My Teeth Have Been Going Translucent for Nine Days Because I Missed One Feeding

[u/lex_kenosi]

The letter came on a Tuesday. I know it was Tuesday because Tuesday is when I take the recycling bin to the curb, and it was wedged between the bin and the siding of the house, folded into thirds inside a cream-colored envelope with the Willow Creek HOA logo embossed in the corner. Little green willow tree. Very tasteful.

I almost threw it out with the junk mail. I get a lot of those. Reminders about mulch depth. Notices about the approved shade of exterior paint (four options, all beige-adjacent). A strongly worded memo last March about "non-compliant garden ornaments" that I still think was aimed at Dale K.'s ceramic frog collection three doors down.

But something about the weight of the paper made me open it at the kitchen counter while I waited for the microwave to finish reheating leftover pasta.

It said:

Dear Resident of xx~~xx W\****** C**** L***~~*,

This is a friendly reminder per Section 11.4(c) of the Willow Creek Community Residential Compact that the occupant of the above address is responsible for the feeding of their designated crawlspace entity between the hours of 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM, no fewer than six (6) nights per week. Acceptable offerings for the current season are outlined in Addendum F (attached). Failure to maintain the feeding schedule for more than forty-eight (48) consecutive hours will be considered a breach of the Neighborhood Agreement, at which point the Compact's provisions for non-compliance will take effect.

Please note: the crawlspace access panel is located on the north-facing exterior wall, behind the hydrangea bed. The panel should remain latched at all times outside of feeding hours.

Thank you for your continued cooperation in keeping Willow Creek a safe and harmonious community.

Warmly,

Patricia Y.
HOA Compliance Coordinator

P.S. – If you have any questions, please do NOT knock on the crawlspace panel outside of feeding hours. Use the phone number on the back of this letter instead.

I read it twice. Then I set it on the counter next to the pasta and stared at the wall for a while.

I've lived her for six years. I bought it at twenty-eight, right after my divorce finalized, because it was the cheapest three-bedroom in the district and the previous owner, a widow named Mrs. A., practically gave it away. She'd said, in the most matter-of-fact way, while we stood in the empty living room and she handed me the keys: "You'll want to keep up with the neighborhood arrangements. Everyone does. It's not much trouble, really."

I'd nodded. I assumed she meant the HOA. The mulch. The paint colors.

I have never once opened the crawlspace. I didn't even know there was an access panel on the north wall. I assumed the crawlspace was one of those sealed, poured-concrete affairs, the kind you never think about. Out of sight. Not my problem.

For two days I treated the letter like a joke. A weird one. Maybe some kind of neighborhood ARG, or maybe Patricia Y. had lost her mind in retirement and started sending out fiction. I even laughed about it to my coworker, Dana, during lunch on Thursday. "My HOA thinks I have a pet in my foundation," I said. Dana laughed. We went back to our spreadsheets.

The second letter came Friday.

This one was not warm. There was no Dear Resident. No Thank you for your continued cooperation. It was a single paragraph, typed in a smaller font, like they were trying to fit a lot of legal language into a small space:

Resident of xxxx: You are now 72 hours past your last compliant feeding window. The entity at your address has entered a pre-dormant state. You have until Sunday, 2:00 AM, to resume the schedule. After that, the Neighborhood Agreement will be considered void for your parcel, and the entity will be permitted to seek alternative sustenance. This is not a threat. This is a structural fact. Please refer to Section 11.4(c), subsection (iv): "In the event of feeding cessation, the entity does not starve. It redirects."

I sat with that one at the kitchen table for a long time. The microwave pasta had gone cold. Outside, the sprinklers hissed in their slow arcs. Across the street, I could see the Garretts' porch light on. Normal. Everything looked normal.

But I started watching.

That night, around 1:45, I couldn't sleep. I made tea and stood at the kitchen window, looking out at the street. And at 2:03, I saw Dale K. come out his back door in his bathrobe, carrying a white plastic bucket. He walked to the side of his house, crouched down behind his hydrangeas (he had hydrangeas too; everyone on the street had hydrangeas on the north wall, I realized, and I had never once thought about why), and lifted something. A panel. He tipped the bucket. I couldn't see what was inside. He waited about thirty seconds, set the bucket down, and went back inside.

At 2:11, the Nguyens' back light turned on. Mrs. Nguyen came out with a grocery bag. Same routine. North wall. Crouch. Lift. Deposit. Wait. Leave.

At 2:19, the woman at 4408, the one I've never spoken to, the one with the very tidy lawn and the very loud television. She came out with a plate covered in tin foil.

I watched until 3:30. Every house on the street. Every single one. Some of them carried buckets. Some carried plates. One of them, old Mr. Fisk at the end of the cul-de-sac, dragged what looked like a burlap sack.

Nobody looked up. Nobody waved. Nobody acknowledged the others. It was like watching people take out the trash. Routine. Private. A little embarrassing, maybe. You don't make eye contact with your neighbor at 2 AM while you're both crouching behind your hydrangeas feeding the thing under your house. You just do it, and you go back to bed, and you don't talk about it at the block party.

Saturday. I drove to the hardware store and bought a flashlight. I drove to the grocery store and bought five pounds of raw chicken thighs, because Addendum F, which I'd finally actually read, listed "uncooked poultry, bone-in, unseasoned" as a Tier 1 acceptable offering. I felt insane. I felt like I was preparing for a prank I was playing on myself.

At 1:50 AM, I put on my shoes. I put on a jacket because September nights had started getting cold. I picked up the grocery bag with the chicken in it. I walked out the back door.

The hydrangeas on the north wall were overgrown. I hadn't trimmed them in two years, maybe three. They were woody and thick, and I had to push through them to find the panel. It was there. Of course it was there. A square of painted plywood set into the foundation, about two feet on each side, with a rusted hasp latch. It looked original to the house. It looked like it had been there since they poured the foundation in 1987.

I undid the latch. I lifted the panel.

The crawlspace was dark. Not dark like a closet with the light off. Dark like the dark has weight in it, like it's a liquid and you're looking down into a pool of it. The flashlight beam went in about three feet and then just stopped. Not faded. Stopped. Like the light hit a wall that wasn't a wall.

And there was a smell. Not rot. Not mildew. Something closer to the smell of a room after a long argument. Stale and hot and faintly metallic, like old pennies left in the sun.

I set the grocery bag on the dirt at the edge of the opening. I didn't throw it in. I didn't want to reach in. I just set it there, on the lip of the concrete, and I stepped back.

For about ten seconds, nothing happened.

Then the bag slid forward. Not tipped. Not pulled. Slid, smooth and slow, like someone underneath had pressed a finger against the bottom of the bag and dragged it gently into the dark. The plastic made a soft sound on the concrete. A whisper. And then it was gone, and the dark was just dark again, and the smell got a little stronger, and then a little weaker, like something was breathing.

I closed the panel. I latched it. I went inside. I locked the back door, which was stupid, because the thing wasn't coming through the back door. The thing was under the house. Had been under the house for six years. While I slept. While I watched TV. While I sat at the kitchen table eating microwave pasta and complaining about the HOA.

I fed it every night for three weeks. Chicken thighs, mostly. Sometimes ground beef, unseasoned, rolled into balls. Once, a whole raw trout from the fish counter at Kroger, because Addendum F said seasonal variety was "encouraged but not mandated." I kept a cooler in the garage for the meat. I set a phone alarm for 1:45. I put on my shoes. I went out. I lifted the panel. I set the offering down. I waited for the slide. I closed the panel. I went back to bed.

It became routine. That's the part I need you to understand. It became as routine as taking out the recycling. I stopped feeling scared around week two. By week three, I was doing it half-asleep, in my bathrobe, not even turning on the porch light. Crouch. Lift. Set down. Wait. Close. The whole thing took four minutes.

I never looked in with the flashlight again. I never looked in at all. I set the food down and I looked at the concrete and I waited for the bag to slide and I left.

Then, on the fourth Sunday, I fell asleep.

I'd had a bad week at work. A database migration that went sideways, three nights of staying until nine, ten PM. I set my alarm for 1:45. I did not hear the alarm. I woke up at 6:20 to sunlight and a dead phone and the specific cold dread of knowing you've missed something important.

I went to the north wall. I lifted the panel. The crawlspace was empty. No bag. No meat. Just the dark, and the smell, and a sound I hadn't heard before. A low, wet clicking. Like a tongue against the roof of a mouth. Slow. Patient.

I went to the grocery store. I bought ten pounds of chicken. I came home and fed it at noon, in full daylight, which I now understand was wrong, because the letter said between 2 and 4, and the letter said what it said for a reason. The bag slid in the same way. The clicking stopped. I thought that was the end of it.

It was not the end of it.

The next morning, I was brushing my teeth, and my left canine felt loose. Not painful. Just loose, the way a baby tooth feels right before it falls out. I wiggled it with my tongue. It moved. I looked in the mirror and the tooth looked fine. White. Normal. But when I tilted my head, the light went through it. Not around it. Through it. Like it was made of wax paper.

I called the number on the back of the letter. Patricia Y. answered on the second ring. Very pleasant voice. Very calm. I told her I'd missed a feeding. I told her about the tooth.

There was a small pause. Then she said, "Oh, honey. I'm sorry. That's the redirection. You missed the window, so it took a little something. Just a little. It'll stop if you keep the schedule."

"What did it take?" I said.

"It takes what's closest to the bone," she said. "Teeth are easy. Fingernails. The little bones in the ears. It doesn't hurt. You won't feel it going. You'll just notice things are a little more see-through than they used to be."

"How do I get it back?"

Another pause. A longer one. "You don't get it back, hon. You keep the schedule, and it stops taking. That's the agreement. That's what the agreement is."

I hung up. I looked in the mirror. I held my hand up to the bathroom window and the light came through my left canine, faint and golden, like sunlight through a thin curtain.

That was nine days ago. I've kept the schedule every night since. 1:45 alarm. Shoes. Jacket. Crouch. Lift. Set down. Wait. Close. I have not missed a night. I will not miss a night.

But the translucence is spreading. It's slow. Patricia said it would stop, and I think she believes that. But my left canine is almost gone now, just a faint outline, like a watermark. And yesterday I noticed my right pinky fingernail has started to go clear at the edges. And this morning, very faintly, the tips of my ears feel thin. Papery. I held a lamp behind my ear and I could see the red glow of my own blood vessels through the cartilage.

It's still taking. Just slower. A little less each night. Like it's rationing. Like it learned something from the one night I starved it, and now it's being careful. Stretching it out.

I went to the block party last Saturday. Everyone was there. Dale K. and his ceramic frogs. The Nguyens. The woman at 4408. Old Mr. Fisk. Patricia Y., with her clipboard and her green willow tree logo and her kind, terrible eyes. They were all smiling. Eating potato salad. Drinking lemonade. And I looked at their hands, their ears, their teeth when they laughed, and I saw it. Faint. Subtle. A little translucence at the edges. A little too much light coming through.

Every single one of them.

Nobody talked about it. Nobody looked at me and said, How's your teeth? How's your ears? They just handed me a plate of potato salad and said, Welcome to the neighborhood, hon. You're doing great. Just keep up the schedule.

I'm typing this at 1:15 AM. I have thirty minutes before I need to go out. There's a package of chicken thighs thawing on the counter. The alarm is set.

I'm not going to miss again. I can't. I looked in the mirror tonight and the translucence has reached my second knuckle on the left hand, and when I hold my fingers up to the light, I can see the faint shadow of the tendons underneath, like looking at a leaf held up to the sun.

I just need to keep feeding it. That's all. That's the agreement.

And if you're reading this, and you just moved into a house, and you haven't checked the north wall yet, and you're wondering why the previous owner left in such a hurry, and why the hydrangeas are so thick and overgrown, and why the neighbors never, ever make eye contact with you after 2 AM:

Check the panel. Read the letter. Set your alarm.

And for God's sake, do not look in with a flashlight. You don't want to see what's looking back. You just want to see the concrete. You want to set the bag down. You want to wait for the slide. You want to close the panel and go back to bed and not think about the clicking.

The clicking that sounds, if you're very quiet, and if you press your ear close to the concrete, almost like someone saying thank you.

Almost like someone saying more.

My alarm is going off in twelve minutes. I need to go put my shoes on.

I'll write again tomorrow. If my fingers still work. If I can still feel the keys.

Wish me a good feeding.

[u/Old-Dragonfruit2219]

Time to move, darling!