Demon Dentist - David Walliams

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Darkness had come to the town. Strange things were happening in the dead of night. Children would put a tooth under their pillow at bedtime, excitedly waiting for the tooth fairy to leave a coin. In the morning they would wake up to find something unspeakable under there. A dead slug. A live spider. Hundreds and hundreds of earwigs creeping and crawling beneath their pillow. Or worse. Much worse…

       Someone or something had come into their bedrooms in the hours of darkness, snatched the tooth and left a blood-curdling calling card behind.

       Evil was at work.

       But who or what was behind it?

       How could they sneak into children’s bedrooms without being seen?

       And what could they possibly want with all those teeth…?

      Meet the characters in this story:

      Alfie, a boy with rotten teeth

      Dad, Alfie’s dad

      Gabz, a little girl

      Miss Root, a dentist

      Fang, her cat

      Miss Hare, a Science teacher

      Winnie, a social worker

      Raj, a newsagent

      PC Plank, a policeman

      Texting Boy, a boy who never stops texting

      Mr Grey, a headmaster

      Mr Snood, a Drama teacher

      Mrs Morrissey, an old lady

       A Simple Case of Toothache

      Alfie hated going to the dentist. As a result the boy’s teeth were almost all yellow. The ones that weren’t yellow were brown. They bore the stains of all the goodies that children love, but dentists hate. Sweets, fizzy drinks, chocolate. The teeth that were neither yellow nor brown simply weren’t there any more. They had fallen out. One had bitten into a toffee and stayed there. Assorted fruit-flavoured chews had claimed others. This is what young Alfie looked like when he smiled…

      That’s because this twelve-year-old boy hadn’t gone to the dentist since he was very little.

      Alfie’s last visit was when he was around six. It was a simple case of toothache, but it ended in disaster. The dentist was an ancient man, Mr Erstwhile. Despite his good intentions, Mr Erstwhile should have retired many years before. The dentist looked like a tortoise, an old tortoise at that. He wore glasses so thick they made his eyes appear to be the size of tennis balls. Mr Erstwhile told Alfie the tooth in question was rotten, a filling wouldn’t save it and unfortunately he had no option but to take it out.

      The dentist yanked and yanked and yanked with his huge steel forceps. But the tooth wouldn’t come. Mr Erstwhile even rested his foot up on the chair by Alfie’s head to lever himself against it to help wrench the wretched tooth out. Still it wouldn’t come.

      The ancient dentist then enlisted the help of his even older dental nurse. Miss Prig was instructed to hold on to him and tug as hard as she could. Even then the tooth wouldn’t come.

      Soon the hefty receptionist, Miss Veal, was asked to step into the room to help. Miss Veal weighed more than Mr Erstwhile and Miss Prig put together. But even with all her ballast, the tooth wouldn’t come.

      Just then the dentist had an idea, and ordered Miss Prig to fetch some particularly thick dental floss. He carefully tied the floss around the forceps, and then looped it around Miss Veal’s ample frame. The dentist then instructed his rotund receptionist to leap out of the window on the count of three. But even with all of Miss Veal’s immense weight yanking on the boy’s tooth, it still wouldn’t come.

      With poor young Alfie still lying in terror on the dentist’s chair, Mr Erstwhile stepped into his waiting room to request reinforcements. The growing crowd of patients waiting to be seen were all called upon to assist. Young and old, fat and thin, the elderly dentist needed all the help he could get.

      Nevertheless, even with a lengthy human chain and an army of yankers*, the tooth stayed well and truly put.

       *Made-up word ALERT

      By this time poor little Alfie was in great distress. The pain of having his tooth pulled out was a hundred times worse than the toothache. However, Mr Erstwhile was determined to finish what he had started. Sweating profusely, the thirsty dentist took a large swig of mouthwash, and gripped on to the forceps as tightly as he could.

      Finally, after what seemed like days, weeks, even months of yanking, Alfie heard a deafening…

      The dentist had gripped so hard he had crushed the tooth. It exploded into thousands of tiny fragments inside Alfie’s mouth.

      With the ordeal finally over, Mr Erstwhile and all his helpers were lying in a tangled heap on the surgery floor.

      “Well done, everyone!” he announced, as his assistant Miss Prig helped him to his feet. “Oh, that tooth was a stubborn little blighter!”

      Just then Alfie realised something. He still had toothache.

      The dentist had taken out the wrong tooth!

      

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