Doctor Smirnov

there I was, sprawled in the dim light of my room, bottle half-empty on the floor, the drink going hot through me. I thought of Doctor Smirnov in the East End, his little practice with the cracked linoleum and the waiting room that smelled of old magazines and fear.

I saw those posters on his walls, faded and curling at the edges — perfect picket-fence families grinning wide with teeth like piano keys, munching carrots like happy rabbits in a field, brushing and flossing the way God intended, shining bright in the promised land of oral hygiene.

that was a long time ago.

now, in the empty years without those visits, without the nerve to go back, the teeth go brittle, crack and crumble like old pavement, and the fillings pop out and shatter into black dust, and the holes become traps — little dark pockets where chunks of meat lodge and rot, places no floss can reach and no prayer can clean, breeding grounds for the pain that’s coming, the pain that’s already here.

Christ, the thought of it hits me now, drunk and shaking — the way he leans in close with that steel pin in his hand. he pushes it gentle-like into the nerve, and then the switch flips, the drill whines alive, that high screaming whine of metal against bone. it starts its long journey down, boring through the marrow toward the rotten core of me, the centre of the earth.

God help me in this condition, this river I’m going down, this fear that grips my gut like ice — the chair and the light and the mask and the rabbits on the wall. and that’s why I’ll never go back. never. to Doctor Smirnov and his rabbits, his posters, his drill that cuts straight into my skull.

just one more drink, and maybe the pain will sleep a little longer.

the drill in my head,
before I’ve even gone in,
pour another one.