The Last Man

by Kaylie Saidin

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​   Every man that spends the night in my cottage uses the same toothbrush. I take it out from under the sink, where it’s nestled between the rusted pipes, and offer it to them. Each of them uses it only once, for they never return to the cottage, so I’m able to keep it in good condition, with erect bristles and no discoloration. It looks new and unused every time. They take it from my outstretched hand and marvel at the kindness I’ve offered them. Then they put it between their teeth.

    The last man that spent the night cast a spell on me. After he left, every pastry I baked disintegrated into black ash the moment I removed it from the oven. Blackberry cobbler, walnut bread, maypop cookies, all slipped through my fingers, thin as dust. The house smelled perpetually like smoke. I opened all the windows, and toads and rats and birds came in through the portals. I heard them moving about in the night, clicking against the floorboards, a chorus of ribbits as soon as the sun went down. Then the birds would awaken me by singing in the rafters. I rose one morning to find a snake slithering across my ankles. It looked at me, one large red eye unblinking. It was then that I knew: this was the work of the last man that spent the night. 

    I went outside with my crow whistle and gave three long, slow calls. In the distance, I saw his figure emerge. He had been hiding behind a long leaf pine. I put my hands on my hips over my apron, the way I had seen my mother do once, and this made me angrier.

    He looked the same as the night he had left: dark hair, dark eyes, a dark cloak. He smiled crookedly and said, “Forgive me. I only wanted you to feel what I did.”

    “The heart is not a pastry,” I told him. “It doesn’t spoil or turn stale.”

    “Please,” he said. “I needed to get your attention. I knew no other way. I’m not versed in charms, only hexes.”​

    Of course, I could not reveal to him that he already had my attention––few men in these woods can do the magic I can. I’d met only two others. They had also once used the toothbrush. The others had showed me their magic, one shyly, the other boldly as a means to impress me. All they could do was hexes, though, which I ultimately found crass. What was the point of divine ability if you only used it to curse?

    “Come inside,” I said to him.

    We climbed the winding staircase, where my quail-feathered bed seemed prepared for our pleasure. In the center of our animal want, I felt the red-eyed snake slither at the end of the blankets. I saw the next moments before they took place: drawn fangs, chomping down upon his ankle, right above the bony knob on the side.

    He wailed, but his words were unrecognizable, for his vocal chords began to turn to charcoal as the cry emerged. His skin hardened and crumbled. His eyes encrusted over with embers. He was on the verge of splintering into black dust. I held my hand to his face and felt his warmth, felt what was going to be gone and what would soon be restored to me.

    Then, miraculously, he opened his collapsing mouth and managed to eke out a few words.

    “Take it,” he said, spitting into my hand. I looked down, and there, in the center of my palm, was a canine tooth. I was shocked that he had given it to me, that he had known how to counteract the spell at all. His transformation back into his man-form was quick and left no ashen residue. Of course, the moment he was back in his own body, he stood and fled the room.

    I heard him downstairs in the bathroom, running the faucets and coughing black bile. A melancholic myself, I could not help but smile at the sound of his retching. The wooden door of the cottage swung open, and he vanished back into the woods with the crows. I knew I would not see him again. Still, I crept downstairs to see what he had done: the toothbrush was gone, stolen from beneath the sink. Every debt was now balanced.

    Now, he wears my toothbrush around his neck. I kept his tooth––I have it in my pocket, and I reach in there and thumb it in my fingers when I feel stress. It’s a nice souvenir.

    
Kaylie Saidin is a North Carolina based writer and surfer.