My, What Big Teeth You Have

Darlings; There's Something In My Teeth - repost

There are times when food shouldn't taste good. But the bread is perfection, the burger is juicy, and the fries have tiny crystals of salt clinging to them so that every bite balances with a sip of coke. The diner is bustling and painfully well-lit for so late in the evening. At least no one questions my sunglasses.

I can still smell the blood on my hands, so I glance at them to make sure I don't have crimson crescents under my nails. They're fine, but my thumb has an odd reddish hue. I bring it to my mouth and dig with the edge of my canine, tasting rusty blood that's been kept fresh under my nail.

"Don't think about it," Ethan says, thumping on the bottom of a bottle of ketchup to get the last bit out.

"About?" I pull my hand away, frowning when I realize I've chipped my nail.

"What we did. If you don't think about it, it won't matter." He drags a fry through the ketchup till it's dripping with red clumps, and puts it in his mouth.

I shiver a little from the icy drag of fear down my back. Talk about your crimes and talk about them loudly; that's Ethan's key to success. People tend to think you're joking when you boast about murdering someone.

"I wasn't thinking about it until now," I grumble. "Anyway. My hands are dry, do you know how many times I washed them?"

"Hard work needs good washing, Khloe," Ethan shrugs and kicks Alda under the table, or something close because her drooping head jerks up and she squints at him.

"Huh?" She slurs, perpetually drunk.

But really, it's just her head that got messed up. That I do remember; Ethan screaming at me to find him a pair of scissors that worked while his fingers fumbled inside her head wound, trying to pluck bits of metal out.

"What happens if some of it snags on her brain?" He had asked me.

Well, this happens, I say to past-Ethan.

"You need to eat something," Ethan says to her now. "Regain your strength."

"I'm not hungry," Alda moans, letting her head sink against her palm, the tips of her fingers scratching lightly at the admittedly masterful stitches hidden in her hair.

"Do you know what I ate down there? Corn porridge with maggots in it. The maggots tasted like vanilla ice cream with crunchy bits. The crunchy bits were like biscuits. Those were their heads."

"God, that's horrible," I mutter, and take a sip of my drink to choke down the bite of food that just went bad in my mouth. "So, that's what hell is like?"

"No, you idiot. I'm an atheist," Alda snaps, sharpened. "I wasn't dead, I was unconscious!"

"That makes no sense. Were you dreaming?" I ask her.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter," Alda says. "Anyway, normal food doesn't taste good anymore."

"Funny," I muse. "How it affected us differently, I mean. You died- or got knocked out, and my eyes changed, and Ethan-"

"Looks different," Alda finishes dreamily, reaching out a hand and smoothing a finger down one of his aggressive smile lines. "He got old."

Ethan leans away from her touch and signals the waiter for another basket of fries. "As long as we get what we want," he says.

"And what do we want?" I reply, swishing the straw around in my glass. "Do you even know what you want?"

Ethan looks over his eyebrows at me, his expression a formulation of wisdom even though we both know he doesn't have any.

"We stick together like we always have," he tells me. "And everything will be fine."

"Sure," I drawl and decide to stop poking the bear. "I'm going to pee. Alda, do you want to?"