Work Text:
[Recorder clicks on.]
TIMOTHY STOKER:
(CLICKS TONGUE.) Let's see. Tim Stoker, Archival- Archivist? Archival Assistant with the-
SASHA JAMES:
What are you doing?
TIMOTHY STOKER:
Oh, hey, Sasha! Just playing Archivist for the day, I guess.
SASHA JAMES:
You're missing the petrifying stare.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
And the raging stick up my arse.
SASHA JAMES:
(LAUGHING.) Okay, but really, what are you up to? Since when do you read statements?
TIMOTHY STOKER:
Since even though Jon is a major gargoyle with his ‘petrifying stare’ and grade A stick up his arse- I'm still his friend. Trust me, he was not this pressed back in research. I'm just trying to help him out a bit. Get some of these statements out of the way so we can get some proper work done.
SASHA JAMES:
(NOW TEASING.) Oh, and what's that?
TIMOTHY STOKER:
You know, I still haven't quite figured it out. Wanna help me, say- 8 o'clock this Friday? We could put our pretty little heads together over drinks and think of something better to do than reading statements and conducting follow ups all day.
SASHA JAMES:
Now that is tempting, but I'm busy Friday. I'm sure you and your pretty head can figure something out all by yourself.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
Hey, worth a shot.
SASHA JAMES:
But, I am free Saturday.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
Suddenly, so am I. Hash out the details with you later?
SASHA JAMES:
Sure. Also- it's ‘gorgon’.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
If you're trying to call me gorgeous, I think you may have butchered it just a bit.
SASHA JAMES:
No. You called Jon a gargoyle for having a petrifying gaze. Medusa was a gorgon sister, she turned people to stone by looking at them. A gargoyle is one of those singing stone statues in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
Wow. How does you explaining that make you even more beautiful, Ms. James?
SASHA JAMES:
You can figure that one out by yourself, Mr. Stoker. I'm heading out to pick up my lunch.
(FOOTSTEPS OF SASHA JAMES LEAVING.)
TIMOTHY STOKER:
(TAKES A BREATH.) O-kay. Tim Stoker, Archival Assistant with the Magnus Institute, recording the statement of Cruz Batista, regarding his encounter with an odd beach crab and his own toothaches. Statement given 31st of August, 2006.
Let's go then.
TIMOTHY STOKER (STATEMENT):
I love crabs. Not like to eat, but the animal. You know? I always thought they were the coolest things. When my family would go to the aquarium when I was younger, my siblings were always more interested in the sharks and cool looking fish. Not me, no, I had my nose pressed up against the glass to all of the crab enclosures until I was physically dragged to the next exhibit.
I'd often bore my family with crab facts that I thought were the coolest thing in the world. I'd print out pictures of crabs and I could identify so many of them. I knew what they ate, where they lived, and so much more. Kind of crazy that with all of those signs that I went undiagnosed as a kid for autism.
But crabs, crabs have been my favourite thing for as long as I could remember. Now though, it's a painful way I feel towards them. Even with everything, I can't bring myself not to be amazed with them. How could I? How could I give up on the things I've loved my entire life.
I recently finished secondary school, I was excited to be done with it, you know? I wanted to go to university, I was excited. I was going to study maths and statistics, the only thing I'm more passionate abouts than crabs. I'm- I don't know if I'm excited for it anymore. If I can even be excited. I think I am, I want to be. But it's not going to be what I hoped.
A day after the leavers ceremony, I hopped on the train and traveled up to Brighton Beach. I always loved that beach, it's where my parents took us when we were small for holiday. It helped that my grandparents’ house was near there, so we always had someplace to stay when we visited. The beach was special to me, it held so many memories for me. I wanted to go there by myself to celebrate starting uni in a few months since I knew I probably wouldn't have the time to visit once term started.
I got to the beach early in the morning. I took the earliest train I could so I could have plenty of time to comb over the shore during low tide. I was hoping to find some crabs. Low tide, early in the morning when it's not yet bright, is a good time to go hunting for crabs. Little hermit crabs always go about searching the washed up shells and whatnot for new homes, it's so cool to watch.
I had my jacket on, it was still cool when I got to the beach. The sun was barely even poking over the horizon and it was quiet except for the gentle hush and hiss of the waves. Another good thing about getting to the beach so early in the morning is that there are hardly any people around. Yeah, you'll see a stray dog walker or lone person here or there, but for the most part the beach was mine. I loved it.
I took off my shoes and socks. I remember how cool the sand was, not yet baked by the sun and still damp from dew and the high tide from hours ago. I left my shoes near the entrance to the beach, I wasn't scared about losing them. No one wants a ratty pair of trainers and old socks anyways.
I was so excited to be starting university soon and being on the beach all by myself was nothing but a wonderful addition to how I felt. I felt free. I was going to make a life for myself, and it started right there on that beach.
I walked for some time, looking for little hermit crabs. I knew the beach had plenty, but surprisingly I didn't see a single one. I was disappointed, sure, to not see the crabs. I loved the little hermit crabs that tuttled about with their homes on their backs, but it didn't ruin my day that I didn't see any. It was weird certainly, but I had been seeing fewer and fewer crabs on all the beaches. More people and pet stores were grabbing crabs off the beach to sell them as cheap, novelty souvenirs to tourists who would inevitably kill them in a week. It was a sad fact, but something I accepted.
After a while of walking, I turned around and headed back to the entrance of the beach where I came in. The sun was up now and some people were setting up their beach blankets, getting an early start to the day. I followed my footsteps back to the beach entrance where I left my shoes. I didn't mind how the sand clung to my shorts as I sat down and began putting my socks on.
The first sock went on without a problem, but as I stuck my foot in the second sock I felt something hard. I pulled my foot out and reached my hand in instead. Getting little rocks or clumps on sand in your socks was inevitable when coming to the beach, so I wasn't very surprised. I put my hand inside my sock and felt around. Fallen at the end near the toes was something hard. I wrapped my fingers around it, trying to feel what it was before I pulled it out, and suddenly felt a sharp pain in one of my fingers.
I was more surprised than hurt and quickly whipped my hand out of my sock. Clamping onto my finger was a small hermit crab. Its large pincher gripping on to my poor finger with all of its tiny might. The crab wasn't what I was most surprised to see, though. What shocked me the most was what the crab was using as a home. Now I have seen crabs use trash, bottles, and things that very much aren't shells. With all the human trash in the oceans it's just as sad as it is unsurprising. But what that little crab had in its back wasn't the remains of a toy or a bottle cap.
It was a tooth.
A human tooth.
I was so shocked that I didn't move. The crab continued to grip onto my finger, the rest of its little body hiding in the hollowed inside of what I could only guess was a molar.
I don't know how I knew it was a human tooth, but deep down something just told me that it belonged to a person. I didn't know what to do. Finding human teeth on the beach- that was on the same level as finding a body, wasn't it? It could be considered evidence in a missing person's case or something more sinister. And here was a tiny crab, finding his home in the lost tooth of man.
My mind was racing. I didn't know what to do. While I was so lost in my thoughts, the crab realized it was safe and let go of my finger. It scuttled away before I even registered that it had let go, taking its tooth with it. When I came back to reality and the crab was gone, I felt sick to my stomach. Out of all the trash in the ocean, the crab had decided to use the hollowed remains of someone's tooth to live in. I should have been faster to do something. Quicker to act and not sit there like a blind fool. Maybe I could've taken the crab to the authorities then.
But no. I wouldn't have done that. I couldn't have, not when I knew that the police would kill the poor crab. Rip it out of its home for the tooth. I couldn't let them do that. But what could I do?
Nothing. It's not like I could change how I acted- or didn't act.
After carefully checking my sock and shoes for any more crabs, I quickly put them on and left the beach. I went home, feeling more aware of my own teeth than I ever had before.
I remember, tracing my mouth with my tongue, wondering where the tooth should have been placed. Where it belonged. I felt sick, even when I got home and inspected my own teeth. I looked, trying to map where it should have gone. Trying to remember what the crab's tooth looked like.
No matter how much time passed, I couldn't get that tooth out of my head. It made me scared for my own teeth. Not scared, really- but anxious. I don't know why. I don't know why I was scared. All I knew is that upwards of 15 times a day I would be going to the bathroom with the sole purpose of looking at my teeth. I'd run my finger along my spitty gums and count them, I'd feel them to make sure they weren't loose, and I'd brush them until my mouth was overflowing with spit and foamy toothpaste broth.
It became an odd sort of ritual. At any time of the day I would be compelled to go to the bathroom, to abandon what I was doing to check on my teeth. I always felt so relieved when I finished my little tasks and saw that my teeth were okay. Annoyed that I took 20 minutes to do so, but relieved. That was until some days later when I felt such a pain in my mouth that it woke me up in the middle of the night.
I woke up, my mouth throbbing and immediately I was worried. Immediately I thought of my teeth. I ran to the bathroom, not even trying to be quiet even though the rest of my family was sleeping. In the dim, orange light of the bathroom I examined my teeth. The pain was coming from a tooth on my jaw, near the very back of my mouth. It looked okay, it wasn't cracked or brown with whatever cavities were made of. But it hurt.
So, I did what every person does when they find a part of their body that hurts- I touched it. I touched the very top of the aching tooth and felt it move under the very little pressure I gave it. The touch added to the pain and tears filled my eyes. I knew I should have just downed some pain killers and went back to bed. Take a better look at it in the morning when I could go to the dentist and get actual help. But I was so scared. For weeks this is what I had been worried about, and now it was finally happening. I couldn't just go back to sleep.
I carefully put my thumb and first finger on either side of the tooth and tried to wiggle it. It gave easily under my touch, but I could still feel it digging in, stuck there in my mouth. Spit dripped from my lips and tears silently fell from my eyes as I stared at myself in the mirror with my hand in my mouth. It was loose, loose like it was nothing more than a baby tooth.
I wiggled it and felt a pinch inside my mouth, inside the tooth. Now that I knew that it was loose I couldn't leave it alone. I had to pull it out. It's like the way some people get when they get a pimple or a scab, they only feel better once it's popped or picked away, leaving behind a red, irritated bump of skin that oozes as your body desperately tries to heal itself.
I stood in the mirror, for I don't know how long, wiggling that tooth. Sometimes I would get brave and twist it, but it hurt. Finally after what felt like ages when my face was wet with tears and the fingers in my mouth were all pruney from spit, it came loose enough for me to remove it. I felt it. I felt the things inside my mouth shift and I knew. I knew.
One more tug was all it took.
I was breathing hard now as I finally wrenched my hand from my mouth. Spit and blood dripped down my chin and on to the night shirt I always wore. I didn't care. I didn't care that the front of my shirt was already cold and damp with spit. I didn't care that blood was now pooling from the open hole in my gums and filling my mouth. I had the tooth. I had it. The pain it had been causing me was gone and that's all that mattered.
I pulled my hand from my mouth, a firm grip on the tooth. It was red and gummy, bloody and slick with everything that kept a tooth in place. But there was something else about it. Something wrong. It was moving. At the base Of the tooth, where the pointed root should have been, there was a small, gore covered leg that I immediately recognized as a crab leg.
Inside my tooth, tucked neatly inside, was a hermit crab.
I stared at the crab tooth for a long time. It hid in its shell- the tooth, for a long time, but when it finally became brave enough to reach it's body out of its enamel shell, I got scared. I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to see the thing that grew inside my tooth. In all my fear I dropped it down the open drain of the sink.
When I looked down the drain I could still see it, the movement that said the crab was alive. That wouldn't kill it. No, I knew it wouldn't. But I knew what would. I quickly dove under the bathroom sink and grabbed all the cleaning supplies and what else I could find. Then I poured them one by one down the bathroom drain. Filling the room with mixed chemical fumes as I frantically tried to kill the crab I had dropped down the drain.
After I had emptied the bathroom of all the chemicals I could find, I checked the drain again. This time there was no movement. For the first time since before my mouth had begun to ache, I felt relieved. It was dead and gone. But so was my tooth. A tooth was a small price to pay for getting rid of a parasite, or so I thought.
It was still pretty early when I killed the crab in the drain, so I quickly tossed the empty cleaner bottles in the main trash and did my best to clean up my mouth. For as bloody as the place where the tooth used to go was, it didn't hurt. That was all I cared about. One tooth was nothing. There were many people with missing teeth. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that I was clean and free of that sick little crab that had somehow managed to find its way into my tooth.
Or so I thought.
Ever since that day, it's continued to happen. At least once every week I'll have the most terrible toothache, and every time I look it's another one of them. Those crabs. I've lost 17 teeth now. That's 17 crabs I have had to rip from my mouth. Not all of them want to leave. No, I learned that the first one was easy. Some dig and burrow and fight to stay planted in my mouth. But I won't let them. God, I won't let them stay there. Maybe if they didn't hurt, but-
I don't know how I've managed to keep it hidden this long. I don't talk anymore, not to my family at least, and I've stopped taking meals with them. I wear a face mask whenever I can, I don't want someone to see. I would never be able to explain this to them. They'd think I was crazy.
I don't know how I'm going to go to uni like this. I mean- at this point I want to just take them all out. Rip out all of my teeth before they can become infected. I can't keep them clean, no, I tried. But if I remove them then there's nothing for them to crawl into and to contaminate. I can be safe, I can be clean.
Out of the 17 teeth I've removed, I kept the latest two for this. For evidence, I guess. I don't like looking at them, I don't like having them in my room, but God I need to know that they're real. That I'm not crazy, that they were inside of me. That's why I'm giving them to you. I want you to see them with your own two eyes and know I'm not making this up. That I had to birth these horrible things from my mouth like some disgusting alien c-section.
In all my disgust for them though, I cannot still help but to find myself enamored by them. They're just- they're crabs. Nothing about how they act or how they look suggests otherwise. But I know better. I know better. Take care of them for me, my teeth. They didn't do anything to ask to be born like this, just like I didn't ask to bear them into the world.
TIMOTHY STOKER:
End statement.
Christ. What a way to start the day. Well, I did a little digging into Cruz Batista. He has not responded to any of the calls or emails I've left him. I don't think he's very interested in doing a follow up. Whatever pictures I find of him online, he never shows his teeth…
Had Jon been the one to read this statement, I'm sure he'd go on some spiel about Batista suffering from paranoid hallucinations and whatever other mental health problems he could think of to excuse such behaviour. Usually, I try to be a little more… compassionate with statements, but I might have to take a leaf out of Jon's book for this one.
Batista did claim to give two of his teeth-crabs to the Institute as evidence for his at home dentistry, and while there is a form here that says he did leave two hermit crabs in a terrarium with a whole list of ways to take care of ‘em, nothing says where these crabs are. I checked artifact storage, but no crabs or teeth that fit the time frame were ever logged there. I guess it's possible someone could've taken them home as a pet, but if they did that, then why wouldn't they follow up with the statement then?
(THERE IS A PAUSE, THEN THE SOUND OF TAPPING AS TIMOTHY STOKER THUMPS HIS FINGERS ON THE DESK.) I mean, I have seen the tank in Elias’ office once or twice. Big thing. The few times I was up there and he wasn't, it looked like there could be crabs in it. But that's weird. That's weird, right? Elias having crab-teeth as some desk pet.
Maybe I'll bring it up to Sasha when she comes back. I'm sure Jon won't think it's worth the trouble to come up with an excuse to snoop in Elias’ office anyways. And Martin- (HE SNICKERS.) Love the guy, but for such a big man you'd never guess him squeamish about this kind of stuff.
Well, end recording.
[Recorder clicks off.]