The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Incisors cxviii-cxxxiii

In the city before that, by contrast, everyone carried a shovel on their shoulder and Father of Teeth merely walked up and down the high street, greeting the citizens with the full range of his least appealing dentition. Reasoning plausibly that the Apocalypse was upon them, the people hastily unshouldered their shovels and dug through the pavement and through the soil, into the redeeming catacombs where their ancestors were entombed.

Thin-skinned and lacking the encumbrance of eyeballs, the ancestors were the embodiment of divine justice. They sat against the dripping walls with their knees drawn up and their smiles growing steadily wider. The people knelt before them and made obeisance and then waited, exalted or terrified each according to temperament, for transportation to the realm of a more glamorous underworld.

Amid showers of débris, the Father of Teeth descended grinning upon the congregation. "They are not smiles of welcome," he said. "It's just that their gums have shrunk."