Written by Brad McEntire
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/vilevi

It was only recently that the small man that lived in Evelyn’s tooth had begun to whisper disturbing things to her. For the bulk of her life the small man had been nothing but a help to her. Things were different now. He had to go.

Evelyn had first noticed the tiny man in her tooth while she struggled with multiplication in the third grade. She was having a hard time memorizing the multiplication table and as she sat quietly at the kitchen counter staring at her homework, she heard a tiny voice.

“Six times six is thirty six.”

It sounded like someone had crept up beside her and was pouring a warm confidence softly in her ear. She whipped her head about to see where the voice was coming from. Nothing. Nobody was there.

Evelyn shook it off after a moment and turned back to her math.

“Thirty six. Six times six is thirty six.”

“Who said that?” demanded Evelyn.

“Just mark it down and go on to the next problem.”

Evelyn did as the whisper told her and it did not speak to her again that evening.

The little voice next spoke a few weeks later when she was trying to climb a rope in PE. Of all of her classes, Evelyn considered Physical Education to be the most unpredictable. One day the enthusiastic but overweight Coach Becky would have the class do something fun like dodge ball or freeze tag. The next day they were just as likely to do something not so fun like running laps or push-ups. On this day they were doing something not so fun.

Evelyn had tried twice that class to shimmy her way up the knotted rope, but each time she found that her grip failed her and her upper body strength would not haul the rest of her skyward.

On the third attempt Evelyn had made it to the third knot up the rope and it was there she froze up. Paralyzed, she could not get herself to move back down the rope, nor continue to climb higher.

The you-can-do-its from Coach Becky gradually became get-off-the-rope-so-others-can-go as Evelyn’s stuckness stretched on into minutes. That’s when she heard the whisper again.

“You could quit. You could loosen your grip and fall.”

Though she recognized the whisper this time, she instinctively still strained to look over each shoulder to see where the whisper was coming from.

“Or you could just go ahead and climb up the rope.”

“I can’t,” Evelyn countered.

“Then just come down,” yelled Coach Becky

“Your options are limited, but you have a few. Quit or keep going.”

Evelyn struggled and shook for another moment or two.

“Just go up the rope,” the whisper urged. “Why not just go up?”

Evelyn reached above her head and grabbed the rope further up. She pulled herself to the next knot, then the next. After what seemed to be a personal eternity, Evelyn found herself at the top of the rope. She was up by the rafters in the gym. Coach Becky and the other gym students looked so small below. They were all standing there, mouths agape, just staring up at Evelyn far up near the ceiling.

Evelyn didn’t hear the whisper again for nearly a year. It echoed in her head when she went out for the debate team. Then after that when she was thinking about a gift she wanted to buy for a friend. Then when she took her Spanish final.

It seemed to come to her only at those times when she faced big decisions.

She had considered telling others about it, but had decided against it. She could just imagine telling her mom that she was hearing voices in her head. Evelyn knew her mom to be the type that over reacts to even the smallest things. To learn that her daughter was hearing voices would have caused her mom to worry, so Evelyn kept the whispering voice to herself.

She kept the whisper a secret from everyone else, too. She wasn’t eager to defend her sanity, especially if there was a chance her position proved to be indefensible.

On one evening during Evelyn’s first year of college, she had a bit too much to drink at one of the first keg parties she had ever been to. As she was presenting an impromptu ballet demonstration to settle a bet, she accidentally fell forward into a stair banister and banged her face pretty hard.

Evelyn was taken to the emergency room and x-rays were done of her jaw. For the first time, clear as day, she could see where the whispering had been coming from. There, staring back from the x-rays she could see the silhouette of a tiny man in her tooth.

The x-ray technician didn’t know what it was. He ordered a repair request for the machine and advised Evelyn to come back a few days later for another x-ray. She did not return.

If she had any doubt later that same day she heard the tiny voice once more.

“Did you see me wave?”

The tiny man in her tooth continued to offer commentary and advisement off and on for the next several years.

Evelyn was taken aback one afternoon as she stood in the women’s department of an elegant store and heard the whisper say, “Take them.”

She had just picked up a pair of silk gloves and was admiring them. “Just take the gloves.”

“Steal them?” she said out loud.

“Sure, why not…”

So, she tucked the gloves into her purse and walked straight out of the department store.

When she got home with the gloves she felt a twinge of guilt, but found that it was not stifling. She tucked the gloves in a drawer and got on with the day.

The voice began to advise her to jaywalk, to tell off people she found to be unpleasant and to use fake names when she ordered coffee on her way to work.

At first Evelyn disregarded these suggestions. The whispering became more and more difficult to ignore as it became more insistent and more persistent.

One day, as Evelyn stood behind a rather annoying woman in the checkout line at the grocery store, the whisper in her head finally went too far. The annoying woman was on her cellphone and engaged in one of those personal conversations that hijacks public spaces. Evelyn was trying not to listen to the woman’s near-yelling peppered with profanity or pay attention to the notion of the woman’s seeming obliviousness to her surroundings. As the frustration swelled within her, she heard the tiny voice say in a calm clear voice, “Kill this bitch.”

Evelyn was snapped out of her frustration and listened hard to the inside of her head. Did the tiny man just whisper to her what she thought he did?

“Kill that inconsiderate bitch.”

Evelyn set down the kale and tampons she was going to purchase and stepped out of the checkout line. She quick-walked outside the store and took several deep breathes.

“Why didn’t you kill her?”

“Shut up!” Evelyn shouted to herself.

Things got worse from there. The tiny voice stopped making suggestions. It began to make demands. The demands included horrific actions… burn that sandwich shop to the ground… behead that bothersome owl… rape and taunt that apathetic house cat… punt that baby like a football…

Of course, these demands began to take a toll on Evelyn. She became frazzled and frustrated and stressed. She began to get bouts of insomnia and indigestion and ennui. She finally decided she needed to do something.

So, Evelyn finds herself in the dental surgeon’s chair. The last noises she hears are the frantic cursing calls of the tiny man in her tooth being drowned out by the whir of the drill.

***

The origins of Brad McEntire are unknown. Theories range from a rare and exotic escaped zoo animal to an inter-dimensional entity bent on world conquest. He runs a small outfit in Dallas called Audacity Theatre Lab. There he writes and performs plays. He seems to do a lot of stuff related to solo theatre performance. Brad produces the Dallas Solo Fest which brings together one-person shows by performing artists from around North America to display their wares in north Texas for two weekends every summer. He also podcasts, has a barely-impressive YouTube channel and has a sporadic webcomic called Donnie Rocket Toaster-Face. Read about his adventures and such at: www.BradMcEntire.com