Henry Henler was born without a tongue. Because of his  differently-abledness people automatically paid extra attention to his  mouth. This made Henry self-conscious about his mouth, and so he took  extra care of his teeth. He got braces to straighten them as a child,  had his wisdom teeth pulled as a young man, and visited the dentist  thrice per year throughout the whole of his life. He refused to eat  sweets, never had a cavity, brushed and flossed vigorously, and always  carried toothpicks just in case. Later in life he was known to carry a  dental pick and mirror in his pocket.

Lacking a tongue, his pristine mouth was like a beautifully cared-for  palace utterly devoid of occupants. Some un-haunted haunted house,  hauntingly un-haunted, as if the mouth were haunting itself.

He was brutally murdered at a carnival when a posse of freaks escaped  from their pens. The abuse they'd suffered under the cruel whip and  crueler tongue of their master had warped their psyches even worse than  genetic abnormalities had warped their hideous bodies. They chewed a  hole in the wooden roof to gain their freedom, and became so emotionally  overwhelmed by their unrestricted proximity to so many people, and so  frightened at the prospect of recapture, that the freaks descended into  an animal frenzy and violently assaulted passersby. Henry was just one  unlucky man who stood between the freaks and the open plains that lay  beyond the carnival grounds. They ripped off his arms, smashed his head  against the ground, and threw him into the haunted house to slowly bleed  to death in public where people thought he was just part of the  display.

We acquired his toothbrush at an auction in South Carolina, and it's available now for $37.55 CAD.

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