Jenny Greenteeth

English folklore.

Don’t go too close to the water, mothers called through the ages, too few eyes in their human skulls to see everything, everywhere, as it happened. Jenny Greenteeth will get you. Little lies. Little white lies about green things that snatch and eat children. Why not? It’s for their protection after all.

Swampy, green, green moss coats the rocks. It always has. It always will.

Legend says Jenny Greenteeth lies there in the black water, watching. She smells like rotten eggs, or rotting cabbage. She smells just like algae bloom in the murky water. Jack would know all about her, but he has no mother. Father says she died. He was too young to understand the difference between dead and dead to him. He supposes that she did die, but no flowers rest on her grave, for no one knows yet where it is. He has a picture by his bed. He was two when it happened.

Decades pass by the old house. Jack, like any good son, buries his father. Friends and family come to pay their respects. They drink wine, beer and cocktails and talk in the garden on this warm summer evening. Bracelets shimmer as glasses clink with visitors remarking what a good sendoff it was for him. Swallows dive and dart about the fields outside of the fences, eventually turning in for the night. The sun sets, and night makes space for the emerging array of bats. They clumsily flutter overhead, probably saying all kinds about the human folk below them; the humans, poor sods, oblivious to the frequency. How life carries on.

Dad’s death was not a shock. The house had been his, and his alone for thirty years. His body is in the ground, a couple of miles away, but the house, with all its beams and questionable floral carpets, is still very much as he left it. An aunt jokes that at any moment, he will just walk in. Nothing has moved. It’s too soon to talk about what will become of the house. His stepmother, still in that big hat, greets guests as though everything will be all right. This is awkward, Jack thinks. She inherited fuck all. Another whiskey splashes into what was once an old fashioned. Jack throws it back.

Phil, a wide-waisted cousin, stands by the huge pond and jokes about Jenny Greenteeth, lurking, listening, watching. It’s a big pond, Jack. Could be three or four of them in there. They played near there as children. Once, as a dare, Jack dipped a toe in. Phil laughs at how frightened they were of reeds, algae and aquatic vegetation they had yet to learn the names of. How it stinks. It reeks, like death.

Swift kisses are exchanged on cheeks, perfumes and drink fumes mingling. That was lovely. The door is closed for the evening. He falls asleep on the couch, and dreams.

In this dream, Jenny Greenteeth snatches his ankles while he skips by the pond. He screams. He was only playing.

It was just a dream. Go and play, Jack. The day’s work is done, and father is making supper. He’s in the kitchen now, with a tea towel slung over his shoulder. He can’t cook to save his life, unless it’s a bacon sandwich and a box of Smash. He supposes he can do a fried egg, too. The cigarette ash adds a distinctive flavour, and the shell a distinctive crunch.

Jack wakes from his dream. His head aches. He loosens his tie. The room, once so large and accommodating, is stuffy. Fresh air.

A mist hovers over the lawn. The white veil covers the grassy bride as she waits for dawn’s warm kiss. He goes barefoot, and walks around the edges.

Slip, trip, fall, splash.

Cadaverous woman. Cavernous, black eyes. No lips. Swampy, green green moss coats the teeth. She smells like rotten eggs. How she stinks. How she reeks like death.

It’s Jenny Greenteeth. She’s been here all this time, waiting. He flails his arms, and clambers out, panting, his heart threatening to beat its last—but she can’t get him. Her watch is chained to a sunken suitcase.

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