A Tempting Offer

by Marinda Kotze

Alice got off the bus at its final stop and walked across the road to a quiet strip mall. The sky was a deep purple twilight. The words ‘Dr Anna Csonka – Dental Surgeon’ gleamed from a round lightbox sign on the far-right side of the strip mall.

Csonka.

Alice made the mistake of googling the name after she made the appointment and found that the surname meant ‘mutilated’ in Hungarian.

Not the most reassuring name for a dentist.

Unfortunately, Alice didn’t have much of a choice. She often delayed going to the dentist, but she absolutely couldn’t wait today.

Last night, she ate her usual ramen noodles dinner with some lentils that she cooked on her two-plate stove. All went well until she bit into a lentil-sized rock.

The pain was instantaneous. She immediately knew that she had broken a tooth. A cautious look in the bathroom mirror confirmed it. The tooth was broken in half. The part of the tooth on the side of her tongue was already out, lying on the rim of the bathroom sink with some food debris that she spat out. The other side of the tooth was cracked and almost completely broken off, save for a thin piece of flesh from her gum that still tethered it to her mouth. Whenever that piece moved, which was pretty much whenever she opened or closed her mouth, the pain would shoot through her upper right jaw like a lightning bolt.

Alice didn’t have a medical aid, so she had to pay cash whenever the need for medical or dental care arose. Fortunately, this need was infrequent. At thirty-eight, Alice was still relatively young, so she could get away with it. But she was tempting fate, and she knew it, especially on her basic salary as an assistant at the perfume counter at Macy’s.

None of the dentists in her area had an opening on short notice, so she had to search the internet for a dentist in her city who was both available and affordable. That’s how she found Dr Csonka.

When Alice called, the old lady on the other side of the line said, with a heavy East European accent, that she was available in the early evening and willing to negotiate a fair price, depending on what needed to be done.

Perfect.

It was a scorching hot day in June, and even though dusk was approaching, the parking lot pavement was still hot. Alice wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead and reached into her handbag for a hair tie to pull her greying brown hair back into a ponytail.

The strip mall had seen better days. Most storefronts had ‘to let’ notices in front of them. Weeds lined the cracks in the pavement. The paint on most of the store signs had peeled off in large flakes. Shabby blankets, neatly stacked in front of some of the vacant stores, suggested that homeless people slept there at night.

The strip mall wasn’t entirely empty. The pulsating neon lights of an adult store on the left side of the mall indicated that it was still in business, and someone was locking up a hardware store two shops down from the dentist.

A soft bell rang as Alice opened the glass front door of the dentist’s office. Fluorescent ceiling lights embedded in the fibreboard ceiling cast a smooth white glow over the reception area.

No one was behind the front desk, but three patients – two men and one woman – were seated on plastic chairs that were arranged along the reception area’s walls. None of them acknowledged her as she walked in. It was difficult to tell their ages because they looked haggard and unkept, but Alice guessed they were possibly somewhere in their forties or fifties. The woman held an open magazine in her hands but didn’t read it and stared blankly out in front of her. One of the men wore a ragged black top hat and had a long beard with several knots in it. A strong whiff of stale alcohol emanated from his side of the room. He mumbled to himself as he rummaged through an old shopping bag. The other man had shoulder-length grey-brown hair, sat with his head in his hands and stared at the white floor tiles. His nails were long and dirty.

Alice reluctantly slipped into one of the plastic chairs closest to the front door.

The plastic coffee table in front of Alice had a stack of tattered magazines. By the looks of it, none of them were newer than 2012. A lonely plastic spider fern hung from the ceiling. Next to the front door was a wood coat hanger that held a red floral women’s jacket. The walls were bare except for a plastic Colgate-branded clock.

“Alice?” An Eastern European woman’s voice broke the silence. 

“Yes!” Alice jumped up instinctively, trying to find the source of the voice.

A short, stout old lady with a stooped gait appeared from a door behind the front desk. She wore a yellowed white dentist uniform. Short grey and black curls stuck out of the sides of a dull red cap tied tightly around her head. She had rough, uneven skin, a large, hairy mole on her cheek and a prominent nose that Alice tried not to stare at.

“Alice DeLacy?” Dr Csonka repeated, looking at Alice strangely.

“Yes, that’s me. We spoke on the phone this morning,” Alice said.

“Mmm, you sounded younger on the phone.” The dentist grumbled something under her breath as she turned around and stepped back into her examination room. “Come.”

Alice grabbed her handbag and followed the dentist into the examination room.

When Alice entered the room, it felt like she stepped into a time capsule from the nineteen sixties. Or perhaps even earlier.

Almost everything in the room was either brown or beige. The walls were covered from the floor to the ceiling with off-white tiles. A dental chair stood in the middle of the room. It had a cast iron frame with walnut-brown arm and headrests. The seat and backrests were a well-worn creamy beige. The footrest was covered with a rough piece of russet brown carpet that was almost worn through in the middle. The walls were lined with metal cabinets and worktables. A skull with a complete set of perfect teeth sat on one of the cabinets. Below it was a shelf packed with brown and green glass bottles of varied sizes. A small porcelain washbasin with a cracked mirror stood in the left corner of the room. Opposite the washbasin was an old sand-coloured Kelvinator refrigerator that hummed in the right corner of the room.

At least everything looks clean. Alice consoled herself.

“Get in.” The dentist gestured to Alice to get into the dental chair.

Alice obeyed and climbed into the chair. It was a bit smaller than she would’ve liked. She had been slender most of her life. But nowadays, she avoids looking at herself in the mirror or shopping for new clothes. At times like these, however, she was reminded of how her body had changed in the last couple of years. The armrests pressed into her hips at uncomfortable angles.

The dentist didn’t ask whether she was ready or comfortable and simply started to pump the recliner pedal with her right foot, which gradually tilted the chair back. While doing so, she put a surgical mask on her face and assembled her tools on a small metal tray beside her. Once Alice was sufficiently tilted, the dentist reached out to a bulbous hanging dental light and aimed it at Alice’s face.

“Let’s see,” the dentist said and peered over the light at Alice.

Alice obediently opened her mouth.

“Oh, very bad, very bad,” Dr Csonka said, shaking her head. She took a moment to assess the situation further and then declared the words that Alice had feared: “We need to do a root canal.”

The dentist extracted her dental mirror from Alice’s mouth and started to rustle in a cabinet beside her. Alice closed her mouth and sighed silently.

A root canal.

She had really wished that it would not come to that. Getting a root canal felt like she had failed once more in life.

When she was a child, Alice excelled at everything – academics, sports, music, you name it. Her parents constantly bragged about her to anyone within earshot, and everyone had high expectations of her.

Boy, did I disappoint.

She flunked out of law school and, despite what she had promised herself, never made it back to college. She had drifted from one retail job to the next and knew she would never do better than the one-bedroom apartment she rented now.

Alice had always wanted to get married and have kids, but she has been single since her late twenties. Men didn’t look at her like they used to when she was younger, if they even noticed her at all. Slowly but surely, her body was ageing and failing her, and it felt to Alice like there was no way for her to make it stop.

Alice tried to brace herself for what was about to come, but her heart sank when she saw the long metal injection that Csonka held in front of her. Alice opened her mouth and closed her eyes, resigning herself to whatever came next.

She could feel the dentist positioning the needle but not piercing her gum yet.

“Relax your jaw a little, yes like that,” the dentist said, guiding the needle into Alice’s gum.

Alice hadn’t been to a dentist in a while but remembered dentist appointments as a teenager. The dentist would always be kind and warn her when something would hurt. Dr Csonka wasn’t quite as considerate.

The needle remained in her gum for what felt like several minutes, going deeper and deeper into the soft flesh. The pain radiated out from the point of the injection, deep into her jaw and all the way down into her neck.

Once all the anaesthesia was dispensed, Dr Csonka removed the injection needle and returned to her metal tray. Alice opened her eyes again and looked up at the beige fibreboard ceiling. The ceiling had the same fluorescent lights as the reception area, except one light behind Alice buzzed and flickered sporadically.

Dr Csonka stood up from her chair and stepped towards the back of the examination room. Alice couldn’t see her but could hear Csonka opening and closing a metal cabinet. A few moments later, dramatic classical music filled the room.

“Franz Liszt,” Dr Csonka’s voice boomed proudly over the music from somewhere behind Alice. “This is his Hungarian Rhapsodies. They are my favourite,” Csonka said as she sat beside Alice.

“Is it numb?” Dr Csonka asked and prodded at the gum with a dental tool, where she injected the anaesthetic.

Alice uttered an open mouth, “Ah?”. She couldn’t tell whether it was numb.

Dr Csonka went in with her tools anyway.

“You have a nice big mouth,” the dentist said as she started working. “And a small tongue. Very good for dentist work.”

It sounded like a compliment to Alice, so she graciously accepted it with another open mouth, “aha”.

It seemed like her jaw was numb, as Alice couldn’t feel much of what was happening to her. As the moments crept by, Alice started to feel a numb heaviness all over, as if she was drifting to sleep.

Alice wriggled her toes to resist the numbing feeling. Her vision was getting blurry as well. Soft green, blue and purple afterglows started to linger over everything around her. She caught a glimpse of Dr Csonka’s face through the colourful haze. Csonka looked a little bit different, too.

Alice closed her eyes and tried to focus on the music. It was beautiful. It sounded uplifting like it was telling a tale of an exciting quest into a fantastical Hungarian forest. But soon, the music took a darker, more dramatic turn and became almost ominous, as if a monster loomed somewhere within the depths of that forest. It felt to Alice as if the music was sweeping her away.

At some point, she felt a sting in her right arm, but she felt so numb from the anaesthesia that she didn’t even flinch nor care enough to open her eyes.

***

Alice woke up with a splitting headache. Her mouth was dry, sore and numb.

She turned her head from side to side to survey the room. She was alone.

She lifted her left arm slowly to check the time on her wristwatch – it was a quarter to midnight.

I’ve been here since… what was it? Six-thirty? That was over five hours ago!

Alice tried to sit up straight in the reclined dental chair, but a bout of dizziness overtook her, making her lie back in the chair.

Beyond the closed door, she heard upbeat folk music from the reception area.

Did I pass out while she was working on me? Why didn’t she just wake me up?

Alice attempted to push herself out of the chair again, this time more slowly, to avoid getting lightheaded. She sat upright for a few moments to compose herself. When it felt like the dizziness had subsided, Alice slowly stood up and walked over to the washbasin to rinse her mouth. Her mouth was still numb, and some water spilt as she tried to rinse it. But at least the cool water brought some relief. She opened her mouth to check the tooth and saw that it was fixed. Quite neatly, actually.

But then she noticed the sand-coloured Kelvinator fridge behind her in the mirror. It had a bright red stain, resembling the shape of a handprint, on its silver metal handle.

That stain wasn’t there before, right?

Alice slowly turned around and approached the fridge. A chill gripped her heart, but she couldn’t stop herself from going closer. She had to see what was inside.

Alice pulled the silver handle, careful not to touch the red stain. A faint yellow light came on inside the fridge as soon as she opened its door.

Plastic bags filled with blood were neatly stacked on the metal shelves. The bags had white tags sellotaped on them. Alice peered into the fridge to read some of the bags’ labels at the top of the piles: ‘Male, 50’, ‘Male, 51’, ‘Female, 48’, ‘Female, 38’.

Female, 38. Is that… me?

Alice stumbled back from the fridge and slammed the door shut.

What the hell is going on here?

Alice frantically ran to fetch her handbag from a small table where she had left it and proceeded to the door.

That’s when she noticed the bruise on her right arm.

It was on the inside of her elbow. In the middle of the bruise was a small needle mark. Her hands started to tremble.

I need to get out of here.

Alice clumsily grabbed the door handle and threw the door open.

Pleasant folk music was playing in the brightly lit reception area.

A slender woman sat on one of the plastic reception room chairs with her legs propped up on the coffee table. Alice guessed that she must be in her mid-to-late twenties. The woman had curly raven black hair, perfect silky white skin, a button nose, high cheekbones and full red lips. She wore a yellowed white dentist uniform and held a metal flask in her right hand.

She flashed a wide smile at Alice. Her teeth had a red glint.

“So, how do you feel?” she asked Alice. She had a prominent East European-sounding accent.

The voice took Alice off guard. “Are you…?”

“Dr Csonka?” the woman completed Alice’s sentence for her. She laughed. “You’re older than I would’ve wanted, so your blood won’t last me as long, but I think I’ll get at least a good couple of weeks of youthful fun out of it.”

Alice stared at Csonka in disbelief.

“Oh, and don’t worry about payment. Your blood was the payment. I understand you’re a bit strapped for cash, yes?” Csonka said.

Alice opened her mouth to scream but could only manage a loud gasp. She ran towards the door and grabbed the handle, but the door was locked.

“Don’t leave so soon! Everyone always just wants to leave,” Csonka said in a mockingly glum tone.

“Don’t come near me,” Alice warned. Her voice sounded scared, so she followed it up with a more confident sounding: “I’m calling the police.” She tried to grab hold of her phone, but her hands trembled too much.

“Ah, don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Sit. C’mon, sit,” Csonka gestured to the plastic chairs opposite her.

Alice reluctantly stepped away from the door and took a seat, placing her handbag on her lap. A bunch of keys was on the stack of magazines in front of her.

“You know, I can learn a lot about a person from drinking their blood. I always find it fascinating,” Csonka said as she took another swig from her flask. “A person’s hopes and dreams. Their fears. Their greatest disappointments. You and I are actually very similar,” Csonka smiled. “Could you have guessed that?”

Alice stared at Csonka wordlessly.

“We both hate getting older. I’ve been staving it off for over a hundred years now. Granted, my methods are not… perfect. But they at least do the job temporarily. Getting young blood without attracting attention to oneself is tricky,” Csonka said as if she had to justify herself to Alice.

“But actually, any blood would do,” Csonka said with a wry smile. “That’s what makes the homeless population so useful. They’ll agree to anything, and no one ever believes them.”

Csonka took her feet off the coffee table and leaned over towards Alice.

“You’ve let the gift of youth slip through your fingers, Alice,” Csonka said. “You had all these opportunities in your life. You had a nice upbringing. You were a gifted child. You practically had the world at your feet, and then… you gave it up for a life of mediocrity.”

Alice looked away and pulled her handbag closer to her chest.

“You hate that you’re getting older, and you think there is nothing you can do about it,” Csonka said. “But there is something you could do about it.” Alice thought she saw Csonka’s green eyes glow for a split second.

Csonka remained silent for a moment. The folk music had stopped playing. The only sounds in the room came from the plastic Colgate clock that ticked each second off.

“I don’t offer this to anyone. Of course, you don’t have to say yes, but honestly… given your current life situation… you’d be a fool to refuse.”

“Offer me what?” Alice shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“A chance at a better life. One where you don’t have to avoid looking at yourself in the mirror.” Csonka glanced over Alice’s body with a look of derision. “I’m offering you a chance to forestall the inevitable and plot a different course for yourself. At the moment, you are just a passenger in your own life. Circumstances and the dull forward motion of time determine where you’re going. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Alice looked at Csonka seriously. “Are you offering to make me… like you?”

Csonka laughed. “Not exactly. I’m a boszorkány. You might translate that to witch in English, but the word witch has such a stigma attached to it. Boszorkányok, like me, are simply women who… know how to make things happen. We can be your greatest friend… or enemy.” Csonka winked at Alice and took a final gulp from her flask. She then carefully licked the flask’s rim to ensure she didn’t waste a single drop.

“Ah, now that was refreshing,” Csonka said, placing the empty flask on the coffee table.

Alice was repulsed.

But also a little intrigued.

Her life has not been going her way, and perhaps…

“This offer won’t be on the table forever,” Csonka said. “If you want to do this, we must act quickly.”

“Can’t I at least take a few days to think about it?” Alice asked.

 “If you need to think about it for a few days, then I guess I was wrong about you. You don’t mind getting fat and old.” Csonka said with a look of scorn.

“I didn’t say that!” Alice replied defensively. “I just… I just need more… time.”

Alice lessened her grip on her handbag and let it slip off her lap. She looked down at her body. She was wearing her favourite blouse. The one that she thought made her look the least fat. But looking at herself now, she could see every one of her stomach rolls as they rested on top of each other. She looked up and saw her reflection in the glass front door. She looked old, like someone’s aunt.

“You’ve had enough time,” Csonka said and picked up the keys from the magazine stack. She walked towards the front door, unlocked it, and swung it open, removing Alice’s reflection from Alice’s view and replacing it with a view of the dark open parking lot.

Alice stared out into the night and then looked up at Csonka.

Csonka gave Alice a dispassionate look, as if she was bored with her and did not care either way about what Alice decided.

Alice picked up her handbag and stood up. She walked towards the door, but hesitated when she reached Csonka and stopped.

Csonka raised her right eyebrow and gave Alice an intrigued look.

“You could be so much more than what you are now,” Csonka said.

Alice looked at Csonka and admired her amazing skin, slender body, and soft, raven black hair. She admired the confidence with which Csonka held herself.

If I could just have an ounce of that…

Alice didn’t have to say anything. Her hesitation was enough for Csonka.

Csonka slammed the door shut, and the room suddenly went pitch dark.

Alice instantly knew that she had made a terrible decision.

Something, some sort of energy, pulled her away from the front door. Alice reached out towards the door, but the tips of her fingers just missed the door handle. The energy dragged her across the smooth white floor tiles of the reception area, past the front desk, through the doorway and into the examination room. The door of one of the largest metal cabinets flew open, and the force dragged her into the cabinet. The cabinet door slammed shut and instantly locked.

Alice sat where the force had left her, hunched up inside the cabinet, facing its door. Her body was sore all over. The cabinet was lined with a rough nylon carpet that scratched Alice’s skin.

Apart from the humming of the Kelvinator fridge, it was completely quiet.

Rays of white light from the examination room’s fluorescent ceiling lights shone through the edges of the cabinet’s door.

Her handbag was gone.

Alice wanted to cry.

What have I gotten myself into now? I should have just walked straight out of there. But I hesitated…

The examination room’s door opened slowly with a drawn-out squeak. Alice kept herself as still as possible to hear what was happening outside.

“There’s been a few people who took me up on my offer. You know, the one where I promise them their best life. Some people really are that gullible.” Csonka laughed. “As you would probably have guessed by now, it ends pretty much the same way for all of them. Ah, correction, for all of you.”

Alice remained quiet.

“But I was honest when I said I don’t offer this to everyone. I really am discerning in that regard. I choose people based on certain qualities and, well… what I need for my potions at that given moment.” Alice could hear Csonka moving things around in the examination room as if she was preparing it for something.

“I usually choose people who have lost enthusiasm for their life. You know, the depressed, the ones that have lost hope for their future. Turns out they are the easiest to manipulate and the most hesitant to fight for their lives when… well, their lives literally depend on it.”

The cabinet door swung open at that moment and Alice felt herself being pulled out of the cabinet. She tried to hold on to the cabinet door, but it was no use.

The examination room had transformed into something that resembled a medieval-looking dungeon. The off-white wall tiles were a rusty brown now. The floor was a rugged grey colour. A bare wooden table stood where the dental chair once was. Next to it, where the dental light formerly stood, was now a large black cauldron that hung from the ceiling by a corroded black chain. The fibreboard ceiling had transformed into a soot-black abyss that seemed to extend far higher than before. Beneath the cauldron was a small firepit that looked like it had recently been lit. Weathered wood tables now replaced the metal tables where Dr Csonka used to keep her dental tools. They were covered by thin, greyish-brown tablecloths. On these tables were a variety of items – a large hunting knife, a dark grey stone grinding bowl, small bottles with powders, plants and live insects, and jars that held things that looked like eyeballs and other things that Alice could only assume were animal or human organs. A few rusty gold candelabras with lit black candles stood on the tables, casting a warm yellow glow over everything.

The energy pushed Alice onto the bare wooden table where the dental chair once stood and forced her to lie down.

 Csonka peered over her, much like she did hours before when giving Alice a root canal.

“This won’t hurt… too much.” Csonka tilted her head back as she laughed.

Alice tried to scream, but she couldn’t open her mouth.

She tried to get up from the table, but the invisible force held her down.

Behind her, Alice could hear Csonka busying herself with something at the table with the jars and bottles. It sounded like she was sharpening the knife.

Alice thought about what Csonka had said earlier. She’s right. I always make excuses for why I can’t change things, and in the process, I have become a passenger in my own life. I’m unhappy with my life, but honestly, who do I have to blame for that, other than myself? The years had literally flown by, and I’m waiting for…what? I can’t let it end here. I must fight back.

Alice felt the force that was holding her in place retreating slightly.

Csonka walked towards the cauldron and tipped a bottle of pink oil into it. A pop and sizzle emanated from deep inside the cauldron in response. The fumes from the cauldron reminded Alice of the metallic smell of blood mixed with the dusty smell of old leaves.

“You know, there are a lot of stories I can tell you of how I came from the old country to America. The free world has been nothing but good to me,” Csonka said while she stirred something in the cauldron with a long wooden spoon. “This country really is the land of opportunity.”

While Csonka was droning on about her exploits, Alice tried to find her own opportunity to get out. She realised that she could probably lift her left leg high enough to kick the cauldron.

Csonka turned back to her worktable. Alice could hear her grinding up something in the grinding bowl. Alice kept her body still so as not to tip Csonka off that she had gained some ability to move.

“And thanks to this country’s criminally expensive healthcare, plus the worsening economy, I’ve been getting quite a lot of eager patients in the last couple of months. People are getting really desperate.” Csonka walked back to the cauldron. She turned her back on Alice and poured something into the cauldron.

Alice didn’t hesitate.

She bent her left knee and kicked Csonka as hard as she could. Csonka stumbled into the cauldron, causing its sizzling contents to splutter upwards in a large boiling wave and into Csonka’s face and chest.

Csonka screamed.

Alice pulled herself from the table. The energy that had held her in place had almost completely subsided now. She moved towards the door as fast as she could, but before she opened the door, she turned to look back.

The boiling hot oil was still sizzling on Csonka’s beautiful face, leaving large yellow and red welted patches of burnt skin over her eyelids, cheeks, lips and neck. Csonka was blinded by the oil, but she still tried to reach out to Alice to stop her.

Alice grasped one of the golden candelabras and tipped it over. The greyish-brown tablecloth immediately started to burn. She was surprised at how quickly the flame from the candle spread across the table.

Alice exited the examination room and quickly closed the door behind her. She scanned the reception area and saw a sturdy office chair behind the front desk. Alice picked up the office chair, carried it over to the examination room door, and jammed it against the door handle so it would be stuck in its closed position. Then she grabbed her handbag that was lying on the tile floor and ran towards the front door.

Csonka’s shrieks pierced through the dental office.

Alice ran as fast as she could. Out into the empty parking lot, past the neon lights of the adult store and into the dark, cool night.

© Marinda Kotze, 2025

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