Smokey Mountain Breakdown

It seems to have been the potatoes that did it. I'm not a huge potato eater. I like one now and again, but I got a bag of them to make some curry with and had the leftovers stored in a cabinet. It takes me a while to eat that many potatoes.

Anyway, I saw evidence of a mouse in my kitchen--hanging out around the potatoes. I don't know why it wants potatoes, but that seems to be what it is going for. But it's too late, the mouse is here and this is war.

So, I take three hours to do a cleanup yesterday that would normally take 30 minutes. What I really need to do is take everything out of the cabinets and figure out where the little bugger got in--but it takes two functional arms to do that.

I've set traps and put Havoc under the house and in places the dogs can't get to. But it really likes potatoes. Not sure if it's going to go for the Havoc. Getting rid of the potatoes today. At least it hasn't figured out how to get to the upper food storage shelves.

Here's a new installment of Porn and Donuts. Enjoy.

He met her a month ago at the dentist’s office. Their eyes met across the cracked linoleum of the waiting room under a sofa-sized portrait of a hunting scene. She smiled, revealing a sexy space between her front teeth and the dark place on the edge of her smile.

“I’m Kellie, Do I know you?”

“No, but you sure should.”

A cheerless technician called Lucius’ name and he went to pay in blood and pain for what he had come for.

The dental profession referred to Dr. Jeffers’ favorite tools as extraction forceps. Everyone else called them pliers. His second favorite tool rocked teeth loose in their sockets before the extraction forceps came into play. They called that a wedge. His clinic specialized in extracting teeth in an assembly line operation. He did not ask questions. He pulled teeth. For fifty dollars, he extracted one tooth and charged twenty-five dollars for each additional tooth. He gave his patients a script for thirty #10 hydrocodones and the antibiotic of their choice when they left.

Lucius came for the hydrocodone. He sat down in the dental chair, upholstered in cracked vinyl. The rusty metal fittings of the equipment and spit-flecked chrome creaked as he settled. Dr. Jeffers strode in, applying the Novocain injections with such speed that Lucius did not have time to flinch.

The dentist ripped off his gloves and delivered his parting shot before marching off to his next victim.

“Meth mouth.”

“E’s ‘ot!” Lucius protested as his face went numb and he lost the ability to blink his right eye.

Lucius had bad teeth, but they were bad from chewing assorted narcotics like they were Flintstones vitamins. This, combined with a steady diet of Mountain Dew, Pink Snowball cakes and Milky Way Bars rotted his teeth prematurely. The tooth pulled today had nothing wrong with it. He had run out of bad teeth to pull.

He looked across the hall into the next room. The girl, Kellie, was there and he could see her legs from the thighs down, resting on the dental chair. She kicked and twisted, tensing in evident pain. Her heels thumped against the footrest rhythmically.

“Aaargh--Aaar--Aaargh!”

Lucius became aroused and moved his coat to cover his lap. He tried to lick his lips but his tongue had gone numb. Her feet stopped drumming and Jeffers rushed out of the room, snapping off a pair of gloves.

Jeffers pried open Lucius’ mouth and retreated in a matter of moments with a tooth. The taste of iron and salt hit the back of his throat and gauze padding slammed into the socket. Jeffers was gone from the room by the time Lucius sat up.

Kellie stood in the doorway with a handful of bloody gauze pressed to her mouth. She flushed and her eyes glinted a bit too bright. They made their way up to the checkout desk together, with their frozen faces and bloody gauze wads.

They collected the hydro scripts and went to the pharmacy, glancing shyly at each other.