Andrew Jeromski
The Fifth Dentist

“You see William, it’s a practical decision. “In truth, it would probably utterly ruin your family, your survival would,” added the doctor.

The sun was starting to slip behind the rooftops of the boulevard when William took his leave of the company and walked outside through the silt-clouded glass door.

“A fine Friday indeed,” he thought to himself, checking the time on his watch.

Yet another relentless week of back-breaking labor behind him, William was in high spirits. There was coin in the pocket and beer in the belly and the earthly cares of a day-laborer seemed as far away as the opulence of Princes and Kings. The streets were cast in evening’s artificial glow: it was always more pleasant to William on Fridays.

He thrust both his hands into the pockets of his worn black woolen great-coat, and with the right began probing for his tobacco pouch. Locating his prize, he began to roll a small pinch of the dark leaf into a crudely formed cigarette as he casually sauntered towards the drowsy sanctum of the terribly small and crowded flat he shared with his wife and young son.

He whistled a tune that they sang earlier that evening amidst the end-week revelry of his fellow day-laborers; it was a jaunty tune, and William–safe within the unassailable walls of recent imbibery–made it even more so with his treatment.

There were many men out of work, and it was not at all unusual to happen upon those who had taken to soliciting charity from the steady flow of foot traffic that passed along the busier streets. There were laws against this sort of thing of course, for the benefit of the wealthier classes, but for the most part, if a vagrant shown no outward signs of mental instability and kept his genitals out of view, he could expect a relatively small and infrequent amount of trouble from the local constabulary.

William passed by them all the time. Sometimes he dropped a coin or two into their cups, other times he didn’t. He never spoke to them.

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Andrew Jeromski
The Fifth Dentist

We have seen the darkest of days.

We have seen our brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers poisoned by the very air they breathe. We have watched the rivers and lakes turn stagnant. We have seen the earth rise up beneath us and swallow our cities whole. We have run from the churning seas when they would wash us away like grains of sand. We have stood both as victims and as accomplices; we have shared the same fate as those who bear the greatest blame for the state of our world. We have all finally become equal.

If there ever was such a being as “God,” he has long since abandoned us to our fate.

My father used to say: “There is no glory in banging your head against the wall. You’ll find that your skull will always yield first.”

He was right.

At first, as people started to grasp what was happening, there was a great uproar.

“They are destroying the environment for the sake of greed,” was a commonly heard term on network news shows. “They,” of course, being big business.

There were oil spills, nuclear meltdowns and documented cases of companies brazenly dumping volatile chemicals into water supplies. There were cancer clusters, workers with more toxic chemicals in their bloodstream than would be found in a year’s supply of 10W-30 motor oil and the ever-present slick black marine life, covered in petroleum, desperately trying to survive in a world that humans were killing at an increasingly rapid pace.

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