Night of the Demon

 

Once there was a Demon Lord who had tired of Hell and all its ways; and being a Lord of the Nether Realms, he had the power to free himself to wander the earth

Where he saw war and famine and pestilence

He saw cities burn under mushroom clouds and men grow rich in the light of the flames

He saw death-robots fly and drop rockets on weddings halfway across the world

He saw a great city by night, with brightly lit shops and restaurants, yet the alleys were dark and deserted, and came down for a closer look

And in one of the alleys was a house, and the house was crumbling; and in it a room, and in the room a bed

And on the bed was a little girl, curled up and not crying

She was not crying because it was difficult enough finding the strength to breathe; and the demon saw she had been brutally treated and was clearly dying.

And the demon's mind was touched with compassion, so that he reached out to comfort and heal her,  when there was a flash of light;

And he looked up to find an angel covered in wings, and the angel said to him:

"Do not presume to heal this girl, I forbid you." And the demon furrowed his brow and said,

"She is suffering, and she is young and has her life ahead of her. Why should she suffer like this and die, when you could heal her at a touch, and so could I?"

And the angel said, "If she dies now, she will die innocent, but if she lives she will accumulate sins; so it is better that she dies now. And young death is beautiful."

And the demon looked at the angel, and so great was his wrath that the creature fluttered backwards. "So this is your Kingdom of Heaven," he said. "Suffering and death is what you love. And you call us evil!"

Then turning to the girl, he murmured, "I am forbidden to heal you. But I am not forbidden to do this." And he gathered the child up in his arms.

"What are you..." the angel shouted, but it was already speaking to the empty air. For the demon was gone, and with him the girl too.

Perhaps there is a world where he can heal her, and there they have gone.

Death March

 

You see them pulled from the street

Dragged from their homes while the women cry

Fighting for freedom, they were told

Fighting for the democratic way

While money from a western land

Pays cocaine sniffing freaks who send them to die.

(It is the best money ever spent, said -

Old men who sleep safe and snug in bed.)

Now see them two weeks later -

Sprawled in the mud 

A hulking charred box beside,

That was to be the chariot of victory 

White faces with fear

Still touched,

Not yet smoothed away

By the blur of decay -

Though there is nothing

To fear now

Not anymore - 

All that they had, mind and body and thought

Ended in the sound of a cannon shot.

Reconstruction of a fractured maxillary central incisor

 This was a ten year old girl who jumped off a wall, fell on her face, and broke her tooth.

The first thing I did was a root canal treatment. Here's the X ray:

That's my assistant's finger.

After cutting retention grooves in the tooth...

I removed about half the root canal filling I had placed...

Then etched the tooth with phosphoric acid...

Followed by filling the space in the root canal I had created with a flowable light cured resin gel...

In which I placed a fibre optic post of the appropriate size which I had already tested for adequate  fit...

Red, in this case (note the red band on the top). The three post sizes most commonly used, in increasing order of diameter: yellow, red, blue.

I then hardened the flowable resin with a light cure unit, sealing the post in place:

(Each subsequent  layer of filling material was similarly hardened.)

Then I started building up the back of the replacement part of the crown with light cured filling material that is extra white to block out the dark shadows of the inside of the mouth which would otherwise  make the replacement look dark:

After building up the back of the crown, I cut off the excess fibre optic post.

Then I started adding more light cured resin filling material of the correct shade to match the other teeth to the front of the built-up crown:

At this stage it's bulky and rough in appearance, and the anatomy doesn't match the other intact incisor. Notice those two notches in the other tooth? The bulges between them are called mamelons, and I had to reproduce them by careful cutting and shaping

Then I polished the filling:

Voila: