TEETH /2018: chapter 3

A/N: I decided that giving the project a code-name was overly paranoid! digestive system is now - and always has been - Flesh is The Way of The World.

They walk in single file. Chrissie’s steps are small and quiet - Lena, considerably taller, is constantly pulling ahead.

“The first time was through the tool cabinet in my parent’s shed.” Lena’s hands move energetically through the air; they almost look like birds. “Then it was an electrical box - y’know, the big ones you get on the street? Don’t ask why I was trying to get that open. Then it was the freezer.”

Chrissie nods, realises Lena isn’t looking, lets her head go still.

“…And bam! Here we are. In the labyrinth!”

An expectant glance over the shoulder signals that it is Chrissie’s turn to talk.

“Cupboard for me. Both times. Why do you call it that?”

“The labyrinth?” There is a flash of widening mouth, of bloody teeth. “Because it sounds metal as hell! Plus, it’s a bit of a maze in here. You’ve probably learned that already.”

The question buried deep in Chrissie’s chest: “Do you know how to get out?”

Lena stops so abruptly Chrissie almost bumps into her. “I guess so. I mean, it usually lets me go. After a while.”

“Usually?”

A shrug. A non-committal noise. Lena continues walking.

Well, Chrissie supposes, that’s okay. What does she have to go back for, anyway? She still isn’t certain this is more than a particularly long and vivid dream. Is it possible to stay awake so long that when sleep finally takes you, you’ll stay under for hours, days, a week? Chrissie hopes so - she wants things to be different, if she wakes.

Her attention drifts to Lena’s shoulders, the small of Lena’s back. If this is a dream, she wants to remember it well. The torchlight, trained on the back of Lena’s head. How dark it is, how severely it contrasts the pink-red-wet of the labyrinth walls. Lena’s hair - long, straight, dyed a fierce black, with shades of brown emerging at the roots. The black tank top that exposes her shoulders - awkward, bony, dotted with acne constellations. The sharp eyes and sharper nose that occasionally peek back, to see if Chrissie is still there.

Her looking is interrupted - the gullet floor has begun a sudden, sharp decline. Fearless, Lena bounds her way down. Chrissie passes down the torch, then begins a more cautious descent. She does not want to touch the flesh - she does not like the way it heaves.

Lena is cast into darkness. The light is trained on Chrissie, now. Her eyes keep watering, she has to squint. Worse - goosebumps flare up on her arms.

She stumbles, at the end, and almost falls. An arm flies out to catch her. Lena’s skin retains its softness, even where it strains against the bone.

“Thanks,” Chrissie murmurs. She draws away as soon as she is steady. Lena stands there, regarding her, slowly dropping her arm. The light blots out her face.

“So… did you come here to get away from your parents, too?”

“Nah,” Chrissie says. There is a short and pregnant pause. “My parents are in prison.” She brushes past, pushes onward, takes the lead.

“Damn,” Lena says. Two sets of squelching steps ring out, not quite in sync. “Sorry about that.”

“Is it your fault?”

“Hey. I’m trying to be polite.”

“Sorry,” Chrissie says. They both fall silent for a while. Chrissie in front and Lena behind. The weight of Lena’s eyes on the nape of Chrissie’s neck.

She blocks it out - focuses on the labyrinth walls instead. More clustering teeth, more hair. Patches of freckling skin. A tongueless, toothless mouth that gapes up from the floor.

At one point, the left wall falls away to reveal a vast and cavernous space. Lena casts the torchlight over it, barely makes a dent against the all-encroaching dark. There is a lake of clear-ish liquid, there is a cyst the size of a house. It reeks. It stings their eyes.

When Lena speaks, something in her voice has shifted. “This part always makes me… I don’t know. Not sad, but…”

“Not not sad?” Chrissie says, pawing at her eyes.

“Right.”

No more is said. They press on, side by side, wordlessly passing the torch back and forth. Their shoulders drift together, then apart, with each and every step. They pass lattice-like structures of interlocking bone. A single eye, crusted shut by honey-yellow sleep. A single kidney. A single lung. All fused into the walls, all fed by twisting threads of red/blue blood. Then: a high and narrow flesh-ravine, lined with a million million human tongues. Some searching, some still. Each one leashed on either side by a taut, wet muscle-strand.

“It looks like an anemone,” Lena breathes, “isn’t it cool?”

Chrissie is thinking of the spit against her skin, how it might leak inside her pores. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Right,” says Lena, “I mean. It’s pretty horrific, when you keep looking.”

“Yeah.”

They stand there, the two of them, at the mouth of the wriggling valley. The path ahead is barely wide enough to sidle through.

Chrissie, voice tight: “Can we go another way?”

"Not without a lot of back-tracking.” Lena turns her head, squints down at Chrissie’s face. “You really don’t like being touched, huh.”

Chrissie shrugs. What is she supposed to say to that?

“C’mon,” Lena pulls ahead, takes the torchlight with her. “It’s just tongues. What are they gonna do, lick us to death?” With that, her body slips into the gulch.

The tongues come alive as she moves past - tasting, probing, drawing circles on her skin. Lena shrieks, laughs, turns her head back to stick her own tongue out at Chrissie, wriggles it wildly around inside her mouth.

Chrissie stands there, dumbstruck, struggling more and more to make out Lena’s silhouette. There is only Lena’s laughter, only the tongues and their shadows, only a light drifting further and further away.

“Are you coming?” Lena shouts back, once she has reached the other side intact.

Chrissie takes a breath and plunges in.