Possessive Apostrophe

Martha used to get lost between the house and the station on her way
to work. It was not that she didn't know the way or that she could not
remember the route, but her feet moved her in directions while she
thought of other matters and frequently she would find herself in some
unfamiliar part of town. Her meanderings happened so often that over
the space of a year she became familiar with all the unfamiliar parts
of the town. When she realised what had happened she would remember her
thoughts from her previous visit to that street of tower block. In this
way, the town became a map of her mind and vice-versa.

If she had taken the time to record destinations and ideas, she may
have noticed patterns forming. Those thoughts concerned with her
emotional well-being took her to the path that ran between the river
and the park. Plans for the future were destined for the high street
and complex or intellectual questions doomed to the ragged estate
littered with syringes. Family the old tannery, love and lovers to the
ring road and money up the thickly painted gloss grey stairs that
spiralled to the only wig-makers in the county.

This was how Calvin came to meet Martha, and later come to love her.
Calvin had become preoccupied with dentists. It started when he notice
a film of plaque forming a crust on his molars. Vigorous scraping with
office stationary produced limited improvements and the sharp taste of
iron in his mouth. He visited the dentist for the first time, held down
by a dental nurse while the gowned green man removed the film from his
teeth. The tip of Calvin's tongue enjoyed the smooth post-scraping
sensations, probing at the skin around his gum. For two days. On the
third day just after waking the roughness had returned. Running to the
bathroom mirror, prising his lips apart to reveal the whites of his
mouth, contorting to see in the orange light seeping from the un-shaded
bulb he was horrified to see the plaque had returned.

The seeds of addiction sprouted quickly. When the dentist refused to
see him more than once a month, he created false identities for himself
so he could register with other practices. There were a surprising
number in the town. By these means, he managed an appointment each
week, counting the hours in the few days beforehand. Each polish
removed another layer of enamel until his mouth was continually ringing
with a tingling pain. He could no longer eat ice cream, which he had
never been partial to, or drink hot beverages. As the weeks wore on and
his teeth wore down the range of temperatures he could endure
diminished until only foodstuff served at exactly body temperature
where tolerable.

Finally, he decided while tucking into a lukewarm bowl of soup that the
best course of action would be the removal of all the offending items
to be replaced with a prosthetic set. Calvin's practitioners were not
so convinced of the wisdom of fitting dentures into an otherwise
perfect mouth. They all turned him down. While he was replacing his
raincoat in the reception of his final turndown, he got talking to the
horse-headed receptionist. She seemed sympathetic to his plight, more
than a professional interest, and when he'd finished talking she
whinnied, and pawed the ground with a hooven shoe, shook her main and
pulled his arm so she could whisper into his ear.

The address could easily be confused for a derelict building. The only
un-boarded doorway in a condemned row of shops held together by
graffiti and timber joists. The wooden plaque beside the door served as
a placeholder, a reminder of some golden age when it had been covered
with a brass explanation of the occupiers. Inside mildewed walls could
be mistaken for sophisticated paint dappling, framed by woodwork
painted repeatedly over the years without stripping until it bulged
from its sockets, making the staircase difficult to climb. Two doors at
the top, the wigmaker and the defrocked dentist, Calvin had pushed
against the friction of the door into the room. There was no
receptionist here only a tiny old man, besieged by wrinkles who peeled
his tiny glasses to blink at Calvin through tiny eyes. His instruments
were laid out on a trolley, tarnishing in the light.

Calvin met Martha under the worst of circumstances. Martha was
struggling to reconcile her balance when Calvin bolted down the stairs,
bloody cloth spewing from his mouth. He sent her flying and gravity
found them sprawling arms and legs at the foot of the stairs.
"Ge gid goo gill ge!" screamed Calvin sprinkling blood over Martha and
the mildew. His eyes were so wide the white part has disappeared.
Martha looked up at the assaulted vision pinning her down and screamed
with such force that Calvin was sent flying through the door and out
onto the street.

He lay on the pavement blood dripping from the corner of his mouth onto
his cream polo neck. Martha sat on the doorstep sobbing, tied of waking
up in the middle of this hateful town, tied of recognising places she
should never have been, tied of men spraying her with blood. She was
covered in tiny red splashes across her face and the exposed parts of
her arms. The sun had instantly baked them into red freckles and she
was reluctant to mix them with her own spittle for fear of an adverse
reaction. When she had stopped crying she realised he assailant was
still bleeding on the floor. He was not unnoticeable.

"What happened to you face?"
"Gu gengist! Ge gied go gill ge!"

The man's mouth appeared to be stuffed full of red cloth. She moved
closer, bent over him and pulled at a corner. The wad unwound in the
same way that a magician pulls bunting from a top hat but each flag was
a congealed abomination of communist China. When the show was over
Calvin was gasping for air.
"Dat dentist," he croaked, "Nearly killed me." Then he fainted.

First, there was smell. It crept up one nostril without triggering the
tripwire hairs that waited there but in the other nostril the odour
must have been to brash because it brought Calvin sharply to
conciseness. He imagined his eyes were not functioning, as it was a
dark with the open as closed. When he blinked shapes stepped forward
from the shadows, squares defining furniture, window and door. He
became aware of a bed, mattress and duvet smothering his body, his
nakedness between the sheets. Then the pain rang like a base bell
across the roots of his jaw. A timid tongue danced into the empty
sockets. The dentist had claimed four top right teeth before his
untimely demise. Mitigating circumstances caused by the absence of
anaesthetic, or rather the use of a double scotch in lieu of
anaesthetic.

The flat was habited but deserted.
The living room wall was filled with a photocopied map of the town
blown-up several times. Flourecent marker pen traced routes to post it
notes or photos. Printed across the yellow in bold caps were individual
words 'money', 'family' and 'school' with additional notes crammed into
the remaining space in different coloured inks and pencil
scribbles.

In the kitchen the boundary between organic and inorganic substances
had become fuzzy. Cockroaches had the run of the Astroturfed work
surfaces.

A tug opened the fridge with a rush of released stench
But the odour was not from there.

Painkillers. There must be some. She looked like a girl who would have
frequent requirements for painkillers. Not in the cupboards above the
cooker, ignore the ants and bite marks in the cereal packets. Just
candles, string and screwed up carrier bags in the drawer by the sink.
Under the sink? Just a collection of cleaning agents sealed in time
capsules and droppings. Think beyond the waves of pain to the
&;#8230; bathroom. The bathroom, sauna wood walls rotting behind a
window painted shut. There would be painkillers in a cabinet with a
mirror. There was no cabinet with a mirror, just a raffia basket of
creams and shampoo samples, soaps and pills. A brown plastic bottle
filled with icing drop pink pills. Calvin downed two, crammed his head
under the sink tap to swallow them. Then wait propped against the
cracked bath panel watching the green encrustations around the pipes
feeding the toilet. They were growing.

Martha felt a twinge around her stomach when she found her prize
missing. On her return from the grocery store, she went straight to her
room but all that was left of him was a brown flower on the pillow. His
flight has strewn the covers across the floor, her porcelain
reproduction was jigsawed across the rug. The carriers fell from her
hand and their contents gravitated towards its eye. The cramp bent her
double, felt food, liberating, hand to mouth, Martha heads for the
bathroom.

Calvin's lolling. Eyes open but passing freely through conscious,
semi-conscious, beyond and back, legs catapulted, dribble of salivary
blood down his chin. She swallows her nausea and cups his bristly head.
The pain is retreating, dumbing-down to a numbing throb. Calvin looks
up, Martha's face resolving into focus, the holes filling in, the pores
and cracks plastering over.
"Who are you?" is all he can manage.
"I'm looking after you. Something terrible happened, now I'm looking
after you."

For a mind so often lost in no-mans-land, she had be methodical in her
actions. There had been no witnesses to their initial meeting. The time
of day, the location, the weather had all conspired to keep passers-by
from passing.
"You were delirious. Asleep but you kept on shouting. I couldn't
understand what you were saying. There was something in your
mouth."
"The dentist

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