The Dentist Part 3

Part 1 Part 2 Malcolm Severin sat in the car and stared up the street towards his surgery door. His fear had turned to indignation. Who was this cunt? What the fuck did he want the surgery for? Being a good little boy and making himself scarce had ceased to be an option. The idea of toddling off to Darling's seedy Soho club for a couple of Banana Daquiri's was no longer on the agenda. Malcolm wanted to know exactly what this distinctly vile quartet were up to and he thought he knew exactly how to find out. He shifted the car a few streets down and got out. He knew the lanes in the area as well as anyone, except maybe the binmen and the rats. He was fairly relieved that there were no binmen about and the only vermin he was concerned about were the shitbags currently occupying his surgery. On reaching the fire escape at the back of his surgery he knew instantly that something deeply unpleasant was going on. It was lying slightly ajar and though his first notion was to make his way straight into the building, he held himself back. He listened for breathing or footpaces on the other side, trying not to breath himself. It became obvious with his nervous and heavy breathing that if there had been someone on the other side of the door they would have heard him by now, so he tapped the door fully open with his foot.

Malcolm was beginning to join some dots now. He sidled into the marble floored main hall just in time to hear a dentist's drill start up and a roar of utter terror from someone. It sounded almost animal in it's ferocity. Malcolm moved over to a door on the far side of the hall where he thought the sound was coming from. It was surgery one, his pristine, state of the art personal workroom where he treated all his highest paying clients. Whoever was in the chair seemed to be paying a price that went beyond mere pounds and pence. The screams subsided after a few minutes, only to be replaced by sobbing and gurgling. The drill stopped and Malcolm heard the muffled babble of voices. He heard one voice get nearer and in a flash he was back into the fire escape. The door didn't open though and within a minute the drill was being revved up for round two. whoever it was on the end of this rather impromptu dental checkup was letting out a few meek sobs but they were obviously saving their breath for the next installment. Malcolm slowly shuffled over to the door again and with a deep breath put his eye to the spy-hole.

He couldn't see what the 'patient' looked like, he was obstructed by the two heavies holding him down and the small wiry guy warming up the drill. Darling was pacing about in a slightly manic fashion. Maybe it was his job to make sure the man in the chair 'gargled and rinsed'. Very important job that.

The screaming started again as the man with the drill moved in on his victim. It was now that Malcolm saw the blood all across the surgery floor and the wall nearest the chair. A fine spray of the stuff, barely visible at first but nonetheless decorating parts of the sterile white surgery with a sickly pink spray that would never look good in any light. The tattooed torturer was covered in blood and the heavies were having trouble staying out the way of it too. Eddie Darling was nowhere to be seen though. Malcolm had no doubt he was busy in the little cubby hole in the corner of the room making himself a cup of tea and reading a copy of Peoples Friend or Vogue pilferred from the waiting room. After another minute or so the man in the chair had gone somewhat limp. Where before he had been screaming, flailing and kicking like someone undergoing electric shock therapy, now he just lay there in silence with only the high pitched whine of the drill resonating around the cavernous room.

Malcolm wanted to prise himself away from the door, he was on the verge of nausea as it was. Something kept his eye to the peep-hole though. He soon got what he needed to break the grisly spell. The drill weilding man moved away from the motionless figure in the chair. The two heavies had moved away when the man had stopped struggling. There on the chair lay a man with no face. All there was below his cheekbones was a bloody, tattered hole that you could have put both your fists into. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets and he was drenched in his own 'claret'. In fact, it was still oozing out of the gaping wound, they'd done everything but stick the drill up his nose and trepan his brain Malcolm's faint nausea turned to a full blown retch but nothing came out. He stumbled back from the door before launching himself down the fire escape. He stopped halfway down to listen for footsteps, he couldn't be sure they hadn't heard him almost lose his breakfast. No footsteps or voices seemed to be approaching and he continued on his way back to daylight.

In the car Malcolm suddenly realised that unless he fancied drinking his dinner through a straw for the rest of his life, he'd better get over to Soho in a flash. He knew how to get there in fifteen minutes but he also knew he could use the old 'heavy traffic' excuse for being late. The image of the man with no face was still fresh in his mind and he had no desire to be next in line for this rather unique approach to administering a Chelsea smile.