(A/N: This is for all those fanfic readers who, like me, strongly dislike visiting the dentist and/or have had unpleasant experiences thereat. It was funnier in my head than it is on paper, but oh well. It might be appreciated anyway. The general premise/worldview, namely the thoroughly modern elements in an otherwise normal Middle-earth, is largely inspired by Erestor's compositions. The Mouth of Sauron belongs to Tolkien. Karl Brenner, D.D.S., is solely my invention and is not based on any one person, but is rather an exaggerated composite of all the bad experiences I've had with dentists plus a healthy dose of motivational cynicism.)
The Terror and the Teeth
Karl Brenner, D.D.S., glanced through his schedule for the day. Fifteen victims, scheduled for routine cleanings, were spaced at half-hour intervals with a break for lunch, the former guaranteeing that each appointment, which had been filled no less than three months in advance, would run progressively later. Hey, they could not blame him; with the pitiful local economy, he could not afford to hire a trained assistant or two. Anyway, it was good, he thought. After all, the folk of this nation needed to learn the virtue of patience almost as much they needed to understand the pure evils of sugar, acidic beverages, crunchy snacks, etc. In fact, if Karl Brenner, D.D.S., were to have his way, all people would get their sustenance intravenously, thus keeping their mouths pristine and immaculate.
With only a few minutes to go, he looked at his first appointment. 'Mouth of Sau Ron,' Kristen, his receptionist and sometime girlfriend, had written. He grinned wickedly. 'Mouth of' was their code for someone who had all manner of dental problems, usually starting with many cavities, crooked teeth, and puffy gums, or had not seen a dentist in at least five years, or, as was most often the case, both. He relished 'Mouth of' cases, because he could not only watch the pain in the victim's face as he cleaned, poked, prodded, and scratched the mouth with all manner of instruments expressly designed to deliver maximum discomfort to a small area but also lecture the victim for the entire half-hour on the importance of proper dental hygiene. Of course, the 'Mouth of' designation was originally intended to remind him that, although he could hate the sins being perpetrated against the mouth, he was not supposed hate the individual attached to the mouth. In this he was only successful if the mouth in question belonged to an attractive female, at which point he would extol the virtues of foreign saliva, etc. in keeping a girl's mouth healthy. More importantly, the first appointment with a 'Mouth of' case subsequently led to the scheduling of several lucrative appointments wherein he would endeavor, through the aid of unnecessary extractions and overpriced metal appliances, to bring the victim into the full life of a normal, healthy-smiled member of society. Though he did not yet know it, this would indeed be the first day of the rest of Ron Sau's life.
In the ill-named reception area, which consisted of three metal folding chairs and a lamp stand covered in two-month-old magazines, the Mouth of Sauron sat, contemplating his purpose in life. For some reason that he had yet to understand, filling out medical forms did that. It must have had something to do with summarizing his entire physiological history in a series of yes or no questions. Of course, there was no guarantee that said forms were even readable, assuming someone ever bothered to try. The Hand of Sauron was the one who, in beautiful calligraphy, wrote out Sauron's diplomatic missives. Of course, said missives usually boiled down to 'Surrender. Your ass is mine,' but the point was that they were visually equal to the work of, for example, Gondor's best scribes. The rest of Sauron's literate servants got by with what could politely be called 'chicken scratch,' though if the Mouth was honest with himself, it ranked below all but the worst doctors on the readability scale. Fortunately, that was now the receptionist's problem and not his.
Karl Brenner, D.D.S., poked his head out. There was only one person out there, and all the indicators in his garb pointed to this being the 'Mouth of' case. He was clad in all the full, vibrant, exciting range of the color black, and his garments all bore signs of age and abuse. No skin was visible save on his face, and even there only his mouth and its immediate surrounds could be seen. He was wearing a jagged and slitted helmet with no eyeholes. It was perhaps the most effective mechanism Karl Brenner, D.D.S., had ever seen for covering blindness, if that was indeed this man's problem. It made no effort to conform to a society that generally brushed such disabilities aside. It did not say 'Blind man in the vicinity, please tread carefully,' as sunglasses did. It screamed 'Blind man coming through, get the hell out my way.' As a self-diagnosed sadist, Karl Brenner could understand that sentiment. Most people in his predicament put on proverbial sunglasses and generally avoided contact with people lest they be tempted to hurt them. Karl Brenner had put on the proverbial helmet, embracing his affliction and proclaiming it to the world by becoming a Doctor of Dental Surgery, where he could enjoy inflicting pain on others and help them at the same time. Of course, this particular helmet presented him with a difficult decision. On the one hand, it would make it easy for him to focus on the task at hand and its contours would provide easy places for him to set his tools. On the other hand, he would be totally unable to see the fear and pain in the victim's eyes, which was perhaps his favorite part of this job.
"Sau… Ron Sau?" he asked. The person stood up and walked to him. "Karl Brenner, D.D.S." said Karl Brenner, D.D.S., shaking the man's gloved hand. The handshake was always good for lulling folks into a false sense of security. "Right this way, please" he added, gesturing for the man to follow him. His decision about the helmet had also been made; if the man's lips, teeth, and chin looked like that, he probably did not want to see the rest of the face.
The Mouth of Sauron took a seat in the examination chair with some trepidation. Khamul had told him all about the hideous pain that dentists could and frequently did inflict in the course of a routine visit. Granted, he knew that the Nazgul could be pulling his leg, but still. When one had spent as many years in the service of Sauron as he had, anything new and unknown was by definition slightly frightening.
Even a dentist as experienced as Karl Brenner, D.D.S., winced as he took his first close look at the man's mouth. He tried to ignore everything outside his area of expertise: the pale, oily, dirty skin, the deep gouges radiating from his mouth that, being too regular for coincidence, were probably some form of ritual scarification, the lips blackened to the point where they were hardly recognizable as such. His first assessment of this mouth was that it had every problem in the book and probably some new ones as well. He would have to clean the teeth first, to get rid of what looked shudderingly like blood stains, before he could see what shape the teeth themselves were in, but cavities were probably the least of this man's worries. His gums were so gray and his teeth so crooked that it was a wonder they had not fallen from his mouth already. Before he touched anything, he told the man to smile and snapped a quick Polaroid. This mouth was without a question the most grismal he had ever seen, and he had seen more than a few that were both grisly and dismal. Should he succeed in cleaning this up, it would become the new 'before and after' mouth he used in his advertising to proclaim his great abilities. Should he fail, he would probably also use it in his advertising, though in that case as a warning of what happened to those who did not visit him every six months as they ought to.
Karl Brenner, D.D.S., sighed as he pulled on his rubber gloves with a decisive snap. This went beyond enjoying the pain of those whose mouths he improved. This was a challenge to his abilities as a Doctor of Dental Surgery, and this was more than just another victim: it was a mission. Grimly he turned on the brush and began attacking the stains on the man's teeth. He was briefly tempted to ask about the man's diet but then, deciding that he really did not want to know the answer, plunged into his standard lecture on the importance of brushing one's teeth twice daily.
The Mouth of Sauron tuned out the dentist rather quickly. This was nowhere near as painful as he expected; it was slightly uncomfortable, but nothing he could not handle. With regards to what the dentist was saying, he figured that, having not brushed for centuries without any ill effects, he would continue to not do so. How could he savor the lingering flavor of a freshly killed sacrifice if he washed out the bits of meat stuck between his teeth immediately the ceremonial feast? The ends of his mouth twitched upwards in what, on any other human, might have been considered a grin. Any priest would take delight in being singled out by his god and taken directly into service, and he was not only serving Sauron personally, and in a fairly significant position at that, but was also allowed to continue as, in effect, the chief priest. Fun as it was bearing messages from the Lord of the Earth to his low and often unwilling people, there was nothing quite like leading the worship of him. The Mouth of Sauron loved the smell of burning incense, which might or might not cover the smell of burning flesh, the screams that characterized the responsorial worship, and the self-mutilation.
He was brought back to reality as the dentist turned off the brush and instead started using a metal pick. He could imagine that his teeth, though still far off-white, were no longer so badly stained and were thus significantly less intimidating. He wondered, and not for the first time, what had inspired Sauron to switch to an insurance plan with dental. He did not like to second-guess the deity to whom he had devoted his entire life and then some, given that it was a stretch to call his current state life, but did Sauron honestly think that orcs with healthy gums and straight teeth would be more fearsome?
The pain was beginning to get to him. A succession of sharp, stabbing pains in his gums insured that. The fact that the dentist seemed to be scratching across an exposed nerve did not improve matters. He was beginning to understand why Khamul had said what he did; this was a fairly distinct method of torture. He wondered what it would cost to employ this dentist in the dungeons of Barad-dur. He would have to leave it to the Witch King to crunch the numbers, since math was never his strong point, but he figured that if Sauron's treasury could afford the extra cost of the dental insurance, it could easily handle one more torturer. More to the point, if he offered the dentist the job he could get out of the rest of this painful cleaning.
The pick withdrew before he could decide how to phrase the offer and was quickly replaced by another, though this one vibrated unpleasantly. The Mouth of Sauron was beginning to wonder how much more of this he could stand when it struck the exposed nerve.
A few minutes later, after a futile attempt to keep the furious patient from leaving, Kristen the receptionist found Karl Brenner, D.D.S., lying in a pool of blood with the sonic pick thrust through his eye. With surprisingly little hysteria, she managed to call the police to report the murder and then began the long process of canceling all the appointments on the calendar. For the most part, she was successful in not minding the pleased tone with which most people reacted to the news that they would not be seeing the dentist anytime soon.