He wakes up quaking with a start but something is missing then goes to yell but something is soft where it should have clacked. His teeth are gone. They were stolen by ghosts in the night. Why? He can’t imagine. He was always pious: didn’t complain or curse the howls from the forest when the weather turned foul, didn’t dump his trash in the bottomless ditch where they lived (everyone could hear them muttering Down There) or shit in it out of spite. But his teeth were gone. The ghosts were bad, not the odd and indifferent wildlife he thought they were. They knew no consequences! They couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t be hobbled with a stone. You couldn’t tackle one and make him explain himself. They did it because they could (they didn’t even keep the teeth. They buried them. Ghosts have their own rituals) and because they wanted to hear the sound it would make if a toothless man screeched vulgarities into a bottomless hole. Who knows?
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