The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Bicuspid ccxii-ccxxxiv

Centuries earlier, however, when the Father of Teeth was incarcerated for immoral conduct exacerbated by halitotic manslaughter and unauthorised biting of the national flag, he was fettered within a cell which had only a single small window high up near the rat-haunted rafters of the roof. The sepulchral gloom that resulted was a compassionate measure, protecting the human rights of the turnkeys and flunkeys who tended to become traumatised when they witnessed the Father of Teeth grinning at them. Each day, nevertheless, the callous and compassionless sun sent a single bright beam through the window. Entering in silence during the early hours, the eager beam would crawl across the bare planks of the floor to a point just beneath the Father of Teeth's inexcusable feet; for he was fettered slightly above the floorboards, to prevent his chewing through them.

"You leprous light-lump," snarled the Father of Teeth, contemptuously uncovering his uttermost canines; "you flaunter of idle and frivolously floating epidermal effluvia, you craven crawler out of the radioactive searchlight, you flunkey of the heavenly firmament and incorrigible spy - what seek you here?"

But the sunbeam continued its importunate progress, raising shadows from splinters and making of each pit and crack in the cell's construction a fathomless, carious tribute to the blackness of entropy. With all the ceremonious futility of a polluted rock's dance around its dim star, the sunbeam crept across the wall towards that archetype of cosmic disrepute which was the visage of the Father of Teeth.

"You sneaking shaft," sneered the Father of Teeth, protruding his more horrendous incisors at so hideous a profusion of angles that the sunbeam's light bounced off them with pardonable alacrity, "you yellow log, you shiny-bottomed shade-stealer, you pedantic plucker of particles from oblivion's dark peace - do you dare approach me?"

And the sunbeam, making its bright, blithe way among the bristles and thickets, the seams and orifices, the mildewed leather and rusted wire, was abruptly swallowed up by a cavity in one of the Father of Teeth's most gravitationally uncompromising molars.

"Sod off, sunshine," said the Father of Teeth; and within the hour his chains were struck off by a turnkey with averted eyes and the longest-handled chisel he could find; and the Father of Teeth was escorted in shuddering silence from the prison, and transported with all courtesy and caution through city streets in which every shutter was closed and every door bolted; and finally turned loose at the great western gate, where his infractions were formally forgotten by the Mayor, the Vice-Mayor and the Attorney General in that order; and his guards averted their gaze from the bitten and dented disc of the wounded and bloodied sun.