Root Canal Surgery

Posted on May 14, 2003 in Dentition Prose Arcana Soliloquy

Note: I set the group the task of writing a monologue by a person in pain. This is my work:

The needle’s the part I hate the most. It’s not a terribly bloody procedure, but when that needlegoes in, my heart starts to flutter like a captive pigeon and I start to drool and gag. There’s the needle — that’s all Ah! — and there’s the taste of the juice that escapes — all bitter, like licking the bottom of a desert salt lake except someone’s gone and splashed it with nicotine. It burns. That’s the real taste of fire, in my opinion, the stuff that escapes from the needle while he’s sticking it and pulling it out to stick in another place: impersonal, no spice about it, just the swish of bitterness frothing over your gum ridges.

Once he’s pricked you in three places, he leaves you to sit. Let’s you read a magazine. You learn his politics while you wait. God help you if he’s an opposite or the member of some cult because it sets the stage of your mind like a torture room — dark with chains, a laughing executioner who says “that doesn’t hurt” when you squeal. The drill starts and he touches a spot that’s forgotten that it is anesthecized. There’s no shape to it, no shape to the pain, no gum-rooted carrot like you see in the X-Rays. Just a hood pulled over your ears, your eyes, the dome of your skull, in the places that you shouldn’t be noticing anything. It hurts like a bad fuck.