Main Character / Patient (4:54)

It wasn't pain, exactly. It was pressure. A slow, deliberate force. Like something inside my mouth was trying to make room where there wasn't any. I'd been doing fine. Well, fine for me. The nightmares were still happening, but they'd dulled over the years. The black eyes, the crooked arms, the choking weight of it standing on my chest. It was all still there, but somewhere, mostly far away. Until the ache started a few days ago. Then it all came back. Not a sharp pain, just a kind of pressure building in my molars. It comes and goes, dull and slow, but enough to keep me grinding my jaw and running my tongue over my teeth. I keep telling myself it's nothing. Tension. Maybe I've been clenching in my sleep again. I haven't been sleeping much anyway, so who knows? It's been hard to focus. I catch myself drifting off during conversations, thinking about things I try not to. The kind of thoughts I've spent most of my adult life trying to bury. But the ache, this stupid, invisible ache, keeps pulling things back up. I live alone, have for a long time. People say I'm quiet, polite, maybe a little distant. That's fine. Distance keeps things stable and predictable. I have routines that I follow. One of those routines involves checking the safe. I don't do it often. Maybe once every year or two. I don't need to. Nothing changes. But every once in a while, I'll get that feeling. And when I do, I make myself check just to be sure. It's always there, exactly where I left it. Small, pale, round, cold to the touch. The coin. I don't remember the first time I called it that. It's not really a coin. It's rough around the edges, like it was carved down from something else and made of something that looks like bone but isn't quite. There are marks on it. Each of them represents a different encounter. It wasn't moved in over a decade. I keep it in a small safe in the back of the closet, locked tight with a code only I know. It hasn't left that safe since I put it there, and yet I still can't get rid of it. I don't want to make it come back. So now it stays locked away, out of sight, untouched, unmentioned. I live with it like people live with old injuries. Quietly, carefully, but the ache in my jaw won't go away, and for the first time in a long time I opened the safe again, just to make sure.

Therapist / Interviewer (8:23)

Why don't you tell me about the first time you remember it happening?

Main Character / Patient (8:28)

The first time was when I was seven. One of the bottom front teeth had been loose for days, and my mother kept reminding me not to pull at it, to let it come out on its own like it was supposed to, like there was a correct way for a piece of you to come off. It finally gave up at dinner, a soft click against the fork, that tiny numb shift you feel more than hear, and there it was in my palm, pearl white at first glance and already a little dirty where my fingers had touched it, a faint smear of blood. She made a celebration of it. We did the ritual the way you do when you're told these things matter, rinse and spit pictures, a kiss on the forehead, the little tooth placed under my pillow with an exaggerated flourish that said this was normal and safe. She tucked me in. Don't peek, she said, and pulled the door until the hall light was a thin gold sliver across the carpet. I lay there for a long time, not sleeping and not awake either, held somewhere in between by the thought of something coming into my room. Houses have their own noises, but that night those sounds kept stepping back, as if they didn't want to be mistaken for what was about to happen. It didn't start with footsteps. There was no hinge groan, no door easing open, no shadow moving under the slit of light. The first sound was a smooth damp drag, a little heavier than cloth but lighter than a body, and it came from the left side of the bed, where there was a window that was closed but no door or other way in. Something met the mattress and the mattress yielded in a long patient sigh, and I felt a pressure at the edge, like a hand testing the give. I couldn't make my body move. It wasn't paralysis like you read about, where you try to scream and can't. It was more like being looked at, the way an animal looks at you from the bush, and some part of you understands that if you move, you change the outcome in a way you can't take back. I watched because watching was the only thing I could do. It came up over the edge of the bed without effort, not pulling itself, not climbing so much as arriving the way a shadow climbs a wall when the light shifts. It was small but wrong, Small, compact, and overbuilt. The first thing I understood clearly was the arms. They were too long for the body by a factor that made my stomach knot segmented in a way that suggested an extra joint that arms shouldn't have, and each segment flexed by itself, like a blind finger finding its way. The hands were bony and careful. The nails were not nails. They were flattened crescents, dull like worn tools. Its head looked deflated and swollen at the same time, a pale gray sack that had been filled past comfortable and then left to sack and set into that sack were eyes that took up more than their share of the real estate. Black, glossy, the kind of wet that catches any sunlight and makes it move, and they didn't blink, they didn't even shimmer with the tiny vibrations eyes carry when someone is alive and near you. They just held me. The sacks on its back rode high like useless wings, two soft bulges that inflated and deflated out of sequence, and the sound they made was a thin wheeze, a tired accordion drawn slow. The smell came with the breathing, a candy shop sweetness that turned on you and became the stench of something kept too long in a closed place. Rot under sugar, metal under rot, the copper taste of pennies arriving at the back of my throat before I could even swallow. When the mouth opened, it wasn't like a mouth. A mouth opens along hinges framed by muscle that tells you how wide it can go. This was a split along a line that had already been torn wider than necessary, the edges glossy with saliva that hung in threads as it breathed. There were teeth everywhere in there. Not the tiny arched rows we imagine are universal, but a crowding of shapes and ages and colors jammed into gum that had learned to make room. Human teeth, recognizable in a way that made my skin cold, some straight, some crooked, some perfect porcelain white as if new from a box. Some tobacco stained and hair lined with cracks, some with old fillings that flashed dull in the Thin, light. The mouth couldn't close all the way because of how the teeth were arranged. It watched me the entire time. It had no interest in the room, in the dresser, in the door or the window or the dark or the closet. I was the only thing that existed to it, and not even me, just my mouth. The hand slid under my pillow. I felt the mattress shift against the bones of my skull. Something cold and damp brushed my cheek and I did everything in my power not to make a move. The long fingers shifted under my pillow and then pulled back out. It held my tooth between those tool flat nails and tilted its head a fraction, like it was examining the quality. It brought the tooth to that disgusting mouth, touched the tooth into the crowded gum and pushed it, and the push became a twist and the twist became a little wet pop. All the while the black eyes didn't look away from me, not even for a second. Its tongue felt around with the wet slopping sound before it reached into itself. There was a fold low on the torso, a seam in the slack skin. The fingers went in up to the first joint with a slow flexing motion that made a sound like a boot pulled from mud. And when the hand came out, it was holding something small and white. It tucked that thing beneath my pillow with the same care a parent uses when they don't want to wake a child. And then it began to leave. It did not turn away. It never gave me the gift of not being seen by, slid backward the way it had arrived, those long joints folding in and out, the sacks of its back wringing the air, the mouth working around its new acquisition in small listless movements. And when it reached the foot of the bed, it did not drop. It lowered itself, keeping the eyes on me, letting its head vanish last like the setting sun. I think I counted to a hundred, maybe to a hundred again. My body was shaking under the covers. When I finally decided it was safe to move. I reached under the pillow in one quick motion because I couldn't bear the idea of touching it slowly, and my fingers found the disk. It was cold in a way that wasn't temperature. I didn't want to look at it, but I did, because not looking felt worse, and I saw the little scrawled mark, one that had been scratched or pressed there, shallow and decisive. I didn't show it to my parents in the morning. I tried almost, but the words fell apart in my mouth and came out as a dream. And they smile the way parents smile when they need the world to be made of safe answers. And after school I went into the backyard and dug a hole with a serving spoon and put the disk in and covered it with dirt and pressed the dirt flat with both hands like I was putting something to rest for.

Narrator / Redwood Bureau Analyst (17:15)

Good.

Main Character / Patient (17:24)

Morning drags like wet fabric. I sit at the edge of the bed until the light through the blinds turns the room into narrow ladders and the ache in my jaw settles into its place for the day. Dull, patient, never quite leaving. Coffee helps for a few minutes, the warmth spreading down my throat and taking the edge off, but as soon as the mug cools, the pressure returns. A thumb pressed gently and endlessly at the hinge of my mouth. I avoid the bathroom mirror without thinking about it. I brush gently, slower than I need to, counting out a ritual I've built over top left to right, bottom right to left, never lingering. I rinse until the taste thins to nothing and get ready to leave. I answer emails in clipped sentences and ignore the ones that want more than that. Work gets done because I make it get done. I don't miss deadlines, I don't ask for favors and I don't open space for follow up questions. My jaw tightens again and I rub the muscle with my knuckle until it lets go. At noon I try soup and crackers. The heat from the spoon sends a small wave through my teeth and I find myself holding my breath until it passes. It's nothing, I tell myself. Grinding stress. I swallow ibuprofen and read the instructions on the bottle like they've changed since yesterday. The bills clatter back into the cabinet, too loud for a quiet place. Outside, someone is walking a dog that doesn't like to move. A delivery truck sits with its hazards on and a door somewhere closes with a clean, familiar sound. Everything gets to be simple out there, ordinary problems with ordinary solutions. I think about calling a dentist, but I don't. The idea of explaining my fears and anxiety makes them appear all the same. And anyway, the ache isn't sharp. It isn't urgent, it's just present. I can live with present. I've done it before. I close the tab and tell myself I'll try again tomorrow, after I've slept. Afternoon folds into evening. The apartment slips toward dark and I let it. Lamps can stay off. The screen is enough light to keep the walls honest. I turn on a show I've seen too many times and let the sound wash over the corners of the room. When a commercial for whitening strips comes on, I mute it and try not to stare at the actor's mouth moving until the scene changes and I can breathe again. By 10, I am tired in the way that feels more like a demand than a suggestion. I sit on the floor with my back against the bed and the glass of water in my hand. I don't drink. It hasn't moved in years. It isn't going to move now. I repeat it slowly until I pretend to believe it. When I finally climb under the covers, I close my eyes and wait for the kind of sleep that feels like falling into nothing. And if it doesn't come, that's fine. I know how to lie still until morning arrives.

Therapist / Interviewer (21:02)

Let's talk about those dreams a little more. They seem to have a very evident and visceral impact on you, and I think getting to the heart of them is where our true progress will stem from.

Main Character / Patient (21:14)

Well, the second time happened only a few months later. It was when my next tooth came loose, one of the small ones halfway back, a shy little hinge that kept rocking under my tongue. Anytime I wasn't paying attention, it would catch on food and send that numb electrical twinge up the side of my face, and I'd bite down wrong and freeze and wait for the pain and that metallic taste of blood. It came out in the bathroom before school. I was brushing, leaning over the sink, and the tooth just came out. No pop, no pain. I spat, and there it was with a clink like a bead in a little puddle of red and white. The sight of it kicked something awake in me and I swallowed the sound that wanted to come out because my mother was in the kitchen and I didn't want anyone walking in and asking to see. I rinsed the sink until there was nothing left to look at and stood there with the toothbrush in my hand, water running, waited for a solution to present itself. The plan was simple and stupid in the way children's plans are. Do not put it under the pillow. Don't tell anyone. Get it out of the house as fast as possible. If there was nothing to collect, then nothing would come. I wrapped the tooth in toilet paper and hid it in the pocket of my backpack. I raised my hand when the teacher took attendance and said I needed the bathroom. I didn't. I just needed a toilet that wasn't ours. I went to a stall and unwrapped the paper to make sure it was still in there. With a deep breath, I dropped it into the toilet and flushed, watching it spin a few times before disappearing forever. There's a special kind of silence that follows a decision you hope will save you. It's not relief, it's the awareness that nothing has happened yet and you're still in the space where something can. I carried that silence throughout the school day and all the way home. I did my homework at the kitchen table and ate dinner without tasting any of it, and laughed at whatever joke my mother made with my mouth closed because they might see I lost another tooth. I went to bed early because I thought the hours might pass faster that way. I stared at the ceiling and made bargains with nothing in particular. If the neighbor's porch light comes on before midnight, it'll be safe. If the air kicks on in the next minute, I'll be safe. If a car passes and the headlights crawl the far wall like gold eels, I'll be safe. If and then the ifs ran out and the house settled and the hall light line at the bottom of the door winked out. When the first sound came, I tried to believe it was the house. It was small enough to hide in other meanings. The mattress bowed the way I'd felt it before, and the shape arrived at the edge in the same impossible glide that made my muscles go rigid. I had expected in some part of me that if it ever came again, that repetition would make it familiar, that familiarity would blunt it. I don't know why I thought that. The eyes were the same, enormous and wet and depthless, the sacks on its back inflated and deflated with that tired wheeze, but there was a tension so thick it threatened to strangle me. I knew, lying there with my tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth and my lips barely touching, that it knew there is a look a person gives you when they catch you in a lie you told because you were afraid. There is a look some animals give you when they are trying to decide if you are a threat. This was not either of those, because it wasn't human and it wasn't animal, but it carried something of both. I tried to speak and the sound came out as a breath because I couldn't get my voice to cooperate. The hand moved first, that long segmented arm curving under my chin with the precision of someone threading a needle in the dark, and the fingers slipped between my cheek and my teeth the way a dentist's mirror does. The other hand came slow and sure and cupped my jaw from beneath. The mouth unspooled in that lipless split saliva roping between the crowded teeth, and the stench of its breath bore into me. I shook my head because that is what you do when you can do nothing else, and the hand under my jaw, closed around the bone and the tendons and the small working hinges on either side. The fingers inside my mouth pressed my tongue down and to the left, pinning it toward the floor of the mouth. And the pressure there was not quite pain, not until my body tried to pull away from it and found it couldn't. My eyes watered and the grip only tightened, the taste of its fingers moldy and rancid. It did not reach for the space where the most recently lost tooth had been, the one I'd thrown away. It searched with the tips of those flattened nails along the line of my molars, feeling each root like a person reading Braille. And when it found the one, it wanted a good, solid anchor with a deep purchase in bone. It hooked the edge of a nail against the crown and settled the other hand at my jaw. There is a threshold where pressure becomes pain, and there is another where pain becomes information. The first threshold is where you make sounds. The second is where you forget how I learned this at the age of seven. The pull began as a steady, patient insistence. I felt it in the sinus and the ear and the eye socket. The tooth did not want to leave. Bone asked bone to hold and. And bone held, and then bone changed its mind because the world was changing it. When the root began to unseat, there was a tear in the gum. I could hear more than feel a wet, answering crack. There was so much blood and saliva I thought I would drown. It ran down the back of my throat, and I swallowed reflexively, and the fingers on my tongue flattened harder, and the swallow became a gag that could not be completed because there was no room. When the tooth let go, it did it all at once. There was a sudden give, a slide through tissue, a hot thread where the root had been, and my body tried to sit up and couldn't because the hand under my jaw tightened and the forearm pinned the side of my head. It drew the tooth out along my lip. I saw it in the corner of my eye, pink at the end where it had held on, the crown, slick and perfect, and mine. And then it vanished into that impossible crowding inside its mouth. The push, the twist, the seeding, the small convulsive ripple of gum accommodating a new shape. And through all of it the eyes held mine, never once breaking contact. It reached into itself the way it had before, that same slow insertion at the seam, the same wet peel as the hand came back with the white disc shining softly in skin sweat, and it placed the disk beneath my pillow with a neatness that would have been manners, if manners were part of this. The pressure that had shaped the room released like weather passing. I turned on my side and curled around the pane because there was nothing else to do with it. I brought my hands up and found them not useful. I wanted to put my fingers into my mouth and touch the place where the tooth had been, to prove it was real and also to prove it wasn't, and I didn't either. I couldn't bear to give it that attention. It watched me a moment longer. I could feel its eyes on me like a physical thing. The sacks on its back wheezed in the silence. It began to go, folding itself back down the bed's edge the way a spider lowers on a line. It let its head vanish last, as if it preferred that I not have a world without its eyes on me for as long as it could help it. I did not sleep. I waited for morning, because morning had once meant safety, and I wanted to believe it still did. When the light finally found the edges of the furniture and made the corners into corners again, I slid my hand under the pillow and closed my fingers around the disk. The cold climbed into my hand like a certainty. There was dirt on it. Not much, not clotted mud, just a fine grit pressed into the pale surface as if it had spent time in the ground. I knew then it was the same one that it had put there the first time. I turned it into my palm and saw the second mark beside the first, some sort of a tally. I washed my mouth at the sink and told my mother I'd bitten my cheek in my sleep. When she asked about my swollen face with concern, it wasn't a lie, exactly. There is a difference between being careful because you're afraid and being careful because you've learned the rules. I had learned one rule. It would come when there was something to take. If I cheated, it would take anyway. I didn't cheat again.

Agent Conroy (31:54)

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Jenny Moness (33:29)

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Main Character / Patient (34:48)

Signal connection restored. I booked the appointment the way you book anything you don't want to deal with. I clicked a box, typed a few lines, and let the browser do the rest. By morning, I was in a waiting room that smelled like mint and fabuloso, a television mounted in the corner selling happiness to strangers with perfect smiles while the receptionist slid forms across the counter and asked me to confirm nothing had changed. When it was finally my turn, the hygienist led me past posters of cross sectioned teeth and cheerful gums to a chair that reclined farther than felt necessary. We did X rays first. A bitewing plate pinched the soft part under my tongue, and an overpowering desire to fight and run filled me for a moment. I was seven and that thing had its hands in my mouth. Hold still, she said through her mask, and the machine hummed, and then the panoramic arm circled my head. The dentist came in with a practiced brightness that didn't quite touch his eyes and clicked the images to life on the screen. My mouth became a pale half moon threaded with roots. Farther back, four shadows sat like impending doom. He tapped the monitor with the capped end of a pen, and for every shadow, each tap landing somewhere behind my ribs. Not a cavity, he said, gentle in the way people are when they have to give you news and would rather not. No infection. The gum tissue looks healthy. What you're feeling is pressure. Your third molars are erupting late, but it happens. They're all angled forward, which is why you're getting that crowding sensation. He showed me the angles, as if angles could be reassuring. The upper one slanted toward the molars that had been minding their business. They'll keep moving, he said. That's their job. Yours is to let us take them out before they make a mess of the neighborhood. I nodded because that seemed like the correct response, listened as he outlined the predictable referral consent forms, sedation recovery. He didn't rush the part about risk. Nerve proximity, dry socket swelling. None of it sounded worse than the certainty that this would not stop on its own. How soon? I asked, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone watching from the hallway. We can get you in tomorrow, he said, checking the screen, already moving pieces I couldn't see. Afternoon slot. It's better to be ahead of the pain curve. Tomorrow. Not an idea anymore, not an if. I left with a plastic goody bag and a stiffness in my jaw. Outside, the day was bright enough to make the world look clean. I stood in the parking lot with the folder in my hands. The ache hadn't changed, but something around it had. I had a plan made by people who knew what to do. That should have helped. It didn't. Paranoia overtook me. The plan is simple in the way fear makes plans. Do not lie down. Do not close your eyes. Every light goes on. The safe in the closet is a gravity I can feel even from the hallway. Coffee was a good idea half an hour ago and now it's a bad one, a nervous heat that can't tell the difference between urgency and panic. I organize the folder with my name on it and the appointment time underlined twice, my keys on top of it. I pull a chair into the hallway and wedge it under the front door knob for whatever added protection it can offer the pacing becomes a kind of prayer. Kitchen to window, window to bedroom, bedroom to safe, safe to kitchen. I try breathing the way my therapist had taught me. Four in, six out, and it helps until it doesn't, until the next gust of panic leans its shoulder into my chest and makes my ribs remember they are only wood slats under a mattress, waiting to sag sometime after midnight. My feet on the floor are just an animal, too restless to bed down. I turn too quickly at the kitchen doorway, meaning to change the loop before it buries itself into my nerves and the socks I shouldn't be wearing find the lemon pledge I shouldn't have used on the hardwood. The world tilts. The counter edge comes up like a line drawn under a sentence and my temple meets it with a bright clean flash that wipes the room down to nothing. I wake on the kitchen floor. The light hurts. Something heavy is on my chest and I can't pull air in properly. The smell tells me what it is before my eyes do mouthwash over rot over warm blood. Then the eyes fill my vision. Black, huge and unblinking. It's smaller, dried down to tendon and cord. The side sacs pull thin air and wheeze. Skin is gray and tight. The arms unroll, extra joints clicking into place. The split of its mouth opens, but the teeth are far less numerous than I remember and the ones that are there look broken and decayed. I reach up, adrenaline fueling my decision to fight it. This time it catches my wrist and turns it until the bone gives with a snapping crunch. Heat and then dead weight. The other hand slides under my jaw and locks it. Two flat nails push past my lips, pin my tongue to the floor of my mouth. My scream thins into a whistle. I can't stop. I try to bite it down as hard as I can, but it doesn't even react, just grabs a hold of a tooth. Top, back, left. First it finds the crown as if it owns it. Pressure builds until the side of my head lights up. Ear, eye, throat. One line of pain. The gum tears with the wet sound that lights my world on fire. Blood slides down my throat and the finger holds my tongue down so I choke and gag. The pull stays steady. It wants the root intact. When it comes loose, it comes from deep within my jaw. Cold air hits the bleeding socket and a new pain destroys my thoughts. The tooth clears my lip, slick and long and go straight into that rotten mouth. Twist, pop, seat, small swallow. The shake leaves its wrist. The sacs pull a little deeper. Weight spreads across my ribs. The eyes harden in on me. I try to roll it. My broken hand flops. The other scrapes tile. It doesn't shift an inch. The hand is back in my mouth and the far right top molar goes the same way. Hook, pull, tear, pop. And my screams come out as a choking wheeze, managing only to spray a few drops of blood. Lower left. Its corpse like hand takes another. Blood runs down my chin. My heels drum the floor. The chair at the door doesn't move. The stove clock keeps time for nobody. Lower right. The tremor is gone now. The arms run like they practiced on me for years. The mouth packs fuller, closes gaps and aligns crooked edges. It looks more and more like I remember with each passing tooth. Then it stops being teeth I can spare. Front teeth, incisors. It just keeps taking them. Deep roots pull free until I can't take it anymore and continue still. I feel each one spill heat along the jaw and into the ear canal until I can hear my pulse as much as feel it inside the bone. It makes a quick adjustment. When my jaw wobbles. The clamp under my chin tightens. Premolars move faster. It pries one and the jaw pops sideways. I bite down by reflex and hit those flat nails and slide. My lips, split the nails, press my tongue harder until I cough around its hand and feel my throat burn dry and coat again in warm copper canines. The right comes with the rip. I feel behind the eyes. The left breaks in half. A piece clicks on a tooth and drops. It digs for the root nerve on nail scrapes like a drill. I convulse. The hand on my jaw tightens again. The root tears free with a small pop and the left side of my face empties out incisors. This part hurts different. It's open and humiliating. The two big front teeth lever forward and up. Blood sheets around the nails. I choke. It keeps the airway just wide enough to keep me here for the next one. Upper, middle out. Lower, middle out. The room flashes. My scream breaks and comes back raw and smooth, smaller and useless. Every tooth has its own path out and it takes all of them. I feel each socket open and cool and blood. I can't keep track. The noise I make is steady and pathetic. Tears run into my ears. My feet slow. The tile is cold and sticky under my shoulders. The light hums. The refrigerator motor drones. Nobody is coming. It stops only when I have nothing left to take and reaches into itself to pull free the white disc bone, pale, imperfect. It shows it to me like a teacher shows a Tool. Then it raises it to its mouth and bites. Dry scrape. Again, again. Quick turns. A string of marks. It keeps going until the pattern satisfies it. The sound of it runs through me, like counting. I can't stop. The inside of my mouth feels like a field of holes that all breathe together. Air moves differently. Sound comes out wrong. Pain is a bright smear that reaches to my eyes and drops and then starts again. It looks at my chest like it is reading a map. It taps twice between the ribs and goes in. It doesn't even cut me. It just pushes until the skin parts. Heat drops into a hard, cold circle. The pain is so immeasurable that I wait and beg for unconsciousness. But it never comes. It slides the disc under the ribs and seats it behind the sternum. Nerves ring out and keep ringing. The hand comes back with a wet peel. It leans near the mouth, shines red, black. The bellows pull a deeper breath. The eyes hold me long enough to make sure I understand. The weight leaves my chest. Pressure vanishes like a lid taken off a pot. It folds the wrong joints and drops off the edge of me toward the floor. I don't hear it land. I breathe because my body is stupid and wants to. Somewhere, some being takes pity on me and the world goes black. The first alarm goes and I jerk awake. Sitting up turns the room sideways and back. I touch my gums without thinking and hit raw. Without thinking and hit raw. No teeth. Not one. Blood beads where each hole stares. I spit into the sink, turning the porcelain a sliding red. I don't get words. Air goes in and out through a ruined valve and makes a thin, soft sound. I don't know. The chair still leans under the knob like a joke. The folder by my keys has my name on it. And another alarm mocks me of the appointment to remove four teeth. I stand at the window. The dark thins. I put a palm to my chest and feel nothing under the skin and everything behind the bone. The circle answers just by existing. Hunger starts in a new place. It's not for food. It's pressure with an answer. It's the thought of something leaving someone else's mouth and the noise inside me getting quiet for a second. The thought scares me and it doesn't. Fear is already the whole room. The thought is just another piece of furniture. I lie in the bed, stare at the ceiling and wait for the lights. The clocks blink their little lies. My tongue slides over emptiness and learns the shape of suffering. The thing is gone. I have nothing left for it to take. That Thought is almost a comfort until I feel its longing deep in my chest. Round and cold.

Narrator / Redwood Bureau Analyst (50:12)

The bureau got to him before dawn. Intake notes from a secure slate. Call it active metamorphosis. Jaw, micro movements in sleep, Gingival thread emergence in response to stimulus and orientation to nearby tooth loss. On the same slate is a schedule. Week one to three. Observation, diet restriction, sonic chemical provocation. Weeks four, six controlled offerings. First extracted enamel. Then living donors under sedation. The far column is labeled contingency. It authorizes a child bond if earlier trials fail to elicit a complete conversion profile. There's a checkbox for requested number of subjects. We also found some related history. The tooth custom isn't just bedtime folklore. It shows up in old parish books and household guides alongside warding rites. Older notes are blunt about why you offer enamel to buy a quiet night. Some entries add the price of failure. If the visit isn't satisfactory, the child will be pressed or the house will not rest. Different translations, same equation. A small regular payment in exchange for continued peace. The ferry is a modern coat of paint on a well known and very old transaction. Families learned the rules the way a coastline learns the tide. Don't interact when there's nothing to give. Don't break the chain. Pass the duty to a person who has teeth to. To give and you all sleep. Deny the handoff and the price becomes very steep. Whole villages lived by that knowledge. And some still do. They don't tell stories about a fairy. They talk about keeping the household ledger straight. Every version of the tale points in a different direction. A field of courts, not a single throne. All we can say with confidence after this case is simple and awful. More can be made and more exist. When an exchange stalls long enough, the hunger isn't forgotten. It grows with the entity's rage. A price must be paid and a punishment is exacted. The coin is forced inside. Hunger aligns a day better becomes a collector. That may be how more of these things are made, but we can't say for certain. They exist somewhere. That much is certain. Not spirits or wraiths, but wherever they go between visits, it's not a place we can follow. No nests, no footprints. Only patterns. When someone new gets the token, they. They come and take what is owed. And then it's over. Until the next visit. We know they move, we just don't know how or through what. They're physical, present, but never caught. That's what makes them dangerous. And now the Redwood Bureau has one. However you choose to see them. Fairy tale folklore Parasite Treat these contracts as real. A token like this isn't decorative. It opens doors but not for you. Failure shows it that your body is available and the longer you don't hold up your end, the more consent you give. One last warning. We didn't just confirm their existence, we confirmed their men method. They can make more. They can change a person. And right now someone behind bureau glass is running a full battery of tests to figure out how. If you take anything from this case, take this. The pacts with the unknown are always honored by one side. They follow the letter, you pay the price. And when that bill comes due, it's usually in blood, bone or worse.

Main Character / Patient (54:38)

Or worse.

Agent Conroy (54:39)

Or worse.

Monday Sidekick Advertiser (54:45)

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