Fiction: Small Women (N. God Savage)

My dentist is 4′9″, with arms of steel, and each time I visit she vents her rage against the entirety of mankind on my fragile oral cavity. She grips me around the neck and mouth and ruthlessly hacks into my gums with a variety of baroque torture tools. I remain completely motionless throughout, occasionally choking slightly on the saliva that has pooled in the back of my throat. She leans over me as she works, her face upside down – mouth above nose. Sometimes I look directly into her inverted eyes, but never for more than a few seconds – I quickly loose my nerve and look away. Afterwards she smiles politely, innocently, and when I stand up from the chair I am shocked by how much taller than her I am. I walk out without saying a word, looking down, hands in my pockets, maybe brushing awkwardly against the door frame as I leave.

I saw a policewoman in a supermarket. She was a bit taller than my dentist, maybe 5′1″. She was shopping for oatmeal biscuits and foreign cheese while another policewoman waited impatiently outside. I was tempted to obviously shoplift something, just so she would chase me and wrestle me to the ground, perhaps beat me with her truncheon, maybe drive the side of her fist into my cheekbone with a hard, dull crunch. I stood beside her in the dairy aisle for a few minutes – longer than was comfortable. She glanced to the side, looking up slightly, at me. I stared straight ahead, impassive, concentrating on a pot of cream as if trying to boil the liquid with my stare.

N. God Savage lives in Northern Ireland. His writing has appeared in a variety of print and online publications.
www.ngodsavage.com