By Deyland Somer
On the Sea Lion Press Forums, we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write vignettes on a specific theme (changed monthly).
The ninth theme was "Gold"
“My dentist is a Nazi,” Molly said.
“Now, Molly, I know going to the dentist isn't that fun, but you can't go around accusing people of being Nazis.”
“Sure you can. If they're Nazis.”
She heard her dad laugh. “Maybe you just need to floss your teeth more often. Did you have any cavities?”
“You know, during the Holocaust...”
“Great start there.”
“During the Holocaust, you know. Those guys they'd send out in white lab coats. They'd sort through the dead bodies in the gas chamber. And pick out their gold fillings? My dentist was one of those guys.”
“You didn't answer my question. Did you have any cavities?”
“How the heck am I supposed to remember? I was too freaked out by some Nazi guy sticking his fingers in my mouth.”
“Have you been taking your meds?”
Molly crossed her arms and looked out the car window. Had she really expected her dad to believe her? She had hoped he would, but she was far from surprised that he hadn't. There was only one person in the entire world that she could trust.
Molly's online boyfriend was the most trustworthy person in the world. He was a little older than her, sure. And his English, while getting better, still wasn't the greatest. But he was foreign royalty. A kind man. A little strange, yes. But her overseas boyfriend was the sweetest guy Molly had ever met. Most importantly, he texted back quickly.
“my dentist is a nazi!!!!” Molly texted him. She laid back in her computer chair, waiting for a reply.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
“better contact the mossad”
“the what?” She texted back. Every now and then Yakubu said some strange word in his native language that Molly couldn't understand.
“the mossad...u know...the jewish CIA”
“r u joking”
“no im srs”
Molly searched for the word on Bing and found a few hits. The third hit down was a website called reportanazi.com.
“The World's Premier Nazi Reporting Database”
Molly quickly became absorbed, scrolling through page after page of Nazi photos and profiles. About fifteen minutes in, she gasped. “Holy shit!”
“No swearing in my house!” Her dad yelled from upstairs.
Molly ignored him, clicking on the profile she had found. Sure enough, there he was. He had a different name, of course. But this Dr. Wolfgang Eigendorf fellow was a spitting image of her dentist.
“I knew it! I fucking knew it!”
“Do I have to come down there?”
Molly read through the profile further. There wasn't much information there. The guy was born in 1903 in Klagenfurt, Austria. He had served as a dentist for three years at Treblinka. And his current whereabouts were listed as unknown.
Unknown until now, that is.
Molly scrolled down the Contact Us section. She began hastily filling out the online form, describing every last detail about her dentist that she could remember. After she'd finished typing her report up, she went back and read through it to make sure there were no embarrassing spelling or grammatical errors before sending it off. After she clicked Send, a spinning animated Star of David gif appeared on her screen.
Thank You, Molly! We will review your submission promptly.
Molly, glowing, picked her phone back up.
“ty yakubu ur the best”
“ur welcome molly”
“hey do u no ur dads credit card number”
“y do u keep asking that”
“how else r u goin 2 fly out here to see me”
Molly sighed and put her phone down, dreams of catching Nazis and becoming a Nigerian princess floating across her mind.
“Listen, I don't think it's safe for you to meet this Mossad guy by yourself.”
“I'm fifteen, I can handle myself.”
Katelyn seemed less than convinced. “I don't know why you don't want me to go with you.”
Molly looked away, folding her arms.
“You know what I think?” Katelyn said.
“What do you think?”
“I think this Yakubu guy is getting to your head.”
“Don't you talk about my boyfriend like that!”
“I remember when we were in middle school. You were just another one of us girls. Lately you've gotten so weird and standoffish. First it was the Nigerian boyfriend. Then it was the Nazi dentist. Now you're meeting with a secret agent? You know everyone thinks you're crazy right? That's why I'm the only one who still sits next to you.”
Molly looked around. She hadn't exactly not noticed that these days it was just the two of them sitting in the corner of the hallway at lunch. But she hadn't exactly noticed just how lonely it was.
“Well...if I'm crazy what does that make you sitting with me?”
“Have you been taking your meds?”
“Yakubu told me to stop. He says they'll turn me gay.”
“That sounds both wrong and homophobic.”
“Yeah well you're racist.”
“How am I racist?”
“You don't want me to be with my Nigerian boyfriend.”
“He's thirty-eight.”
“You're just jealous that you aren't mature enough to get older men like I can.”
“You shouldn't be proud of being the victim of a sexual predator.”
“There's nothing sexual about it. He's super shy. Whenever I try flirting he changes the topic. He seems more interested in my social security number than my body, to be honest.”
“You haven't given it to him, have you?”
“My body? No, I can't exactly afford to fly to Nigeria yet.”
“No, dummy, your social security number.”
“I told him he has to marry me first.”
“I'm coming with you.”
“You'll be my maid of honor.”
Katelyn looked like she was about to strangle Molly.
“What?” Molly said.
“I am coming with you to meet Mr. Mossad agent.”
“Fine,” Molly said. “You'll make me look prettier anyways.”
She heard Katelyn sigh deeply and giggled a little.
After school, they waited in the Starbucks for what seemed like an eternity. Molly drank an entire cup of coffee. She felt so adult. She saw Katelyn pulling a book out of her backpack to read. She recognized the cover.
“Oh I read that book freshman year. The ending was so good. I---”
“NO SPOILERS!”
Molly grinned. “It was so amazing when the---”
“I'LL CUT YOU!”
“You're so cute when you're irritated, you know that, Katelyn. Almost as cute as the ending of that b---”
She saw Katelyn nearly fall out of her stool as she leaned along the counter they sat at.
“I'm just messing with you, Katie, I'd never spoil a book for my best friend.”
“Best friend?”
“Maid of honor.”
She saw Katelyn roll her eyes.
“Excuse me.”
It was the voice of a woman with a foreign accent.
“Are you Molly Marie Hoskins?”
Molly looked over at the woman. She was younger, probably in her late twenties. She was no handsome, dapper foreign spy boy. But she spoke so authoritatively that even Molly was immediately drawn towards her. Maybe those meds had been getting to her after all.
“Yes,” Molly said. “I like your hair,” she said, commenting on the woman's well-shampooed mousy brown locks.
The woman nodded, not bothering to thank her or return the compliment. She looked over at Katelyn, who was sitting next to her.
“The instructions said to come alone or with a guardian.”
“This is my guardian.”
The woman gave her and Katelyn a look. “Listen, I don't have time for any teenage girl bullshit. Your friend has got to go.”
“Okay, sorry, Katelyn.”
She watched her friend get up. “I'll wait outside.”
Molly looked back towards the agent, who flashed a badge of identification at her. It had an even younger photo of herself on it, along with her name.
“Rosa.”
“You're not supposed to say it out loud.”
“Okay what should I call you then?”
The woman thought for a second. “Esther, call me Esther.”
“Okay.”
“Okay so first of all, I'm going to tell you that we think you're bullshitting us.”
Molly was taken aback. “What?”
“Did you even fucking check the date of birth?”
“Umm...” Molly tried to remember.
“1903. Which would make Dr. Eigendorf exactly how many years old?”
Molly started counting on her fingers. “One hundred and...uh....”
The woman grabbed her hand forcefully.
“Ow!”
“The genocide of my people is not a fucking joke. Submitting multiple false reports to the Mossad is a good way to wake up with a pillow shoved down your nasal cavity. You have been warned.”
“I'm sorry, but it wasn't a false report. My dentist is a Nazi.”
“He could very well be a Nazi. But the odds of a practicing dentist in the year 2018 having served in Treblinka are so low as to be---”
“What brand of shampoo do you use? Your hair smells so---OW!!!”
Molly looked at the other coffee shop goers in desperation as she was drawn into an unbreakable headlock.
“Police...brutality....,” Molly managed to whisper.
“Fucking little goy brat. Don't you touch my hair.”
“Oh my gosh!” Molly saw Katelyn rushing into the shop to her rescue. “A grown woman is abusing a child!”
The woman let go of Molly as the other people in the shop finally began to take notice. “Don't even think about calling the cops, I have diplomatic immunity!”
She ran out of the store.
“Oh my gosh are you okay?”
“Never been better,” Molly said as she got up. “Free Palestine!” She shouted as she shook her fist at the shutting door.
Wolfgang hummed the Argonnerwaldlied as he pulled out his drill. The mischling child squirmed in the dentist chair in terror. He laughed under the blood-splattered surgical mask. He had always had so much fun torturing children. From the barracks of Treblinka to the neighborhood practices of Seattle. And while the pay for it wasn't quite enough to cover his plastic surgery costs, he was still able to sell some of the gold fillings he'd extracted from the children's mouths on the deep web.
“Zis one...might hurt quite a beet.”
“AAAAHHHHH!!!!”
After the deed was done, Wolfgang went off towards the sink. He washed the blood and saliva off his gloves. He washed off the nugget of gold, too, placing it carefully in his lab coat pocket as he made his way to the waiting room.
The child had to be carried out on a stretcher. He felt some glee as he saw the look of horror on the child's parents' faces.
“Oh my god, what have you done to my boy?!”
“He should recover een a month or so, do not worry.”
“You should be the one worried, I ought to sue you!”
Wolfgang laughed to himself as he walked back towards the back room.
The dental assistant smiled at him. Although she was of impure racial extraction, Wolfgang smiled back. The low height of her skull revealed her untermensch classification. But she made for an acceptable dental assistant despite her racial limitations. And true Aryan women were hard to come by in the profession these days.
“I heard that Molly Hoskins ees coming een today.”
“Oh yes, she should be here any minute.”
Wolfgang was excited. If there were ever a better specimen of Aryan maidenhood in King County, he had not seen one. Not since the master race had emerged from the mountains of Scandinavia had such a goddess existed among man. He ran his hands along the runic necklace he kept hidden under his shirt as he thought of her complexion.
“Molly, eet ees so nice to see you!”
The maiden was shy as ever, swiveling away from his touch. One day those hips would birth many beautiful blonde children. He looked deep into her blue eyes.
“Are you here for your checkup?”
“Yes,” the maiden said.
“Then come wees me. I weell make you feel good. Lots of novocaine for you today.”
“Okay, just one second.”
Suddenly, Wolfgang noticed the man standing behind Molly. A Negroid, he towered over the maiden. And in his large Negroid hand, he held the maiden's fair one.
Wolfgang felt a pain in his chest.
He began to slump towards the floor, his vision getting blurry. “Rassenschande!” He attempted to shout. But it came out so softly.
“Rassenschande!” He tried to shout again. But this time it was only a croak. Years of plastic surgery had done nothing to make his heart any younger. And this...he hadn't joined the SS for this. He hadn't pulled teeth out of dead bodies for this. He hadn't fled overseas and changed his identity for this.
Wolfgang felt the world slipping away from him as he lay on the floor of the waiting room. The maiden, looking over him, kicking him a little with her shoe.
“I told you he was a Nazi, Yakubu.”
And those were the last words the Nazi dentist would ever hear.
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