I was going to find You inside.

 

Twenty minutes left: Xerox-ing thumb-sized break-up notes I’d like to think of as suicide notes.

I place the thumb-size on my copier and select the Enlarge/Reduce button. Should I enlarge or shrink the words to non-existence?

Dear Suzy. I am sick. I will need to leave. Can’t come back. Love forever. You know, don’t you?

 

Ten Minutes : X-in the X or is it an X-out?

And then there’s another note on the other side of the note.

Dear Suzy. I am sick. I will need to leave. Can’t come back. Love forever. You know, don’t you?

This one should have been better.

 

Five Minutes: ___________.

In the box there’s also your third molar, that wisdom tooth you let me cut and keep, the one you stole when you left me for the starlit adventures in your mind, for the untamed ardor you decided I lacked. I was only worth your hand-me-down sympathy, your loveless I-can’t-live-without-you love notes. You disappear in a heartbeat, come back in hailstorms, you die and undie over and over and over.

 

5…4…3…2…1…

Under the mistletoe I kiss the tooth of my dreams, touch its satiny wedding-dress color; wedge my nail in the empty cavity in its crown, and the feel aching absence in my jaw. This is the part of me I really wanted to keep…

Before I leave I place the tooth outside our no longer home/work doorstep.

 

Riham Adly is an Egyptian writer/blogger. Her fiction has appeared in journals such Bending Genres, Connotation Press, Spelk, The Cabinet of Heed, Vestal Review, Volney Road Review, Five:2:One, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Gingerbread House Lit, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Anti-Heroine Chick, Danse Macabre, and @Fewerthan500, among others. She was recently short-listed for the Arab-Lit Translation Prize. Her translation of author Tareq Imam’s “An Eye” was recently published in Arablit Quarterly. Riham lives with her family in Gizah, Egypt.