The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Bicuspid ccxvi-ccxxxix

But the Father of Teeth travelled on, and came to a city where all the inhabitants had skin as white as the best enamel brushed with the best toothpaste for the best part of a hundred years. Their faces were so smooth that the features were completely bland and unreadable, since any expression would simply slide off and fall to the ground. The citizens looked at the Father of Teeth, and then looked away when the Father of Teeth grinned at them, and the Father of Teeth bowed low before each citizen he met. Whenever he did this, the inhabitants of the city would give the Father of Teeth a curt nod, or else flick with their flowing sleeves the various bald patches on his mangy scalp, in order to indicate that he might safely resume his way without giving undue offence.

But every time the Father of Teeth bowed low before a citizen, he secretly collected the expression which slid from that citizen's face. Under ordinary circumstances these expressions would be trodden into the earth and forgotten except by the wide-eyed buried in their graves; but the Father of Teeth had quick hands and copious robes, and the sight of his scalp when he bowed was distracting to a degree. In only a few hours of wandering the streets, the Father of Teeth clandestinely collected some seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection, all of which he filed away with great care in various pouches that were slung about his person in places few would care to search.

Eventually the Father of Teeth was placed under arrest, because the ground beneath the citizens' feet had become strangely lacking in emotional resonance and the grave-diggers were annoyed at its indifference. The Father of Teeth was brought before the Proctor, who demanded, his jowls wobbling with authority, what manner of magical rite the Father of Teeth had been conducting with all his bowing and grinning in front of respectable persons. At this the Father of Teeth flung open all his pouches at once, and seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection flew out like halitosis and attached themselves, with hideous slapping and sucking noises, to the Proctor's flabby face.

And ever afterwards in that city, the inhabitants went in fear of the Proctor's supreme lack of goodwill, while the ground remained indifferent of expression even as it received them in the grave.