Alternathon short story 1:

Everyone thought of him as being mild mannered. In keeping with his job as a dentist. Or oral hygienist as some would insist on calling him. He didn’t go much with that. He trained as a dentist and, above all, was somewhat of a traditionalist.

He did seem to fit the profile though. Didn’t drink much, didn’t smoke, never cheated on his wife, loving father, etc, etc. Which is why what happened surprised some people.

There were a few things about him that caused some surprise. The fact that he was a pro-wrestling fan. Not even he could explain exactly why he liked that strange pseudo-sport. There was just something about it that appealed. Maybe it was the fact that even though the results were pre-determined (a fact which people never tired of pointing out to him) the was a skill to getting to that point. Maybe it was, in some sick way, the fact that the wrestlers could improvise if something went wrong and they needed to.

Being Canadian, his love for ice hockey was slightly more understandable, if still not in keeping with the image others had of him. He simply couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t like it. He had tried watching baseball, football and basketball but found them all to be a bit too slow. Only soccer had come close to matching the speed and end to end excitement of pro hockey.

The one thing hockey and wrestling had in common was the violence. Ice hockey was the only sport he could think of where violence was in the rules. He knew well of the long since rescinded rule that a fight could only be broken up once both of the original fighters were on the ice. And the players were tough. He personally had carried out emergency root canal surgery on a player during the second period only to watch the guy take the ice at the start of the third. (This gained him a small amount of notoriety when the player in questioned publicly thanked him during a post game interview.)

As a kid he had even entertained thoughts of playing in the NHL himself. Unfortunately, while a not bad player, he wasn’t quite good enough, unusual name aside. But he still played in a local league on a weekend. Turned out to be good for business as most of the players in the league were on his books at work.

He would never forget that day, coming home early and catching them at it in the spare room. His wife and someone he had thought of as a friend. Someone he knew from another team. His wife had begged for a second chance but was currently staying at her sisters with the divorce proceedings having started. And the following weekend he looked across the ice at him. The guy who had helped rip his family apart. As usual, during the game a fight had broken out. A true bench clearer. He saw the guy lying on the ice. He would never be able to say what went through his mind as he skated over, nor if the incident was pre-planned.

The dentist smiled as he cleaned the blood off his ice skating boots.