[1800] Teeth

I won't put this into my critique bank, because it won't be comprehensive enough for that, but here is some feedback that I noticed on one read-through:

1. The "we" POV works just fine for me. At first it doesn't make sense, but when we read that it is someone speaking on behalf of the task force, it does.
2. The horror element: When I began reading the final paragraph, I really didn't want to look over my shoulder. You raised the tension and the suspense expertly in the second half of the story. The sentence about finding several jars of teeth at her home was as brilliant as it was downright chilling. A criticism I have though is this:
3. The story leaves me fundamentally unsatisfied. Now, I don't mean this in a bad way. More in the "I was left wanting more" way. If you released a chapter 2 starting with, "One day we got an anonymous letter..." or something, I would jump on that in a heartbeat. There are so many questions left unanswered and so much potential here for a grand detective/mystery story.
4. The story shines in the second half. The first half was a bit dull I thought. One contributing factor could be that the "we" POV (task force) is not properly fleshed out until the second half. The same goes for what the task force wants. If those two can somehow be established in the first half, I think that would elevate the story quite a bit.
5. Quick comment on your prose: really efficient and clean. I love it. Consuming the text was effortless, and not once did I have to go back and check on things, names, places etc.
6. Prose comment 2: I would change the first line. This flows a little into point 4, but my point is, that it doesn't pull me in to the story; I doesn't "hook" me, so to speak. Now, should you incorporate some of the elements from point 4, that would interest me more I think.

Hope that helps. I really enjoyed the story, and would love to read a follow-up, wink wink.

PS: Let me know if you want more clarity on anything I wrote, or if you have other specific questions.

Have a great day!

This reminds me, in a way, of the prologue/opening to the movie Magnolia, where the narrator describes a series of bizarre events in a style that perhaps lends more mystery to those events than is inherent to them.

I would actually have liked to read this purely as a reader, as someone stumbling upon it somewhere, rather than having approached it at the outset as someone interested in looking at it critically. From a perspective of pure readership I might have found this more sinister and wondrous; looking at it critically I feel like some of the magic of it is lost on me.

I think I know what you're going for. These students experienced something very bizarre and have trouble reconciling the fact there's no satisfying explanation for it. I think that it can work. Maybe in that case the biggest issue is the prose, because the prose will need to be very engaging, I think, to carry this through, and as the other commentator said, the opening is a little vague in setting up who exactly is speaking and what exactly they want.

Here's a quick suggestion for your opening line:

The question of why a first-grade teacher at River Valley Elementary pulled out her student's loose baby teeth has yet to be answered.

The problem with your POV is that, in my impression, it wavers between being removed from the events and describing them with intimate detail. In your second paragraph you write:

The scenery through the plexiglass windows was bleak, defined by a haphazard blend of snow, dirt, and premature greenery.

While these details may have been perceived by whoever it was that gave the evidence, I don't find it believable that they recounted them in that way and especially after so many years. Maybe you could use something like:

A photo of the classroom from that year depicts rotting snow and a premature spring outside the plexiglass windows.

I deliberately chose the word "rotting" there because I think using words like that suit your voice and subtly reinforce the eerie vibe you're going for.

In the furthest corner, a male student mindlessly flicked a dangling front tooth with his tongue like a bored débutante picking the petals off roses.

This, again, reads very much as something being perceived and thought by a contemporary observer. I think you should lean into the "secondary source" angle:

Multiple reports tell of a male student flicking a dangling front tooth with his tongue, and as one student vividly remembers, "like a bored debutante picking the petals off roses".

I also think that your tone allows you some leeway when it comes to varying your sentences. I believe you would be forgiven for repetitions of sentences beginning with "the" and "he" and "she" etc. In this paragraph:

As expected, the neighbor eventually turned to the teacher for assistance. The male student received at least two verbal warnings. Eventually, the entire class was providing commentary. Exasperated, the teacher took swift action.

I got the impression you used "as expected," "eventually," and "exasperated" to vary the sentence beginnings but I found those constructions to have a poor effect. The first instance is fine on its own, but the second one makes them both stand out, and then the third, "exasperated," really sours the paragraph, in my opinion. Additionally, "as expected" and "exasperated" seem like a lot of conjecture on the part of the narrators and seems to contradict their otherwise objective evidence.

“I actually cried in the bathroom,” he said to us.

This line might be a typo or a fossil from an older draft, but "to us" throws your POV out. Up to this point everything is "evidence we gathered" and you use impersonal terms like "the male student". It does not seem like any of that would have been perceived by us, however, that would explain the very intimate descriptions that I mentioned earlier.

From what we can ascertain, the teacher used the aforementioned events in anticipation of her final form*.*

Couldn't help but think that this was a Dragon Ball Z reference and it felt very out of place. In fact I think that phrase only has meaning to the kinds of people who watch shows like DBZ or consume fantasy media or whatever.

There are hints in this piece that you're trying to be a little tongue in cheek. That's OK and is useful to offset the eerie overtones. Here is one example where I think emphasizing the "secondary sources" will produce humour:

The childrens’ eyes illuminated upon discovering the new addition.

Modified to:

There are reports that the children's eyes "lit up" upon the discovery of the chair.

It starts to bring you into the realm of absurdity. Like how is that the sort of thing anyone would remember or even mention? It's so weird it's kind of funny. But you may not want to steer the piece down that avenue.

The intrigue surrounding the teacher's penchant for tooth pulling did increase as the story progressed. I feel that only strengthens the ending where it all amounts to nothing and nobody has any answers. Though I thought maybe the end paragraph was a bit forced, like you're going out of your way to drive the point home instead of letting the reader come to the conclusion you want them to. Also I found the prose there to be excessively formal.

One last tidbit. I've never seen the word "misfit" used as an adjective and it should properly be "misfitted" (though also obscure), but as someone who tries to invent and re-appropriate words I think you should stick to your guns if anyone tells you to change it.

Overall, interesting and unusual story! I enjoyed the read. Thanks for sharing.

I really, really, like this. I know some people have had a negative response, but I feel like the this airy, more subtle, creeping type of psychological horror isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s always going to happen. But for every person who doesn’t get with it, there’s going to be many who are obsessed. Like me. I’m pretty obsessed with this piece. I think the prose can be tightened and some phrasing is awkward, (you’re much too reliant on the passive tense!) but that can be overlooked because I can’t get over the originality and pure absurdity of this piece. It’s so surreal and that it something I’ll remember, even if vaguely, for months to come. In my critique, I’ll be focusing on your use of perspective, character, relationships, pace and plot progression, and of course prose. Then I’ll wrap it nicely in a bow with final thoughts, which will discuss the ending and an overall summary. I want to be clear now that my critiques aren’t meant to fault the work because I do like the core of this piece and your writing, but make it better!

POV

I understand why you use the omnipresent second. It gives a distance that promotes detachment and emphasise the almost delirious nature of the events. I can also imagine it’s not easy writing from such a perspective, I would never do it, so I can understand the hiccups noted.

Firstly, although the first line is intriguing, it could be much, much better. You have such a killer premise that you should show it off! Invite the horror from the start.

“We recalled to the inspector our first grade teacher at River Valley Elementary, who pulled out our teeth. She would constantly remind us “first and foremost, I am your teacher” but the jars of our teeth sitting on her desk beg to differ. Granted, she was a part- time dental hygienist so she had some credentials. She may not have been a stray maniac who enjoyed putting latex gloves in her pupils mouths, but what are we to know? The why has never been answered.”

The changes I made here are as follows:

1. I gave this piece a direction. (“Inspector.”) Immediately, the reader knows who the speaker to relating to and they know the context of the story. This keeps it somewhat grounded, so you can float off into the abyss but still have the story nicely structured. Then later, when you reveal the police don’t really do anything, you can conclude the report and just have the speaker finish the story. This would take your story from the past, a memory, to the present. I think this is attempted in your piece, but it’s too muddled if so. The only problem I had with you POV is that it didn’t seem to go anywhere which distributed the structure- having an addressee fixes this. The listener could also be a journalist, anyone you want- just a suggestion.
2. I feel like I gave this piece a better hook. The fear of teachers doing this to their students and the little morbid detail of the gloves keeps the reader engaged and keyed in to what they should expect. I’ve streamlined and taken away some of your stylish flounce, but I’m not saying you should completely change your style. Just for the first paragraph, to set the scene, I would anchor your style slightly.
3. NO MORE PASSIVE TENSE! Go through each of your sentences and find the subject and make it act. Too many things happen to the subject which makes it seem like you don’t have confidence in your own writing, which shouldn’t be so.

The POV makes certain scenes too vague and this is infuriating, because where the piece should be realistic, it’s not. Flicking your tooth is such a small action, that I feel like the exaggeration it causes is unwarranted. What I like about this piece is how it spirals and I would believe this scene if it was later- once teeth and suspense is rich in the air. But I don’t believe it now. This bit is your catalyst, your inciting incident which propels the whole teeth nightmare so it has to be done well.

To tone it down, write it as if it was happening to someone so instead of the vague, “our disgust” attitude, make viable actions happen. I would make the Male student tease his classmate beside him, slap his ruler on the desk until she looks at him, then he terrorises her with a grin that has moving teeth. She kicks up a fuss, her friends join in, maybe his friends find it funny- hazzah! Classroom antics to annoy the teacher.

The use of your POV shines when the Male student comes out triumphant, then states that he cried. I adore the confusion of it all. I feel like because you’re writing as the group, people are going to have differing opinions on what occurred, how they felt, and as you’re looking back on the past, it’s evident that how they recollect their trauma is different to their experiences in the moment. Time and knowledge obviously educating them in how “not okay” all of this is- brilliant psychological horror!

Your POV also does you justice at the questioning paragraph near the end. There’s strength in writing as a group because it emphasises the multitude and sheer amount of anguish this teacher has caused. It reiterates that her actions has made lasting affects on many undoubtedly. You wouldn’t get that in third or first to this degree, I believe.

Character

This is where your vagueness lets you down. Not with the teacher, I don’t have any real issue with her, but your students. You need to flesh them out as people. This will make the horror more pronounced as it would make the scenes with them in it feel real. This is also a POV issue, but I’m going to label it under character. The one strong example I felt this was the “real extraction” scene.

“Students who’s ribs protruded too crudely in gym now bought three lunches. The classmate who argued against the boy’s taunts, sparking this mad decline, replaced her tattered rug sack with a shiny new handbag.”

By showing the reader the schools poverty it’s connects differently, making her payments even more insidious because we can see she’s taking advantage of poor children.

I don’t have any critiques for the teacher. I think you gave us enough to guess, be interested and wonder about the why, like the kids, but left plenty of mystery. I like the cheeky moments, like the risqué tooth fairy on the rock and you gave us enough of a peek into her attributes that I could clearly picture how I imagined her house without being told. Great! With her, the moments I liked the most were when she seemed most like someone I could relate to, mostly in her dialogue. She had this ironic wit that is quite captivating. Another note, love the dialogue. I think it’s intercepted with action well and not bogged down with adverbs.

Relationships

The most intriguing part of this is how the students react to the teacher, and how this experience, whilst odd, cements to something cruel in their minds. I enjoy how this contradiction is summarised in your first paragraph, with the teacher/teeth collector paradigm.

There’s also a sense of fascination in this retelling from the students which is gripping. There’s almost a hint of positivity after she does the horrific thing of ravaging her first bathroom tooth in the fact that she actually gets the students interested in dental education. In an odd way, it echoes all those school lessons I’ve had about how important flossing is for your teeth, but on acid.

Slowly, I saw this teacher starting something of a subtle cult. She gets off on her antics, she buys silence and participation from the students, she manipulates the events by controlling the image of it (the tooth fairy propaganda) which then spirals in the turning point of your piece- she becomes untouchable by getting the police on her side. Official government has okayed her- so what is there to do? How the horror spirals makes you not want to stop reading.

The relationships that spoiled this piece at bit for me was the teacher and the education system. I wish it was more of a well known secret until the police incident because I don’t buy her level of control at this point in the story. I cover this more in the next section, but I wished you started slower on how she weaves dentistry into education.

I believe the school wouldn’t mind if she set up some models and shared it to the class as a hobby, after school or at lunch for whoever was interested. Due to the morbid fascination the students have, a surprising amount turns up, which then increases until she has all of her class at her call. Then she starts bringing in more things and the teachers relent, but because she isn’t using up any official education time, there’s nothing the principal can do. After all, how is this different from an after school club?

I wanted the teacher to be smarter, and find the loopholes in the system. Simply, I wanted more conflict and a razzle dazzle show of her intelligence. From my critique, it should come as no surprise that these paragraphs I liked the least. I would even dip my toe in and call them boring- which leads to...

[deleted]

OPENING COMMENTS:
This story needs serious work. There's a good idea in there somewhere, but as it stands right now the piece is a real mess. There are multiple problems that I will go through in detail below. The cumulative effect of the issues present is to render the story unreadable for pleasure. I finished it only because I was doing this critique. There are troubles in nearly every area, most of them serious. I think it needs more than just some traditional editing. Complete rewrites and reworking looks to be required here. I'll try to give you some idea of where to start at the end of this critique.

SPELLING, GRAMMAR, and SENTENCE STRUCTURE:
Problems throughout. Firstly, tense is shaky and changes frequently, like in these two sentences:

Granted, she had somewhat of an expertise as a part-time dental hygienist. Still, the question of why has yet to be answered.

Had/has is a mismatch. The second sentence has to be "Still, the question of why had yet to be answered." This happens a lot in the story, I'm not going to point out every instance. Doing this wrecks story flow.

Another problem is passive phrasing, like here:

her first in-school dental extraction was performed in the spring of ‘92.

Get rid of the passive "was" by rephrasing into more active language. "She performed her first in-school dental extraction in the spring of '92.

There are 29 instances of the word "was" in your 1792-word story, an average of one "was" per 62 words! That's way too many. Passive language robs the story of action and immediacy.

There is also wonky capitalization in your story, like here:

we conjecture it was along the lines of “Gross!” or “Stop it!”

The G and the S should not be capitalized.

Sometimes incorrect words are used:

The journals, however, were monotonous, premeditated.

"Premeditated" doesn't make any sense here. Of course she meant to write her journals. Journal writing doesn't happen by accident.

I'm going to stop talking about grammar now, but this piece needs an edit focusing on grammar only. You can't build your story without a good foundation.

HOOK:
Bad.

We recalled the first grade teacher at River Valley Elementary who pulled out loose baby teeth for her students.

It's more like a blurb than a hook. It's like someone's notes before they start writing: "A story where a teacher pulls out loose baby teeth for her students". It's almost like a prompt you'd get in a writing group or workshop. It doesn't really lead into anything and is totally detached from the rest of the story. It doesn't mention any characters or settings and doesn't really start the action. Your hook is just a declarative statement which is made more awkward by the weird "we" at the beginning.

You have a much better hook a few sentences later.

As she reminded us students many times, “first and foremost, I am a teacher.”

This should be the first sentence. It introduces a MC, prompts questions in the reader's mind (Who is this person? What else does she do, besides teach? Why does she feel the need to remind her students that she is a teacher first?), and flows well. In my opinion it is a much better hook than what you currently have.

PLOT:
There is none, really. An elementary teacher has some sort of a tooth fetish and pulls the loose teeth of her students in class. In time, she installs an actual dentist's chair in the classroom and continues collecting dental trophies, which she puts in a comically oversized jar on her desk. Eventually she dies and people discover her weird behavior, and no one can figure out why she does it. Kids from her class grow up scarred by these events. The end.

Internal consistency problems abound. The kids seem to enjoy having their teeth pulled, and the other trappings of dentistry in the classroom.

Without warning, she ripped out his tooth with her index finger and thumb. He re-entered the classroom to cheers, his tooth raised over his head in victory.

and

we also know she arranged a play dentistry set with the rest of the toys around the same time. With their interest in dentistry piqued, the students flocked to the new item. There were frequent quarrels over the toy

Yet later, the grown-up kids say they are traumatized and remember these events as unpleasant.

Perhaps she was a witch or a sadist; did she get off on our pain

I thought the kids liked having their teeth pulled? Not much interest there for a sadist.

Not to mention the suspension of disbelief required to accept that elementary-aged children would actually enjoy dentistry in the classroom, the trappings of a dental office, dentist-themed toys, etc. Most kids I've met dread going anywhere near a dentist's office or dental hygeinist. It's extremely unrealistic they would cheer and clap after being exposed to these things in the classroom, especially after the teacher begins actually removing their teeth for real.

THE PROSE:
Needs work. You've got metaphors that just don't come together:

a male student mindlessly flicked a dangling front tooth with his tongue like a bored débutante picking the petals off roses.

This is comical (not in a good way) and doesn't really fit the lower-grade school setting.

Things happen that stretch credibility until it snaps like a rubber band:

Eventually, the entire class was providing commentary.

...on a kid flicking his tooth with his tongue?

Just before Christmas break, a clinical dental chair was displayed at the front of the classroom.
The childrens’ eyes illuminated upon discovering the new addition.

Really?

she asked for a volunteer in a calm, if not calculated, tone.

What does this even mean? Change it to "calm and calculated tone" or "calm, calculated tone". The words "if not" make it seem like "calm" and "calculated" are waypoints along some sort of sliding scale, which they are obviously not (you can use "if not" like this: "big, if not gigantic" or "serious, if not catastrophic", where the words actually do indicate degrees of some quality like size or seriousness).

Another example of the same thing:

The team disbanded without a logical, or even sinister, reason for the events

"Logical" and "sinister" aren't on a continuum. This makes no sense.

Story logic is a problem, too. Like this part:

The display was grotesque and many reported their distaste, but it remained on her desk all the same.

A jar of students' extracted teeth remained on her desk? Didn't other teachers, the principal, and parents see it? How was this allowed to continue? It just makes the entire story seem absurd. Is that what you were going for?

the body was identified with one of the teeth the teacher had pulled. Her assistance was highly praised by both the child’s family and police department.

Come on, now. In real life the police would cart this weirdo off in cuffs.

As expected, some of the students were untraceable or had passed; in which case, the teeth were donated for research.

Teeth...for research? I can't see a need - there are plenty of teeth around, they don't have to source them from oddball teachers' jars.

The prose is overall dry and boring.

In her school district, where the graduation rate was not far from Michigan’s lowest, successful performance was key for funding. She was quick to counter the board’s protest with this information, and they eventually agreed to her requests.

This reads like a recitation of facts from a courtroom. There's no life to it.

SETTING:
The school setting is described in an adequate manner. I got that we were in a school, and the trappings of the environment were there, at least in a bare-bones way. The setting is not one of the main problems here.

CHARACTERS/POV:
The entire POV is in this odd "we" construction. It's distant and off-putting. Reminds me of a police report or a recitation of agreed-upon facts in a courtroom. The only real character is "the teacher" (give her a name!), who claims to be an accredited dental hygeinist and proceeds to perform dentistry in her classroom on the unsuspecting children. This could be a terrifying plot, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

DIALOGUE:
There is no dialogue to speak of in the piece.

CLOSING COMMENTS:
There's a few good lines in here, like:

Of the dozens interviewed, eighty-four percent remembered the set.

The idea that 16% of kids didn't remember the time their teacher brought dentist's tools into the classroom (along with a genuine chair, not to mention the fact that she constantly pulled teeth) is hilarious.

But there are so many difficulties in reading through the piece that very few people will stick it out until the end.

Speaking of the end, the last line of the story is very bad.

We must bide in the fear until our family’s dinner conversation returns to the foreground.

It doesn't really make any sense, it reads awkwardly, and it doesn't provide any sense of closure. What does the phrase "bide in the fear" even mean? "until our family's dinner conversation returns to the foreground"? Huh?

I don't mean to be harsh, but reading this is like getting on a train to nowhere. There isn't really any plot, the prose is cumbersome and clunky, there's no character interaction, no resolution to anything...my overall assessment is pretty bleak.

My Advice:
-This is more like a first-draft outline for a story than the actual story itself. Rewrite and fill it out.

-Fix the grammar or have someone else do it for you.

-Tone down the unbelievable stuff. It's too "out there" if you want the story to seem serious and plausible.

-You've got to create some flow and lessen the choppiness of your prose. This is far from readable in its current state.

I hope some of this is useful to you. Good luck.

I’ll start out by saying I had a bit of difficulty critiquing this story because I liked it a lot, and I had to really think about places where it fell flat or was just- slightly less good? So this critique might feel a little like I’m just praising you, but I wanted to give my perspective since I don’t agree with what some of the other people here said.

First impressions

I loved it. Buildup of desperation for answers at the end was excellent, and somehow the ‘anticlimactic’ ending didn’t take away from that at all. Just leaves me in suspense wanting to know more, but not in an unsatisfactory way.

I don’t think the horror was too subtle. Especially the description of that first moment with the chair she brought in, when she asks the students if they want to see a live dental extraction, was very visceral and I cringed a bit.

POV

The POV was a bit odd at first, but I quickly got used to it. It worked well to give the feel of an after investigation report.

The POV became completely seamless from this point:

What we really wanted to know was why. What was her motive for keeping our teeth?

So the last part of the story. The distant report-type writing is nearly completely abandoned as the narrator goes from using exclusively ‘we’ to also including ‘our’ and ‘us’.

In my first reading, this is when I properly understood that ‘we’ meant ‘the students conducting this investigation’ even though it’s essentially mentioned from the first paragraph.

As she reminded us students many times, “first and foremost, I am a teacher.”

You can clearly see the moment of the shift in the narration here:

The resurfaced news spread via social media and several former students put together a task force to assemble the missing details. What we really wanted to know was why.

It instantly becomes more personable, and I felt the shift very strongly. In isolation, it might look off, but in the context of the rest of the story I think it works very well. The narrator has trouble keeping to the distant report writing style from the start. They’re too invested in this, they have too many feeling about it. The students feel violated, confused and weirded out, and this permeates the whole story. They try to write it objectively, but at this point they just give it up as a long cause and vent their frustration.

It brings the emotion that has been there from the start to the forefront. And this emotion escalates through the last few paragraphs. It leaves the readers as much in frustrated suspense as the narrator. I really liked that, it didn’t feel like an anti-climax for me at all.

Plot

On the surface, a story in which a teacher pulls baby-teeth from students (on the dentists chair in her classroom!) and keeps them in a jar on her desk, and in which the students volunteer for this, sounds absolutely bonkers. A recipe for getting fired at best, and complete disbelief at the students’ actions at worst.

But then you spend the entire story basically outlining exactly how plausible this insane scenario is. Because that’s essentially what this story is, the students rationalising what happened, how it could have happened, and why it happened. And although the why is never answered, the what and how are.

Take the first incident, where the boy does cry when his teeth is pulled, but enters the classroom with it held high like a trophy. It foreshadows exactly the type of repression of feelings that causes the students to accept the events at the time, and only feel properly weird about it years later.

Then you get small hints of how the teacher was viewed as a person at the time; A competent teacher whose students performed above average. Good with children, dressed up as the tooth fairy on Halloween, looked fairly innocent even without the costume.

She had sense of humour, as evidenced by the costume once again, and by the plaque of recognition she placed next to her teeth jar. I could just imagine her placing it with a smug look on her face, pointing to it any time someone questioned her. Iconic.

But yeah, with that image, you can see how she was never fired, and how the children trusted her. It’s so plausible that it could actually happen.

Some extra notes

During my first read-through, I highlighted one paragraph I had a bit of trouble with:

Upon her death, the, […] they found the discovery odd.

I tripped especially over the last sentence. I think it was the ‘although, admittedly’, combined with the earlier ‘As such’, but it could have been the paragraph as a whole as well, I’m unsure.

After my second reading I think it might be the third, rather than the last sentence, that gave me trouble. ‘The teeth were collected as evidence and the DNA was processed over a decade.’ The mid-sentence time jump doesn’t work for me.

Without warning, she ripped out his tooth with her index finger and thumb. He re-entered the classroom to cheers, his tooth raised over his head in victory. “I actually cried in the bathroom,” he said to us. As the teacher held wadded tissue paper to his bleeding gums, she had told him to “stop making such a fuss.”

I just wanted to highlight this one because I liked it a lot. It’s completely non-chronological, but it works very well as it’s exactly how someone would recount the story in person.

The following year, however, the teacher’s maniacal activity increased.

This didn’t bother me much on the first reading, but 2nd reading it feels a bit awkward? Not sure. I guess especially since the behaviour described after isn’t maniacal at all, but that might be the intention. I mean, the students sure think it’s maniacal in hindsight, so in that sense it works.

Her recollection of the day-to-day set us on edge; by the end, we had an immense desire to set the journals aflame.

This calls up so many questions. Was it just because they were boring? Was it the frustration at not finding anything that made them want to turn their anger at something? Was there something else going on, like the recollection was off somehow and that is what set them on edge?

Perhaps she was a witch or a sadist; did she get off on our pain or desperation for money?

The part before the semicolon doesn’t work for me. Maybe because the rest of the story felt so grounded in reality? Or maybe it’s just that it doesn’t fit the normal three examples rule. It feels like there should be a pause there, but there’s no indication of where. I want to read it with a comma damn it! Where is my comma??

I think the paragraph would improve if you just deleted the part before the semicolon. Asking first if she was a sadist and then if she got of on pain is a bit double, even with the semicolon to indicate it’s one thought.

The recollection is unavoidable, such as when our bite slips while eating a tough piece of meat and our teeth scrape violently against one another. Suspended again into the discomfort of the unknown, we have no reasonable explanation for our dread. We must bide in the fear until our family’s dinner conversation returns to the foreground.

I love the ending, it reiterates how they’ll have these questions for the rest of their lives. The middle sentence could be more powerful, it’s a bit abstract at the moment. Instead of suspended in the discomfort of the unknown, I’d had them suspended in the discomfort of the dentists chair. That’s where I thought the sentence was going to go at least.

The scenery through the plexiglass windows was bleak, defined by a haphazard blend of snow, dirt, and premature greenery.

This conflicts with:

Witnesses do not remember the other student’s exact reaction but, considering our experience with our own children, we conjecture it was along the lines of “Gross!” or “Stop it!”

If they can’t remember the exact reaction, I doubt that they’d remember the scenery outside.

I hope the helped. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, I don’t mind clarifying.

Thank you very much for taking the time to provide your feedback! I look forward to taking your suggestions and creating a stronger piece.

GENERAL REMARKS

To start, I think this is an excellently formed story. I get a criminal investigation report more than anything. Like it was a classified document in a small town police office before getting released to the public. On with the critique/compliments!

The majority of your actual writing in this is quite solid, so most of my remarks will be tailored towards things that I think would help enhance what you already have brewing in this story.

As a note, you do not have commenting open on your google doc!

MECHANICS

There's not a ton going on in this story mechanically, honestly. But the simplicity is doing wonders for your story. Keep it simple in any revisions.

You've cited some specific dates and incidents in your story. If you want to go deeper with that, you could introduce some extra investigative elements to it. Such as using REDACTED names like police files do or add in more dates with specific interactions or interviews from previous students.

SETTING

It's hard to call the school a setting, honestly. Setting up the beginning or the very end like someone is writing a report with just a small paragraph could close this out with a bang. Like, adding something in at the end where one of the students who took her class took a job as a reporter could be amazing. You're already ending it with the narrator being confused as hell, so if you took it straight into their life in that town with their family could end it on a more personal note. Who doesn't want to think about their own kid's teachers possible stealing teeth? :)

The teacher paying for children's teeth and those payments being used to pay for their food is a very believable touch. Many students are forced to go without lunch, who wouldn't give away baby teeth for something to eat? That also just immediately paints a picture of the school and surrounding area for me, coming from a small town where many families had issues paying for things like that.

CHARACTER

Is your main character a previous student? I don't think that was explicitly stated, but it seems to be hinted at early on in the story. The later parts of the story seem to transition into an investigator or reporter's thoughts on the matter.

The dentist lady is well realized. I love that you get almost no information from her directly, just all speculative responses. She even gets her creepy hobby justified by helping out the police. The best part is that there's nothing inherently evil with what she's doing, it's just MEGA weird. I think that plays on the weirdo stuck inside us all.

PLOT

This information is all covered in other sections, really. Fully deciding if you want to go with the 'previous concerned student turned detective' is really critical here. If you do that, opening the beginning of the story differently would be punchier. Opening it with a partially redacted statement for the police from a student would be awesome.

The scenery through the plexiglass windows was bleak, defined by a haphazard blend of snow, dirt, and premature greenery.

If you do change it to a report perspective, I don't think this line would fit. No one in a report could really recall that kind of information. Many of the descriptions would need to shift to solidify the perspective into a reporter/officer retelling about their investigation.

The slow transition of the lesson plans into weirder and weirder things is solid. My only criticism here is legitimately to add more information on the weirdness of her lessons leading up to "her final form", as you put it.

GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

There were very few locations where you shifted tense or had some grammatical mistakes. A lot of line edits were caught in many of the earlier critiques, so I'll keep those to a minimum just to not hound you on the same information.

However, the amount of teeth she accumulated during her thirty-three years as an educator proves otherwise.

This should be proved otherwise.

We recalled the first grade teacher at River Valley Elementary who pulled out loose baby teeth for her students.

Remove the "out" from "pulled out loose". It's implied that they're coming out when you pull teeth.

“It was in a tone not to be defied,” he said to us.

These type of dialogue tags do not fit well with this style of storytelling, in my opinion. Something like "An anonymous student reported" or just leaving off almost all of the dialogue tags would make it read more smoothly.

CLOSING COMMENTS

Overall, this is a really cool, bizarre story. Honestly, most of my commentary is more about ADDITION to the story rather than changing a bunch of what's already there. If you expand on some of the themes I've mentioned earlier, you could very easily have a publishable horror-esque short story, in my opinion.

I'd love to see the revised version! If you change it up and want some feedback, hit me up.

Right off the bat, the tone seems to be from an adults point of view.

Words like “male student” rather than “boy” seems to indicate a lack of connection (I assume the narrator isn’t a parent, and may not even be normal)

Or maybe, I then begin to think upon reading “Witnesses do not remember the other student’s exact reaction but, considering our experience with our own children, we conjecture it was along the lines of “Gross!” or “Stop it!”” I do have a hint that maybe the narrator is a parent, though quite a robotic one

The paragraph “In the furthest corner…with greater theatrics” draws a lot of attention to the student flicking the dangling tooth, which, as I’m thinking about the teacher about to take out the tooth, seems to be an irrelevant detail, I’m just waiting anxiously to hear about what the teacher is going to do.

“It was in a tone not to be defied,” doesn’t seem at all like something a first grader would say.

Something feels weird in this sentence: “ the teacher’s maniacal activity increased. At the start, she brought in large molds of teeth and the children practiced proper cleaning:”. Maniacal activity at this point, in my mind, is her pulling out one kid’s tooth. Now that’s pretty strange, though maniacal activity makes me think about a series of similar events rather than a single instance. In addition, mentioning the children practicing good dental hygiene (that sure is weird!) comes a little non-elegantly since its not said that her “maniacal activity” expanded to include more besides pulling teeth.

“Of the dozens interviewed, eighty-four percent remembered the set.” Upon reading this, I think suddenly that a decent amount of time has passed, such that it’s an interesting thing for these students to remember the toy.

“The childrens’ eyes illuminated upon discovering the new addition.” This sentence caught my attention because it departs from the tone so far — it’s no longer neutral, robotic, and detached, it’s suddenly describing something vividly like an author.

“Satisfied with her volunteer, she asked the class, “Who wants to see a live dental extraction?”” I like this! Creepy! I like how it’s at the end of the paragraph, it makes it linger in my mind.

Another tone conflict: “She displayed the bill to the class like a gameshow host; they gasped unanimously.” Displaying like a gameshow host is something I’d expect to see in a work of fiction with an artful narrator, the word unanimously is something I’d expect to see in a research paper.

The thought of somebody having a jar on their desk with all the teeth from students is pretty creepy! If the tone was more consistently artful, I feel like you could expand more on the descriptions of the jar and how the students see it and how it changes over time, to create a more creepy effect.

“Although the sorting of the teeth took several months and the child was later reported deceased…” When I read this, I gasp that one of the students died, but it strikes me as so odd that the death is like a side note here—part of a dependent clause.

“Upon her death, the teacher’s family found several other jars of teeth at her residence.” When I read this, my first thought is that “her” refers to the teacher. Which comes as a shock, a new revelation that the teacher died.

This sentence confuses me a lot: “The teeth were collected as evidence and the DNA was processed over a decade. Of the five hundred teeth removed from the home, the teacher was never linked to any criminal activity, although the police were able to arrest several former students of crimes with the newly founded DNA.” ‘The teacher was never linked to criminal activity’ doesn’t seem to make sense with ‘of the five hundred teeth removed from her home’—I expect the clause that comes after to be directly about the teeth. And then what’s up with the police being able to arrest several former students of crimes? Is it supposed to mean that the former students grew up after a decade and have committed crimes? If so, I had to pause and think for a bit to reach that conclusion. It’s a new detail that these students began to commit crimes when they got older, and that these teeth would provide a way for the authorities to arrest them. I still don’t get how the authorities would use them. The teeth aren’t labelled, so what could they know other than that one DNA sample matched a tooth of a student from this old class. I guess that makes sense with a finite suspect list. Whether or not this is the case, I think this part of the story deserves a little more clarification.

Aha! Revealing sentence: “What we really wanted to know was why. What was her motive for keeping our teeth?” I like how now you reveal that the narrator is a former student (right?). Though the transition from referring to former students as “former students” to “we” is a little choppy. I think it should be a consistent “we” when mentioning students throughout.

 “..the family handed over several journals and a written record of the hundreds of teeth pulled…” What’s the family? Is it the teacher’s family? If so, I think that should be made more clear. You could also the fact that the teacher was writing in the journal earlier when you first start to describe the teeth pulling. The journal, I think, is a creepy detail that would add to your tone.

Ok, I just finished reading.

Wow! That was definitely an interesting read. It struck me as original, and it was definitely pretty creepy.

My biggest pet peeve throughout was the tone— it feels so detached, and it sounds to me like somebody writing a research paper—so passive and dry, and forced to be academic. After reading, I don’t think this adds anything at all to your story, in fact, I think I can see you realizing this and feeling a desire to break away, to be able to write artful, personal prose. Especially at the end, when you make those analogies and metaphors that are evocative and great! I would love to see more of that type of language throughout!

The ending I felt was a little unsatisfying, not knowing what happened to the teacher. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do like the element of mystery, I think it adds. I don’t think you should change the ending plot-wise, but I do think you should change the lead up to the ending. For example, what happened to the teacher that caused her to die? Perhaps you could write about something that would evoke more mystery and make it more blood-chilling. Did the teacher do anything with the teeth? Perhaps you could give some more details regarding the deaths of some of the students. Just adding more details about anything at all would make this cooler and creepier. I think the reason it felt unsatisfying to me at the end was because I was expecting something more because of the lack of these more interesting details that would’ve left me thinking about the story more after finishing reading.

Other than that, it was pretty great! Good luck revising, and keep on writing!!! :)