Chapter 1
The boy hurled forward, propelled by his spindly legs and sheer willpower. Little insect of a thing, a small bag of coins slung around his shoulder.
Hurry.
We’d told him his mother needed the medicine before the hour turned.
We’d told him he could keep the change, too.
Hurry.
Across the bridge, past the old well, left on the asphalt road โ he repeated the landmarks under his breath in prayer. He could make it. He could make it.
Weโd said so ourselves.
But that was a lie.
Chapter 2
The whole town knew, of course.
That, while the boy was out there running for his motherโs life, she was in here โ planted in a narrow kitchen, face split into a toothless smile, a desecrated chapel with its tiles missing. Her neck stiff yo-yoing, side to side.
She didnโt notice her son was gone, the stench in the room, sour. Egg-gone-bad.
She didnโt notice us.
Not as we stepped inside, crunching glass, ceramic, something brittle. Not even as we grabbed her by the back, gently. She toppled all at once, so we half-dragged her, like a big sack of potatoes, through the door, through the weeds, to the back.
We loved Momma once, we truly did. The beaded necklaces she strung by hand โ prettiest in town, we always said.
So we gathered around and paid our respects.
Then we buried her.
And that was the truth.
Chapter 3
Faster, he thought, faster, but his legs wouldn’t carry him, silly boy.
And because we were all there, huddled in his backyard, none of us saw it happen.
The boy, running faster than his limbs would allow, stumbled, tripped, then wavered a little, like a train gone off-rail, before hitting the ground โ chin first.
The small bag flew from his hands, spinning in the airโฆ
โฆto land a few feet away.
He held his breath, waiting for the cascading, metallic sound of coins spilling across cement.
But it wasnโt coins that burst out.
It was teeth.
Human teeth.
Chapter 4
The boy blinked.
He was still down, jaw throbbing, his world tiltingโฆ slowly finding its axis.
Teeth. Human teeth.
Twenty-three half-rotten, dark threads clinging where the gums had tornโฆ Plus one, heavier than the rest.
Only the boy knew that tooth.
Momma had liked to gnaw at it, making it clink when it was just the two of them.
He didnโt look closely then.
He stared at it now.
Then picked it up with a trembling hand before turning on his heel and running back home.
Smart boy.
Chapter 5
But we didn’t know that then.
We didn’t know he would return early, or that the quiet would stop him cold at the threshold. That he wouldn’t go in, but creep along the side of the house instead, crawl into the overgrown bush by the garden.
That through the leaves, he’d see us.
Gathered in the back, fingers muddy, faces solemn.
A hole in the ground between us, half-covered.
A shoe. Theโฆ the foot.
His Momma.
Chapter 6
Thud.
Dirt struck her body. Thud.
And the boy gulped down a scream.
Thud.
Because, with eyes wide like a pair of blue beads, he spotted something elseโฆ
A coin pouch, identical to the one he held. Still strapped around one of our waists.
Our mistake.
Thud.
The coins weโd meant to give him, the lie we’d told instead.
A mismatch.
Thud. Thud.
As we piled the hole with rocks in hushed motions, sealing his Momma beneath the earth forever.
Chapter 7
The boy let out a howl โ squeezing, almost crushing it: the tooth he knew was special to Momma.
He’d never asked why, and yetโฆ
We crowded him, stroked his hair, we wiped his tears with our muddy fingers.
โฆso the boy palmed it away.
The tooth, the truth.
The diamond.
Chapter 8
At the edge of town sat a small cemetery. A few graves, names faded, hard to readโฆ
One fresh mound of earth, no headstone.
Momma.
That’s where we had buried her, the day before.
We meant to tell the boy โ we would have told him, truly.
But we needed time to find the diamond, we told ourselves as we removed her teeth.
The whole village knew what was encrusted in one of them.
What we didn’t know was in which.
Chapter 9
It was in the way Momma’s jaw clinked when she smiled, absentmindedly.
We noticed.
And yet, she hid it.
From the village that had raised her, the ones who loved her beaded necklaces, who cared for her boy.
The boy.
We never meant for him to know. There would’ve been no need for him at all, either.
If she had stayed buried.
Chapter 10
But she rose again with the sun.
Dragging what was left of her. Gaze fixed straight ahead, face stiff in rigor mortis.
We all saw her.
Shuffling and wobbling her way back home. Flies swarming the muddy clumps in her hair, mouth gaped open, no teeth.
We all heard her.
Fumbling with the house, the kitchen, cabinet doors, her necklaces, beads all over the floor. Searching.
And when she couldn’t find it โ the teeth we’d removed, the diamond โ she settled her dead glare on her son.
She searched him with that hollowed grin, side to side.
So we did what was left to do: we sent the boy running.
Then we buried her again.
Julia Garicochea is a bilingual writer based in Sรฃo Paulo, Brazil, whose speculative fiction draws on a multidisciplinary background, blending lyrical storytelling with emotionally immersive worlds. When she’s not writing fiction, she’s a gamer, an award-winning copywriter, and Mother of Cats.
