The Day Charming Charlie Lost His Charm

Date: 1/25/2026

It starts, as all personal derailments should, in our local pub. The Plough — a place where dreams come alive and shatter before the night has ended. Mat and I brush shoulders with our former MP, Jeremy Brown — a man whose hearing packed its bags sometime during the Blair administration and never returned. We end up shouting our pleasantries like two stranded sailors trying to seduce a lighthouse. “So what are you doing now?” Jeremy bellows. “I’M A POSTIE,” I yell. He nods gravely, absorbing the information incorrectly. “POLITICS NEEDS PEOPLE LIKE YOU.” “I SAID POSTIE.” “YES, YES — POST-TRUTH. VERY CUTTING EDGE.” He grips my elbow like he’s about to knight me with a pork scratching. Apparently I have the authentic air of someone who understands the common man because I once delivered his Amazon parcels. Two pints later, my future has been bundled into the boot and driven somewhere unspeakable. I hate politics. I don’t have a political bone in my body. Bollotics, I call it — a sweaty gladiator pit of shouting men and weaponised eyebrows. I avoid it like a contagious rash. I once left a room because the radio mentioned a referendum. Yet somehow, here I am. I hang up my Royal Mail uniform and descend into the municipal underworld of canvassing. Sweet Jesus. How did this happen? Knocking on strangers’ doors. Smiling like a hostage. Asking deeply invasive questions about bins, taxes, and potholes while hoping nobody lets their dog loose on my moral integrity. But I’m not alone. Enter Charlie. Charlie is… disarmingly lovely. Soft-eyed, warm-voiced, with a slightly crooked grin that suggests he apologises to chairs when he bumps into them. He offers me a spare mint before our first street like we’re about to sit an exam together. “Nervous?” he asks. “I’d rather lick battery acid,” I say. He laughs — genuinely — the kind of laugh that makes your shoulders drop an inch. “You’ll be fine. Just think of it as chatting with humans. In their natural habitat.” “Like David Attenborough,” I say. “But with doorbells and loose morals.” Our first door opens to a small, elderly man clutching a mug like it’s the last warm thing left in his day. Charlie glides in smoothly. “Afternoon! We’re just popping round to see what matters to you locally.” The man melts. Smiles. Nods. Signs. He tells us his wife died three years ago and the afternoons are very long. He seems grateful just to be standing in a doorway with another human. Tick. I feel it — a tiny internal fizz, like a champagne bubble popping behind my ribs. “Did you feel that?” I whisper as we walk away. Charlie blinks. “Feel what?” “That… flutter.” “Oh!” He grins. “Yeah. That’s the tick. Gets you, doesn’t it?” We start joking about it. Keeping score. Celebrating particularly juicy ticks with imaginary trumpets and a victory dance. At one point Charlie bows theatrically to a pensioner’s signature like he’s accepting a BAFTA. “I’d like to thank the heroic bins, the unpredictable weather, and all the clipboards that ever believed in me,” he says, clutching an invisible award to his chest. I find myself enjoying this ridiculous partnership. Feeding off momentum. Laughing more than I expected. Walking faster. Standing taller. Tiny dopamine confetti explosions. Another signature. Another tick. Another hit. For someone who despises bollotics, I’m having a jolly good time. But somewhere between the fourth and fifth street, Charlie changes. Not suddenly. Gradually. Like milk quietly turning evil in the fridge. His jokes sharpen. His voice grows louder. His posture broadens into the pavement like he owns the air molecules. His head… looks heavier. Slightly swollen. Like ambition has weight. By week two, he’s stopped saying we and started saying I. “I’ve got a real knack for this,” he says, slicking his hair back with unnecessary flourish. “I think people trust me.” “I could do this job better than Jeremy.” One afternoon he laughs — not kindly — and says, “To hell with Jeremy. He’s a deaf old bastard anyway.” Something cold skitters across my spine. The laugh lands wrong — like a dropped plate you don’t hear until a second later. A hairline crack in the charm. Easy to miss. Hard to forget. That night, I come home to find violent splashes of electric blue paint smeared across my brand new carpet. My soul briefly exits through my nostrils. “What the actual fuck?” “Oh hi!” Kylie chirps, holding a dripping bag like she’s just murdered a Smurf. For the first time in our fragile relationship, I don't fear being rugby tackled by her. I briefly fantasise about rolling her up in the carpet and blasting her into sweet fuck-nothingness. “Those are NEW carpets!” “It’s just a bit of paint,” she laughs. Just. I attack the floor with wet wipes — because wet wipes are the answer to all of life's messes — while Kylie lounges nearby offering useless commentary. “You’ve missed a bit.” “Want to help?” I hiss. Eventually the carpet survives. Barely. But then I discover every houseplant has been quietly assassinated. My precious, beloved green dependants. Wilted. Slumped. Spiritually deceased. Kylie freezes, trying to conceal a bottle behind her back. Plant killer. “What kind of botanical serial killer are you?” I whisper. “I was only having a bit of fun.” “Get out,” I say — and mean it. She slinks away, tail metaphorically between legs. The door clicks shut with the satisfaction of a tiny moral victory. And I realise — disturbingly — that it feels good to be the one in control. Then the screaming starts. Upstairs. Mum is giving birth. My seventy-three-year-old mother, panting, slick with sweat, gripping the sheets like she’s wrestling time itself into submission. Her face looks both ancient and terrifyingly young — like pain has peeled her backwards through decades. Charlie stands beside her, sleeves rolled up, eerily competent. “Just breathe,” he says gently. I don’t know what disturbs me more — the impossible biology or how natural he looks doing this. Like power has found a new costume and it fits perfectly. The baby arrives in a slick rush of noise and heat and wetness. Screaming immediately. Shrill. Animal. Unsoothable. Mum tries to cradle it, sobbing. “Take him,” she begs. “Please.” I look down. The baby has a full set of teeth. Not baby pearls — adult teeth. Crooked, yellow, each one twisted like a dagger. Sharp enough to snag light, dripping with pale saliva. “He’s got your teeth,” Mum whispers between sobs. I run to the mirror. My teeth are wrong. Shifted. Crowded. Buckled into a grotesque parody of my own mouth. Years of orthodontic devotion undone by one magnificently stupid pub-born decision. “Oh my god…” “It’s okay,” Mum whispers weakly. “There’s some teeth over there.” The floor is carpeted with partial dentures. Hundreds of them. Smiling up at me with waxy menace. A plastic landmine. A cheap graveyard of borrowed mouths. Behind me, Charlie clears his throat. “Can I just get you to sign—“ “Charlie,” I snap. “Read the room.” He paces now. Twitchy. Scratching his arms. Breathing too fast. Like a creature trying to outpace its own shadow. “I just need one more tick,” he mutters. He rushes into the bathroom. I follow closely behind. The room is humid. The mirror fogged. Charlie bends over the sink, gripping the porcelain. His shoulders begin to bulge and shift beneath his skin like something trying to unzip him from the inside. There’s a wet, horrific, snapping sound — dry, brittle bones breaking under a boot. His arms stretch — grotesquely long, joints bending in places joints should not bend. Skin slicks over into oily scales, green-black and luminous, catching the light like grease. His spine arches upwards, vertebrae pushing visibly beneath the skin as he grows taller, taller, until his head nearly kisses the ceiling. His clothes surrender in pathetic ribbons around his feet. His mouth splits wider than a mouth should split, teeth multiplying into jagged rows — my teeth, the baby’s teeth, hunger wearing enamel. Too many futures packed into one grin. He turns. His eyes gleam with fevered delight. “What’s happening to you?” I whisper. He grins, saliva threading between his teeth. “I guess,”he hisses softly, “it’s all gone to my head.” Behind him, the mirror catches my reflection. I look like a monster. And I realise — not with fear, but with recognition. With slow, curling hunger through my ribs like smoke. With the hollow thrill of taking, of nudging, of bending another’s will to feed the tick. Power tastes sweet — metallic, almost electric — before it rots from the inside out, stripping our teeth, our dignity, our reflection. Scales ripple across my arms. Grease glistens on my skin. Every twitch of a finger, every flicker of an eye feels like another life bending, another tick claimed. Reptilian. Predatory. Monstrous. I can feel it in my spine, in the mirror, in the way the light hooks the crooked rows of teeth. And somewhere beneath the scales, the grease, and the hunger, I understand — this is politics. This is how charm dies, and monsters rise.