Day 5 Winner of Quarto’s 2020 Thunderdome Flash Fiction Contest. View the prompt here.

The laughing man shakes me above the toilet, making sure I got everything out. I catch a glint, consuming that part of all the movement, the glinting, the shaking, and the laughing. He bridges the space between me and the grimy floor I will not touch my feet to, his arms extended like a reader of ancient scrolls, a panther running. The tissue holds the door not the hand. Maybe we are precious.

Skeletons have teeth, and I’m moving my tongue over my teeth, wondering, what’s the count supposed to be at the end of this ordeal? I just lost another. It’s Justin Bieber’s birthday and the girls are wearing purple. Our smiles possess a youthful levity, our gums hug the opals fervently, the gaps and the ridges.

My baby brother likes how our dad’s teeth have gold in them. He got the gold in France, he says. When he used to live there. I think it’s nice that Gabby likes the teeth. My dad’s beard is scratchy and I catch the gold sometimes.

Memory works so that when it’s just me and my brother I will remember the gold and the toilet. When it’s just me and my brother I will hold with me the shaking above the toilet.
The gold under the ground and the splashing sound, the body liquid and my vomiting mouth.
The teeth decay but the gold will stay
I-love-you-man laughs like a cat at play,
The gold in the ground, the gold in the ground, gold in the ground gold glimmer in the dirt ground