The Jar of Baby Teeth
Flash Fiction by
S.M. Hallow (Architect) & Halle Merrick (Haunter)
This piece is the product of our Tiny Hauntings pop-up sub call. First, we asked you to become Architects, creating stunning, spooky, spine-chilling settings. Next, we gathered Haunters and unleashed them into our favorite Architect-designed landscapes. The results are to die for.
The jar full of baby teeth, unused for thirty years, sits in the back of a glass cabinet no one opens anymore, with only a menagerie of glass figurines for company. To its right, a grandfather clock, aged by the passage of time and coated in a thin layer of dust, performs its singular duty once more. Midnight chimes and Grandfather alerts the residents of the cabinet that the witching hour has begun. Life drips slowly, slowly into the figurines.
A ballerina reaching for an invisible partner frees herself from her position as the moonlight floods in. Her feet remain in place as she glides to the jar and taps gently three times. The souls inside are tired – they have slept all day, because what else is there to do, and the cabinet shakes as they yawn and wake up.
The teeth begin to chatter, clinking against the jar, desperate to be freed for an evening. The ballerina twists off the lid, and the teeth float out, one by one.
To the living inhabitants of the house, the teeth are small, insignificant. A selection of souls, trapped in molars and canines and incisors, every other inch of their bodies erased from the Earth. The teeth are souvenirs of the children they stole long ago, the figurines macabre gifts for each life taken, innocent souls severed between the two.
But tonight they are all awash in the moonlight, and they are not souvenirs and gifts. They are children, with souls reunited once more, playing as the ballerinas pirouette and the stained-glass rabbits hop. And though all that’s left of them is the glass and the teeth, and though the world has long since moved on without them, a small segment of their childhood survives, unseen in the dark of the cabinet.
S.M. Hallow was published in Icebreakers earlier this year. Hallow has also been published in Baffling Magazine, Prismatica Magazine, Seize the Press, Taco Bell Quarterly, and others. Twitter: @smhallow.
Halle Merrick (she/they) is an English writer of the magical, the peculiar, and the whatever-thought-pops-into-her-head. They hold a Bachelor's in Creative Writing and a Master's in Professional Writing from Falmouth University. They are the founder and editor of Haunted Words Press, and their work has been published in FILTER COFFEE ZINE and TOIL & TROUBLE LITERARY MAGAZINE, among others. They would very much like to live in a haunted house with a legion of ghost cats one day. You can find her on Twitter @halle_merrick, and Instagram @hallemaem.
