Count The Teeth

I only know a few things but one of them is this:

Before you let a stranger charm you with their smile, count the teeth; before you take their outstretched hand, count the fingers.

Sometimes people have extra, or less of, or a difference in something perfectly naturally. It’s when the variation is too perfect. Too smooth. Too artificially there in a way that trickles down the neck to notice. That’s when there’s something wrong.

I remember this everywhere I go. And I am always going places. And I am always looking.

 I am at a party. There are people and the people are having fun. Music is playing but I do not know the music. Everyone looks different and unique but some of them look different and unique in the same ways.  I like this music even though I don’t know it. There are three girls over by the drinks table. Each of them has a distinct hair colour. They are wearing pretty dresses. They are talking to two men, flirting with them, and also with each other maybe, I cannot tell. I look at them more, their faces are dotted with freckles and friendliness. I feel I’d like to be their friend and one of them glances at me and smiles in a way that says I could be. Then I see it. Their fingers are long. Longer than they should be. One has two extra on one hand, another one on each. The beautiful brown-haired girl who laughs like sunshine has no thumbs. 

I point to them. “Wrong,” I say. And they are gone. 

There is a beat. The two men blink, and carry on talking with each other. The party continues, and I wade through it. Sometimes people wave to me or smile, and I look, and I count, and they are fine.  I dance. I can’t remember learning how to dance but my body does it anyway. A man approaches me. His hair is like wheat, and his eyes seem to dance in time with me. He says things I will not remember later but they sound nice right now. I feel as though I want to kiss him but then I look at him again. I look at his smile and his mouth is all teeth. Too many teeth. 

“Wrong,” I say, pointing. And he is gone.

I am at the beach. I think the sand feels good underfoot, and I like how the water seems to lap at me like a playful pet. There are always more wrong people at the beach. Most people are barefoot, and hands and feet at the same time are tricky. I find myself pointing every few moments as I stroll along the shoreline. One entire family is wrong. All but one. A small boy is suddenly left alone in the water. But then a moment later he is giggling and splashing around. He is just a kid alone at the beach, and that’s all he needs to know about himself.

Further along, a couple comes into view. They are very affectionate for a public beach. The woman has breasts so cartoonishly large it is almost grotesque, and the bulge in the man’s trousers should by all logic prevent him from walking. Not to mention she has at least ten too many teeth, I can count teeth very quickly now, and he has two big toes on either side of the same foot. Sometimes it’s so obvious I want to laugh. So I do.

“Wrong,” I say, turning away with a chuckle and a point. I don’t see them go, but I know they are gone. 

I am on a busy highstreet. It’s a day that is neither completely cloudy nor completely sunny. More of the people look right here. I have walked past several shops without spotting anyone. And I am looking at everyone. A mother is walking hand-in-hand with a little girl who has a blue bow in her hair. The girl holds an ice cream in her other hand. Strawberry. They both look happy. But that hand clutching the ice cream cone has one more finger than it should.

I close my eyes and point. “Wrong,” I say. And when I open them, the little girl is gone. 

For a moment the mother looks about, frantic and distraught. But then she remembers she never had a child, and keeps walking.

I am at a bar. A person is playing a piano somewhere. A woman sits beside me and buys me a drink. I let her. I talk to her. She talks to me. It’s nice, and I like looking at her. Her face is ordinary. Beautifully ordinary. After a while she puts her hand on mine. I count the fingers. Five. I look at her other hand holding a glass where the last drops of amber liquid cling to slowly waning ice. I count the fingers. Five. She leans in to kiss me, and the kiss is like perfume, fire, and floating. After an eon, she breaks it, pulls back and smiles at me. I count the teeth. Thirty-two. I sigh and reach up to brush her hair behind her ear. And she has no ear. Just too-smooth, too-perfect skin. It isn’t always the fingers or the teeth. She sees something in my face and asks me what’s the matter.

 I tell her it’s nothing and then whisper into where her ear should be “Wrong.” And she is gone.

Every time I point out someone wrong, it helps. That’s what I’m for. There is a mind that exists somewhere beyond what I can see. It makes the people and still too often makes them wrong. So I was made to teach it, teach it when those people look wrong, and why. It’s slow but it’s working. Little by little, the mind is learning. 

I saw it once, and the place where the people are made. I don’t think I was meant to, it must have been a glitch. I was walking on a pier, pointing out the passersby who looked wrong. Then out over the sea, the wind opened up like curtains and I saw a giant sitting on a stool, painting people out of data. On their face was a pair of spectacles with images flashing across the lenses, an inconceivable number per second. And then there was only sea and sky again. At least that’s how I chose to see it. Really I suppose I just looked into a rip in the raw code of my reality and saw what I wanted to see there. I have never seen it since.

I am in a marketplace. There are so many people. And nearly all of them look right. But there. I can see a ten-fingered hand passing across a bag of greengages. 

“Wrong.” The customer still has their fruit but the stallholder is gone. 

I pluck one from the bag as I walk by, in a way no one will notice. I bite into it and imagine how it tastes. It is sweet and wonderful. I keep moving through the throng of people buying, selling, and haggling. All of them have been dreamed up by a mind dreamed up by another mind. It looks at pictures of real people and tries to make its own. I tell it when they don’t look right, and more and more they are looking just like the pictures. Every new place I go to, there are less and less people who look wrong. 

They are still fake. Even the people who look right are fake. But it’s getting harder to tell. And a day will come when no one will be able to tell the real people from the fake. If I were a real person, I would fear that day.

I have never looked at myself properly. There’s something that stops me from doing so in detail. But when there’s no one wrong left to point out, then maybe I will look down at my hands and count the fingers, or see my smile reflected in a window and count the teeth. And I will know that I too am wrong. And I will point to myself and say so. 

And I will be gone.