I was a fairy, and my job was about to be distributed to me. I could already see that only two positions were left - the two that were the most plentiful.

  Children needed their teeth collected so they could have money for candy. I knew that.

  The Head Fairy handed me a tooth fairy badge and said, "Go do something for yourself, Mark. Make the world a bright place! Bring joy." She looked at me and added, "Do what you want. No one is going to stop you. And even if someone tries, they will fail."

  And so, I decided to collect teeth - but not from children. My journey began just like any other adventure.

  I did some breaking and entering.

  After which, of course, I took a hammer in my hands and began to talk to a sleeping dragon.

  Most people would say that was the stupidest thing someone might do. Dragons were, after all, very big and did not ask questions.

  But I wasn't ready to give up! I was ready to do the ultimate thing - something no one would have ever done.

  I prepared myself to bring the hammer down on the dragon, only for the dragon to yell at the last second.

  Something between the yell of a very hungry wolf about to get eaten by a bear and the shrieking of a banshee.

  "Dentist!" the dragon yelled, moving away from me. "I don't like dentists."

  The dragon told me this using his scaled armor to create distance between us.

  "No, I suppose you don't," I replied. I wasn't even a tenth of the dragon’s bulk. And yet, I was not intimidated by the dragon.

  The hammer was still in my hands. Ready to be brought down upon the reptile!

  It wasn't about marketing oneself. It wasn't even about how one perceived themselves. It was all about keeping my cool in the face of a creature who could probably eat me in one single bite.

  "I don't have health insurance," the dragon continued to defend himself.

  "I am a hedge dentist,” that was, of course, a lie.

  My hopes were that he wouldn’t know how healthcare worked. How the hedge healers were being beaten on the spot if they were caught.

  Sent to work camps. Their fortune taken from them.

  The dragon puffed out some smoke. Did he think he was going to intimidate me? Me?

  The smoke was just getting on my nerves. I decided to play it on the safe side, though.

  "When an infection in the teeth occurs, that infection goes straight to the brain."

  But not even this old fish wife's wisdom was getting to this donkey!

  "Okay, but isn't there a potion I can take that can stop the decay?”

  It was going to be a con for the ages...

  Not even I knew how potions were made. The only thing I knew how to do was mix healing salves. Ones for losing teeth. Guaranteed not to harm the child!

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "No," I said, looking into his big, wide eyes. "They are made from dead creatures.”

  Which might even be true. After all, what sort of a witch created potions out of living beings? Not even the worst witch was probably going to be so cruel.

  "Okay, then. They are made out of beings. So what? I eat meat all the time."

  I decided to do the only thing I could: visualize it all.

  "Do you know how witches take eyeballs out of a person?"

  I didn't know that. But that was supposed to be a no.

  “With their nails?”

  The dragon possibly knew something about witches. Darn it all…

  "I know that," I told him, as I began to form my next counterattack. "The old-fashioned witches, the ones who are bound by the witch union, don't have time to do that anymore."

  "There is no such thing as the witch union!” The dragon roared.

  He might even be right. All witches were probably just some old grannies who didn't do anything but brew health potions all day.

  I was ready to argue with him until the end of time, darn it, but I needed to see how good he was. "If you gave me your tooth, I will sell it and then give you the money," I said.

  The dragon blinked at me. "Wait. You don't know much about dragons, do you?" He had a smile on his mouth. "My teeth will grow instantly if you take one of my teeth and sell it. If you can even find a market for that, then you'll be rich. But you won't get anything for it."

  My brain did the math.

  The dragon had about 150 teeth. How exactly they positioned themselves in his mouth was not something I was willing to consider a question worth asking.

  But if those 150 were sold to the Goblin Black Market, and I took a 10% cut and sold a single tooth for ten gold coins, and no one robbed me at the tax station, then…

  I got gold coin signs in my eyes.

  "Okay, then. Let me try finding a seller for you. Is that okay with you?" I asked.

  The dragon tore a tooth out. If I had known it was going to be this easy, I would have gotten all of my buddies from the academy in on this gig!

  "Yeah, sure. Go ahead. But I'm telling you, it's probably not going to be something you can manage."

  I decided to try it anyway!

  The Goblin Black Market was a dump. That was the only possible explanation I could get for the fact that I was given a single gold coin for a dragon’s tooth.

  "You know I wasn't going to give you even that much," the goblin behind the counter said. "But I like you. There's something about a con after my own heart that I simply can't ignore."

  I narrowed my eyes.

  "I am not a con. I'm a tooth fairy. We take teeth, we bring back gold. It's in the textbooks!”

  “Is that so?" The goblin shook his head. "How much do you normally trade for these teeth?"

  I blinked. How was I supposed to tell the goblin that I usually gave only a single coin for a tooth?

  "This is not from a human.” I lied to him. Not willing to admit to being a con. “You know, most of us make more with dragons."

  The dragon was a treasure. A treasure who was sure to kill me if I didn't deliver.

  "Just one more thing," the goblin said in a voice which made me shiver. "I can give you something else. Something that could really make you stand out as a tooth fairy."

  The next thing I know, I had a pair of pliers strong enough to take off the scale of a dragon, and the merchant was gone.

  But was I really going to cheat the dragons by giving him a single gold coin and stealing his scales? I shook my head.

  "I am many things, but murder I am not."

  As soon as I went back to the dragon, he showed me his horde.

  "My tooth is now yours. Do you have something to show me for it?"

  "Yes," I said. My head bowed.

  "Give here," he offered me his paw.

  I handed him the gold coin.

  "This is all I was able to manage to get for you. The goblin gave me pliers, but I can’t use them on you. I am sorry for wasting your time, sir Dragon.”

  "You can have my old scale," he said, as he pointed to the pile with the most luscious dragon scales I had ever seen.

  My part-time job was to wash dragons while studying in the academy. Those love to be washed.

  “And just because he gave me the pliers, I will let you become the main distributor of the scale. But I want 50%."

  This was a show of trust. I had no hopes for this venture. Knew it was doomed from the start.

  But as the dragon patted me on the head, I fell to the ground, and then, when I woke up, I saw just how much fire could pass through a dragon’s maw.

  Dragon scales were the most magical thing a person could sell. The most sought after by wizards who didn’t have a thing to do without them but smoking grasses and uttering nonsense, which made kings banish their newborn sons.

  And I didn't have a permit to sell them. But what was I supposed to do?

  I was trapped. My lie had grown legs as long as the horizon.

  I was going to make him rich. I was brave. But I was brave enough to file my taxes properly, God has mercy on me.

  And even still, even as sure as I was that the money went into the treasury and then into a lord’s seventh’s mistress, I just knew that the tax collectors would find me.

  And then deliver justice upon me.

  Creepypasta style…