The Tower of Teeth

Death becomes me, I have no more desire to live. I will die soon, not by suicide, but by a lack of will and severe age. A man may not look at me and believe that I have anything worth complaining about. With my estate, my many servants, and my prized plantation. Which has set many records in crop yields over these last ten years. Even now, I sit on a fine chair crafted from expensive ivory and ebony from Africa, while I write on a pen made from the bones and feathers of a rare bird. Wearing my tailored night clothes, I write with my emerald covered hand, a final testimony of my time in the awful trade of flesh.

I am not a good person. I regret most of what I have done with my life. However, I do want to give myself credit, that once I had enough money to quit, I did. I have attempted to write the many wrongs of my past. I’ve never debt trapped or raped anyone and have punished those who have. I’ve freed many men and woman in my life. I only employ with wages for my workers. It’s not enough to amends… but it’s what I can do. I’m going to tell my testimony now; of the day the flesh trade swallowed me whole. Of when I saw… the Tower of Teeth.

It was a lifetime ago. I was a young man back then. A runner, a person who gets the product from point A to point B. Through any means necessary. I can’t recall all the details of that particular deal; however, we were trading guns for woman. No, they weren’t woman, we were trading guns for girls. Virgins, most hadn’t seen their first blood. We met on the outskirts of Bombay; many strangers including myself, all committed to doing evil and being paid for it. I recall the metal whine of a door, then a sea of eyes blinking in the darkness of a shipping container on the back of a diesel truck. In exchange, our side brought a crate of worn machine guns, 45 kilos of ammunition, and two kilos of heroin.

The details were brief. One drives the truck, the others follow to protect. Set to be delivered to a secret market in Pakistan. The trip went as usual. Quiet outside and inside the truck. Rarely did a girl ever make a sound. We would’ve killed them as we had before. It was a three day trip with one stop halfway and the rest for petrol. It went as usual, right until the one stop. Where unnecessary cruelty ruled like a king over my coworkers. The boys I ran with had a tradition, that on the halfway point, they’d pick a girl out and have her till the sun came up. Degrading her in every way imaginable, before tossing her back into the storage container. If she was too damaged, they’d cut her throat before tossing her into a ditch. I’m proud to say that I never participated in that. I was outside having a smoke behind the petrol station while they had their “fun.”

It was calm night. At in the edge of a Forrest, aside from the sounds of laughing, drinking, and screaming behind the building. In my quiet moments where I wanted to be somewhere else. I choose to imagine that I was home. I am not from Bombay or Pakistan. Where I come from, the water is clear and beautiful, glimmering like a row of diamonds on a rich woman’s neck. The waters of Bombay and Pakistan are nasty, blood and filth filled waters. Not like my waters, not where I come from. That night as I dragged on my smoke, I could almost hear the rush of the waves. See the moonlight glittering over the water like fairy dust. It was a peaceful night for me, until I heard a shriek from behind, followed by shouting and cursing coming from around the building.

I looked back, just as I did one of the men was dragging a girl by a mess of long black hair onto the dirt. Despite the dark I could see his crotch was covered in blood, he was furious. The man produced a pair of pliers and while using his knee to hold her down, began prying one of her teeth out. Letting it tick against the dirt, as the blood soaked into the ground he went for another. I said something bad to him. It was the morally right thing to do, but not the smartest. I can’t remember what I said, but whatever it was must’ve struck a nerve in the man. Because he beat me half to death for it.

I stumbled backwards and felt my head being bashed against the concrete wall of the petrol station. In my mind, I was being thrown into glistening black water. I was drowning as he hit me over and over and over again. I cannot tell you how I survived, what I can tell you is that I did. I lost consciousness several times. The first time he disappeared, the second, the truck did, the third and everyone was gone. Even the girl he defanged, all gone. Now, one might think that this wasn’t so bad… however my situation could not have been much worse. This petrol station was in the middle of nowhere. The roads there remote, they aren’t traveled, it’s why we took them. A man could die out there you’d never find him again.

Determined to live, since I had no better option, I made the decision to follow the broken road. It was a day’s trip going 128. I’m not sure of how many kilometers it was… too many, that’s right. As the sun rose, I began walking. Thoughts of the water and the bloody teeth streaking across my stressed mind. A man can walk for a very long time if he has too, and I did. I did without break, till the sun was near ready to go down again. I was so tired by then that I just stopped, then I rested against a burned car. I couldn’t go anymore. As I sat on the dirt, and let the water inside my mind carry me, eventually I closed my eyes and found myself sinking. I was going to die there, I should have died, I didn’t.

I sunk into the deep black, surrounded by an endless nothing of water. Until I woke to find myself laying on something warm, wet, and solid. I raised my head to see another endless land of visceral and twisting flesh in front of me. Behind me, was nothing, as black and endless as before genesis. I struggled to stand, as I did, the smell hit me. It was a mix of freshly gutted organs mixed with various stages of infection and rotting. More than strong enough to knock me back down even though it didn’t. I had not way of telling time, there was no sun, yet light was coming from a source I couldn’t see.

I looked around to get my bearings. I didn’t have time to wonder what I was standing on or the impossibility of it. I was alone at nothing end, if I didn’t want to die alone at nothing end, I had to find a way out of there. In the distance I spotted a tall tower looming over the flesh world. Seeing no alternatives than to climb as high as I could to see if anything was out there, I started towards it. The island of flesh soon proved to be much larger than I originally thought possible. Despite seeing the tower in the distance, no matter how far I walked, it rarely got closer.

The flesh consisted of many types of terrain: flat plains, rolling hills, and even deep red mountains here and there in the far distance. Pink wriggling meat, touched with occasional bone teeth poking through and what I believe was nerve endings fluttering in the air were everywhere. My withered shoes would squelch under the wet flesh with noises that reminded me of sex. It had a certain “life” to it. In the sense that it all appeared to be connected by the island. A life that I was unlucky enough to have disturbed by simply being there.

When I couldn’t walk anymore, I slept uneasily against a large bit of bone poking through the ground. My dreams were no longer of the water I missed. I dreamed of the tower, it wasn’t clear, however its imposing nature loomed over me like an angry God prepared to strike me down. I know I will sound insane when I say this. However… I believe the tower knew from my dreams that I was coming. When I woke up and began walking towards it again. It allowed me to reach it. To approach, and the distance to close between us in no time all. A brisk walk at most. I climbed a hill of guts and intestines to reach that horrible monolith in the sea of flesh.

It was even more horrible than whatever I imagined was possible. It was a gigantic structure, taller than most buildings. Arraigned with thousands of teeth of different sizes, colors, states of decay, and species. Some were human, some were fangs belonging to some predators, others were from creatures I had no earthly knowledge of. It was beyond all and anything I had ever seen prior or since, and it knew I was there. I was afraid… I was right to be.

The tower of teeth loomed over me as an angry God. Just as my head began to vibrate, my body shook, my nose bled, my ears filled with tinnitus. I put my hands to my head and I began screaming, screaming as my teeth twisted themselves and pulled by their roots from my mouth to add to the tower. One, then two, then three, then four. I dropped to my knees. Praying for it all to stop and it didn’t. My torture went on until I gathered all the strength I had left and ran back. I turned around and started back down the hill of intestines. Running until I tripped and fell into a pit of flesh I didn’t see. I got up and ran, and ran, and ran. Until I ah dreaded the edge of the flesh island, where I jumped into the black nothing below.

I woke up in a hospital in Pakistan. I was so tired I could have died there if I wished. However, I didn’t. I went home, took my savings and began my farm. Took a woman, had a family. Tried to do right ever since then. I saw true unimaginable horror that day. The day I saw the tower showed me how small I really was. How life is worth more than the money we chase. How flesh and teeth are sacred things given to us by heaven. To be respected, cherished, and loved. I will never be able to do enough to fix what I did… I just pray one day, Allah will see a regretful sinner and know how sorry I am.

If he does not, at least before I’m cast down. I pray he will allow me to see the glittering waters of my home one last time.