“Hi, welcome to your appointment,” the woman behind the desk tells you as you enter. “Your hygienist will see you shortly.” After waiting for a few minutes, a woman dressed in scrubs comes out to greet you and leads you back into a room that is completely white and spotless from floor to ceiling. She asks you to sit down in the singular chair in the room as she begins to place a lead apron over you. “This will only take a second,” she says as she asks you to bite down on an object that resembles a phone from an 80s sci-fi film. After a few seconds, she whispers “All done,” in your ear as she disappears behind a curtain, leaving you alone for the first time.

As you look around the room, you notice that this isn’t what you remember from last time you visited. There’s no picture frames on the walls and the tiles on the floor glisten like freshly fallen snow. And now that you aren’t caught up in the moment, you realize that the woman behind the desk and the hygienist who brought you in both had the same v-shaped scar above their right cheek.

Before you have the chance to take much else, a woman appears in a white coat, carrying a note pad. Her face looks familiar but you can’t place it behind the surgical mask she wears. “How are we doing today?” she asks you, but before you can realize the question is rhetorical, she pulls down a screen from a ceiling and the lights dim. The screen brightens up and before you an image arises from the dark. “Let’s take a look at these gums.”

Without any further warning, a collage of nine images, each showing different parts of the interior of your mouth, are displayed on the screen. It is probably the most disgusting group of images you have ever seen, but the woman in the white coat seems pleased to be showing them to you. “Wow,” she says, pointing to different parts of the screen. “You’ve got a great maw.”

With this, she reveals her face by removing her mask, showing off a v-shaped scare above her right cheek. She smiles at you and presses a button on the screen which enhances the bottom left image. “This is an exceptional mouth you have here. I’d like to have it.”

Before you know what is happening, two more women appear from behind you, each with scalpel in hand. As you are about to shout for help, a breathing mask is placed over your mouth that suffocates the scream in your throat before it can be released.

The last image you see as you drift out of consciousness is five women in scrubs with v-shaped scars above their right cheeks, each smiling down at you with wide, unflinching grins.