CHAPTER 1
"I HATE ALL DENTISTS—categorically!" the old man's face taking on the ruddy colour of impending apoplexy.
"...with their fiendish stainless-steel instruments of torture..." he continued undiminished, a tiny web of spittle now stretching pendulously from his chin.
...strange place for a tiny spider to live... the boy thought.
"...All sadistic brutes, the lot of 'em. No doubt bullied while in school and now hell-bent on revenge!"
Still no end in sight. The boy began to worry. It had never been this bad before...
"I mean, WHO, in blue blazes, answer me that!... gives these Sick-O's medical licenses in the first place?
"Oooh. I'm sooo sorry, Mr Smyth, but we'll need to yank every tooth in your head... One at a time, sadly... using my rusty pliers that served so well in the Great War... And perhaps, if you grovel sufficiently", the old undertaker's face twisting up, pretzel-fashioned, "a smidgeon of pain killer might be found in the cupboard somewhere..." the old man mimed, clownishly.
"What in TARNATION could these damnable dental boards be thinking! Can't they appreciate the dangers of handing out diplomas to bent specimens like this?", pointing his scalpel at the corpse laid out in front of him. "Loosing such feral beasts as him on innocent citizens? Monstrous! That's what it is!!"
Only then did the old mortician seem to notice his young apprentice, now cowering in the corner staring wide-eyed from across the mortuary, his left hand shakily groping behind him for the unseen door handle.
"HMMPH.. Well..." embarrassed now, "You see, being a mortician by trade, my boy, I could tell you stories... Too true, I could!"
"Attending the 'Dearly Departed' for more than 100 years..." adjusting his heavy, gore-spattered leather apron, "I've witnessed more than a thing or two—oh yes, I have. Curl your toenails, I could...".
The 16-year-old son of the local hardware merchant, and the undertaker's latest participant in a long line of failed apprenticeships, had listened to his mentor's bombast often since enrolling 6 months ago. But today's rampage had been the worst—by far—during his short time at the mortuary.
Did he just say, '100 year'...?
"...And that makes this particular client, sooo relevant, my boy!
You see, when I was a child this twisted specimen was my dentist; and believe-you-me, I can still recall every... grisly... minute I spent in his chamber of horrors."
"This sadistic monster", savagely burying his scalpel blade deep into the corpse's right eyeball—a jellified ooze resulting upon its abrupt retraction, "Well, I'd be quaking in my boots, I would, waiting to be dragged into his perverse lair... And my mother... well, she would JUST SIT THERE, 'tutt tutting', reading her Home & Garden Magazine while I screamed...and screamed...
"Don't fret over the eyeball" he said quickly, noting the horrified look now creeping across his apprentice's face. "We always replace 'em, anyway, with glass ones."
"...Of course," he continued, "this abomination never once apologized for all the suffering he so gleefully inflicted upon his defenceless victims. Never!
Well, rest assured my child. No bad deed goes unrewarded in this life! No, indeed.
And so now, we have the monster on our table... Oooh, Yesss—We well and truly have him in our grips now, haven't we!" a joyful, maniacal cackle bursting forth from the old man.
The young apprentice began edging towards the door again.
"And it is our sacred duty, is it not, to right past wrongs wouldn't you say, young man?
Who, if not we, will do so, may I ask? bracketing his young pupil with an interminably-long, hawkish stare.
"So...What to do, eh? Have you a suggestion, my young budding colleague?
Shall we start by checking the state of his dentition? OH, YES! That we must do without delay! The corpse's jaw fractured loudly as the mortician's strong, practiced fingers brutally wrenched apart the mandible and maxilla stiffened in rigor mortis.
"Ahhh, but one must always beware the fang, dear boy—respect the fang even in death! Mustn't provide our dear 'Doctor Horror', here, a last opportunity at villainy...we certainly mustn't!" (hadn't the name printed on the toe-tag been 'Horstein', thought the boy?).
"Yes, me Boyo. Always beware the viper's severed head! He'll bite ya sure as Hades resides across the Styx", the old undertaker slipping into an ancient brogue, pronouncing the last sentence with a hissing sneer.
His eyes glitter like diamonds, thought the frightened boy. Just for an instant, he was certain he'd seen an amber-red glow coming from deep within those eyes...
CHAPTER 2
The young apprentice jumped at the high-pitched whine piercing the air, the bright surgical lights now striking the blurred rotating stainless steel blade and rebounding off the old man's crazed obsidian eyes.
Fortunately, there's never any gore here in the mortuary, he thought, taking a deep breath. That's a silver lining if ever there was one!
He had previously tested his aptitude for that sort of thing at the local hospital's Emergency Department— his apprenticeship there cut short by an embarrassing tendency to faint at the sight of blood...
No. Thankfully. The dead didn't bleed all that much.
The frenetic, yet well-practiced motions of the old mortician's fingers fascinated the young boy who now watched the old man go to work on the corpse with renewed vigour and purpose.
For the first time since starting his apprenticeship, he thought with growing excitement, he actually found himself genuinely intrigued by what he was watching!
For instance, why had the corpse's head been positioned in just such a way as to abet the tiny wire now snaking surreptitiously around and through the hidden holes which the old mortician had drilled into the mandible?
"Why, to maintain the straight, condescending chin angle with which this arrogant creature carried himself throughout his life, of course, my dear boy!
Must stay true to form—Always true to form."
The old man worked with blinding speed now, brutally slicing a huge inverted Y-shaped incision through the dead man's chest and abdominal cavities, nonchalantly cracking ribs and scooping out organs as he went, plopping the latter casually into large shiny stainless basins attending the macabre ceremony. Why so fast, thought the boy? What's the hurry? After all, he's dead, isn't he?
Tears brimmed the young apprentice's eyes, the formalin fumes floating heavily in the air.
The wail of the reciprocating sawblade as it sunk rapidly into corpse's skull bone, made a particularly stark impression on the young apprentice. The unique smell of scorched bone struck a solidly discordant chord somewhere deep in his primeval olfactory brain.
