skonen_blades

This is the story of Dentist McGee
Who fixed every smile on every high sea
From his dentistry parlour in Openwide Bay
On Gummington Street and Flossington Way
In the small town of Sayaw just up on the coast
And he was the dentist that pirates liked most

When Dentist was younger, he worked in a city
Helping the folk keep their teethies all pretty
And hygiene in his part of town was pristine
Rarely a filling or drilling was seen
He polished for upkeep and handed out candy
The life of a city-boy dentist was dandy

He saved up a fortune and when he was old
He cashed it all in and he changed it to gold
And looked on a map for a quiet small town
Where he could retire and just settle down
And maybe fix teeth in a part-timey way
In the tranquil and sweet-smelling Openwide Bay

But little did Dentist McGee know back then
That he’d be a full-time tooth doctor again
That he’d be so busy he’d work overtime
That he’d be a lynchpin of nautical crime
That he’d be a dentist for sea privateers
That he’d become famous amongst buccaneers

For yanking, extracting, and cavity-filling
For polishing, scraping, injecting, and drilling
For implants and bridges and dentures and plates
For caring for teeth at quite reasonable rates
For life on the seas isn’t kind to our mouth
No matter the north hemisphere or the south

Scurvy can loosen the hold of the gum
So much that one sneeze and then whoops! Out they come
Salty air rots them and poor hygiene browns
In rum, wine, and coffee, a pirate mouth drowns
Pipes make a pirate grin yellow and old
And sugar’s a force more alluring than gold

But pirates don’t like to admit they’re in pain
They laugh at the loss of a limb and the gain
Of a hook for a hand or a peg for a leg
But pain in the tooth makes the strongest one beg
Every splash of hot wine, every breath of cold air
Is a reason to hold back a scream and to swear

The reason why pirates all come to McGee
Is because of some old maritime history
The fearsome Goldbeard landed here in the past
The most famous pirate and maybe the last
One to meet the King’s army out there on the sea
And win in a battle and claim victory

He stopped here and buried his cargo of gold
His plunder he stored and his jewels he all sold
Until his quadruple-sailed ship was so fast
That the wind would now sing through the ropes of the mast
The huge empty ship then sped quickly away
And hasn’t been heard from again to this day

So pirates came here and hoped some of the luck
Of Goldbeard rubbed off and then hopefully stuck
That bravery, courage, and valor to boot
They’d find here along with some part of his loot
His jewels and his gold and his plunder, it’s said
Lay here asleep in some long-buried bed

But no map was made with an obvious X
No simple riddle. No guidance complex.
So all pirates stop here to look and carouse
To truce and tell tales and trade stories and browse
To refresh supplies and to hire new crews
To rumour and hob nob and trade pirate news

And Dentist McGee, with his age and white hair
Found himself being the only one there
That knew how to fix the poor teeth of them all
So each single day he is packed wall-to-wall
A lineup that goes out the door to the street
They wait to be seen on their peg-legs and feet

They pay as they can. They give what they may.
So many currencies on any day
Galleons, coins and doubloons are exchanged
As wide-ranging dental-care plans are arranged
And those that lack coin offer plunder and rum
And rare souvenirs from the land they come from

Dentist McGee’s office now is a cave
Of pirate-themed randomness things that they gave
Of parrots and flags and antiques and old bones
Of cutlasses inset with bright precious stones
Business is booming so much that he’s had to
Expand to accommodate more. He’d be mad to

Not knock down the wall to another salon
Not teach and then take five apprentices on
Not get in some barbers and doctors as well
Not put in a bathroom to bathe off the smell
Not open a restaurant that serves up cuisine
Not open a mall like you’ve all never seen

So Dentist McGee ran a small pirate town
But the thing that gained Dentist McGee such renown
Were the dentures he made for the pirates he fixed
Of the textures he crafted and sculpted and mixed
He’d make a customized set just for you
A smile that gave you back confidence too

He made one set out of seashell and jade
He made some of pearl and he even made
Some dentures of tempered green glass like the sea
Some were encrusted all di-a-mon-dy
Some were bright metal with teeth meshed like gears
Some sets took fortnights and some sets took years

Some carved with skulls and some with card suits
Some with carved dragons right up to the roots
Some etched with poetry read with the tongue
Most just to make an old pirate look young
The teeth were expensive and quite stylized
Cared for and valued and coveted. Prized.

They came in tight-lipped and they left with a smile
And unknowingly McGee had, the whole while
Been changing the face of each wide shining sea
Changing the image of all piracy
For now pirates smiled and grinned on their ships
They no longer hid all their teeth with their lips

The pirate cliché of bad teeth was now fading
And Dentist McGee found himself now awaiting
The chance to retire again now for good
But maybe it’s not possible that he could
The pirates all know him and want him by name
He’s become somewhat trapped by his dentistry fame

He’s half-pirate now and he finds it bizarre.
He has a pet parrot. He’s fluent in arrrrr
But sometimes he wonders. Was it a mistake?
Was helping these pirates the best choice to make?
Was giving these pillagers pride and new life
A second-hand spreading of seafaring strife?

For pirates, when shameful, kept hid and alone
They flew the odd flag with its skull and its bone
But they didn’t have pride and the confidence to
Come out from the shadows and keenly pursue
In a way that felt history-changing at times
It was there in the sea-chanty piracy rhymes

Their confident smiles’ charisma became
The new pirate flag. The new pirate game.
Pirate ships swollen with volunteer crews
Were glutting the sea and then making the news
With their raids and their wins and their new victories
All of them smiling through their new piracies

So Dentist McGee felt quite guilty some days
But also quite destined that this, of all bays
Was where he quite randomly tried to retire
But fate and the sea and the pirates conspire
To make him quite rich and to change history
Through strange applications of weird dentistry.

So if you are ever in Openwide Bay
On Gummington Street and Flossington Way
In the town of Sayaw and you want to stop by
Put a limp in your step and a patch on your eye
Try to blend in with that new pirate style
And never be shy with a wink and a smile

And if you see Dentist McGee on a break
In his restaurant eating or trying to take
Just one tiny minute of calm in the storm
Then make sure your smile and greeting is warm
And give him a nod and I bet he’ll nod back
But leave him alone on his life’s bizarre track

And tell all your friends you saw Dentist McGee
The Seven Seas Pirate King of Dentistry
And get your teeth cleaned and buy one souvenir
And think to yourself you should go back one year
To the town of Sayaw in that bay on the coast
And the dentist that all of the pirates like most.


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And there it is: his horrifying pirate’s mouth opening wide. A ridged, wet, pink pit yawns impressively in my dentist’s chair. It’s a foul abyss from which almost all teeth have fled, ringed with a crunchy bush of wiry hair that could sand a deck with its crust. His jaw hinges open like a snake as he tips his head back. His pink vulnerability is a symbol of trust given solely to stop the agony.

It’s such a site of carnage that I feel swallowed, my own interest magnifying the fissures and decay until I feel as if I’m sticking my head into the mouth of a dying, ancient, stinking lion. A nearly-visible cloud of foul gas warmly lounges up in a mushroom cloud of exhalation. Even with the ammonia paste smeared under my nostrils, my nose hairs try to recede. My eyes water. I’m used to it by now but on a scale of ten, this is at least an 8.

I should never have moved to the port to be a dentist. The idea was to retire in the country. To maybe move to a place where there wasn’t much competition and eke out a small, peaceful living in my old age. I looked at a few maps and this small seaside town seemed ideal. My inquiries revealed no dentists at all. I could maybe be moderately middle-class by pulling a few teeth and handing out pamphlets on proper dental care.

But in the last two years, I’ve found out exactly why there are no dentists here. I’m stumbled into a lucrative and dangerous career.

It’s because of pirates.

This town is a stop for pirates. They come from three oceans to whore and piss and spend and carouse and relax. There are problem twenty or thirty pirates in town at any time, swelling seasonally to a few hundred.

It’s tradition, I’m told. A famous pirate once stopped here and went on to a legendary victory against the authorities. As a result, no pirates misses a chance to pull into port here and hope that a little luck rubs off. They’re a superstitious bunch of sailors.

But life at sea is not kind to teeth. Scurvy loosens them, salt water corrodes them, poor hygiene browns them, thick coffee blackens them, rum perforates them, pipes yellow them, and if a pirate encounters sugar, it’s a force with more allure than gold.

Most every pirate I’ve met laughs at his missing limbs or eyes. He scoffs as he recounts the loss of them as if they were nuisances in the first place.

But as he talks, he winces and blinks back the agony of his teeth twisting bright through his jaw. The nerves are alive and singing with pain with every breath of cold air or splash of hot wine. Every steely-eyed jaw clench is an exercise in holding back a scream.

I have a lineup out the door on the busy days. I have four chairs in the waiting room. I have several assistants to help me now. They’re cabin boys I’ve taken in payment and offered to teach. It’s been a rescue in all cases. To call them hygienists would be to belittle the herculean task I’m training them to take on.

The clients pay me as they can. Sure, they offer galleons and doubloons. All manner of coin. But for those that can’t, they offer stolen livestock, liquor, art from far-off lands, strange antiques, exotic pets, and other plunder. I have been offered large sums to embark as an onboard dentist but I am not an oceangoing soul. I have seventeen standing offers of safe passage should I need a quick escape.

Safe passage. Quick escape. Offered with a knowing nod and a wink like I’m some sort of criminal laying low and hiding from the police.

There’s a reason I have tight security and seventeen parrots in cages around the shop. At this point, I’m somewhat of a power broker. I’ve passed messages on from pirate king to pirate king during extractions. My shop is neutral territory. Treaties have been signed in the back rooms between factions. I’ve changed the course of history, I’m sure. But I focus on the task at hand.

I’m quick with the pliers and generous with the anesthetic. Their thankfulness is sometime frightening to a peaceful man like me. To be embraced by a stinking, sinewy mountain with a beard and a hook for a hand is quite scary. But I’m a professional. I don’t flinch.

I make a brisk side business renting chairs to barbers that clip the pirates’ unkempt mops and thicket beards as they wait. I’ve had thoughts about bringing in some bloodletters and surgeons as well.

Lately, the real money has been coming from another avenue I’ve been exploring. I’ve been carving dentures for them. A pirate with a gleaming with smile is an oddity but the sight is becoming more common because of my shop.

I’ve been experimenting with different custom finishes. Metal, pearl, wood, abalone. Some designs like skulls or suits from playing cards. I recently made a jade set of teeth with an inlaid twisting dragon across the front. Also a gleaming set of tempered glass, green like the ocean herself. One set of polished copper that came together like the teeth of gears.

They’re quite popular. I’ve even had a slightly-damaged pair return to me as payment.

They come to me in pain and leave youthful. I have given confidence to monsters. I have given smiles back to sadistic adventures. I have given fangs back to tigers.

I’m making a killing and I’m scared to stop. If I ever pack up shop here, I’ll have to flee and remain disguised for the rest of my life to avoid the pirates hunting me down. If I accepted a post on one of their vessels, the others would hunt that ship down and abduct me. If any of them harmed me or killed me, they’d become a pariah to be destroyed on sight by the others.

I’m probably the safest man on the continent that isn’t royalty. But I can never leave.

I wonder if I’m slowly becoming a pirate myself. I did pierce my ears and one of the parrots has become accustomed to perching on my shoulder. I understand many of the subtle nuances and inflections of the word ‘arrr’.

I stop my musing and get back to work. Into the mouth of madness, as we say.

Four lonely, pitted, pus-yellow Stonehenge teeth gaze pathetically up at me from this stinking funnel of flesh. Liver spots and grey areas dot the inside of this gaping max. They’ll all have to come out.

This man can’t be more than 22. I wonder if he’s ever brushed his teeth in his life.

I break out the anesthetic and while he drinks himself to sleep, I talk to him about the options I have on offer for a brand new smile.




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The pulsing orb set down in my farmhouse’s back yard in the middle of the night. The corn swayed in the breeze, completely unaffected by the alien craft. It silently came to a stop on the grass just outside the cornfield, shifting in colour from red to green.

In the distance, a dog barked.

I stood on my back porch in my bathrobe carrying my shotgun.

I stared at the glowing, eerie ship. A door opened and a green creature came out, stepping down invisible stairs to the lawn. It stood fifteen feet in front of me. It had a disturbing amount of claws and teeth. It looked nervous and awkward.

“Hey there. Uh. You mutht be a hoomin.” it said, long tongue lisping through long teeth, “Thorry. Uh….human! Human. Yeah. Uh, take me to your leader? Is that how it goeth? Yeah. Take me to your leader.” Said the alien.

“Get off my property.” I growled.

“Uh, yeah. Uh. We come in….peath! Peath, yeah. That’s how it goeth, right? We come in peathe. So, like, take uth, to, the…prethident. At the White Houthe.” Said the alien, shooting me a red-eyed questioning look.

“Look. If’n you don’t get offa my property, ahm a-gonna blast ya.” I sneered at the beast.

The alien looked at me. It appeared to be thinking.

“KORTH-QUAT!” boomed a huge voice from inside the ship, making both me and the alien jump. “QUIT PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD!”

Sheepishly, the alien looked back at me and shrugged. It leapt at me before I could even raise my gun. The last thing I saw was those teeth coming straight for my face.






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I squeeze blood sugar from the prefab four and count the draconian petals on my spine. Each helmet-sized affirmation made of reptile skin and seven-eleven countertops turns my life into a Turkish dice game. Let’s tickle the cheese. Let’s elevate our rim shots. Let’s make baskets just so that we can keep them empty. This clean-shaven hard drive is balding early and trying too hard. Let’s whisper the answer and let the motherboard relax.

It’s a complicated song played in the key of skeleton in dragon scales. It’s a universe in the shape of a balloon animal. A mental rat hunt. Shaving cream on the face of Jesus. I wouldn’t be here selling tickets to the ride if I could take myself up on it. I can’t see the forest for the tease. Crocodile clips in machine-gun brainstorms whip through the wires to the light-bulb idea factory and just like that, it becomes a demolition.

The support structure shudders and you can sense the revolution through the soles of your feet. Capes and counts invade the ballroom to lie to the mirrors. It’s just dessert, you say, but I can’t agree. It’s so much more. It’s February in the oven and this bakery needs an excuse to become a lingerie store. I can’t rid myself of the caretaker’s key ring anymore than I can pilot paper airplanes.

But all the same, get comfortable. Perambulate the plank. Let’s get to gnaw each other. Each bitter peach-pit future can go fuck itself while we settle into the flux of ley-line predictions. Quantum possibilities will flicker and fluctuate around us as the future calcifies, no, coalesces, no, coagulates into a timeline. Clarity is for the weak. Let’s meet the coming storm with a smile and our lucky, lucky teeth.




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One tusk was silver.

It cost a lot.

Eightykills fingered the tip of the tusk with his yellow fingernail. It jutted up from his lower lip, guarding his cheekbone. He remembered how much it had hurt when he had gotten a cavity in that tooth. He remembered that every change in the wind would shove him into a stagger from the pain of the air’s caress across the exposed nerve.

Human dentists made fortunes off ogres like Eightykills. In today’s cities, life expectancy had risen for all races. Usually, up in the natural habitats of the hills, ogres were dead before their twentieth kill. Either neighbouring trolls vying for supremacy or just the treacherous rocks of the upslopes carried most Ogres to their death as young, virile creatures.

Now, in the city built by humans, beings lived longer lives with the help of new medicine.

All it cost the races that moved there was their traditions.

For instance, Eightykills' name meant just that. He had killed eighty intelligent beings in the course of his life. He'd had the name for over two of the human’s years now. His powerful employer paid him well but attempts on his boss’s life were rare. His boss ran the guild. If anything, Eightykills was there as a terrifying, two-ton, green, scarecrow.

Eightykills was embarassed that his name hadn't changed in so long. It made him feel old, useless, or like some sort of ghost.

Eightykills’ traveling cousin had come to town last week. His cousin’s name was Ninetysixkills. Eightykills had ridiculed his cousin as a child, back when his cousin had just been named Twelvekills. His cousin’s travels around the countryside had kept him poor but his name was a proud one to have now.

Eightykills, rich and well-polished, had to show deference to his cousin. Intoning his cousin’s record and flickering his thick fingers in the quick mathsigns for his name, he bared his own throat with a whine as a greeting of lesser status.

His cousin had surprised him. “Please don’t refer to me as Ninetysixkills anymore, cousin. My English name is Harold,” he had said. “It’s embarrassing and it scares the humans. We need to be more like them to succeed.”

Eightykills had been disgusted with his cousin and left in a huff. Later on, though, over a cup of fermented horse blood, he’d thought of his own slippery slope into becoming a pet for the humans.

He hadn’t killed in two years. He was dressed in silk. And here, just at the edge of his vision, was the ornate silver tusk that he’d gotten after the root canal on the old one.

The story of the ogre’s race was carved in a spiral up the silver tusk to the sharpened tip. It was beautiful and traditional.

And utterly hypocritical. It might as well have been a tombstone for the values of his race rather than a celebration of it.

He pawed over fantasies of killing his boss and as many underlings as he could before they took him down, taking a recorded name of over a hundred kills to the Great Ogre-Cave above the clouds.

He knew they were fantasies. He was as bought as the furniture in his master’s boudoir.

He went home to brood and sleep.


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Last Thursday, an out-of-breath girl with dirt on her face asked me for a place to hide.

I work at a newsstand. I watch the world go past me.

She was young, maybe nine or ten. She looked desperate and panicked. The street was crowded with the business rush. A sea of dark blue suits and umbrellas and there she was like little red riding hood in a forest staring up at me, a slash of colour standing out and begging me for safety.

Her eyes told me I had less than seconds to make a decision.

I don’t know why I did it. I reached forward and took her hand. She weighed hardly anything. She gave a little hop to help me as I swung her up out of the rain and over the counter into the newsstand with me. She curled up by my feet, shaking and wet.

I resumed staring forward like I always do. It was easy.

Three men ran past, shouldering through the ranks of well-dressed men. Umbrellas were jostled. People complained. One woman was knocked over.

The three men had long faces and dark eyes. The suits they had on looked out of date and worn. They were wet from the rain and they didn’t care. Something about them looked feral. They cast around with their eyes, looking for the girl. They looked at me and past me.

One of them paused, cocked his head, and swung his head back to look at me. I felt like I was being scanned by a machine. I stood like a statue and looked back at him with what I hoped was the look of a salesman hoping to make a dollar.

“Newspaper, sir?” I asked, passing my hand over the day’s editions.

With a curl of his lip, the thin man resumed the chase. Within a minute, the three hunters were long gone. I couldn’t help but think of them as a pack.

I looked down at the girl. I offered to help her up.

With a derisive smirk, she ignored my hand, stood up by herself and smoothed out her dress.

“Men.” She said in a voice more adult than her years. “So predictable.”

She looked up at me then. The flush on her cheeks was makeup. She gave me a look that told me that I had just helped the wrong person.

She smiled. Her teeth were filed to points. She made a quick movement towards me and I flinched. That made her laugh.

She spun around, crouched down on all fours, and with a sprinter’s grace, she ran out of the dog door.

I stood and watched the small door oscillate to a stop. I listened to the rain. After a few minutes, I went back to staring ahead and hoping someone from the business rush would buy a magazine.




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