Fairy of Teeth

By Norman Crane

Paulie and his buds are regular small town teens. Until the night Paulie drowns but doesn't die. Normal people don't tend to do that. And monsters exist, even in the suburbs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Norman Crane
• Release date: Nov 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311949318

Norman Crane

I live in Canada. I write books. I'm a historian, a cinephile and a coffee drinker.

Book preview

Fairy of Teeth

Published by Norman Crane at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Norman Crane

Chapter 1

And you're sure your mom won't rip your head off?

She's not a praying mantis.

Motherfucker.

Three of them laughed. Paulie wanted to punch them all in the nose. It wasn't a secret his mum was hot. At least by boys' standards, which meant she had big boobs and wore clothes that were less baggy and showed more cleavage than other mums. They called her Mrs Baggins sometimes because of a joke that had started after the first part of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy opened in town and before everyone had seen it too many times and knew it sucked balls compared to reading Tolkien. The joke was: she wasn’t short or hairy-footed, but Paulie’s dad was, and he smoked a pipe and saw the movie more than four times and complained each time that Radagast was a wizard, not a pot smoking Greenpeace activist. They liked Paulie’s dad, too, but, come on, like he could ever fuck a pair of titties like hers.

She sure could rip my head off if she sucked me off first, Pinder said. I'd die headless and happy.

She could breast feed me, Akira said.

That's gross.

Not in Japan, Akira said. There are entire manga about it.

They fuck octopuses in manga, George said.

Just because they have tentacles doesn't mean they're octopuses, Akira said.

As if that makes it any better. Pinder smirked. Though I wouldn't mind seeing Paulie's mom wrapped up in tentacles...

Paulie knew his mum was hot. He’d had it pointed out to him many times. He was an expert by now. But what was he to do but force the steam out of his ears and show his fists and yell, Shut up! so loud Pinder said, You shut up, man. You'll wake somebody and get us caught.

They were still in the subdivision, cutting across the Akers' back yard because it was the fastest way to get to the path which led through the trees and down the hill they sometimes went tobogganing—swerving to avoid the pine trees—to the foot of the lake, on which winter always formed the perfect sheet of ice.

The air was crisp, their cheeks red. Plumes of warm vapour streamed out of their nostrils like smoke, meaning they were dragons—fire breathers with duffel bags and hockey sticks. They ran down the hill, half sliding, half losing their balance, laughing, making all the noise they wanted to make because now they were in the company of themselves, out of the range of the adults.

Paulie sucks cock! Pinder said.

Like mother like son, George said. They pass it down from generation to generation, like corporate shares.

Or defective genes.

If you were a girl, I'd let you give me a blowjob, Akira said.

Paulie raced past all of them and into the cold, crisp air that was rushing off the lake mixed with just the right amount of snow to sting your face and make you feel alive.

He dropped his stick and his bag and slid onto the ice.

It creaked.

George slid by beside him, before kicking out his feet and falling straight onto his ass.

Did you hear that? Paulie asked.

Hear what?

The ice creaked.

Hey, guys, George said, Paulie's scared again. He got up, cleaned the ice off his pants and jumped a few times. Nothing creaked. Sure seems fine to me. Of course you could always run home and hug your mom's tits till you grow a pair.

The ice is good, Akira said. My dad monitors it every day. If he says it is safe, it is safe.

Akira's dad was a scientist, though what exactly he studied was beyond anyone's comprehension. When he was in town he didn't do anything other than measure things, like the water temperature of the local lakes, and go birding. When he was out of town he was gone for weeks at a time, to Waterloo or Toronto. Lately, he'd been involved with some experiment that suggested time was merely the consequence of two protons—no, not protons: some other particles, maybe quarks—was the consequence of two quarks coexisting in the same physical space, which was impossible unless you applied quantum theory and, at any rate, it was not visible to anything outside of those two quarks, meaning that to an outside observer everyone and everything was as eternally still as the frozen water on the lake.

Pinder opened his duffel pack and tossed out a few pucks. Then he sat down and started lacing up his skates. My mom says real hockey is played on grass.

That's because she's from India, George said.

Paulie was listening to the ice, waiting for it to creak again. It refused. When he was satisfied he'd imagined the first creak, he said, On your mom's grass, you fucking Paki.

Three of them laughed. Pinder laced up his skates tight. He looked like he wanted to punch all of them in the nose.

My dad says Indian women are hairier than Japanese and white women, Akira said.

I bet he has computer simulations and pie graphs for that, too. They laughed at pie graphs. Pubes per square centimetre.