Hazelthorn
There is something toothy and feral about the way he is now.
Before the accident, he was a good, quiet little boy, or so they keep reminding him, but something has turned him inside out and he is so very hard to pin down, to reason with, to quell when he falls into frantic fits of rage. Or maybe it’s pain.
He is eleven now. He hasn’t left his room in a year.
Fever has eaten all the way up his throat and he cowers in a rocking chair by the cold fireplace, his sweaty curls trailing down his back in damp coils. He is dressed in a rigid brown suit and it’s too tight, it hurts. Silver scissors lie discarded on the floor.
The ancient butler nurses his bleeding hand, tooth marks ravaging the flesh like mincemeat.
“It’s due to the head trauma,” his guardian is saying patiently to the butler. “We’ll have these behaviors under control soon.”
The butler clenches his teeth and wraps a rag around his hand.
The old man crouches by the rocking chair and holds it still, ignoring the little boy’s whimper at the loss of motion. It makes him feel calmer, to rock like that.
He didn’t want his hair trimmed, his beautiful black curls. He loves the way they feel trailing down his spine like tender, lovely vines. When he said no to the haircut, it didn’t seem to matter, so he repeated the sentiment with his teeth.
“Do your gums hurt again?” the old man is asking, his voice low and reasonable. “Your teeth are all crowded and overgrown. Do you know my plants get this way? All they need is a little bit of pruning.” He holds silver jewelry pliers.
His hand snakes out and snatches the little boy’s jaw with excruciating pressure to pry it open.
The little boy starts to struggle as the cool metal pliers are forced between his lips and clamp onto a tooth.
“I already told you,” the old man says casually, “to be quiet.”
He begins to pull and the tooth comes out like a thorn, lumps of fleshy pulp tangled in the root. Blood gushes into the boy’s mouth and he is panicked by it, drowned with it.
He screams for a long time.