Teeth

Chapter One

The bathroom tap was leaking again. A tang of rust from the pipes filled the air, pulsing through his senses with each resonating drip. He rolled onto his side, groping around his waist for the blankets. It was too cold to consider getting out of bed. His stomach growled and churned, begging for food, but he couldn't think of a single thing that sounded appetising.

Each drop from the tap pounded through his head, and Thomas buried his face against the pillow. In his state of drunkenness the night before, he must have forgotten to close the bathroom door, keeping the noise at bay. The pipe gurgled at the constant flow of water. It seemed louder than usual.

Maybe that was just the headache talking.

Thomas couldn't even remember if the night out had been worth it. His stomach was churning, his head pounding, and the smell of rust in the air both turned his stomach and gnawed at him in hunger. The fifth drink—or perhaps the sixth—was the last he could remember. He groped forwards with his leg, trying to locate a blanket. He could only imagine that later on he'd be told tales of how hilarious he'd been in some venture or another.

His foot, in its blind search for the blanket, slid across something wet and sticky. Grimacing, Thomas groaned and retreated, wondering if he'd spilt something. Though, now he thought about the wet patch near the bottom of the mattress, he realised something else: this wasn't his mattress. It was hard, lumpy, and had a definite sag under his hip.

He'd gone home with someone. He'd left the bar with someone who apparently didn't own a blanket and also had a leaky tap. Now he knew exactly what the stories would be about when he got to work. Perhaps he'd found someone nice, someone with long and beautiful dark hair, copper skin that sometimes seemed to glow.

Thomas flinched and squeezed his eyes closed tighter. He half hoped that it would remove the picture he was quickly getting in his head, a picture he knew wouldn't be real. The other half hoped that he'd be able to remember the girl when he saw her asleep next to him. She wouldn't be the one he had wanted for months now, the one he constantly pictured when his mother asked when he'd stop thinking about work and find a girl. But she would be nice. At least, he hoped.

Thomas opened his eyes.

Then he began screaming.

Splatters of blood covered the bare walls. A pool of it had spread so far across the concrete floor that it was soaking into the edge of the mattress, creeping through the material. Fingers drifted inches above the pool, arms swaying as calmly as willow branches over a red lake.

Thomas launched himself across the mattress away from the blood and away from the corpse hanging upside down above it. It had to be a corpse. True, he'd not yet completed his medical internship, but he knew how much blood a body could lose and this was definitely more than that. Far more than that. He tumbled off the edge of the mattress and onto the concrete on the other side, pressing his back against the rough brick and drawing his knees up to his chest. The distance only made the sight worse. He could see more of it now. He could see more of her.

The corpse was a woman. She had been suspended from a beam across the small, bare room, a rope knotted so tightly around her bare ankles that the skin beneath was raw and bleeding, her feet black and blue. She wore nothing but her underwear and thin streams of blood wove their way across her skin from numerous long, thin slashes across her body. Her skin looked even paler against the dark blood. Even though she'd clearly been hanging there for some time the blood hadn't stopped dribbling from the cuts.

The pipe gurgled.

No, she gurgled.

Thomas's gaze shot to the woman's face. He expected to see lifeless eyes staring blankly ahead but he was wrong. She was watching him. Pale green eyes blinked. Choking on his own breath, Thomas covered his mouth as the urge to be sick boiled up into his throat. He could taste bile, more acrid than he had ever tasted. Four hooks held her mouth as wide as it could go, blood dribbling along the shining silver metal. A fifth bar joined them, pierced through the centre of her tongue, pulling it out at a grotesque angle. She couldn't talk, couldn't move. She probably would have been able to scream at first but now, having lost so much blood, all she could do was gurgle.