Sample 5: “Are Dental Implants Right For You?”

Written for VitalWeb (unpublished)

A simple trip to the dentist can be a nightmare. Many of us have our own horror stories, from painful novocaine needles that seem to jolt the life out of us, to frustrated dentists who chastise for forgetting to floss. This fear of potential pain and embarrassment has led many patients to avoid the chair altogether. For some, this can bring about an even worse fate: tooth extractions.

Thankfully, dental implants have saved many a mouth from the horrors of missing teeth and uncomfortable dentures. The word “implant” might sound more off-putting than a root canal, and it’s true that the process takes more time. With newly improved methods, however, the surgeries are quick and streamlined.

During the procedure, the dental team prepares the root of the missing tooth and then surgically inserts the implant into it. None of the dental implant is actually visible outside the root area. It takes anywhere from two to six months for the implant to fuse to the jaw bone. After the area heals, a dental surgeon will place an “abutment” that joins the implant and a custom-made crown. This is where the magic happens: once the crown is placed, the patient will once again have both the full use and cosmetic benefits of a healthy tooth.

Dental implants can be installed on multiple teeth and are even available to help secure dentures. And patients concerned about the implants being rejected need not fear. According to Los Angeles dental implants Doctor Arthur Kezian, the implants are “basically sophisticated screws made of a medically pure metal, Titanium… [which] has no history of rejection by the body.”

While dental implants take time, ultimately, many patients find that the result is worth the effort.

Sample 6: “Looking Back” 

Short story published in Page & Spine

2015

Anna squeezes my hand. Her little palm is warm with sweat and dirt and all the things five-year-olds grab on to. I look down at the tiny girl with wisps of brown bangs covering doe-black eyes. She’s always looked more like Frederick than me. “Are you excited to see what the telescope finds, hun?”

“I’m hungry,” she whines, bopping her head onto my thigh.

“We’ll have something to eat soon.” I smile and wrap my arm around her. She’s still too young to know what’s going on.

Frederick’s office is rumbling with voices; mothers, wives, kids, coworkers. We all wear cocktail dresses and suits. Hanging on the far wall is a yellow and green banner printed on plastic: “Congratulations, StarEx Team! We Did It!”

They certainly did. I can’t help but smile, despite the years and drama that went into this project. I nearly left Frederick twice. His long hours, days, weeks away, made me feel like a single mother, anyway. And when he did come home, we only heard about this project; how it’ll change the world, alter humanity’s destiny and our family’s.

Sometimes I worry just how much it will. Frederick doesn’t question the secrets this project might illuminate. He doesn’t worry about the unknown horrors waiting out there, the monstrous things that can destroy us all in an instant.

I push these dark thoughts away, force them into the place where my old nightmares gather dust. I smile at Frederick and take his hand. We stand there together, a family of some sorts, in this single moment at least. We probably look normal.

A champagne glass clangs and the room quiets. Dr. Daniels clears his throat. His hair has gone almost completely gray since I first met him, but his ice blue eyes are still sharp as ever.

“Welcome, everyone, to the evening we’ve been working toward for years. We’ve hit quite a few road blocks, but tonight, finally, we’ll test our new vessel.” Applause. He waves them down. “Now sure, sending a  telescope through the space slip is an added touch,” he laughs. Other scientists chuckle. “Thank you again, Dr. Porter, for that last-minute idea. But while it’ll be exciting to send the telescope through and see what it sees, let’s all remember the true reason for celebration. Tonight, we travel farther than any human intelligence has before.”

The crowd applauds again. Dr. Daniels checks his phone. “It’s time. Turn on the screens.”

Everything darkens. Two wall-sized monitors illuminate hundreds, thousands of stars. The telescope shows us what the dark side of the moon sees. There are gasps of delight. Anna clutches me. She hates the dark.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “Look at all the pretty stars.”

She’s quiet, but I feel her shaking. I should have gotten a nanny, but Frederick wanted her here so badly I relented.

“For those of you who aren’t scientists,” Dr. Daniels continues. “In twenty seconds, the vessel will create a miniature worm hole around itself. If everything goes well, it will travel eight thousand lightyears.”

We wait in silence. Anna’s breathing hard below me. I rub her back. Even my own heartbeats seem loud. I glance around to see if anyone can hear, but all eyes are reflecting the stars.

I return to the screen. It blinks. Then the stars move.

Someone cries out. Cheers. They did it. All these years put into a flash that lasts a microsecond.

“And there we are.” Dr. Daniels’ voice is shaking.

Now we wait to see if the telescope will perform its final task. I feel sick. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t look back.

The stars move again as the telescope turns its camera toward Earth. It zooms in to a small cluster of stars that grow brighter and farther apart. It magnifies them further, until we see a familiar formation. Our solar system. Soon our blue and green and brown planet lights up our screen. White clouds cover almost a quarter of the planet.

“This,” Dr. Porter continues, “is light emitted from Earth eight thousand years ago. Right now, we’re looking at the past.”

More gasps and whispers. What will we see? Who will we see?

It zooms closer, through the clouds. This telescope is better than I’d expected it to be. Everything is as clear as a satellite image.

Before us sits the island of what is now the UK, then the region around present-day London. Then we see movement. A town. People walking around, dressed in leather and tunics. I try to remember my world history. Who lived in the UK eight thousand years ago?

The images get blurry. Humanoid shapes the size of ants are moving around. The telescope focuses. Now we’re close enough to see faces, expressions. Laughter. Talking. A little boy in brown pants and a gray shirt chases a chicken on a busy dirt road. Faces pass by, some worn, some young and bright.

And some, a strange greenish gray.

Whispers flutter through the room. “Who are they?” “Is that face paint?” “Look at the shape of their heads, that’s not normal.”

The beings’ eyes are a bulbous black, devoid of iris or white. They don’t walk like the others, either. Their cantor is graceful, fluid, like a ghost floating above the ground.

One of them stops and lifts a thin finger. A glassy sphere appears just above it. The object glimmers in the sunlight, reflecting rainbow patterns like a soap bubble. But this thing is solid.

It grows larger, until it’s the size of the strange man’s head. It continues expanding until it’s just large enough for him to walk inside. In a flash, both man and bubble are gone.

“What the hell?”

“Did we just see that?”
“What was that thing?”

Anna whimpers. I hug her again. “It’s okay, honey. This isn’t happening now.”

But it is happening now, somehow.

“It’s probably an anomaly,” Dr. Porter reasons. “Might be a lens flare that we misinterpreted.”

A few people murmur in agreement, mostly to assuage their nerves.

The telescope moves slowly over its predestined path, toward a new village. It scans over the trees and grass and countryside pastures. Flits of sun reflecting off metal bound back and forth, fast, like the objects are traveling themselves. Planes?

“The telescope must be straining,” Dr. Porter says. His voice is high, halting, like even he doesn’t believe his words.

None of us do, anyway. Those things are definitely flying high over the atmosphere, and fast. Too high and too fast for an civilization that had supposedly just entered the agricultural age.

I want to take Anna away from here, teach her the history I’d learned, give her false knowledge for the sake of a good night’s sleep. Will her future be the same as mine, or will this night change everything?

The telescope pans down on a new village. This one is denser, with buildings packed in together and people scrambling to fit in.

A scream rings out. Loud talking, pointing. “What the hell is that? And what’s that there?”

I try to focus, but panicked black splotches cover my eyes. I blink hard. Am I really seeing this? There are tall beings with lizard-shaped heads and huge, dark brown scales down their long necks. They’re wearing metal armor and standing upright. Their hands are slender and fleshy, like a human.

One of those things turns to look at an old man leaning against a building, taking in the shade and chewing an apple. The thing reaches its long fingers out, around the old man’s neck. There’s a brief flash of surprise on his gruff face; his blue eyes bulge, hands instinctively claw against the creature’s grasp. But then his jaw slackens. There’s something like realization in his eyes, a simple acknowledgement of some unavoidable fate. This was always going to happen; it was inevitable. The creature lifts him over its head and eats the man whole.

My stomach flips. I try to cover Anna’s wide eyes, but it’s too late. There’s muffled screaming all around me, but I can barely hear it beneath the ringing in my ears.

But the people in this village barely notice the man’s demise.

That is, except for an older woman nearby. She looks straight up into our telescope. If I didn’t know better I’d assume she saw us. Something about her was so familiar, like I’d looked into her dark eyes a million times. She mouths something like “hi” or “hide.”

I want to leave. Something isn’t right, we shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be witnessing this. I pick up Anna, who is now crying into her free arm, and turn my head to the office’s entrance.

Two dark figures stand in the doorway. I back up toward the office on the other side of the main room, away from them.

Hide.

The lights turn on abruptly. More screams. The dark figures are men wearing black suits and gas masks.

I duck into the back office as the room fills with smoke. Anna whimpers to the sounds of bodies thumping, thumping, thumping onto the floor.

There’s a click, and someone asks something on a radio. “All subjects saw the footage,” I hear one man’s muffled reply. “We destroyed them on site.”

The back office has an unlocked window. We’re on the second story. The smoke is already curdling into our room.

I hold Anna tight. She’s whimpering and shaking so hard I almost can’t carry her. I whisper “close your eyes” and wait for her to comply. Then I crawl through the window, take a deep breath, and jump.