Sugar Blue

They’ll steal your smile.
They’ll yank out your teeth and sell ‘em to the devil.
Nobody comes back from that place alive.

As Veruca stood in the pouring rain outside Mr Gunn’s surgery, she wondered exactly how it had come to this. Ten years of gobstoppers, jellied-eels, and bubble-gum bears that sweated sugar. Cola for breakfast, lemonade for lunch. And not a single trip to the dentist.

************

It started with a gentle throbbing, just a slight twinge here or there. Then, one night, she awoke to a world on fire. There was an orchestra at the back of her mouth, led by a man with a tiny hammer. There was a horse, beating its hooves on her gums. There was sherbet on the sheets; and a sugared smear from her bedtime jellied-diamonds.   

They bundled her into the car. Veruca remembered the alien texture of the footwell on her soles, the coldness of the leather against the back of her pyjama onesie, but nothing more until she awoke to a man in a green coat, shining a hot, bright light into the pit of her mouth.

‘Two cavities,’ the doctor said to her horrified parents. ‘It’s as black as thunder back there.’

************

The magic pills did little. She went into school the next day with an ache in her mouth and a knot of anxiety in her stomach. Dentist. Gillingham. Wild-eyed stares and whispered rumours followed Veruca across the playground, travelling like daggers in the wind. One boy swore his uncle had been to Gillingham and never returned. Another told her, on his life, that the town was haunted by strange beings, creatures that lurked in the mist outside the local McDonalds.

‘Soul snatchers,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s what they call them. They gon’ snatch the teeth right out ye’ mouth.’

At home, there were heated discussions. Mum and Dad spent hours at the old oak table, their voices low and fraught with anxiety, their hands reaching for the translucent tub of jellybeans whenever things became too hectic.

‘We’ll all have to go,’ Mum declared, ‘it’s the only way,’ to which Veruca’s dad responded by storming out of the room. He emerged several hours later; teary-eyed, tongue sugar-blue.

‘Fine,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air dramatically. ‘But I’m not going in, for god’s sake – I’ll just sit in the car. Now pass me the jellies, please.’