Thirty-Three Teeth Read Online Free PDF

it’s possible that Siri had been trying so hard to see something, he’d imagined the whole thing.
    That’s what he believed when he awoke. As was common after he’d had one of his dreams, he found himself in a state that may have been consciousness, or may have been a continuation of the dream. These were the scary moments when the visitors felt so real they could have been in the room with him.
    It was quiet. The stars were still blurred by the heat rising from the hot earth, so he was certain he hadn’t been asleep long. He was on the veranda behind his mausoleum. The mosquito net shimmied from a rare puff of summer breeze. It moved again. And again. It was swaying gently in time to some slow but regular stimulus.
    Siri turned his head and looked into the darkness, and into the dull eyes of a bear. It was so close, its breath moved the net. It was close enough that Siri could see fresh blood at the corner of its mouth; close enough for him to smell the decay on its teeth.
    It was sitting, watching the doctor. He felt its power over him. But Siri wasn’t fearful. Yes, he believed this was unreal in some way, but he also had an instinct that the animal wasn’t there to hurt him. The creature, its inspection over, rose painfully, turned, and walked off into the mobile jungle.
     
    When Siri next awoke, it was certainly morning and the sun was threatening to rise over Miss Vong’s well-scrubbed house. Before he could forget it, and before the government loudspeakers could begin their obnoxious prattle, he reached for the notebook on the table beside the cot. He lit the cooking-oil lamp and wrote down his dream.
    Saloop dragged himself toward the light like some obese moth and put his head on the cot. Siri scratched it.
    “You didn’t happen to see a bear in the yard this morning, did you?” Siri asked.
    As always, Saloop kept his secrets to himself. He’d neglected his duties. He’d been off romancing the bitch at the ice-works. He smelled the intruder when he got back, sure enough. It wasn’t a scent he’d come across before. But it was something big and terrifying.

A Day at the Maul
    Mr. Geung was sweeping the deceased cockroaches from the morgue when Siri arrived the next morning.
    “Morning, Mr. Geung.”
    “G…good health, Comrade Doctor.”
    “Any new guests today?”
    He was expecting a “no” in response. Geung laughed and looked to the sky as if Siri’s consistent question were the most wondrous greeting a man could receive. He never tired of it. Siri often considered climbing inside his friend’s mind to enjoy some of his simple pleasures.
    “New guest in r…r…room one, Comrade Doctor.”
    “Oh, no.” Siri moaned. “Isn’t it getting a bit crowded in room one?”
    There was only the one freezer. The last Siri had known, Mr. A and Mr. B were already bunked in there on makeshift bamboo rafts that doubled the occupancy potential.
    Geung snorted a laugh. “N…n…no. Mr. A and Mr. B went home already.”
    “Somebody came for them?”
    “Yes.”
    Siri walked into the office to find Dtui at her desk poring over the pictures in one of Siri’s old French pathology textbooks. As she studied the black-and-white photo of a man who’d been sliced in half by a locomotive, she chewed on a rice snack wrapped in pig intestine.
    “Do you recall the good old days when I’d come in here and find you reading Thai comics?” Siri asked.
    “Good health, Doctor.”
    “Good health. I hear A and B have left us.”
    Dtui put down her greasy snack, wiped her hands on a surgical mask, and picked up the police report.
    “Mr. B. Now Kampong Siriwongsri. Glass factory laborer by day. Second-shift security guard by night. He was on his way to work. His wife identified the body and they took him to the temple to get him ready. Mr. A apparently didn’t have anyone to love him, and don’t we know what that feels like. So the Ministry of Sport, Information and Culture has taken responsibility and arranged a