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Speaker 1:
[00:59] This is Tales to Terrify. Good Evening, Children of the Night, and welcome. Next week we've got something out of this world for you, the results of our horrific sci-fi flash fiction contest. We have five tales to teleport your way, so here's hoping no flies end up in the chamber when we do. And I suppose if they do, that's just another reason for you to tune in. This week we have two tales for you about new jobs and family heirlooms. Our first story for the evening comes from Anthony J. Rapino. Anthony J. Rapino resides in northeastern Pennsylvania with his cats Luna and Poe. When he's not writing speculative fiction, Anthony can be found in the classroom teaching English or crouched in dark alleyways sculpting horrific autumnal creatures out of clay. His most recent novel, Tommy and the Order of Cosmic Champions, is available now. Proof of psychosis, a full bibliography, and his sculptures can be found on Anthony's website, anthonyjrapino.com. Children of the night, join me for Anthony J. Rapino's This is My Happy Face, a Tales to Terrify original.

Speaker 2:
[03:20] I drew the blade across my inner thigh, breathing through its bite, shivering against the line of fire, quenched in warm blood. Drip, drop, drip on the tile, across my thigh, over my bare foot, running tiny red rivers between my toes. My thighs were more scar tissue than skin. Years of this, looking for something under the surface that wasn't there. Izzy searched too, but she found other ways inside. Better, wet ways, that made me forget about the dull ache of absence. She was a warm, happy thing, with a body that radiated love. I wrapped myself around her, a lizard atop a sun-soaked rock, stealing the heat. She allowed the brutal theft because I was broken, and she wanted to fix me for her own desperate reasons. Buried so deep, bodily excavation would have uncovered as little as I had under my own skin. So I clung tight, and suckled and tore and bit, fastened like a leech, savoring the life blood offered willingly. Such was Isabel's curse. Such was my need. The night before, crumpled around each other, wrapped tight and slippery, Izzy whispered, don't go. Her tongue teased my ear. She knew this was the best time to ask, maybe the only time I'd agree. I let her think she was convincing me until we were done. Then I revealed what I'd known all along. I'm going. She pulled away as if I'd stabbed her. Her eyes were narrow and glassy. I know. Of course she did. I'd never failed to disappoint raven-haired Isabel. When I first met her in the park, walking her little Pomeranian, Franklin, she radiated pure joy. Now she was the dull matte finish on a bathroom wall. I'd done that. I'd stripped away her glossy finish. These thoughts grew like mold. I slit fast and precise with my trusty straight edge, trying to replicate the emotional pain I should have felt, but only succeeding in drawing more blood. Izzy stood like a ghost in the kitchen out of her tiny apartment. Staring in my general direction, she swayed as if about to faint. An acrid smoke rose from the frying pan on the stove, masking the floral stink of potpourri. Franklin barked and hopped at Izzy's legs until she snapped to reality. Oh! She turned the fire off and dumped the pan into the sink, burnt contents and all. Her face crumpled like a child who dropped her ice cream. I was making you breakfast. I stood at the door, my backpack on, and filled with the items they'd requested. I'm late. Smoke filled the room like early morning mist. Izzy bent and lifted Franklin into her arms, cradling him, pushing her face into his fur. Please, just be careful. I will. When I turned the doorknob, Izzy dropped Franklin and rushed to ensnare me in a hug from behind, crushing the backpack between us. I worried she might feel the cold of frozen things in my bag, but her mind was elsewhere. She whispered one last plea, Don't. I bent my head and kissed her arm, then peeled her off. Without turning, I said, Sorry, and fled the scene before causing more hurt. Standing at the front door of a perfect home, I double-checked my cell phone to make sure I was in the right place. 360 Maple Drive. Fucking hell, I'd stepped into an episode of Father Knows Best. I rang the doorbell anyway. The suburbs of New Jersey all looked the same to me. Happy little houses stacked one on top of the other, as if the structures themselves were afraid to be alone. Tidy tiny lawns with two green grass. Plastic do-it-yourself playgrounds for the ankle biters. Prefab dog houses and thick cable tieouts running from tree to tree. Mail boxes with Martha Stewart aphorisms about life, love and family. And me, sitting in the middle of all that constipated contentment with my fuck the world frown and dead stare. It was enough to make me want to cut something other than myself. A concrete slab of a man opened the door. Forget Father Knows Best. This guy dressed like the aborted love child of film noir and classic horror. He was one part Lon Chaney Jr. and two parts Bogart, Borsellino Fedora and all. Wearing a corrupted smile, he said, May I help you? Another man sat on a couch, looking more like the sort of person I was expecting. I didn't smile back. I never smiled. Wasn't sure I knew how. Is this the Black Residence? The secret code tasted like artificial sweetener, but we didn't know each other's names and had never met. They were acquaintances of acquaintances. People known for doing the sorts of things I liked to do, but actually got paid for it. Depends on what you're selling. Let me in, fuckknuckle. Amazingly, his smile grew more natural. The man on the couch said, Let her in. His jaws clenched, probably not the type to take orders. I'm Dave. He held out a gloved hand. I brushed past his greeting and stepped into the living room. Dave, your real name? Of course not. He pointed at the other guy. That's not really Philly. And your? Code names. Those fucking twits. Philly stood and walked around me, appraising. Why don't you give Uncle Philly a smile, sweetheart? Without hesitation, I dropped to my knees and punched him in the balls. He went over like a felled tree, cursing and groaning. Dave laughed his ass off until he was able to say, Sergi Wright, you read her resume. No better. Fuck. Deep breaths. You. Dave let that one slide. He looked me over. Yeah, your name is Sunshine. The fuck it is. They could have called me Mud for all it mattered. I sure looked like it. My clothes all black and brown, covering every inch of skin. No color. Never color. But Sunshine didn't fit because bright and shiny wasn't me. Philly crawled his way back to the couch and hooked a thumb at me. No sense of irony. Dave handed me a pair of black vinyl gloves. Put them on. They match her personality. He was thick, his head and body. Thick all the way through, I began to realize, like a giant sequoia, like the General Sherman tree. So thick, he probably thought he could bridle me. If they'd only known the things I'd done. My little list, what he'd called a resume. That wasn't even the half of it. This isn't your house. I pulled the gloves on and took in the scenery. Just as nauseating as the exterior. Everything too clean, too perfect. There was a looming cabinet with ornate dinnerware. Frilly window dressings. The same potpourri stink as Izzy's place. Framed pictures of a family with painted faces and painted smiles. No, it's not our house. It's your first job. Philly was still massaging his balls. Your probationary test run. The stuff in my backpack, the items they asked me to bring, made more sense now. If I fail? They exchanged weighted glances. Don't, Philly said. Dave leaned in. This gig is Sunday morning church compared to your resume. You'll be fine. The thing about killing animals is as long as you stay away from cats and dogs, people don't give a shit. You poison your neighbor's dog, they'll call the cops on you. You poison some rats, they'll thank you for taking care of their pest problem. People can get bent out of shape over the animals in between like squirrels, raccoons and rabbits, but they're still a world apart from man's best friend. I retrieved the gallon sized zip bag from my backpack and held it up. Mostly rats, one squirrel too. A lucky break, ate some of the poison. Dave handed the bag to Philly. Better run this under some water to thaw. I handed over the small bottle of blood. Where'd you get this? It's mine. The reply caused Dave to flinch and stare at me a moment too long. The question lingered in his eyes, but he was smart enough not to give it voice. Instead, he said, can't use this. DNA. We'll salvage whatever oozes from the rats. I nodded and gave him Tupperware filled with shit. He raised an eyebrow. This yours too? You wish. It's dog shit. I opened the backpack and tilted it so he could see the rest. Tubes of paint, permanent markers, a hammer, nails and rope. Not bad. We have the rest of what we need. Right. So I held my hands up and looked around. What's the job? His expression grew dark. We're boogie men. We're the creaking steps, the drippy faucet, the settling house, or the monsters under the bed and in the closet, or the unknown fear in a dead black night. Dave growled through those words as if believing their promise. While working, I thought about the other things Dave told me. I cut the head off a little girl's doll and packed the neck tight with gore while hearing. Daddy got in over his head. I used rat blood to smear vaguely satanic symbols on the walls and heard. When they get back from their weekend trip, they'll see our handiwork. Nailing rats to bedposts. Whatever this guy did, he'll never do it again. Professional boogie men. I'd found my calling. With every smear of blood and severed doll head, my body burned with a flame I'd never known. It felt like birth. It felt like an awakening. The smoldering molten core of my being had been stoked and I breathed enlightenment like dragon fire. Dave hid shit surprises in all the places you'd never want to find them. Inside shoes, under bedsheets, mixed with orange juice. That perfect suburban family would be unearthing fecal remains for weeks. We placed nooses hanging throughout the house like mistletoe. Philly-rigged tiny catapults set to fling dead rats when kitchen cabinets were opened. I cavorted with my comrades inside that perfect doll house, turning it into a tinderbox of fear. When the family returned, they'd unknowingly light the match. I only wished I could view the spectacular horror show that would commence. But even more, I wished I didn't have to go home. Izzy glommed on to me as soon as I returned. She nuzzled into my neck and spoke sweet little prayers. Thank God you're back. Thank God you're okay. I got the job, I said. Of course I got the job. The imaginary listing might as well have read, wanted, human garbage. She drew away and I hated what her expression said. These people, they're not good people. The way you found them, the things they probably do, want you to do. I stalked to the kitchen, the fire in my belly still burning ferociously, cooking me from the inside out. She'd said, they're not good people. I'd heard, you're not a good person. Because they were me and I was them. Because Izzy had no fucking clue. Victoria, stop. The flames licked the inside of my head. The name wasn't mine anymore. It was the name of a vacant play thing. The doll Izzy dressed up and positioned in all the right ways, hoping this time I'd stay fixed. This time I'd be good. My name is Sunshine. Izzy's expression twisted. What? Forget it. I manipulated my own expression as best I could. Something that looked tender or lustful. Anything other than what I really felt. Come to the bedroom. She shook her head, an insolent child. I'm not. I approached and took her small, cold hands. She used to be full of heat. She once held the sun itself inside her chest. But I'd stolen it, leaving a frozen, empty shell. Come on. I pulled her into the bedroom, and she let me. Because now she needed my heat, my heart. In bed, I crawled on top of her and tasted her pale lips. She pulled away. Why don't you ever smile? And that decided it. I said, this is my happy face. I caressed her cheek. This is my happy place. I kissed her. Ouch! Izzy held a hand to her mouth. Her fingers came away spotted with blood. She gazed into my happy eyes. Finally, after months of pretending, she saw me. Really saw me. Rotten, stinking, oozing, pustule me. My dull eyes could no longer lie, and her eyes could no longer deceive. Quick as you like, I traced fire across her throat and revealed her own gaping smile. I dug my fingers in and wrenched it into a toothy grin. Her attempted scream produced a gurgling fountain of blood from which I drank lustfully. The room no longer smelled of potpourri, and the thought caused me to grind my hips atop her writhing body. I muzzled her warmth as she watched, whimpering small and pathetic. Every time she tried to speak, more foaming love gushed forth, and I lost myself in her. Time flew away like a bat with a broken wing, even as Franklin barked and jumped, even as daylight extinguished. If a neighbor had heard the struggle and called the cops, if I confessed, if the body were discovered days or weeks later and somehow traced back to me, they'd want to know why. Why did I murder my girlfriend? Why would I taste her blood? I sat atop her as she grew cold and pondered the whys, but I didn't have any answers. There were none, and even if there were, they'd only lead to the terrible terminal question mark at the end of time. It waited there for me and rendered all truths null and void. I brought the razor to my throat and pressed hard. This was how it should end. I'd been practicing for a long time and something was waiting for me impatiently. I began to cut and felt a warm trickle tickle my neck. Then I remembered the boys, the job, the possibilities. Being a boogeyman was fine, but I wondered if I could corrupt them further. I wondered what awful things I could whisper in their ears. The notion stayed my hand and caused a shiver of delight to tremble through me. I'd die eventually, but not yet. Not before I had my fun. Loads and loads of dreadful fun.

Speaker 1:
[20:46] That was Anthony J. Rapino's This is My Happy Face, as read by Amy Paonessa. Amy Paonessa has been the producer and host of The Bloodlust, a horror movie review podcast, since 2018. She has narrated stories for various other podcasts, including Knifepoint Horror and the Alexandria Archives. She's thrilled to read for Tales to Terrify, especially because she credits the podcast with reigniting her love of horror fiction. You can contact Amy through her website, thebloodlust.net. Thank you, Amy. Our second tale tonight comes from Christopher Collins. Christopher Collins is a writer and editor living in Abilene, Texas with his wife and kids. His non-fiction work has previously appeared in Texas Highways, Texas Monthly, Grist and other publications. His fiction writing has previously been published in Noonum. Listen with me, children of the night, to Christopher Collins' Nine Gold Teeth, a Tales to Terrify original.

Speaker 3:
[22:38] It wasn't so strange when Twiggy Beecham came barreling out of the one-room shack in the Trinity bottomland stone trunk, throwing open the pinewood door with such force that it knocked poor Jefford Beecham off the half barrel where he sat cleaning a catfish on the porch. And it wasn't strange at all when Twiggy hurled a flurry of insults like moron and lazy bastard kid and son of a whore at young Jefford, only 11 years old, as he stumbled down the soggy tree-lined footpath to drain his bladder at the bank of Gumshoe Bayou. Such a scene was regular enough at the Beecham homestead on a Friday afternoon, or any afternoon really, when Twiggy overindulged on homemade moonshine and got to brooding over the death of his wife and his two daughters and all the other sorrows and indignities that could be dredged up from a person's past. At this point, the abusive behavior was so routine, Jefford hardly noticed it anymore. The boy simply ratted his barrel and collected his fish and his fillet knife and resumed picking out pin bones with little more than a blink of the eye. Likewise, no history was made when Twiggy lost his balance on the boot-sucking bank and fell face first into a pool of his own piss, splashing and strangling in the water because he was too fat to swim and never learned how anyway. Jephord figured the old man would drown himself one of these days if someone else didn't beat him to it, and with his death, the quality of the boy's life would improve dramatically. The world would be a better place without the miserable bastard in it, of course, but the old man would also pass down a considerable fortune when he kicked the bucket because inside Twiggy's mouth were nine gold teeth, five on the top and four on the bottom, that he wore in a denture fashion from baling wire and sweet gum resin. A couple decades earlier, he'd struck a rich alluvial vein while working as a fossicker out in California. Twiggy then came back home to East Texas, buying 10 acres on the river and building the shack and drilling a well and planting cotton in the Trinity food plane. Now the hoard was all but spent. Used as anties in card games, Twiggy seemed destined to lose. Currently, the shack was sagging in the rafters, the well filled in with silt, and the cotton fields gone to follow. They're tender to drunk or dispirited to play farmer. Still, those nine gold teeth were about the best inheritance a dirt poor colored kid like Jefford could ever hope to be bequeathed. Some nights he even dreamed of yanking them one by one from his father's reeking tobacco stains mouth, and watching them chatter and dance as he held them in his own pink pale palm. Today, as Twiggy tumbled into the black bayou with his hog still in hand, he may have caught a glimpse of sweetheart stalking through the cattails, only her eyes extending above the algae scummed water line. Or perhaps he saw three of her, given his state of inebriation, but it was nonetheless a surprise when the 12-foot alligator launched herself from the water and wrenched Twiggy's head from his shoulders in one swift motion, easy as plucking a ripe red grape from its stem, and swallowed it in one gulp. Twiggy's brief final thought, as his cranium was engulfed by sweetheart's cavernous, yellow-toothed maw, was that it was a very strange sight, indeed. Jefford heard a short, terrified scream from his position on the porch. Then a small splash, then nothing at all. Twiggy might have finally drowned in his fool self after all, he thought, smiling. He started walking down the path to the bank, putting down the fish, but keeping hold of the knife, thinking that if his paw was merely near death, he might as well help him across the finish line. But he dropped the weapon into the mud when he saw Twiggy's freshly headless corpse floating face down in the water, the sight immediately making the boy so angry that he kicked a gum tree with one shoeless foot and broke his big toe. He hobbled over to Twiggy's body and grabbed one leg, dragging him with much effort out of the water and onto the bank, watching sweetheart watching him from across the bayou. God darn gator! he hollered, shaking a small fist in the animal's direction, you lousy bitch, he said. The old man was too heavy, even minus the head, for young Jefford to drag uphill to the shack. So he gathered an armful of small straight branches and lashed them together with the length of cord to make a rough sled and rolled what was left of Twiggy onto it. He hooked the sled to an ornery mud-colored mule that hung around the place, using a handful of mouse-nibbled cotton seed to coax it into dragging Twiggy up to the porch. Once there, Jefford disconnected the sled and kicked out the mule to get. Blood was still dribbling from Twiggy's severed neck arteries, mingling with the blood of the cat Jefford had been cleaning earlier and dripping through the gaps in the slat-floored porch to the dark ground below. The boy looked down at the mess for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. After some careful consideration, he went into the shack, walked past the pallet on the creaking floorboards where he slept, and took down a hatchet hanging from the far wall. Then he gathered four empty cottonseed sacks that were piled in one corner of the room, evicting the family of mice living inside them, and went back out to the porch. Jefford disrobed and kneeled at Twiggy's feet with the hatchet in hand, not bothering to clean the orange flaked rust from the dull blade before he started cutting. First he took the right foot, riddled with bunions and ingrown toenails, just above the ankle. Then the left. He put both feet in one of the sacks, letting them marinate in the dusty turds left behind from their previous inhabitants. He started to hack at the ashy black flesh of the right leg, aiming for a point slightly above the knee, but was hindered by the dullness of the blight. He took up a wet stone and put a sharp edge on the tool before getting back to work, severing the leg in one easy stroke. He picked up the dead limb and was surprised to feel the tendon still twitching and spasming as he dropped it into the sack. Within an hour, Jefford had almost completely dismembered old Twiggy, removing legs and arms and hands, and filling the sacks until they overflowed with piled carnage. The torso he quartered, and upon upturning the half-barrel he used as a stool, Jefford heaped the offal into the bottom of the container, the entrails and organs hot and wet and slippery on his naked body. The sun was beginning to set and the moon was beginning to rise, and the boy had begun to feel exhausted from the day's efforts. Whining clouds of mosquitoes buzzed in his ears. Screech owls squealed from their treetop hollows. Jefford's whole body was laminated with his father's blood, painted on so thickly that it caked and cracked like a mud poultice as it dried. Resisting the draw of sleep, Jefford laid down the hatchet and re-entered the shack. He went to his father's bed, throwing off the corn-chuck mattress that sat atop a low platform of cut barrels. He found the Remington pump action in a hidey hole under the bed, and gathered a handful of shells scattered among the husks of desiccated roaches and the clumps of tapered mouse droppings. He loaded the shells into the magazine and carried the gun to the porch, grabbing one of the burlap sacks full of Twiggy's liberated limbs and headed down to the water. Jefford was going alligator hunting. He stood the gun against a tree trunk at the water's edge and upended the sack, watching the body parts tumble to the ground like fleshy stones. He left and fetched another sack, returning to enlarge the pow until the sloshing gore formed a charnel pyramid representing roughly half of his father. Satisfied with the size of the collection, Jefford took up the gun again and climbed into the tree. He straddled a thick branch overlooking the pile and trained the steel sights of the shotgun on it, waiting for true dark to arrive. The hours passed and the moon rose higher and higher behind a swath of stringy clouds, illuminating the swamp in a dim pallid glow. Jefford's arms had begun to tremble and ache from holding the firearm steady. Eventually, he laid it across his lap as he watched the water. Praying he'd have the strength to raise and aim the gun when the time came. He'd had one false start already, a rustling sound and a slithering shape approaching the pile from down bank, skirting the water's edge under the shadow of the tree canopy. Jefford had his finger on the trigger, was pulling back on it to fire when the shape was revealed to be a mere cotton mouth. The serpent flicked its tongue once or twice at the grisly assemblage and moved on. Since then, nothing. Jefford was starting to question the merits of his plan. What if sweetheart didn't take the bait? He figured that since the gator had eaten some of Twiggy earlier, she'd happily dine on him a second time if given the opportunity. But perhaps her appetite had been spoiled. Maybe she held the same opinion of the man that everyone else did. That just a little bit of Twiggy went a long way. Sweetheart had done a public service in snuffing out the old bastard's life, and Jefford felt a pang of sadness at the thought of killing her. The alligator was something of a family pet, living peacefully alongside them for years, waiting out of the bayou and up on the bank to eat the chicken bones and rabbit guts and whatever other scraps they'd throw out to her. Sometimes she'd sun nearby while Jefford fished for cats and crappy. Looking so docile, she might have rolled over for a belly rub. But then she'd gone and swallowed the boy's inheritance. And if Jefford was to be an orphan, he didn't want to be destitute to boot. Jefford was flicking ants off his legs and swatting at mosquitoes when he noticed a long dark shape appear just beneath the water line at the bayou center. The narrow sinewy form displaced no water, produced no sound, as it made a beeline for the pile of twiggy's parts. As the shape approached the bank, a wide-set pair of elliptical reptilian eyes breached the surface, appearing as radiant candles with vertical black slits that investigated the terrestrial world beyond. Jefford brought the gun to his shoulder as quietly as possible. The ink-black water rippled faintly as sweetheart's snout materialized in front of her eyes. Then a scaled head and ridged back gradually bubbled up from the murk like a latent nightmare conjured up from the depths of a prehistoric tar pit. She produced a low, throaty bellow as her mouth hinged open to reveal four long rows of ivory knives and a fat pink tongue to taste the sultry air. One clawed foot squished on to the waterlogged bank, then another. The alligator lowered her head to the pile, seizing a length of leg and turning up her head as she swallowed it whole. Next she took a foot and a hand. When she lowered her head for another morsel, Jefford fired and missed. The buckshot sailed over sweetheart's head and erupted in a spray of ropy mud that rained down on the alligator and the remaining bits of twiggy. The animal turned tail and disappeared back into the bayou before Jefford could work the guns pump to chamber another shell. God darn! The boy shouted as he slammed the shotgun into the bark of the tree limb where he was perched. He hit it again and again until sweat poured from his face and his breath came in ragged gasps. He started to sob uncontrollably. After a while, Jefford was all cried out. He wiped the tears from his face and descended the tree to the ground. He walked back up to the porch and took hold of the last two sacks of Twiggy, dragging them down the path until he arrived at the now depleted bow of his father's parts. He didn't dump them out as before. The boy knew that sweetheart wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. If he wanted to find the gator now, he'd have to go to her. He walked down the bank a ways until he came to an old leaky rowboat that Twiggy had lashed to at Tree some years before and had abandoned on the shoreline to rot. Jefford untied the boat and pulled it up bank until he returned to the place where the footpath met the water. He used a rope to attach the sacks to eyelets on either side of the boat and pushed it into the bayou, jumping into the craft when the black water reached his waist. He started rowing, listening to the lapping of the oars and the chorus of mournful whipper wheels and burping bullfrogs. The floating sacks that flanked the boat left a trail of purpleish blue liquid on their wake as Jefford approached the center of the bayou. The boat had already started taking on water from some imperceptible leak. The boy could feel the warm viscous liquid covering the tops of his feet and washing away the caked remnants of his father's blood. Jefford reached the bayou's midpoint and dropped his oars, leaving the boat to drift and bob as he watched and waited for signs of sweetheart. Only a few minutes passed before he saw the lithe, narrow-shaped gliding just under the surface, headed in his direction. The gator's head appeared just three feet from the boat's starboard side, yellow eyes gleaming as if backlit, a mottled green-black snout inching ever closer to one of the floating sacks. Jefford readied the shotgun and waited for her to take the bait. A split second later, sweetheart lunged for the sack, her teeth tearing into the burlap as a wave of water hit Jefford in the face. He squinted through blurred vision to get a bead on the gator. He shot, aiming for the base of her head, but landed only a glancing blow to sweetheart's armored bag. The force of the recoil nearly pushed the boy off the opposite side of the boat and into the water. The gator dove down, still holding the bag in her mouth, wrenching the boat sideways until it was dangerously near capsizing. Jefford held onto the bench seat underneath him to keep from going over. Then the rope broke, and the boat ratted itself, and sweetheart was gone. The boat had taken on a lot of water in the tussle. It rose midway up Jefford's calves, and sinking now seemed inevitable. But the boy dared not jump out and swim for shore, knowing that sweetheart would catch him well before he reached safety. As he racked another shell into the gun's chamber, the shredded burlap sack floated up to the surface in front of him. One of Twiggy's feet jutted out from a long gash in a heavy woven fabric. The boy stared at his father's foot bobbing in the water, thinking it wouldn't be long until he met a similar fate. For a moment, all was still and silent. The whipperwheel seemed too stunned for birdsong. The bullfrogs sat mute. Even the waning moon had taken cover behind a curtain of gauzy clouds in the east. Jefford's heart thudded in his chest and blood pounded in his brain. He was staring so intently at his father's floating foot, preoccupied by the fear of being eaten alive, that he didn't see sweetheart coming the second time. Jefford squealed with terror as the alligator launched herself from the water once again and landed the boat's port side, crushing the wooden railing to splinters and breaking off one of the oars. The sneak attack so surprised the boy that he dropped the gun into the bottom of the boat, where it sank down into the rapidly rising water. He frantically felt around for it as sweetheart snarled and snapped her jaws inches from his head, her putrid saliva pelting his face. The boat was tilting to the side under a massive body weight, and Jefford again gripped onto his seat with one hand to keep from sliding directly into the gator's mouth. Finally, his fingers found the gun by his feet and he raised it with one hand aiming the barrel directly into the black hole of sweetheart's throat. He pulled the trigger. The explosion was blinding and deafening. Jefford had involuntarily closed his eyes and now he opened them to see a fountain of blood and bone raining down on the bayou as sweetheart gave one last gurgling growl from a mutilated mouth. Her jaws clapped closed and her body slid away from the boat and back into the water. Jefford sat in stunned silence, feeling as if he might faint as he viewed the gaping wound in the back of the gator's skull. But he took one deep breath, then another, rallying. He used the boat's remaining ore to row over to Sweetheart's floating corpse. He held it steady and tied a rope to the gator's tail, rowing back to the bank with the animal in tow. The boat had all but sunk by the time he reached dry land. Fighting exhaustion, Jefford leapt out of the boat and retrieved his fillet knife, wading back into the water where he'd left Sweetheart floating, and rotated her so that her white belly was facing the night sky. He made a long straight cut along the center of the thick leathery hide. Having accessed the gator's stomach, the boy dug through its contents, pushing past half-digested cooters and catfish, and of course various pieces of his old man, until he found them. The gold teeth shining like a tendril of ore lodged in the wall of a gooey cavern. Jefford left the water and walked up the path to the shack, holding tightly to the denture made of bailing wire and sweetgum resin as he took a seat on the porch. The moon was falling and the sun was rising, and young Jefford badly needed to sleep. But for the moment, for one glorious moment, he was content to simply gaze upon the nine gold teeth chattering and dancing in the gathering light, to hold them in his own pink pale palm.

Speaker 1:
[42:51] That was Christopher Collins, Nine Gold Teeth, as read by Curtis Michael Holland. Curtis is a gay, Greek, black, indigenous, Canadian-born expat. He teaches and directs theatre and voice acts from his home studio and local studios in his home, Hong Kong. He's an all-or-nothing kind of guy, so you can either find him surrounded by a million of his closest friends, more melting away in a sauna reading a scary book. Thank you, Curtis. Well, Children of the Night, the hour is late, and we've run out of Tales to Tell. For now. Tales to Terrify is made possible by the tremendous generosity of our supporters on Patreon and PayPal. Incredible fans like Orion D. Hegre, whose generous support helps keep the lights on and flickering ominously. Not a supporter already? Head over to patreon.com/tales to Terrify, where you'll find all kinds of perks, like ad-free episodes, bonus content, and behind-the-scenes interviews. Every dollar goes back into this show to make it as horrific as possible, and we appreciate it so much. Want another way to support the show that doesn't cost a cent? Head over to Podchaser, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and leave us a five-star review. You'll not only put an unnaturally wide smile on our faces, but help new listeners discover our terrifying tales, too. Why not share your love of the show out in the world with some Tales to Terrify merch? talestoterify.com/merchwilltake you to our T-public store, where we've got a great collection of creepy custom and curated designs. Tales to Terrify is produced by Seth Williams, Meredith Morgenstern, Andrew Gibson, Crystal Hammond, Kathleen Palm, Spencer Disparte, and myself, Drew Sebastini, with original theme by Nebulus Entertainment. Tales to Terrify is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license. Join us again next week, as we're devoured by a thousand tiny terrors from more Tales to Terrify.