Your body is a fragile thing.
Not because it breaks easily. Because it listens.
In the oldest stories, the woods didn’t kill you for breaking a taboo. They rewrote you. They took your betrayal, your vanity, your grief, and turned it into something with roots and teeth.
That’s what I’ve been trying to bottle for three years with Folklore and Flesh: Stories of Transformation and Terror. I call it Folk Body Horror – where ancient dread becomes a biological instruction manual.
The collection is 10 stories and 9 poems. It has a 4.9 on Amazon. And in June, when I made it free for 5 days, 13 people downloaded it.
13.
That taught me Amazon isn’t going to show this book to anyone unless I bring you there myself. So for October, I’m doing it direct from the press.
The Free Infection: Read “Digital Fangs” Here
This is the most-loved story from the collection. A beauty influencer whose viral filter stops being digital and starts growing flesh. It’s about vanity as a ritual, and what happens when the algorithm answers back.
Read the first 740 words of Digital Fangs here…
Digital Fangs
1
Ava Delgado lit her ring light, the soft glow painting her cheeks porcelain-pale. She angled her phone so the blue studio wall slanted behind her, pinned with polaroids of past photoshoots. Tonight was launch night—her biggest drop of the year, a tooth-whitening serum called Dentifex. It promised “an incandescent smile forged in ancient rites” and retailed for eighty-nine ninety-nine.
“Ready in three…two…” Her manager, Bree, peered over Ava’s shoulder, chewing her lip. “You sure about this copy? ‘From bone-dust to brilliance’ sounds…cultish.”
Ava tapped the little glass vial, catching the light: a whisper of bone-white powder settled like snow. “It’s perfect. People eat up esoteric marketing. Besides,” she flashed practiced teeth, “I’ll be glowing.”
Bree sighed. “Just sell the smile, Ava. No need to mention ancestors.”
Ava winked. “My ancestors love views.”
She hit record. “Hey, Glow-Gang!” she chirped. “I’ve got Dentifex on deck tonight. You’ve seen those celebrity smiles—shaded like fresh ivory? We’re about to get real bright.” She unscrewed the cap, inhaled that sterile-sweet scent, then dabbed the serum onto her incisors. The tingle felt like a million tiny combs brushing over enamel. “Feels amazing,” she breathed. “Hydrating but zingy. Let’s wait ten minutes and see the magic.”
Her followers flooded the live chat with emojis—sparkles, flames, tiny teeth. She smiled wider, lips taut. The serum settled warm against her gums, and she bit her cheek by accident, tasting coppery blood. She ignored it, signing off with a wink. “Stay glowing, babes.”
2
By dawn, the promise of Dentifex had transfigured into a fevered omen. Ava surfaced from fragmented dreams, the taste of copper lingering on her tongue, a phantom ache pulsing beneath her jaw with each heartbeat—a Morse code tapped out by some unwelcome architect deep within the bone. She staggered to the bathroom, the world pale and trembling, and bared her teeth to the mirror. There, rising behind her right canine, a pointed nub erupted: not the soft milky ivory of childhood, but a hard, creamy fang, the color of bone ash, glinting in the sour morning light.
Ava’s breath stuttered, her chest a locked vault of panic. The new tooth staked its claim, slick with a bead of blood as she gingerly prodded it. This was not the glimmering smile Dentifex had promised. She snapped a photo—flash piercing the gloom—and sent it off to Bree with numb urgency.
Ava: “I woke up with a … fang???”
Bree: “Wtf. That’s…not normal.”
Ava: “Should I see a dentist?”
Bree’s reply buzzed in, frantic and terse. “Yes. And pause the serum. Immediately.”
The hours that followed unraveled in splinters—an Uber through bruised city haze, the silent terror of waiting rooms, the antiseptic hush of Dr. Park’s office. Ava sat, fingers knotted in her lap, as Park peered into her mouth with clinical reverence and ordinary dread. He pressed a gloved finger to the errant tooth, studied the X-ray, and frowned so deeply the lines seemed to etch new years onto his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Park murmured at last, voice thin as dental floss. “The structure is wholly mature. Roots, pulp, even enamel striations—your body’s growing teeth outside its own blueprint.” His eyes glinted with something between curiosity and fear.
Ava tried for levity, her voice brittle as spun sugar. “Maybe it’s a beauty trend. Custom fangs. Shark-chic.”
Park didn’t smile. His scalpel hovered, a crescent of cold light. “I can remove it, but this—” His gaze lingered, too gentle for comfort. “Whatever that serum does, it’s more than cosmetic. I’d advise you never use it again.”
She nodded, knuckles white and trembling, the word “never” echoing in her head like a prayer and a curse. The dentist’s office smelled of mint and antiseptic, but Ava swore she caught a whiff of something older—dust, salt, the trace of ancient bones ground fine.
Outside, the sun was jaundiced, the sky a thin blue bruise. As she stepped onto the street, every reflective surface—the chrome of passing cars, the glass of storefronts—seemed to shimmer with a secret, her teeth glinting in the distorted reflections. Somewhere in the marrow of her jaw, the magic pulsed, restless and unyielding.
In the distance, sirens wailed, a chorus of warning. Ava pressed her tongue to the new fang. It pulsed, alive. She walked home beneath a sky stitched with veins, wondering what she had become.
Go download it. Let’s peel back the skin together. And if you enjoy the transformations, please consider leaving a short, three-sentence review.
So it goes.
Thank you for visiting with me. For more Poetry or Literature related content, visit my blog at The Ritual.
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