***
Bark, Bark, Bark.
Koll woke, sweat peppered his brown. His large bulging eyes rolled up to glance at the white clock which glowed with its own inoffensive light, one in the morning. Was he dreaming about that stupid dog?
The record had turned itself off after the needle reached the end, there was nothing but silence. Until that incessant barking started again. Why in God’s green earth was that thing out at this time of the night? Was its master insane?
He had every right to march to the homeowners' association to lodge a complaint, but even if they took note of his opinion they couldn’t do much more than warn his neighbor with a stupid pink note, and the beast would be back at it the next day. No, yesterday he knew what was coming, he started writing, and that sealed the future for the dog.
He only asked for a good night’s sleep, but that had been too much for both the man and his mutt. Still, taking care of what he needed to tonight meant not having to call into work the the next day, able to go to work as if nothing happened it’d be a great alibi, it always was.
This wouldn’t be his first animal, no, before his annoyances had taken on the form of two-legged beasts he took squirrels, cats, dogs, and the rare possum. Gah! Possums! Those creatures annoyed him at how ugly they were.
Koll swung out of bed and rummaged through his closet for his usual work wear, a paint spattered set of overalls, and a matching white shirt, clothing that hid what he wanted, and pretended to be what it wasn’t. His next item he’d need from his lab.
Behind his living room and around his stairs he pushed aside tons of junk, a mattress, a box spring, piles of boxes, for the closet under his stairway. Once inside it looked nothing more, until he closed the door behind him and pressed the lock on the side of the inner knob, upon which the wall behind him, beyond the jackets he never wore, unlocked and slid in on its track to the right. Inside he slid it back and behind him was nothing more than another wall to the untrained eye, another switch in a hatch to the left slid this one aside to reveal wooden stairs that descended into dirt.
An earthy, dusty musk scented the air. Often it smelt of fresh experiments he brought home, after those victims retired it’d smell of rot, no matter how well he disposed of the leftovers. But it’d been such a long time since his last, the quiet one, that there were no smells, no fresh stains, no forgotten flesh still rotting back into the mother planet. Off the stairs he walked around and crouched to enter beneath them, the stairway was a hallow set of wooden steps, nothing underneath except what he stored. What he stored here he figured he’d never need again, trash that was treasure, something he couldn’t let go.
Often he surprised himself into needing an item from this pile, he needed one today. Near the back was an old, rusty, five foot long rabies pole with a two foot loop that retracted if he spun the poles halves opposite ways. He could use it to wrangle any unwilling animal, from dog to rat.
He never needed to use it on humans, humans hardly ever had to come with a restraint other than a squirt of chloroform, but most came to him without much struggle, perverts, junkies, good Samaritans, kids, of everyone who annoyed him in the past he had only used chloroform twice.
Koll made his way back up and out of his house in his painting uniform, not a shadow in the night but no one was awake to notice him, no one but the damned dog. Bark, Bark, Bark.
He walked straight to his neighbor’s fence and tried the gate, smiling when it unlatched, the fool thought his dog was enough to secure the house from any intruders, never thinking that his stunted pit might be the target of invasion. Noting the intruder the dog came charging, not with a menacing growl but a playful bounce and quick swish of its whip-like tail.
How could such a fearsome bully breed be happy all the time? Was this was the dogs problem? A mental insufficiency, that instead of having the anger and fighting gene the dog knew only happiness and friendliness? Some might have stopped short of taking the mentally challenged, but not him. In the past ten years, as being mentally challenged became more acceptable, as their kind where allowed into school, he had killed three.
Their whirring wheel chairs, often with stinking bathroom bags built right in, the way their arms where bent at the elbow sometimes, the slurring, stuttering, drool filled speech, retards annoyed him. Everyone he rid from the school was another peaceful moment for him.
The dog stopped short, hesitating, seeming to remember their last encounter, giving Koll time to slip the loop around his neck. It hit the brakes, his back feet went under him and his butt planted itself as Koll pulled. Still, while it whined at the futile tug of war, it didn’t bark or even yelp and he was able to half drag, half walk it into his front door.
With the door shut the thing stopped struggling, it was an indoor dog most of the time leaving a probability being cut off from the outside created in it a false sense of security. It took lead, he pushed it with the metal poll to guide it to the back of the stairs where the closet awaited, against the dogs attempt to sniff, and maybe piss on, every piece of furniture and corner of the house. Once inside the closet he engaged the safety, slid the door aside and it once more took lead, though this time slower and more cautious, which Koll didn’t mind, getting pulled down on his ass and shattering a hip wasn’t his idea of a good time.
He wondered if it was becoming frightened. Could it scent the other animal remains, humans from his past, no matter how long ago they perished or how well he had cleaned? He knew the answer, dogs where trained to scent out cadavers, even ones years old, and though the pit wasn’t a dog bred for sniffing out dead people there was no doubt that its senses where many times powerful than any human.
Still it was disappointing, by the time he locked humans in here he would have been forced to push them down the stairs, no matter how big, or how small, how thick, or how fragile, how masculine or how feminine, and his future victims would beg for their lives, hoping for reprieve from him, his pistol, and his cruelty. He’d promise them the world as they lied on the dirt ground and take everything.
What was he going to promise the willing dog, a biscuit?
It sniffed the confines of his new home still attached to the rabies pole it drug around while Koll rummaged through the well organized drawers of his workbench for a set of restraints. Without giving the dog a chance to fight him he pulled a short black lead over its neck, tightened it with the alligator clip which the lead slipped through, pulling it over to a stainless steel table bolted to the floor by each leg. On the table where four metal circles to attach restraints to, he looped the loop into the one closer to the right leg and around the table tops corner, leaving the dog’s head pulled up, standing on the ground.
With his victim secure he turned for his tools, an old rusted blue toolbox contained a stash of monkey and socket wrenches, removing these he removed the faux bottom and eyed his treasure. Rolled up into a thick blue canvas carrying case a little larger than most wallets where a set of surgical equipment, plus a large kitchen knife, bottle opener, and a few items not found in the typical hospital.
He unrolled this, set a cloth keeping his tools sanitary and dust free aside and laid out his tools, touching his thick bottom lip as he decided what he needed. The scalpel, no matter how quick or slow he took this rudimentary cutting tool was always a must. The bottle opener, its screw end was slow, cruel and fun, but he hadn’t used it in years. Last time it was he meant to have taken the man’s eyes, but screwed up, turning the man into a vegetable when he mixed up and pulled out parts of his brain.
Bark, there it was again, the dog was now comfortable enough to start its yapping. It started, one bark, then three, and then the same never ending refrain, as if it was still chasing that stupid blue plastic ball, not tied to a table. He turned and eyed it with annoyed hate before he realized his new problem. His basement was soundproof, no one heard the screams and if someone did they’d mistake them as part of the many horror movies he kept in stock. Movies he never watched and never planned t
o watch, but kept for that exact reason.
But this dog was the closest neighbor he had ever taken and his owner might wake to its barking, or yelping… or screaming. He needed to silence it and he guessed the only time the thing was quiet was when it was asleep. With a sigh of disappointment at the delay Koll retrieved an oil rag from his sink Koll walked over to his chemistry table at the far end. Using care he picked a watery solution in an unmarked bottle and poured it onto the rag, careful not to hold the sweet smelling substance too close to himself.
Then he turned for the dog, he attempted to make a grab for its muzzle, but it snapped at him. The dog still grinned, it looked loose, relaxed, he guessed it was just playing, but he’d a hell of a time explaining a dog bite coinciding with its disappearance. Koll thought for a minute with his chin resting on his free hand, the beast pulled on its restraint and the table creaked against its bolts.
Well, if it wanted to play, what was he to deny it such a pleasure? He tossed the dog the rag, it arched through the air, and the beast caught it with expertise. It shook it, forcing Koll to step back to keep from catching spray of the solution that the dog flung from the rag. Within a minute the dogs shakes slowed, it’s eyes baggy as if it was sick, then it sat and closed its eyes. It couldn’t lie down because its restraints, Koll knew it would begin to strangle instantly.
He could feel a stirring in his groin at the thought of this slow death that would leave much of the dog’s fleshy mouth purple from oxygen deprivation. Often he had intimacies with his experiments, and this would be no different. Such intimacies ended in simple strangulation, there was something empowering about denying a struggling victim such a basic necessity of life. But the dog couldn’t go like this too early or he wouldn’t be able to finish.
Koll had strangled a young woman to death three years ago without doing more to her, using tight woven knots of her own hair his scalpel cut from her the day before. The quick death left him unable to become aroused with her as she died or after death, and he knew why. It was the lack of gore, the lack of insides on the out for him to see, to touch, to fondle, while they were still alive and suffering, the ones he strangled to death he killed after he finished pleasing himself with them.
This dog would die a horrible and slow death, with most of itself on display. But he needed to wait until the owner left for the day and no one was around to hear it.
Koll stooped to pick up the dog, careful not to breathe in too much residual chloroform and strained, his back popping as he lifted the mass of muscle onto the stainless steel table, the last living place of his most challenging patients.
He turned from the sleeping beast to a cot full of laundry to push everything but one sheet aside. Without undressing he crawled under it, unzipped his overalls and stuck his hand inside to feel himself, it wouldn’t get him anywhere, but he still enjoyed it.
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