"Minty and the Tooth Fairy" - NYC Midnight Flash Fiction 2021 - Challenge 3

 NYC Midnight Flash Fiction challenge 3 submission: 

Minty and the Tooth Fairy

Minty pushed up her birth-control glasses and scrutinized me over the cafeteria trays. “Amber doesn’t have the guts,” she muttered to Nicole.

I looked down. I hated being talked about. I was right there. The sad remains of lunch-lady spaghetti stared back up.

Nicole kicked me in the ankle while crunching her apple, core and all. “Yeah she does.”

“Course I do.”

“Okay. After shchool, tell your mom you’re shleeping over at my place,” Minty slurred. She’d already stuffed half a pack of gum in her mouth. “Then bring your backpack. It’sh easy.”

“What’s so great about the old quarry?” I sulked. “It smells.”

“Shee, Nicole? No gutsh.”

Nicole whispered in my ear. “Mr. Bascomb hid there before they caught him.”

“Cool.” My stomach sank to my sneakers. Mr. Bascomb was famous. Not the good way. Prison famous. They’d found bodies from his mortuary stuffed into a shed. I wasn’t supposed to know: Mom said they were missing pieces. Teeth. “The tooth-fairy cabin. You tryna see ghosts?”

“Better,” Minty leaned forward so Jimmy and his douchebag friends couldn’t overhear.

“Lots better.” Nicole nodded.

I waited. “Gold,” Minty mouthed.

“Why would a rich dude embalm stiffs?” I hissed.

“Shhhhh!” Minty scowled.

Later, after Minty bribed her brother Albert to drop us off at the quarry, and we started our hike through the scrubby trees, she finally explained. “He wasn’t rich, Amber. Just tryna get rich. Gold teeth.”

“Ew.” I wasn’t sure I wanted dead people’s teeth, even if they were gold.

“How far is it?” Nicole asked. God knew why, she was wearing sandals. Her feet probably hurt.

“Almost there.”

Somehow, we didn’t get lost. Minty steered us surely to the quarry rim and its creepy tiny house with the windows broken out. It looked worse than sleeping outside. The mucky quarry pond beyond it reeked like dead bodies. “We gotta camp here?”

Minty grinned, cheek chipmunked with gum. “By the time we finish searching, it’s gonna be too dark to hike out til tomorrow.”

“Shit, Minty!” Nicole whined. “I don’t wanna sleep in the tooth-fairy cabin!”

“Your funeral.” Minty did her best horror-movie laugh.

Nicole froze. “Someone just moved in there.”

“No they didn’t, bitch. You’re just tryna make us as scared as you,” Minty scoffed.

“Quit it, Nicki,” I said sharply. I didn’t want to let her scare me. “Come on.”

“No!” Nicole balked. “What if the teeth are haunted? What if there’s really ghosts?”

“Well, they can’t fuckin’ bite us, can they?” Minty laughed.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed too.

Nicole shook her head. “No. This feels messed up, you guys. Let’s go.”

“So leave,” Minty said. “Call my brother and get a lift from the road.”

“Come with me, you guys.”

Minty put her arm around my shoulder. Her armpit was definitely not minty. “Nah, me and Amber’ve got this. You’re gonna be sorry when we’re crazy rich.”

“Where are you going to sell teeth, anyway?” Nicole was ugly-crying. “This is stupid.”

“Pawn shop. They buy everything.”

“They’ll call the cops!”

“You coming with or leaving? Or staying there?”

“Dammit,” Nicole whimpered. “Dammit. I’m leaving.”

“Okay. Call Albie.”

“Be careful,” I added. “Your shoes ain’t it.”

“You be careful.” She didn’t budge until we went on ahead. I thought she might come with us after all, but she didn’t.

The cabin smelled like mold and dead mice even from outside. “Just you and me,” Minty said. “Fifty-fifty. Ma told me where he hid the valuables in his own house.” Minty’s mom, a police dispatcher, might actually know.

“You think Nicki really saw something?”

“Yeah,” Minty snorted. “Casper the friendly fuckin’ ghost.”

I pulled my flashlight out and took my time shining it in the windows. Cloth waved in the breeze: a torn curtain, grimy with mildew. “Drapes,” I said.

“Hey, chicken, it’s curtains,” Minty called.

Nicole didn’t answer.

“Whatever,” Minty shrugged and pushed the door. It creaked open. It’d already been a little ajar, partway off the hinges.

I could have sworn I heard something move inside.

I clutched my mom’s keyring in my pocket. It had a flashlight-shaped canister of pepper-spray on it so she could take it jogging. I’d grabbed it for the hike.

Minty hissed. “I think Jimmy and Company scooped us. Dicks.”

“Is that you, Jimmy?” I called. Minty glared daggers.

No answer.

“You got your flashlight?” Minty asked.

I looked pointedly at the flashlight I held, illuminating a rotten couch.

She looked at my pocket. “Your flashlight.”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me after her.

The floorboards were soft underfoot, and the furniture was bloated and tilted like Peewee’s Playhouse. A sketchy kitchen. Stacks of broken junk. Everything gray and filthy. There were dead animals everywhere: taxidermy fails everywhere, squirrels turning into Satan’s jerky, a super-dead bird on the table. “What the fuck?”

“Rat poison,” Minty guessed.

All at once, there was a firecracker noise in the other room, and rapid movement in the kitchen area. The squishy floorboards bounced and squeaked underfoot. Then someone ran right at us, smoke pouring after him, sparks shooting from his hands. I squirted pepper-spray just as the person tackled Minty. She almost pulled me off my feet clutching my hand. Everyone was coughing and screaming.

The attacker wasn’t Jimmy pranking us. He was trying to choke Minty. He wore a horrifyingly bloodstained surgical mask, scrubs, black gloves. Oh my God, was it Bascomb? Was it Bascomb in his embalming gear?

Minty hacked and choked. Stink of fireworks through the pepper fumes.

I kicked the apparition in the head. After three kicks, he slumped off Minty and convulsed, vomiting in his mask. I’d have hit him again harder, but Minty saw his sandals and rasped, “wait,” tearing the mask away.

It was Nicole, with a sparkler, and puke on her bloodied face. “Punk’d. I’d have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids,” she coughed weakly.

“Fuck you, Scoob,” Minty laughed. She was red. She’d peed herself.