1. An Overdue Cleaning

The outdoor terrace of the Italian cafe was covered with flowers: mountains of white gardenias and lilac plants, their scents mingling with the aroma of freshly grilled meat and seafood being carried to the faux Art Deco tables. The restaurant at the country club always reminded Jenny of the resort in Milan where Phil had taken her on their honeymoon, and that thought --- at least today --- disturbed her.

But why should it, she thought. It was perfectly natural for her mind to drift to her ex-husband, seeing that she was dining with their 28 year-old daughter. Even though she shared Phil's fair head of hair as much as she did her passively aggressive, recalcitrant personality, Jenny was simply not prepared for this latest bombshell, in any event.

“I can't go through with it, mother. Why can't you understand that?” Janice Palmer took a sip of her Chardonnay and paused to stare out at the greens keepers who were patiently trimming the edges of the rolling lawn leading into the gold course.

“Well, dear, maybe because you know as well as I do that most of the deposits that Harvey and I have put down are non-refundable. Do you realize that we'll lose almost $10,000 if you back out at this date?”

Even though Jenny hated to talk about money, she could picture Harvey going through the roof, even now. But it would be worse if she insisted on using her family money. Like Phil before him, Harvey was none too keen on relying on the fortunes of Harris Greenberg, Jenny's gregarious, and sometimes overbearing, father.

“I never asked for you, or his, support in the first place. Really, mother, it's kind of strange for a grown woman to expect to have the entire bill for her wedding footed, don't you think? Or maybe I should just forget about any of the warning signs, right? Plunge headlong into an unsatisfying marriage, just like you and Dad did?”

Jenny's eyes rolled as she leaned back in her chair, taking an irritated swipe at her hair which was falling relentlessly into her face.

“Oh, god forgive me for trying to help my children. And what's wrong with this one, may I ask? Is he too serious? Too fun-loving and carefree? You just don't want to be happy, do you?”

“I can't just get happy. I'm not into this fix-everything-with-a-man self-help program that you subscribe to.”

“That's enough, Janice.”

“I mean it, mom. Do you really think daddy's ready to move on, at this point? He went through absolute hell for you…we all did.”

Jenny leaned forward on the table, her composure slipping as she shook a finger at her daughter.

“Yes, we all did, dear. Let's not forget that. And I won't sit here and let you blame me for something that was not my fault.”

It had been nine years since that winter, and Jenny was finally feeling that her life was returning to some semblance of normality. She wasn't about to go back down that road.

“You know I still see him, mom. Almost every night. Nothing I take for sleep blocks him out, and no therapist can make any difference. The fact that you and daddy knew about him…knew what he was capable of….”

“I've been telling you that you need to see Lundgren. He's a specialist in this area. He helped me get through my rough spots.”

“No, you helped yourself. By taking up with Harvey the hunk, tooth-puller extraordinaire. How in the hell you managed that, after that maniac almost….”

“I've had enough of this,” Jenny said, standing up. “I'm going to freshen myself and then we're going to drop you at your fitting, and then I'm going to get my teeth cleaned. Harvey said he could fit me in after his last appointment.”

Janice sighed and returned to picking indifferently at the remains of her lukewarm veal piccata.

***********

When Jenny returned to the table, Janice was nowhere to be found.

She muttered with irritation, donned the blazer she had draped over the back of her chair and started for the maitre d's stand.

“Thomas, did you happen to see my daughter leave just a few minutes ago?” she asked the gray-haired, tuxedoed gentleman.

“No, Mrs. Grayson, I didn't. Would you like me to page her?”

“No, no thanks,” she returned, smiling wanly.

Jenny checked the bathrooms, but didn't find any trace of her daughter. How this girl ever hoped to keep even a steady boyfriend, with her poor manners, was beyond her.

After retrieving her silver Lexus from the valet, Jenny began the drive across downtown Boulder to where her husband's practice was located; silently cursing her daughter and the fitting she was now forced to cancel. She's had this planned all along, she thought ruefully.

Pulling into a spot out front, next to her Harvey 's Cadillac, she thought it was strange that there were no other cars in the lot, but then remembered that Sumara, Harvey 's receptionist, always left early on Fridays.

Walking through the vacant waiting area, Jenny rubbed her arms together. Why in the hell did Harvey insist on keeping the air-conditioning cranked to such ridiculous levels? It wasn't even May, for god's sake.

“May I help you?”

Jenny jumped at the voice, and then turned to see a young, blond girl sitting behind the receptionist's desk. She looked to be no older than Janice, but the severity of her pinned back hair and thick glasses added a number of years to her otherwise pretty face.

“Who…? I don't believe we've met. I'm Jenny, Harvey 's….”

“Oh, yes!” the girl cried, standing up and extending her hand over the counter. “So great to meet you! I'm Cindy. Sumara phoned in sick today, and I'm just filling in. Temping, really.”

“Oh, great. Well, if Harvey 's ready, I'll just….” Jenny made her way toward the back of the room, toward Harvey 's office.

“It would be better if you just had a seat in the exam room, Mrs. Grayson,” Cindy said, in a firm but friendly tone.

Jenny felt a cold wave of irritation course up her spine, but smiled tightly and walked toward one of the exam rooms. “Is this one the…”

“Yes,” Cindy said, returning her smile almost mockingly. “I'm sure he'll be able to find you.” She gave a fake-sounding laugh.

Jenny opened the door, and sat down in the chair, shifting uncomfortably. It had taken her over a year's therapy to even set foot in a dentist's office again. But Harvey, dear Harvey , had helped her through it. Still, the dental instruments that gleamed on the tray to her left still held something vaguely sinister. She leaned back against the head rest as the faint remnants of Garrimone's fat face drifted into her memory. She tried to shut it out, humming ridiculously along with the vapid Muzak that was coming from the white speaker in the corner of the room.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she found the sense memory of the trauma coming back, pulsing at the edge of her consciousness like a rattle snake trying to find its way under a door frame. The smell --- she was sure it was real. That combination of sterile wetness and cigarette smoke. She was suddenly very much awake, as Garrimone's face now sharpened in her mind's eye: that bald dome, the cruel, beady eyes, the hideously long cigarette holder pointed straight at her mouth, billowing blankets of foul smoke into her as her teeth were drilled senselessly, sadistically, for his sick pleasure.

Jenny got up and headed for the door. Opening it, she peered out at Cindy, who was typing something at her computer.

“Are you…smoking?” she asked the girl.

Cindy frowned, looking puzzled. “Why…no….” she responded, a bit too smugly for Jenny's taste. “That wouldn't be legal, would it? Not to mention sanitary.” She chuckled lightly and began typing again.

“Where is my husband?” Jenny said, her voice rising slightly.

“I told you…he'll be with you in a minute,” Cindy fired back, sharply.

“There's no need for…” Jenny started. She opened her purse and fumbled for her prescription of Valium. Ignoring the girl, who was staring at her with a small, bemused smile, she walked to the water cooler to pour a small cup to wash down her pills. Jenny stared with frustration at the empty bottle.

“Here,” Cindy's voice said, and she jumped. The willowy young woman was standing just inches behind her, holding a Dixie cup. She took it and quickly downed her meds, then crumpled the paper and tossed it on an empty chair. She closed the exam room door on Cindy's contemptuous snorted laughter.

Jenny considered re-opening the door to berate the girl for her rudeness, but quickly discarded the pointless idea. Getting into a fight with a temp was the last thing she needed right now.

Sitting back down, she began to bite her lip nervously.

More minutes ticked by, and then the exam room door inched open slowly and then suddenly swung full. Before Jenny was a man she had never seen before. She instinctively started to get up from the chair.

“Where's Harvey ?” she asked, quickly.

“Ah…Mrs….Grayson, is it?” the man replied, looking at a clipboard held in his large, plump hands. “How refreshing to finally meet Harvey 's wife….”

Jenny let out a sharp shriek and scrambled for the door. Those words! The sound of them sliced her memory open with the viciousness of a chainsaw.

She darted out into the reception area, only to find it vacant. Running back toward Harvey 's office, Jenny found nothing that indicated Harvey was anywhere on the premises. She returned to the waiting area, eyes darting about madly.

The man was standing in the exam room door, looking at her with a confused expression. He was old, at least sixty-five, Jenny thought. He had a thick head of white hair and wore black plastic-framed glasses with thick lenses. He looked no more threatening than an old man in the park, feeding the birds.

“Mrs. Grayson, if you'll just allow me to explain. Dr. Grayson was called in to Timothy Phelan's office to assist with a gum surgery. You know Dr. Phelan, don't you?” he smiled.

Jenny backed into a wall, and exhaled deeply, suddenly feeling very stupid.

“I'm…sorry….” was all she could think of to say.

“That's quite all right. A bit jumpy today, aren't we?” he smiled.

“Yes. I am. I'm….”

“Think nothing of it. Dr. Morgan Rie, R-I-E, like the bread, but spelled differently,” the man said, grinning sheepishly. “Your husband asked me to check your teeth this afternoon. Seems you're overdue for a cleaning.”

Jenny looked at him curiously, noting the name plate on his white coat. “Yes, yes, I am.” She tottered slowly back toward the man, feeling the effect of the 20 MG of Valium kicking in.

“I apologize for Cindy. She's not the best with people, and she's forgotten several times this afternoon to inform patients of Harvey 's absence. Bloody temps. What can you do?” he chuckled lightly. “Your husband and I go way back. He was a student of mine, back in the stone age.”

Go way back, Jenny thought. Go way back. She began to shift again, de ja vu washing over her.

“ Harvey 's always been a very sharp man, always on the edge of his craft,” the doctor said. “Very astute of him doing this last minute assist. Dr. Phelan is one of the best periodontists in Colorado . Open, please.”

Jenny slowly opened her mouth as the man seated himself on the stool to her right. He reaked of tobacco, she noted. And while this would normally have panicked her even further, she realized that he was just another old guy with a nicotine habit. A throwback to a day when everyone smoked.

“You'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit clumsy,” he said soothingly. “I haven't done a routine cleaning in a few years. I mostly perform oral surgeries.”

Jenny smiled slightly, as he roamed around her mouth for several moments. She took a few pulls on the spit tube hanging from the side of her mouth.

“Oh, this doesn't look good,” he said quietly.

“Wha….” She croaked out.

“You have a rather bad cavity, or at least the start of one. We can take care of that, though, not to worry.”

He removed the tube from her mouth, and she coughed, gasping for air.

“I'd rather my husband took care of this, Dr. Rie,” she said, as politely as she could. No one but Harvey had touched her teeth since the incident.

“Oh? Well, if you insist.” He sighed, and began to select another instrument from his tray.

“Yes, well….” she stumbled to find a gentle way of telling him that she was leaving, that she couldn't do this. Not now.

But as she gripped the arm of the chair to brace herself, she felt weak, almost like she was going to pass out.

Leaning back in the headrest, her mind began to spin.

The doctor pushed a fat cylinder toward her, something she did not recognize.

“Just going to buff your teeth, won't take a minute.”

“All rig….” she began, but he was inside her mouth before she could finish.

A sharp piercing, like a pin prick, seemed to puncture her gum, and she called out shrilly.

“What in the….” she tried to say, but it only came out as a series of unintelligible grunts.

This wasn't right, she thought. Not at all. The old man had a small smile on his lips, and he began to hum a tune to himself as he searched on the tray for another instrument.

Sheer adrenaline propelled Jenny from the chair as she stumbled frenetically toward the door. Rie merely sat, watching her as she tried in vain to turn the knob. He began to laugh steadily as the knob spun fruitlessly in her hand, not activating any bolt, almost as if it were a toy.

The door burst open and a large African-American man stood in front of her, as large as a refrigerator. He wore a dark gray blazer, a white turtleneck, and a black beret. Bracing a pair of muscular hands on her shoulders, he drove her toward the dental chair, as if she were cattle.

A series of guttural screams escaped Jenny's mouth, as she struggled frantically to free herself from the drugged stupor that was quickly collapsing on top of her.

The man with the beret whipped two large leather straps from his waist and quickly secured both of her arms to the chair. When he was done, he tied another, larger, strap around her throat, and then secured her thighs and ankles the same way.

Dr. Rie sat, legs crossed, patiently filing his nails. When he was finished, he leaned close to Jenny's face, and removed his eyeglasses. He burned his coal black orbs into her, and as he smiled, Jenny began to feel as if she was going mad. The doctor laughed loudly, throwing his head back. As he did, he reached to his face and suddenly dug his yellowed claws into his wrinkled flesh, pulling downward. Jenny stared with dread fascination as the man began to tear chunks of pasty white flesh off of his face. But instead of revealing blood, there was only white, plump skin, buffed to a smooth, radiant glow.

After he had scraped away the makeup, he wiped his hands with a cloth and ripped the large white mass of hair from his head, revealing a polished bald scalp.

Jenny began to sob insanely, as she gaped unbelievingly.

Morgan Rie. Garrimone.

“Memories….” The deranged man began to sing, “like the corners of my demented mother-fuckin' mind….” He started to belt out the opening stanzas of the moldy Pop song, and then stopped as he collapsed into gales of sick laughter, accompanied by his henchman.

Jenny could no longer feel her bottom teeth and when she began to speak, she found she was biting her lower lip uncontrollably.

“How?” was all she could say.

“Oh, the wonders of modern medicine and plastic surgery, my pet!” Garrimone trumpeted. “So wonderful to be back among the living, and to be able to finish a job that was regrettably interrupted.”

He opened his coat and smoothly produced a long black cigarette holder, and a cigarette case.

“I'm going to give you a cleaning, all right. But this time, it won't be your mouth that I'm going to work on. Rodney, rip her panties and spread her legs for me. I want to see that little twat again, in all it's glory!”

The goon walked between her legs, bent down, and grasped her silk panties in his sparkling white teeth, winking at her obscenely, to Garrimone's delight.

The villain quickly lit his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into Jenny's crazed face, as the thug thrust a large rough finger into her pussy, straight to the knuckle. He began to violently move it back and forth.

“Oh, she's hot for ya, boss!” he announced, extracting his digit quickly, and suckling it like a psychotic infant.

“Excellent! Now, get my hot seat,” Garrimone instructed imperiously.

The black man sauntered slowly behind Jenny and produced a thick, corded cushion with a small red nub embedded in it. He reached under Jenny and positioned it strategically, close to her asshole, and then pulled the thick cord, and an attached small box with numerous dials and switches, into his hands.

“Can you guess what I have planned, you stupid bitch?” Garrimone hissed into her face, cigarette so close that it threatened to penetrate her nostril.

“FUCK YOU, MANIAC!” Jenny yelled, mangling her lower lip even further.

“Oh, good idea! And I plan to. I'm going to have a very good time with you this afternoon. We're ALL gonna have a good time with you, aren't we, Rodney?”

Rodney laughed with delight, his voice a musical baritone that echoed across the hard steel of the exam room.

“My only regret, my dear, is that you won't be alive after this little treatment to watch as I systematically torture and kill the rest of your family. Did you think I would never return? Sweetness, you simply don't understand my marketability to the powers that be or understand the power of the dollar!”

“No! Please…. Not my fam….”

But just as Jenny began to speak, she felt heat penetrating her ass, and a sharp burning sensation pressing into her anal sphincter.

Garrimone lit another cigarette and mounted her easily, whipping off his doctor's slacks with the speed of a Chippendale. It was unbelievable to Jenny that this once repulsively fat man could now sport legs that belonged to someone half his age, though she noted several large red scars that streaked down his thighs.

His cock was slick with pre-cum and he stroked himself vigorously as he pulled a thick white rubber from his breast pocket. He dangled it in her face and she jerked back, recognizing the hot pepper it had been coated with. He donned it quickly and began to thrust his hips toward her.

“You don't have any information that I want, but I do so want to hear you tell me how much you want me. Every time I snap my fingers, you'll give me a compliment. If you fail, that red-hot spike in your ass will get longer and longer.”

He paused to flick an ash from his cigarette, and smiled. “You see, my pigeon, you get to pick which pretty little poon-hole I'm going to pulverize.”

Garrimone rode the poor woman for minutes, and then snapped his fingers, waiting for her fawning words, but they never came. She only spit into his face.

After fifteen minutes of this, he rose angrily and grabbed the control box from Rodney, fiddling with it maniacally. Jenny's screams rose several octaves as the foul rod began to ruthlessly ream her once tender flesh.

Finally, her voice gave out, and she began to convulse, her body writhing violently at the whim of the psychopath's flying fingers.

The rod pushed even further into Jenny's ass, searing her to the bone, and it suddenly began to spin.

Garrimone laughed hysterically. “Beg me, bitch! Beg for your family's lives!”

Jenny's eyes bulged crazily as she began a shriek that could drown out an air-raid siren.

Her torturer switched off the box finally, when we noted the blood puddling beneath her. She died of shock a few minutes later.

Garrimone smiled contentedly and strutted from the room.

“Rodney, clean this mess up, wipe down the place, and call my car. My work has just begun here,” he said, in a bored tone.