Wooden Teeth
by Douglas Gwilym
Pinocchio—the boy with wooden dreams—had a really good year. And then his father the wood carver, having exerted himself beyond all human expectation, and having experienced the impossible (or so he thought), keeled over in the wood shavings and breathed no more. It was not wholly unexpected, as he was no less than 70 years of age, but it was sad, being the eve of Pinocchio's “real boy” birthday.
Pinocchio didn't turn back into wood in a flash of pyrotechnics, but he felt the wood in his bones, then and after. In his dreams, his knees clattered together and the streetlamps of Pleasure Island cast his jackass shadow upon the wall. That year had been wonderful, full of promises fulfilled, and new promises that were not to be.
If Geppetto had grown a little afraid to touch the bodies of fallen trees with his specialized chisels and blades, if fireflies looked like vengeful fairies, who could blame him? Building chairs he could handle. Making people came with responsibility. Night sweats.
He wondered warily if he could do the thing again. Between walks on the beach and fishing outings with the “boy”—now so fully assured that he was real as to warrant all kinds of fresh bad behavior—his eyes would move invariably from the dinner table to the work bench, and hang in the air, haunted.
How could he not wonder if it had been him—the works of his once award-winning hands—that made the magic happen? One could believe in blue fairies quite easily when they were standing before you, feet not quite touching the bearskin rug, translucence enhanced by the crackling fireplace.
Now it was less easy, and the words of crickets and fireflies had descended to a proper mundane chirping, and he had to try. He had to know.
Nine months after the foul whale with human teeth spat them onto a bone-strewn beach, he succumbed. For Pinocchio's sake, he did it in secret. When the boy was cutting school or smoking cigars at the back of the village square he chiseled. Shaped. It wasn't right for a boy to be alone. He needed a friend. Geppetto hoped, a sister.
When his head came down heavily among the wood chips for the last time, she was as complete as she would ever be. She had a gnarled half-face, and a squared head like a meat tenderizer.
When Geppetto was good and dead, when his prayers had dissipated like cartoon smoke, she awoke and gnawed at his carcass with wooden teeth.
Author and editor Douglas Gwilym has been known to compose a weird-fiction rock opera or two. He edits the speculative anthology series The Midnight Zone. See him read classics of the proto-Weird on YouTube (@protoWeird) and check out his stories at Lucent Dreaming, LampLight, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Penumbric, and Tales to Terrify.