NICK PONIATOWSKI
The Prom Queen

The nurse gave the prom queen another souffle´ cup of pills but the blue one was missing. The little blue ones were the prom queen's favorite.

Disappointment had always been hard for the prom queen to handle. When she was six, she cried because the store didn't have the right Barbie dolls; when she was thirteen, she locked herself in her room because she didn't have large enough breasts; and when she was eighteen, she was hospitalized because she won the title of prom queen by default. She was runner-up and the real winner died in a tragic car accident immediately after the prom. But disappointment didn't simply cause her emotional duress. For as far back as the prom queen could remember, the anxiety made her teeth ache. The doctors identified it as "nervous dental somatic synesthesia," a condition that made the prom queen constantly aware of the painful burden of her teeth. So the prom queen moved into a ten-by-ten white room with a paper clown on the wall and her mother by her bed.

"Can't you see there aren't any good pills in here? Go!" the prom queen shouted as she fished through the clear plastic cup. The nurse left just as the prom queen's mother sashayed into the hospital room.

"Poopykins! Oh, how I missed you!" The prom queen's mother peppered the prom queen with almost-kisses. "You should have seen the guests at Mrs. Vanderbelt's party! It was a veritable who's who of the local fashion scene," the prom queen's mother announced, sing-songily.

"Mother! It's pronounced Ôwhom's whom.' And why did you leave me alone with these...people bumbling around me?"

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. I was only trying to get some new dresses for you. I thought you'd like something besides these hospital gowns. Oh, I just, I'm so sorry." The prom queen's mother began to cry.

"Don't be weak, Mother. I need you here. You can't leave me alone like that."

"I was only stepping out for a bit. To get out of this stuffy room."

"But you're the only one that can deal with these dreadful nurses. And you're the only one that can rub my feet the right way. The calluses on your hands feel so good."

"I'm glad you need me, my turtledove. I'll be utterly lost without you! Utterly! Oh, I miss you so much." The prom queen's mother hugged the prom queen, and the prom queen shoved her off.

"Anyway, go see what's taking that sad-excuse-for-a-nurse so long to get my pills!" The prom queen's mother scurried off, her heels clicking rapidly down the hallway.

Alone now, the prom queen was aware of the world outside her sterile shoebox. A telephone rang condescendingly in the room next door. A drug addict screamed judgmentally down the hall. A dog barked outside and seemed to be saying, "You'll never amount to anything." The prom queen's teeth had never felt worse. She opened her make-up compact to check on the situation inside her mouth. What she saw was quite strange.

An incisor was smiling at her.

Not the kind of smile that a stranger throws at you for wearing your favorite pants or scarf, but the kind of plastered-on smile a mother wears when she's disappointed in her children and has no other choice of action. The prom queen's tooth was, in fact, a miniature enameled version of her mother. Right down to the gray roots and designer sunglasses.

"Mother?! Is that you? Get out of there, Mother! You've no right to be wandering around in my mouth." The prom queen had grown accustomed to pill-induced realities but the thought of her normally proud mother's chagrin made her want to die.

The prom queen pinched her tooth with her thumb and forefinger, hoping for some sort of repose, but the pain didn't go away. A frightened glance into her compact proved that the tooth was still, without a doubt, her mother. She tried tapping it with her fork. No use. She tried rinsing it with milk. Still no use. And the pain was worsening. What started as pins and needles became machetes, jackhammers, lightning bolts, and the pangs of childbirth.

By the time the nurse returned with a cup of blue pills, the prom queen's mouth had given birth. She spit out the tooth and stared at it in her hand. It was an ordinary tooth. A bit bloody, but certainly not smiling. The nurse gasped and picked up the emergency phone while the prom queen downed the entire cup of pills.

"Oh dear. We'll get that tooth back in as soon as the dentist answers his phone. Don't worry, it won't be long now..." The nurse paused and whispered a few words into the mouthpiece. She frowned. "I'll be right back. In the meantime, let's put that tooth into some milk," she said. The nurse tried to snatch the tooth away, but the prom queen wouldn't let go. "Well, at least you're determined to keep it where it is. Oh, your poor mother." The nurse waddled away to find the on-call dentist.

When the crackling static of the P.A. announced that an emergency team was needed in room P4, the prom queen's entire jaw exploded in agony. Every one of her teeth had transformed into her smiling mother. Then the prom queen's vision went black. Her ears went deaf. The pain was unbearable. She tore at her mouth, violently rending at her gums and teeth. Her fingers were weapons of mercy, yanking teeth from their sockets. She was in this state of torturous purgatory until she finally rid herself of her mother's last smile and the teeth were swallowed, rushing down the prom queen's throat and into her lungs with a torrent of blood.