Downtime In Dreamland

It's tough out here.
I just got jumped the other day. It was about 7 pm, almost dark, and I was still walking back home from Zenphlac's house. I knew I should have taken the shortcut this time. You know how it is.

Like I said, I got beat down that night.
I know I had stayed at Z's house a little bit later than usual. I think it was on purpose. That night, I didn't even want to go home. I stalled as much as I could. Told Z that I didn't understand what we "learned" in class that day. I didn't care which class. I just really did not want to go home. Isaac was going to be cracked out that night. My older brother, Isaac started using calcoholic encaine a few months before the night I got knocked out. It was one thing that he used to bully me, like a regular brother, but this was just so hard to watch. I'd rather be thrown onto the bed repeatedly than to watch him, sitting there, eyes sunken in with needles in both arms. I don't even want to talk about the headgear.

I took the long way home.
So, I was trying to prepare my mind for what I'd see when I got home. I was much too distressed to realize what was coming up, in front of me. It was Tyrre. He was the last man I had hoped to see in this mindset. Tyrre was the guy who gave my brother the drivers in the first place. You can believe Isaac never returned them. Now, I had to pay.

This is how the beating went down:
Two other very black men came from behind the nearest trees. One other man must have showed up while I was watching Tyrre dig into his pockets for that rattling chain he stole off a haunting ghost, so he could probably use it to smack me with. A fourth man, whose leather was red rather than very black, seemed to walk.. almost time-lapsed.. from up the street with a long cane in his left paw. It was about to start. I was about to be beat to hell. Literally.

I was scared, though.
Of course, the first thing that I did was duck, and try to run under their arms' lengths. The cane man made sure I did not. Crack! A scuffed plastic cane blasted toward me, and remained above the bridge of my nose as it somehow pushed me back up, onto my feet. When I had finally risen, the two very black men held both of my arms behind my back. The third man grabbed my legs. I watched the cane man walk around me and I soon felt the cane once again, under my throat. Then came Tyrre. He did not do what I had imagined, which was inflict any direct bodily harm with that rattling ghost chain. Instead, he wrapped the chain around his wrist, no where near his actual hand. This somehow caused his fist to actually glow.

I knew I was in trouble.
He had the other men get their licks in, before he did what he was going to. That was the beating, technically. What happened immediately after, was the part that changed me. I found that my mouth had been stretched open on both sides, exposing my teeth. Tyrre, with his glowing hand, reached toward my face. He began flicking the teeth out of my mouth, one by one, as if they were little pebbles. No blood. I watched as each tooth fell to the asphalt. It was practically painless, so all that went through my head was that I could probably get those put back in by the doctors at Nana's place.. until the next thing happened. I was let go. I did not trust that I was free yet, of course, so I stayed put. I think he knew. Quickly, he began to take each of the individual teeth and grind them into the street, like chalk. He made it a point to make sure that each tooth was at least broken in half. I did not know what to have done.

It was over.
Almost as soon as I saw the last tooth snap and crumble into a powder, Tyrre and his buddies had left. I was still in the same spot, as I simply dropped to my knees, in front of my teeth. All I could do was stare down, in confusion, as I started to drool over the remains of my molars. That was when I noticed that one had not been broken. This was the last full tooth on Earth.