#long teeth

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When you’re seventeen and your town becomes a national obsession, the thing you notice the most is the traffic.

The spring that Bobby disappeared, news vans from half the stations in the country clogged the streets of Encino and Reseda. Reporters bought up every motel room from Santa Clarita to Temecula, and once Daniel woke up to see the entire block around his apartment cordoned off because someone from Nancy Grace tried to land a helicopter on the roof of a parking garage.

It took an hour to get to school, another thirty minutes to get to Mr. Miyagi’s place a mile away. Lucille drove him everywhere those first few weeks, even though she’d let him use her car a few times with Louie the year before. She even tried to hold his hand and walk him to the front door of West Valley High before he put his foot down.

Just because one of his tormentors had vanished into the ether didn’t mean the others were stepping down. In fact, it seemed to have whipped Johnny and his remaining gang of idiots back into their pre-tournament bloodlust, slamming kids at random into lockers, getting sent to the principal’s office for cussing out teacher’s and, at one point, whipping a stapler at the school nurse’s head.

Ali’s cheerleading practice was moved inside, and bruises started to pattern her legs from the constant bumps against the hardwood floor. They cancelled prom, and parents started petitioning for a curfew at sundown. Lucille wasn’t the only one getting clingier with her kid. Maybe the loved, prized, only child of a state senator today, maybe a helpless little girl tomorrow. Maybe five. Maybe they’d all be plucked from their beds, one by one, until California was nothing but adults locking their doors.

But of course that didn’t happen. Daniel suffered a few weeks of what felt like a government mandated grounding, only moving between school and home and Mr. Miyagi’s, before the news vans and squad cars started to thin out. He and Ali broke up. Mr. Miyagi got a letter from an old flame and they started planning a trip to Okinawa. Life went on.

By the time graduation came around, his Ma was letting him drive his gleaming yellow Ford all over Los Angeles. Bobby was still missing, but the town seemed to have dropped it’s shoulders, reassuring itself that this was a one-time thing. Tragic, freak, of course. But no one was coming for their children. It was over.

Until the phone rang in his Lexus a few decades and a lifetime later.

Sweat soaked the back of Daniel’s dress shirt as he sat in rush hour traffic, trying not to inhale the fumes of the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. Why did he always try to book it from the dealership to the dojo right at five? Wasn't the whole point of being the boss that he could come and go as he pleased?

The display screen on his radio lit up with IDIOT, and he tapped his thumb against it with barely a glance.”

“Hey Johnny.”

Long Teeth // The Shacklewell Arms // 17.11.2019

Finally finished my Illustration homework. The task was to draw a monster using words we pick randomly. I got: no legs, beak, long teeth, long tail and jewelry

I HAVE A NEW DEMON GAL, HER NAME IS CHERRI!!!! 

(pronounced Sheh-REE)