No Calls After Hours

This won Writer's cramp. I'm working on expanding it because I had to chop a lot out to make their 1000 word limit. The prompt was to write a story about a dentist.


Jason was just leaving his office when the ring of the phone made him jump. He looked at his watch, thinking it must be an emergency for someone to call his office after 9:00 pm.

“Jason Daniels, DDS.” He still felt a little giddy when he answered the phone with his newly acquired title.

“Do you have time to take an emergency?” the male voice on the other end had just the faintest hint of a lisp.

Jason looked at his watch again and shrugged. He was here so late anyway, another hour or two wouldn’t matter. “Sure. What’s the problem?”

“I broke my tooth and the pain is unbearable. I can‘t eat anything.”

“Well, I can at least get you to the point where it doesn’t hurt tonight. You may have to come back tomorrow so we can replace the tooth.”

“No!” The voice was very firm. “We must take care of this tonight. I’ll pay cash up front.”

Jason frowned at the receiver. “I’ll do what I can for you. Do you know where my office is located?”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” the voice answered curtly before hanging up. Jason shrugged and hung up his end.

Turning on the radio in the nearest work area, Jason hummed while he prepared for his unexpected patient. The song ended and a news report came on, reminding him of all the horrors in the city. 

“Nothing but rapes, murders, and burglaries,” Jason muttered in disgust. There appeared to be a serial killer on the loose. A local liquor store had been robbed and two people were gunned down in the process. The suspect was still at large. A woman was attacked and narrowly escaped the perpetrator.

In his hometown, things like this never happened. Jason was beginning to regret refusing  Dr. Garrison’s offer to take over his practice when he retired next year. At the time, he felt that he needed to be completely on his own. He loved his job. Yet as his loneliness increased and the ugliness of city life revealed itself, he regretted his decision more all the time.

A sharp knock on the window startled Jason out of his thoughts. He turned to see a tall, dark-haired man holding a pale hand to his mouth and waving at him. Jason  opened the door and held it open for his patient.

The man stopped short in the entrance. “May I please come in?”

“Of course.” Jason thought that his opening the door had implied his visitor was welcome. At least the guy had manners.

The man threw a large wad of cash at Jason and went straight to the dentist chair wincing in pain as he went. Jason immediately saw that the man was missing a large portion of his left cuspid. After donning gloves, Jason carefully touched the broken tooth.

“Ouch!” the man howled in pain. Jason raised his eyebrows. A broken tooth could be very painful, but this guy was making a bigger fuss than most little kids.

“How did this happen?” Jason inquired.

“Um, I got into a fight.”

Glancing at the cash the man had thrown at him, Jason realized he was probably a drug dealer. He really didn't want to help a criminal, but he worried what the man would do to him if he tried to send him away.

Jason sighed in resignation, “Now this is very important. Have you taken any drugs tonight?”

“Why?”

“You are in so much pain that I’ll have to give you nitrous oxide to put you under. If you’ve taken any drugs, they might cause you to have a bad reaction.”

“No, I haven’t taken anything,” the man responded a bit too quickly.

"Are you sure? I don't care if you did, I just don't want to wind up sending you to the emergency room for something that's completely avoidable."

The patient snarled at Jason and hissed angrily. "I already told you that I didn't take anything. Now just fix the damn tooth!"

“If you say so,” Jason turned the valve on the nitrous oxide and placed the mask over the man’s face. He was out within seconds.

A little relieved that he didn’t have to listen to the man scream every time he touched him now, Jason reached in the man’s mouth to inspect the broken tooth better. As he brushed across the tissue above the injury, a strange thing happened. The remnant of the tooth grew longer. When he removed pressure from the spot, the tooth retracted back into the gum.

Jason was perplexed. He’d never heard of anything like this in dentistry school. Curious, he touched the tissue above the other cuspid. It also grew longer, extending about an inch past the other teeth. Since this tooth still had its pointy end,  it no longer looked like a tooth. It was more like a fang.

Jason jumped back onto the counter behind him. He didn’t know how long he sat staring at the unconscious vampire on the dentist chair. He was yanked out of shock by an emergency news bulletin blaring over the radio.

“It seems the woman that escaped an attack earlier this evening may have been the next intended target of the serial killer that’s been terrorizing the city for months. She describes the attacker as tall with dark hair. The woman claims the man tried to bite her and she hit him in the face with her bag. She thinks it’s possible she broke one of his teeth..”

“Now what?” Jason said to himself. If he called the police and told them he had a vampire in his dentist chair, they’d think he was crazy. He wasn’t sure if that whole wooden stake through the heart legend was true and the closest thing he had to a wooden stake was a number two pencil.

Jason realized that he might not be able to kill the vampire, but he could make sure he never hurt anyone again. He reached for his instruments and went to work.




On the ride back to Jason's hometown the following morning, another news report came on the radio.

“Another woman was attacked by a man fitting the serial killer’s description. She stated  to police that he tried to bite her, but then looked frustrated and ran away. In addition to the previous description of the killer, this woman says he was missing both his cuspid, or canine teeth. In other news..”

Jason smiled. He was very relieved to be leaving the city to take over Dr. Garrison’s practice. He didn’t think there were any vampires in his hometown. He was going to implement a strict no calls after hours policy, just to be safe.