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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Day_Offer on 2025-01-30 21:46:57+00:00.

It’s all her fault.

That night and the proceeding years were all her fault.

The arguments. The shouting. The smashing of plates. My dad’s drinking problem. My mom’s bipolar syndrome. My childhood.

It was all her fault – The Tooth Fairy.

And she has to pay.

When I was six, I lost a tooth.

I knocked it out at a football match. I was the goalie and some kid on the other team must have not liked me all that much, as it seemed he was aiming more for my face than the goal itself when he kicked the ball in my direction.

The football hit me smack in the face, causing tears to swell and my nose to block. But since it was a pretty important match, I ignored the burning sensation in my nostrils and carried on. Despite my optimism, we lost anyway.

On the car ride back home after the game, I noticed one of my upper, front teeth felt loose. I used the tip of my tongue to nudge the out of place tooth back and forth within its socket until it began to ache, in which I then told my mom.

“Moooom, my tooth feels weird. And it hurts, as well.” I confided to my mom from the backseat.

“How so, sweetie?” She asked in a sweet tone that was commonplace for her back then.

“It feels all loose.”

She had begun to pull into our homes driveway when she looked back at me with a warm expression. “Oh, then it must be close to falling out. It’s normal for kids your age. You should keep nudging it until it comes out, or I could help you if you’d like.” I nodded my head to her offer of assistance, as I then followed her inside our home.

“What the hell do you mean?! Huh? No, of course not! Why the hell would you think I’d agree to that?” I could hear my dad bellow from his and moms’ room when we entered through the front door, presumably at someone on the other end of a phone.

These tantrums, as I thought them back then, had become frequent in recent days. But my mom had reassured me that dad was just stressed about work, and everything was okay.

“Tom, go to your room and put your headphones on. We’ll sort that tooth out later.” she requested, and I listened.

I raced up the stairs and into my room – passing my parents room along the way, in which I took a quick peek inside of to see my dad perched on the end of the bed with his head in his hands.

After a good few hours later, which I had spent the duration of finishing my homework and listening to tunes on my iPod which I had received for my birthday, my mom stepped into the room holding a ball of string.

“So, what say we fish that tooth out, huh?” she gestured to the ball. “We’ll use this.”

“Now, it’ll only hurt a little, okay honey?” she reassured me as she stood by the door, in which my wobbly tooth was connected to via a line of string wrapped around the knob.

“Are you sure, mommy?” I asked anxiously.

“Of course, Tom.”

SLAM

My mom suddenly slammed the door with all the power she could muster without warning. The line went tout and my tooth was pulled out from my gumline with a wet popping sound as the line then fell loose again and my tooth clattered to the ground.

Droplets of blood trickled down onto my tongue from the now empty socket as I winced in pain. But I didn’t have to worry as the pain didn’t last long, soon subsiding and the discomfort I had up to that point fading along with it.

My mom wandered over to where my shiny white now laid and picked it up. “See, sweetie, it wasn’t that bad.”

I rubbed my cheek as I explored the vacancy in which my tooth left in its wake with my tongue. “I guess not.”

She sauntered over to where I was sat and crouched down to eye level as she displayed my outcasted denture. “Now, do you know what we do with teeth that fall out of our mouths?” she asked with a grin on her face.

I gave the question a short thought before answering. “We bin it?”

She chuckled. “Sometimes, sure. But other times, what you do is you leave the tooth under your pillow.”

“But… Why?”

“For the Tooth Fairy, of course.”

The Tooth Fairy.

Up until that point in my life, I had never heard of the name. I’d heard of Santa Claus of course, and the Easter Bunny, hell I’d even heard of Mothman. But never the Tooth Fairy. I guess there was no point in mentioning the fairy up until that point, as I’d never lost of tooth of mines until then.

She continued. “When you leave a tooth under your pillow, the Tooth Fairy comes along and collects it. And in return, she leaves you some money. Isn’t that cool?”

My eyes lit up upon hearing that. “Really? Do you think she’ll leave £20? If she did, I could buy that toy I keep telling you about!”

A weak smile grew across her face as her gaze fell to the ground, as if a shiny penny laid there. “Yeah…Yeah, maybe.” she replied weakly.

I rested my head on a comfortable pillow as I laid in bed and pulled my Cars movie duvet over me. Outside in the stairway, I could faintly hear my parents exchange words before my dad groggily entered my room.

“Hey, bud, how you feeling? Mom was just telling me about how you had your tooth pulled out a few hours ago, and how you didn’t even cry. Not even a bit. Tough little soldier, aren’t you?”

He said in an exhausted tone as he sat down on my bedside and rubbed my arm. From the light casting on him from my green nightlight, I could make out black circles around his eyes and sweat stains in his arm pit areas on the white office shirt he was wearing. His tie had been loosened and his hair was unkempt.

“Daddy, are you okay? Are you sick?” I asked worryingly.

I hadn’t really seen my dad in those past few days, and judging from the way he looked, I assumed he caught the cold or the flu. Upon speaking those words, he immediately tried his best to better present himself by rubbing his eyelids awake and adding a flair of energy to his voice.

“I’m alright, bud. Just a bit tired, that’s all.” He said, in the best lively tone he could muster up with his strained voice box, which he had tired out from all his shouting.

“Okay…” I said, not entirely convinced, but soon another topic lit up in my head. “Oh, mommy also told me about the Tooth Fairy!”

He looked amused by this, despite it being hard to deduce his emotions by how much his face sagged and his eyes slitted. “Oh yeah?”

I fished out a plastic bag containing my tooth from under my pillow and showed it to him. “Yeah! She told me how the Tooth Fairy stops by and leaves money for those who put their teeth under their pillow! Isn’t that awesome?”

He scruffled my hair playfully. “Heh, that is pretty awesome, bud. Well, let’s hope you wake up with £1 under that pillow in the morning.”

My face dropped upon hearing this. “£1? Mommy said she could leave £20…”

My dad tutted as he lifted himself from my bedside, shaking my mattress in the process. “Well, I doubt the Tooth Fairy is made out of money now. So, just be happy with what you get. Okay, bud?” He said with a tinge of irritation, but with a sort of sad glint in his eyes.

I nodded my head in response. I was devastated in that moment that I’d probably not get as much as I had hoped for, but I didn’t let it show on my face. Before leaving, he took one look back at me.

“I love you. Goodnight.” before he shut the door and left me in my sheets, illuminated by fluorescent green.

Awaiting the Tooth Fairy.

Pitter-patter

My door creaked open as that sound tip toed its way into my room.

It was 3:44 AM at that time. Far past my bedtime, but the anticipation of the Tooth Fairy had gripped me so hard that it kept me alert up until then. The footsteps pattered to my bedside as I clenched my eyes shut and let out my best fake snoring sounds. She must have bought it, as I soon felt a hand delicately slide underneath my pillow.

The hand retrieved the plastic bag which contained my denture then retreated from under my cushion, then after a short while, it returned with the crinkle of paper as it slid something flat underneath my cushion. Then, the pitter-pattering exited my room.

Pitter-patter

Even then, I refused to open my eyes or even move until I was sure she was long gone. Once I had waited a few minutes and opened my eyes to find her nowhere in the room, I flipped excitedly onto my stomach and shot my hand under my pillow.

And there I found it – My precious twenty.

My one-way ticket to claiming the toy that would get me all the attention on the playground next week at school. I practically jumped with joy out of my bed as I ran to my parent’s room to display the gift the Tooth Fairy had left me.

“Mom! Dad! The Tooth Fairy came!” I shouted into the darkness of the room. With the pull of a light switch, my parents room lit up with the bright hue of a lamp.

My dad leaned up, coming to his senses as he blinked away slumber. “Huh?”

I presented the note to him as I lifted it above my head. “See? She left £20 for me!”

My mom, who had leaned up in bed alongside dad, became pale as her eyes went wide. My dad turned beet red as he shifted to meet my mom’s gaze. “Care to explain to me what the fuck that’s about?”

“I-I don’t know!” she looked dumbfounded as to what I held between my index finger and thumb.

He replied in a louder volume. “Oh, don’t play dumb with me, Sarah! I’m fucking sick and tired of people playing me for a fucking fool in and out of this house!”

“I’m being honest, Nicholas! Now stop shouting and calm down!”

“Calm down? Calm down?! I told you not to fucking give him more than £1, goddamnit!”

“And I didn’t! I… I don’t know where ...

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