Armed with a drill, mirror, scraper, and suction device, Dr. Mehta attempted to look menacing. He was brandishing these implements toward the aliens that materialized before him. Professor Mongorium (Mongo to his friends) barely batted a nictitating membrane in the dentist's direction. As sentient amphibians go, Mongo was very brave. Lacking teeth, he had nothing to fear from these devices nor the cowering dentist behind them. Fear needed feelings, and his species couldn't generate any emotions.

 

It was the dental chair that had Mongo's full attention. Vintage metal framework encased in avocado green leather. Would it become the next feature of his traveling space show? Professor Mongorium's Intergalactic Emotionarium and Candy Shoppe was long-running and somewhat profitable.

The Emotionarium's wondrous items held the emotional essences of their previous users. Mongo hopped into the seat. He ran his nuptial pads over the armrests. He felt the delicious pain of its former occupants, and his pulse quickened. He became warm and tingly.

 

"Exquisite! I can feel their drilled-out teeth. Taste the abscessed roots and smell the stinking maw of humanity, Rilgar!" croaked Mongo, his vocal sac clicking. His body vibrated with a sensual hum. The Emotionarium had plenty of other sitting devices, each thrumming with delicious emotions. Yet this chair had something new to offer.

 

"That's nice, dear. Can we go now?" asked Rilgar, Mongo's universe-weary companion. Their gelatinous form turned shades of mauve and taupe, matching the cabinetry. They hovered above the ashen-faced dentist.

 

"But does this have the same attraction as that electric chair we visited yesterday?" asked Mongo. He needed unique chairs with diverse feelings for his emotionally-deprived clientele.

 

"What does it matter?" asked Rilgar.

 

Mongo could swear he felt them roll their optical fonts. Rilgar, for all their years of matrimonial servitude, still had no appreciation for the beauty of the human chair. They couldn't actually feel what Mongo and eager Emotionarium guests felt. One could say that you needed a backside to appreciate the pleasures of sitting. You needed skin to absorb emotions. It was evident to Mongo that Rilgar would not help him choose.

 

"Both chairs emit the same amount of fear, remorse, pain, and internalized screaming," said Mongo, rising. He walked towards Dr. Mehta, who was attempting to crawl out of the room. "But this chair has a sense of hopeful optimism. If one continued to do everything that this," Mongo grabbed the dentist by his scrub top and pulled him to a standing position, "human told one to do, their dentition wouldn't rot away. But they do anyway, am I right?" Mongo threw the dentist into the chair. Dr. Mehta began screaming. Mongo could taste the fear in the air, and his stomach rumbled.

 

"So you prefer the feeling of self-imposed torture to government-mandated torture?" asked Rilgar. They shifted their amorphous shape to encase Dr. Mehta's head, quelling the screams.

 

"There's something delicious about people lining up for this barbarism. I haven't felt this many emotions since we procured Dr. Freud's couch," said Mongo. He rubbed his webbing over the cracked leather. He touched the indentations where hundreds of fingernails had gouged in pursuit of dental hygiene. In doing so, he felt buoyed by the strength of the absorbed energy.

 

Fear and pain always gave him more of a high than the love and affection most of his customers came for. The closest he'd ever come to feeling love was the pleasure derived from these dental patients' willing suffering. Their masochism could explain why he tolerated Rilgar's constant presence. He wanted to keep this chair for his private collection. It would help him understand who he was and improve his relationship with others.

 

Mongo looked through Rilgar to Dr. Mehta, whose distorted face was a gruesome mask of desperate gasping. Nothing could escape Rilgar's semi-transparent luminescent form. Mongo, no longer connected to the dental chair, had no emotions for the suffocating dentist before him.

 

"We'll take it," said Mongo, addressing Dr. Mehta before the human passed out.

 

"And the dentist?" asked Rilgar, holding his now limp body as the chair vanished within a flash of bright light.

 

"Leave him for the Candymaker. Some of our guests may want to eat their feelings."