Hey! This is a songfic I came up with the other day. The song used is "Dentist!" from the musical entitled "Little Shop of Horrors." It's pretty much explaining Kowalski's fear of the dentist.
P.S. you'll see in a bit that I made Kowalski's first name Andrew. I thought it fit, so... yeah.
You could say that Skipper, Rico, and Private were more than mildly surprised upon learning of Kowalski's odd phobia.
"K'walski, we don't even have teeth!" Private pointed out yet again. "How could you even know if they're really all that frightening?"
Kowalski narrowed his eyes, which were still a little red from the half-hour he refused to come out of the water, in fear Alice would come back to take them to the dreaded dentist.
"Oh, you wouldn't understand!" he said angrily. "No one does."
Private and Skipper exchanged a worried look. Private decided it was time to go into therapist-mode.
"They why don't you explain it to us?" he said quietly, tapping the seat next to him in invitation.
Kowalski paused… he didn't really want to be cross-examined by his inferior (in rank, at least), but it would be nice to not have the team think he was nuts. He relented with a sigh, sitting on the proffered spot.
"It started… when I was six. I had a horrible under-bite - the bottom half of my beak protruded over the top half, and it was becoming hard to speak. So, my mother brought me to see a penguin dentist… Doctor Scrivello." He shuddered and lost himself in that dreadful memory.
*****
"Mama, I th-till don't want to thee the dent-ith-t!" Six-year-old Kowalski said, practically pleading. He blushed when he noticed another boy with a crack in his own beak look over at him, giggling. Kowalski's embarrassing lisp was even more prominent with the under-bite problem.
"I know, sweetie." his mother said sympathetically and she put her arm around her son. She did feel sorry, not many penguins - or birds, for that matter - had to do this. "But, it's just getting so hard to understand you. And I'm sure there's nothing to be afraid of, dear." She kissed the top of his head.
At that moment, a sweet-faced female penguin opened the door to the office where Kowalski had been hearing muffled screams come from. A tiny little robin girl, crying like the dickens, walked out. She was clutching her beak, covered in a dirty white cloth, and hollering for her father. Kowalski gulped.
The female penguin - an assistant - looked at a board covered in names, and called out, "Kowalski, Andrew?"
"Mama!" he cried, digging his face into his mother's side.
"Shh, sweetie, shh…" his mother cooed. She picked him up and began to carry him into the office.
"So sorry, ma'am." the nurse said with a distinct Brooklyn accent. "Only the kid. You're s'posed tuh stay out here."
"I promised my son I'd be by his side - he's terrified!" Kowalski's mom said indignantly.
"It's duh rules, ma'am." the nurse said apologetically.
Kowalski's heart sank as his mother set him back down.
"Mama-" he protested.
"Sweetheart, if you do this nicely, I promise there's a chocolate bar waiting for you afterwards."
"That'th bribery!" he cried.
"And, I'm sure Katrina will be thrilled to hear how you bravely defeated the dentist all by yourself." she added, winking at her boy.
Kowalski considered that for a second. Chocolate and a great story to tell his best friend?
She'd better make good! Kowalski thought as he followed the nurse into the office.
This office was nothing like the ones he'd seen in books… at least, the utensils weren't. They looked like the cold, medieval instruments of sorrow and suffering he'd looked at in his dad's borrowed history books. The word pain was practically written all over them, from the worn aluminum handles to the slightly rusted metal tips. Kowalski thought he was going to be sick.
But, before he came face-to-face with this morning's tilapia, he heard a voice - male, definitely not the pretty dental assistant from before. It came from behind the door, and Kowalski got up from the chair and looked outside the office.
There he was: the famous dentist, Orin Scrivello waddling down the hall with a haughty swagger. He was rumored to have been horribly sadistic, but he was the only dentist within a hundred-mile range that wasn't so expensive you wouldn't eat for a week.
Dr. Scrivello did a crazy, Elvis-esque dance move. He was… singing?
"When I was younger, just a bad little kid,
My mama noticed funny things I did,
Like shootin' puppies with a B-B gun
I'd poison guppies, and when I was done
I'd find a pussycat and bash in its head
That's when my mama said"
The nurse walked out of another door, holding some bibs and rolling her eyes. Obviously, she'd heard this before, maybe dozens, even hundreds of times. Though she knew the answer, she was required by job description to ask:
"What did she say?"
Kowalski saw the two of them coming down the hall, towards the office he was in. He shut the door and hid behind a laughing gas tank. He could still hear the doctor's voice getting closer:
"She said, "My boy, I think someday
You'll find a way
To make your natural tendencies pay…"
Kowalski heard a door open and shut - oh, thank God not the one to his room! He figured it was the one across the hall. He crept out of his hiding place and peeked out of the curtain on the door - the curtain across the hall had been flung open, so he could see well inside. Dr. Scrivello was actually dancing along to his song, a crazy, 50's style, complete with disturbing Elvis-esque leg shakes.
"You'll be a dentist!
You have a talent for causin' things pain
Son, be a dentist
People will pay you to be inhumane…"
The patient (and Kowalski could only watch in fear as Dr. Scrivello began prepping his terrifying tools of despair.
"Your temperament's wrong for the priesthood
And teaching would suit you still less
Son, be a dentist - you'll be a success!"
The dentist turned on the laughing gas machine. To the patient's and Kowalski's horror, he actually strapped the mask onto his own face and took a deep breath, exhaling in a maniacal laugh. The nurse from before, now accompanied by two companions, joined in the song tiredly - you could see on their faces just how much they hated their jobs.
"Here he is, folks, the leader of the plaque!"
"Watch him suck up that gas!"
"Oh, my god!"
"He's a dentist and he'll never ever be any good"
"Who wants their teeth done by the Marquis de Sade?"
Probably realizing there were legal issues, Dr. Scrivello took off the mask and, after grabbing a syringe filled with what Kowalski prayed was Novocain, wretched open his patient's beak and stuck it into his mouth."Oh, that hurts!" the poor boy moaned. Seeing that Dr. Scrivello had chosen his first tool, he added, "Wait! I'm not numb!"
"Oh, shaddup, open wide, here I come!"
Kowalski quickly shut the curtain and turned his back to the door. He shut his eyes as hard as he could, trying to stop the tears. The screams and the music mixed together, a symphony of pain, but he didn't dare cover his ears for fear he wouldn't hear the dentist coming for him in time to hide:
"I am your dentist
And I enjoy the career that I picked
I am your dentist
And I get off on the pain I inflict
I thrill when I drill a bicuspid
It's swell though they tell me I'm maladjusted…"
A door opened and closed again, and little Kowalski began to tremble. The maniac was already finished?! (When he wondered about this later on, he realized that it wasn't like there were actually any teeth, he'd just needed to align his beak back… somehow) Kowalski hid behind the tank again. The door of his office swung open, and the fearsome dentist stepped through.
Either Kowalski had picked a bad hiding place or he'd seen it before, because he strode right over, plucked Kowalski off the floor and plopped him on the chair, all with one hand. In his other flipper was a syringe, almost empty, but still had a few drops of a clear substance - obviously, the same syringe he'd used on the other boy!
As it neared Kowalski's skin, he squirmed and cried out, "I can't u-th that! I'll get acquired immune def-ith-in-thee thin-drome!"
Dr. Scrivello smirked and tossed the syringe over his shoulder carelessly. "You're right - it was out, anyway. Guess we'll have to… use the slate while it's clean, eh, smart-aleck?"
"What?!" Kowalski shrieked, squirming again. He froze when he saw the instrument in Dr. Scrivello's flipper. It looked exactly like a Middle-Ages mace, only miniature and vibrating. It was even made out of wood, except for the long silver spikes. The crazy dentist continued his song and the horrible instrument got closer and closer to little Kowalski's mouth:
"And though it may cause my patients distress,
Somewhere, somewhere in heaven above me
I know, I know, that my mama's proud of me…"
Kowalski was given a second's reprieve as Dr. Scrivello paused to cross himself across the chest:
"Oh, mama…"
Kowalski tried to wriggle out of the vicelike grip, but to no avail. He was slammed back onto the chair, and in the blink of an eye, two seat belts were pulled across his lap and chest.
"'Cause I'm a dentist…"
The mace was shoved into Kowalski's mouth, dug into the side of his jaw for a couple of seconds, then yanked out. The pain made Kowalski mute for a few seconds, shocked.
"… and a success!"
The dentist giggled a bit, then finally pulled out a normal dentistry tool - an electric water-squirt. He held it about two feet from Kowalski's face, aiming it into his open mouth.
"Say ah..."
""Ah…" Kowalski said weakly. The water tasted bitter - really bitter…
"Say ah…"
"Ah…"
"Say AHH!!!"
"AHH!!!" Kowalski had to gargle his scream.
The water stream stopped."Now spit!" Dr. Scrivello spat the water into the sink next to him.
Oh… that's why the water was so bitter. It had turned from a semi-clear liquid into… scarlet. Deep scarlet streaming into the hole.
Kowalski heard no music - the song was over. He finally had the chance to say the word he'd been yearning to say since he'd heard the first note:
"MOMMA!!!"
…
"I ended up needing eight stitches in my mouth after that day," adult-Kowalski concluded grimly, "including patching up a muscle he'd ripped right though. Additionally, my poor mother still had to take me to a real doctor to actually get my under-bite taken care of… the idiot actually thought the problem was inside my mouth! Then again… if he knew the problem was really the bone, he probably would've broken my jaw…" he shuddered.
Skipper and Private were horrified, and they both apologized for calling him a coward.
"But… you never actually said that." Kowalski said, more that a little hurt. He had only been six when that happened! Of course he was scarred for life!
"We said it in our minds." Skipper said.
Rico, on the other hand, had only one thing to say:
"Innagaddadavida?"
Kowalski looked at him, angry, and snapped back, "No, I DON'T know where you can get one of those maces!!!"I still can't believe I did all that to a little kid - especially little Kowalski. Poor kid...
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