I made mention, a while ago, of the news that I had survived the first round of the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition. My second round entry showed vague promise Here but that was where it ended. The story came in 7th in the heat and needed to come in the first 5. Not dramatic enough, apparently. Bugger. Back to the drawing board.

So I entered the Flash Fiction competition and was asked to create a ghost story set in a dentist’s office and featuring a diorama.

It was all a bit of a rush. The first story I wrote I thought to be not too bad, but just before submitting it I realised that the maximum word count was 1000, and I had worked on 2000.

So the whole thing had to be halved (absolutely butchered, in other words) I made another technical error in submitting it and will likely be DQ’d. So this page will probably be as far as it gets.

***

The Man Beneath the Glass

A woman with a toothache debates art and history with a Nazi War Criminal.

 

 

 

She awoke in agony. The cheap gold implants from Thailand had not been such a great idea. The pain a retribution for the sin of pride. She took six codeines and followed them up with a line of coke before heading off to her hastily arranged appointment.

She found herself in the dentist’s waiting room beside an elderly gentleman cradling an ornate box upon his lap. He was gazing with wonderment around the space they shared. “Amazing!” he proclaimed.

She welcomed the opportunity to chat as a way of diverting her mind from the pain. “What is it?” she asked

He responded with a strong German accent, “This place,” he said, “the modernity of it all. Nothing like it in my day!”

“No.” She pointed to the box, “I mean what is that?”

“Oh,” he replied, “a diorama. A life’s work, in a way. A gift for my grandson. He’s the dentist.”

“So, you were a dentist too? A dior-what?”

“I was. And this is a sort of three-dimensional painting, to be interpreted from many perspectives.”

The drugs were having their effect and she imagined that any interpretation of her own may be thus inhibited. Or uninhibited. On closer examination she discovered the box to be an intricate model of a building, lightly brushed with snow and enclosed in a glass dome. The building itself was brown and drab, but beneath the snow she detected a faint glow. “You made this?” she asked.

“Yes I did,” he confessed proudly, “recently. Though it is a relic from the past.”

“A place where you lived?”

“Where I worked, in Germany, in a different world.” He held his hand out by way of formal introduction. “Martin,” he said.

She took his hand but recoiled at the coldness of his skin. “Hannah.”

“Hannah?” he repeated, “A Hebrew name. You are Jewish?”

“Not particularly.”

He grinned. “Shaking hands with a German! How things change! Or are we off to a bad start?”

“Not so far.”

A slightly uncomfortable silence ensued before he spoke again. “A German and a Jew walk into a dentist’s office. A joke?”

“Not a funny one.”

“Perhaps not. We Germans are not known for our humour.”

“And we Jews form a line of stand-up comics.”

“It’s good that you can laugh about it.”

“About what?”

“Never mind.” He was serious for a moment, and Hannah sensed in him something she didn’t like. She dismissed it as a reaction to the pain, or to the drugs, or to both.

“So, you made a model of a dentist’s surgery where you worked long ago as a dentist to present to your grandson, who is also a dentist,  and you put it in a glass box to protect it from what?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Interpreting. From my perspective.”

“Time.”

“What?”

“I’m protecting it from time.” Even spoken gently, there was resentment in the words, and Hannah wondered if this grandson and the modern dentistry might represent that cold enemy – the relentless glacier of time. But the old man seemed to sense her thoughts and he spoke without being asked, “my grandson is a traditionalist. He understands the old ways.”

“Tradition can be dangerous.”

“Don’t lecture me on tradition, my young Jewess.”

“Please don’t use that word.”

“It is just a word.”

It was clear now. He was baiting her. “Don’t try to frighten me.” She despised him.

“The dentist frightens many, but in an age of modern anaesthetics, there remains little to fear. It wasn’t always that way.”

“In traditional dentistry, do you mean?”

They exchanged glares until the German changed tack. “Look into the diorama and tell me what you see.”

“I see a drab deserted building in the snow. I see desolation.”

“Yes,” responded the German, “quite beautiful. What else do you see?”

“I see something shining beneath the snow,” Hanna admitted, “maybe the faintest glimmer of hope.”

The old German placed his hands around the diorama and hugged it. “Then I approve of your interpretation. For that glimmer, that glitter, is gold. The last such surviving remnant of my work.”

The drugs were wearing off and she sensed that she was losing a battle. “Let’s stop,” she suggested.

But he would not be stopped. “The relationship between gold and dentistry is long, a tradition dating back to the Etruscans, and one practised by your ancestors. I can see, when you bare your teeth, as you so frequently do, that you honour that tradition.”

She clamped her jaws shut and felt the lightning rod of pain run through her body. “Please stop,” she begged.

He continued. “And you have heard perhaps, the rumours of dentists of the Third Reich, extracting golden teeth from the cadavers of deceased female prisoners of your own kind? Some of them not yet quite deceased, perhaps. Gruesome work. But rewarding. Repatriating those fading glimmers of hope to the rightful owners.”

She was sobbing now. The pain was overwhelming. “Who are you, Martin?”

“Like my art, like my work, I am open to interpretation. Who do you think I am?”

“I think you may be the devil.”

The German stood slowly and placed the diorama on his vacated seat. “Such has been said before. And now I have overstayed my welcome. Could you deliver this little gift on my behalf?”

And then he was gone.

*

The lights seemed suddenly brighter.

“Dr Hellinger will see you now.”

Hannah saw the approach of a man in white gown and surgical mask, a recognisable smile beneath the mask. She was holding the diorama, and she handed it to him. She saw the inscription on its base: Ravensbrück 1944.

“A gift from your grandfather,” she heard herself say.

Dr Martin Hellinger merely glanced at the gift. “Quite beautiful,” he murmured, the accent German, “and though the man you speak of passed away in 1988 he endures as my constant inspiration. Now come into my surgery and open your mouth wide. We will find what it is that troubles you.”