Lock Loses a Tooth

Part 1

"You're so stupid. Are you actually trying to die?" Shock was standing with her arms crossed, wearing an expression of half disbelief and half disdain as she watched her cohorts toss the long rope out the open window of the treehouse.

"You're the one who did the knots, are you afraid you did it wrong or something?" sneered Lock, looking out the window to check the length of the rope and tugging at the knot to test it. "You're always bragging about how great you are at it so there shouldn't be any problem, right? Unless you're lying about that like you do about everything else."

Shock glared at him. "My knots are perfect, I just don't trust this rope or the bar it's tied to. One of them is gonna break, and then you're gonna break too, when you fall into the pit." Moments ago she had tied the rope in question around one of the wrought iron bars of the window frame and a few minutes before that she had tied an even larger knot at the other end of the rope to form sort of a makeshift seat. Lock had the brilliant (at least he thought it was brilliant) idea to make a rope swing and he and Barrel had coerced her into helping them since she was the best at tying good knots. Shock thought that a rope swing sounded like a lot of fun, but while she suggested they tie it from a more secure branch on a sturdy tree on the nearby hill Lock insisted that they do it right off of their treehouse, tied to whatever was convenient. Barrel had at first remained neutral like he usually did because he wasn't sure which one of them was right… on one hand, Lock sometimes had really dumb ideas. But on the other, Shock could sometimes be overly cautious. Usually - but not always - Lock won in the end because he was so good at persuading just about everyone to do what he wanted, even Shock. Barrel eventually decided that going all the way to the forest was just too much work, and besides that he thought it would be super-cool to have a rope swing right outside their window to play with whenever they wanted, so he chose to back up Lock this time.

"You're such a party-pooper." Barrel said, tugging on the rope as well. It seemed sturdy enough to him. Lock snickered and looked approvingly at him, then looked at Shock and teased:

"Yeah, Shock you're no fun. Just 'cus you're a big huge scaredy cat."

She bristled at the insult. She wasn't scared, she was just smart! Those stupid boys hardly had two brain cells to rub together between them and were always getting in trouble for it, and half the time they got her in trouble, too. Shock loved causing trouble, of course - it came with the territory of being one of Halloween's finest trick-or-treaters. She just preferred not to get caught and punished, and she also preferred to avoid inflicting too much bodily harm upon herself. However, she didn't really care if Lock and Barrel hurt themselves and they certainly seemed determined to do so right now, so she gave up trying to protect them. "I'm not scared, you two are just morons! Go ahead and fling yourselves out the window, see if I care! Just don't come crying to me when you break your necks." she huffed and turned away from them, sticking her nose in the air.

"Whatever," said Lock, now pulling the rope back up through the window. "You're the one who's gonna be crying because it's going to be awesome and you're never gonna get to swing on it 'cus we're not sharing it with scaredy cats like you, are we, Barrel?"

"Nope!" Barrel giggled, and Shock turned back around to glare at him.

"Good!" she spat, "I don't want to go on your stupid swing anyway!"

"Yeah right, scaredy cat." Lock mocked her, and she huffed and turned her back to them once more. When Lock finally got the rope all the way back up he straddled it and put his feet on the knot that formed the seat and swung his legs over the window frame so they were hanging outside. Barrel felt a bit envious that Lock got to try it first, but he knew there was no way Lock would give up that privilege, plus it had been his idea so it was only fair for him to go first. Not to mention if Shock actually turned out to be right then it would be Lock falling into the pit and not himself, which was definitely preferable. So all in all Barrel was willing to wait for his turn, especially now that it had been decided Shock wasn't allowed to use the swing because that meant he got to go second, which was better than his usual third place.

"Adios, bat-brain. Nice knowing you." Shock said sarcastically, but Lock only stuck his tongue out at her before turning back to look out the window. He felt 100% confident that this was going to be the most fun thing ever and he was very much looking forward to gloating at her because she was missing out by being such a bone-in-the-mud. He looked down one last time and readied himself - it was a truly staggering drop all the way down to the bottom of the pit, but he was sure that if he got enough momentum he could swing over to the ground and land safely. He was envisioning sticking an Olympic-gymnast-level-skilled landing and his friends would be incredibly impressed by and jealous of his physical prowess. On that triumphant and inspiring thought he wrapped his tail around the rope and clung on tightly with all four arms and legs, then launched himself out of the window.

"GERONIMO!" he shouted as he dropped like a rock out of sight, and Barrel and even Shock hurried to the window to watch - Barrel certain that he was having a blast and Shock certain that he was going to end up a bloody splat at the bottom of the pit. The rush of adrenaline coursing through Lock's little body was thrilling and he yelled and whooped excitedly as he neared the ground and tried to push his trajectory forward so that he would start actually swinging instead of just dropping - plus if he didn't start swinging in the correct direction soon he would smack right into the tree, which he hadn't really thought about until just at that moment. He unwrapped his tail from the rope and swished it through the air to try and help control his direction and he managed to just barely miss the tree as the rope went taut with a jolt and he nearly lost his grip. He swung wildly forward, barely missing the tree again, and decided it would probably be a good idea to make his glorious and graceful landing as soon as he swung back the right direction, but there was a problem that he wasn't aware of…

Back up in the treehouse Barrel was leaning as far out of the window as he could without falling out, grinning down at his cohort swinging crazily through the air and bursting with excitement for his turn. But Shock was looking at something else: as soon as the rope went taut she noticed the wrought iron window bar seem to bend a little. She watched it closely to make sure she hadn't imagined it, but then it bent significantly and made a sort of groaning creak - she definitely hadn't imagined it. "Oh crap!" she shrieked as the bar finally actually broke completely and before she could even try to come up with an idea it bent sharply and the knot slid right off. "The rope!" she shrieked again and Barrel made a desperate grab for it but didn't even come close - which was probably fortunate because if he had actually succeeded it would have no doubt pulled him right through the window as well. They both gasped in horror as the rope disappeared out the window and they looked down to watch Lock fall to his inevitable death… though at least if he ended up a bloody smear at the bottom of the pit they wouldn't have to smell or look at his corpse rotting because it was so far down.

Lock vaguely heard his cohorts calling his name from above, but he was too busy focusing on the ground as it rapidly approached and he started to prepare for his dismount when suddenly all of the tension in the rope seemed to release and it went somewhat limp in his grip. Before he knew it he was hurtling way too fast straight towards the ground without any support, completely out of control. His eyes bugged out in alarm and he opened his mouth to scream but it all happened so fast that not even his relatively quick reflexes could save him and before he could even let go of the rope to try and land on his feet or do a roll he hit the ground just beyond the bridge, face first. He saw a stunning burst of white followed by black as his face made impact, and then his chest and stomach followed as he skidded forward several feet along the ground, plowing up the earth as he went and in the back of his mind he felt a weird sort of jarring sensation in his mouth. He finally came to a stop and lay there on his stomach with his face in the dirt for a moment trying to figure out if he was dead or not, and decided that he wasn't when he felt the need to breathe again. He rolled over onto his side and snorted the dirt out of his nose, then took a shaky breath through his mouth, which was throbbing with a dull sort of ache. Then he noticed that his nose was bleeding and there was something hard in his mouth that he assumed was a rock, so he spat it out and brought his hand up to pinch his nostrils closed. Just then Shock and Barrel came running over the rickety bridge towards him.

"Holy crap, are you alright?!" Barrel said, rushing over to his fallen comrade with wide, anxious eyes.

"I told you this would happen!" Shock practically shouted, feeling equal parts relieved, angry and vindicated. "Why don't you ever listen to me, you dummy?!"

Lock sat up, still pinching his nose to stop the flow of blood and he looked up irritably at her. "If your sdupid knods didn'd sdink den id would have worked!"

"It wasn't my knots, it was the window! You broke the stupid window, fatty!" she said shrilly, and Lock's heart sank a bit as he realized that he couldn't really blame this mishap on her.

Barrel started to giggle - now that it seemed Lock was pretty much okay he started thinking about how hilarious this whole situation was and how stupid Lock looked all covered in dirt, and he was glad that he hadn't tried the rope swing out first. "Shud up, Barrel!" Lock hissed, but that only made him burst out laughing and Shock started to laugh, too.

"That looked so cool!" Barrel gasped between laughs.

"Yeah, until the part where you ate dirt!" added Shock, starting to laugh even harder.

Lock decided to ignore her and instead focus on what Barrel said. "Yeah? How cool was id?" he asked excitedly. A bloody nose wasn't a big deal and was totally worth looking cool to his friends.

"Super cool! Was it fun?" said Barrel, now even more eager to get the swing set up properly so he could try it without ending up eating dirt himself.

"Before you totally face-planted into the ground?" Shock cackled. Seeing Lock a filthy, bloody mess now made all of his earlier insults null and void, in her opinion.

Lock ignored her again. "Yeah, id was dodally awesome! We godda fix id and do id some more!" But as he spoke he noticed something was not quite right with his mouth and he ran his tongue around searching for whatever was amiss… then his eyes widened when he felt an empty space where his leftmost top incisor should have been. He looked down at the ground and saw that the 'rock' he had spit out was actually his tooth and he suddenly felt extremely queasy.

Shock noticed his change in expression. "What?" she asked, then followed his gaze and saw one of his pointy teeth laying in the dirt. "Is that your tooth?! You knocked out a tooth, you moron!" She started laughing even harder at the fact that now Lock was going to look like a gap-toothed idiot for the rest of his life and Barrel joined her. He didn't even know it was possible to knock a tooth out, and he was glad it was Lock and not himself who had discovered this.

"Gross!" he giggled, utterly delighted by the grossness and wondering what other body parts could come off of Lock without killing him.

Lock was torn between anger at his cohorts for laughing at him and horror at the idea of having a big dumb gap in his teeth like Shock – but at least he would only have one gap whereas all of her teeth were gappy. He picked it up off the ground with the hand that wasn't pinching his nose shut and examined it closely. It did look kind of cool, with multiple long points that apparently kept it anchored in his jaw, but he still wished it was in his mouth instead of his palm.

"Now what are you gonna do?" Shock snickered as she picked the rope up off of the ground. "You want me to nail it back in for you with a hammer?"

Lock stood up and glared at her as he experimentally let go of his nose to test if it had stopped bleeding yet, and it appeared to have finished. "No thanks." he sneered. "You'd probably hammer it right up my nose with your crappy, beady little eyes that can't see anything." and then it was Shock's turn to glare. It was an exaggeration, her eyesight wasn't actually bad, it was just that Lock's vision was just abnormally sharp, a trait that he enjoyed lording over his companions.

"Shut up, butthead! At least my brain works, unlike yours!" she shouted.

"Except the part that knows how to tie knots!"

"I already told you, it was the window, not my knots!"

"Guys, let's fix the swing and do it again!" said Barrel, grabbing the rope out of Shock's hands before hurrying back across the bridge. He really didn't care about Lock's missing tooth, he just wanted to keep playing.

"What about my tooth!?" yelled Lock, starting to feel more and more unhappy about his situation.

"Who cares about your dumb old tooth?" Shock said meanly before she turned to call after Barrel: "What are you doing, stupid? We gotta tie it on an actual branch like I said earlier unless you want to lose a tooth, too, like gappy over here!"

"YOU'RE ONE TO TALK!" Lock screamed, now starting to get seriously upset.

"Shut up or I'll knock some more of them out for you!" Shock hissed, clenching her fists and Lock was on the verge of tackling her but he didn't want to drop his tooth that he was holding tightly in his hand.

"I'm going home!" he yelled, and stomped across the bridge – shoving Barrel as he passed him – and went up to his room to pout. His cohorts didn't go after him, they just took the rope to the forest and picked out a tree that looked good and Shock climbed up it and tied the rope tightly around a big, sturdy branch. Then she and Barrel spent several hours playing on the swing, taking turns and having a contest to see who could swing the highest. They went back to the treehouse when they were ready for lunch and Lock was still in his room, no doubt still pouting. Shock fixed up some quick sandwiches then went down the hall to pound on his door.

"Hey gappy, you want a sandwich? Or can you even eat with that big hole in your face?" she taunted him, and Barrel snort-laughed around his mouthful of sandwich. Lock had been lying on his stomach on his ratty old mattress, staring unhappily at his solitary tooth on the floor in front of him, but he glared at the door when Shock teased him. He considered ignoring her, but a sandwich really did sound good regardless of his broken mouth so he put his tooth in an empty mug that was sitting by his bed and got up to go eat some lunch.

"You should come play on the swing with us, it's really fun!" said Barrel once they had finished eating.

"Yeah, especially now that you're probably not gonna fall on your face again, unless you're as klutzy as Barrel." snickered Shock, and both of the boys frowned at her.

"It was a really good idea to make a swing." Barrel continued. He knew that flattering Lock's ego was a surefire way to make him feel better, and sure enough Lock brightened up a bit and decided to try it out. After all, there wasn't anything he could do about his tooth now – the damage had already been done and sulking in his room all day was boring so he might as well go enjoy his brilliant idea. He followed his cohorts outside and they led him to the new-and-improved rope swing and they played on it until dark, yelling and laughing and trying to swing the highest and spinning each other around till they felt sick. It was the most fun they could remember having lately, and as they finally walked back home completely exhausted and still giddy even Shock admitted that the rope swing was terrific, which made Lock feel so proud that he didn't even gloat about it.

The next morning while they were eating breakfast, Shock turned to Lock and said between bites of scrambled egg, "I think I have an idea how to fix your tooth."

He raised an eyebrow at her suspiciously, but he really hoped that she was being serious.

"Why don't you bring it to Dr. Finkelstein and see if he can put it back in? He made Sally, after all, so putting in a tooth should be super easy compared to that."

"No way! He's totally crazy, are you trying to get me killed? He'll probably do some weird experiment on me and I'll come back with two heads or something!"

"Even more reason for you to do it, maybe he'll give you a head that actually has a brain in it!" she snapped. She had thought it was a pretty good idea so she was annoyed that he wasn't thanking her profusely for thinking of it. "You got a better idea?" she demanded.

"I'll just live with it, it's no big deal! Better than letting that maniac poke around in my mouth!" he said, though deep down he hated the idea of staying gap-toothed now that a viable solution had been presented. He didn't like her idea, but he didn't have any other idea himself and he was sure that Shock was correct that putting in a tooth would be incredibly easy for the Doctor… but he'd meant what he'd said about him being crazy and plus they had pulled so many pranks on him over the years that Lock was almost positive that the Doctor would take the opportunity to do something awful to him as revenge. He would definitely have to think long and hard about the risks versus benefits of asking Dr. Finkelstein for help before going through with it.

"Well, my offer to hammer it back in your head still stands." Shock said irritably.

"No thank you. I'd rather jump out the window again than let you anywhere near me with a hammer." Lock sneered at her.

"I dunno, asking Dr. Finkelstein doesn't sound like a bad idea." said Barrel, eyeing Shock's uneaten bit of scrambled eggs still on her plate.

"Nobody asked you, bigmouth." grumbled Lock.

"At least his big mouth still has all its teeth!" Shock taunted him, and Lock went ahead and tackled her right off of her chair since he wasn't holding anything he was afraid to drop this time. While they wrestled around on the floor Barrel took the opportunity to eat Shock's remaining scrambled eggs, and then he drank the rest of Lock's pumpkin juice while he was at it before sliding off of his chair and heading into the living room to watch the morning cartoons on T.V.

Lock lived with his missing tooth for the next week, still leery about going to the mad doctor for help. It wasn't too terrible, he decided, and he had even figured out how to spit through the gap – a fun trick that he frequently practiced on his cohorts until they teamed up to hold him down and twist his arm until he promised to stop… and they made sure to watch both of his hands while he promised so he couldn't cross his fingers. On the eighth day after the rope swing incident Lock was finally sick of his missing tooth and was steeling himself to go see the doctor the next day, but while brushing his teeth that evening he noticed a hard little point coming out of his gums in the gap – and when he looked closer at it in the mirror it appeared that a new tooth was growing in. Feeling ecstatic at this new development and deeply relieved that he wouldn't have to ask Dr. Finkelstein for help after all, he happily went to tell his cohorts and show it off to them. Shock was disappointed that she could no longer call him 'gappy', but Barrel was glad to know that it wouldn't be permanent if he were ever unfortunate enough to knock out a tooth himself. Now that Lock knew that losing teeth was no problem, he had another brilliant idea: "Let's build another rope swing out the window again! We'll just tie it to something better this time!" But Barrel just looked at him like he was crazy and Shock rolled her eyes and threw a rotten apple at him that she'd been about to put in a trap for bait overnight. He dodged it and looked at them with half irritation and half disbelief. "Oh come on!" He held out his hands, palms to the ceiling and tried to convince them, but they wouldn't budge. Finally he groaned and rolled his eyes and trudged back down the hallway. "You two are the most boringest borings that ever bored!" he shouted from the bathroom, and decided that he would just do it himself the next day whether they liked it or not. If Shock could tie good knots, then surely he could, too, right? How hard could it be?