At the Gates of Madness

by Shaun Meeks

  Show them the God you now are!

  Teddy smiled at that and continued to grin like a madman as horror came to Hal’s Diner by the way of the monster hiding in his mullet. He watched as thin tentacled arms shot out in every direction, ripping and tearing into the people that sat trying to eat their food, being torn to shred so fast and so brutally that none of them didn’t even have a chance to scream or cry out. The room exploded in a red mist and Teddy smiled as food and flesh flew through the air, all these people feeling the power that he held. The melee lasted only seconds, and when it was done, blood was pooling on the scarred floor and Teddy moved to the center of the room to stand within the destruction. He looked around from table to table, dead women, children and men at each; people that had once laughed at him and thought themselves better where now dead because of him and his new power. He reached up and stroked the monster in his Kentucky waterfall, feeling it pulsing and moving still, when he heard the kitchen door open. He turned and saw Hal and Larissa standing there looking at him, horror written clearly on their faces.

  Teddy was standing in the middle of the room, his wife beater now red and wet, stuck to his body, making him look even smaller. Around him, the diner had been painted red, the smell of fresh blood cover the smell of the omelets, burgers and coffees that where laying forgotten on the tables, the people that had ordered no longer sitting at their tables. The customers were still in the diner, just not in their seats. They were on the floor, the ceiling, the walls and on Teddy himself, bits of someone hung from his teeth as he smiled at Hal and Larissa. She looked at Teddy, though to be honest, he was far from the boy she had known all his life.

  Teddy was standing there, his body cover in the blood of the others lying dead around him, his flesh seeming to ripple with something unseen under the surface, moving from head to toe, all the way to his hair. Larissa watched as the boy’s mullet moved in time with the movement under his skin and he turned to her.

  “You laughed earlier, didn’t you? Thought it was all a joke, but now you will see the power I have and that everything you know will crumble around you.”

  Hal moved forward, raising the meat clever, but Teddy was faster than the old cook could ever be. Whatever was under his skin, moving like snakes or worms, flowed up to the top of Teddy’s head and exploded out of and moved out towards Hal with speed that seemed unnatural. The meat clever fell to the ground as the monstrous extension hit the cook with a wet slap, followed by his head and his insides. Larissa watched, unable to scream as her boss fell to his knees, the stump of his neck spraying blood on her before it fell with a dull thud. She looked back towards Teddy, his hair seemed to have returned to normal again, though the party in the back was dripping with fresh blood and his skin was still pulsing with alien life underneath.

  “Now, I’m going to show you what I meant earlier. Try not to laugh.”

  End of the Leash

  Dogs.

  For some reason, they just seem to hate me. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing or where I’m going, if there is a dog close by, sure enough it will bark at me and if it is close enough, they will do whatever they can to try and take a chunk out of my ass. It’s been like this since I was a little kid, walking past people’s yards, dogs would just go crazy as I walk by, and I have no idea why. They see me and it’s as though they seem to hone in and gone wild. To be completely honest, there are times that they don’t even need to see me really, now that I think about it. Some days when I have been coming home late at night from work, walking through my building hallway as quiet as can be, even doing my best to keep my keys from rattling, sure enough the dog that lives two doors away from my place will start yapping away. It’s a little poodle, looks more like a pile of grey pubic hair than an actual dog, and has a bark that sounds like a chair scraping across a floor. I can usually hear the owner too, shortly thereafter, yelling for it to shut up and stop making noise because that freak –which means me- is walking by the door.

  I’ve always wondered what it is about me that make them go crazy. Is it my pheromones maybe, the sound of my footfalls, or is it that they just see me as some sort of threat, or even a victim. I remember being told by one of my neighbors as a kid that the reason her dog barked at me all the time was because he could smell my fear, and that I must me afraid or it wouldn’t constantly bark when I was near. I thought to tell her that I have never been afraid of her dog, or any dog for that matter, so that couldn’t be it. The only thing I ever feel as I see a dog is the annoyance that sooner or later it is going to start going off at me, making me feel uncomfortable and giving me the urge to give it a good swift kick. I never do, but I can still dream can’t I? So maybe it’s something like the laws of attraction? Do they all bark because I expect them too, I put out some vibe that they feed off of? Or is that just some new age bullshit that is about as believable as crystals and palm readings?

  Most people that know me well enough quickly learn this little fact about me, seeing firsthand the effect I have on the K-9 species. I use to be embarrassed by it, but there is nothing I can do to change it, so what do I care. My friends, the few I have, liked to make little jokes when they see we are approaching one, nudging me and asking if it’s all because dogs can sense evil. I laugh at the thought, but it did occur to me. It was an expression I heard before and I even looked it up and found that in the past, people kept dogs at their homes to warn them of creatures in the night. Sure they were keeping them to ward of werewolves, vampires and banshees, but some folklore is based on actual reality, for the most part. So maybe these dogs all were able to see something in me, or smell something coming off of me that I didn’t even know existed. Is it possible that you can be an evil person and not even know it? I can’t see why not.

  So with everyone who is close to me knowing this little fact, seeing it themselves first hand in most cases, you have to ask why any of them would ever give me a dog as a birthday present. Never mind that giving someone an animal; whether it’s a dog, cat, rabbit or elephant, is just a horrible idea anyway. Giving someone an animal as a present is a way of assuming for one, that they like animals at all, and that they will love them and take care of them for up to eighteen years. What other gift costs you money on a daily basis, requires such maintenance and love? Any gift that makes you have to pick up shit is no gift at all if you ask me.

  Yet, last week I was given a dog, a six month old brown and black Rottweiler, not a fully grown, huge monster like I knew it would one day be, but by no means a cute and small puppy either. It was given to me not by a friend, but from the woman I have been dating now for the past five years. Can you believe that? Five years and she gives me a dog saying that the little thing is so cute and she knows that I’ll come to love it and it will come to love me, knowing very well how well I fair with dogs all along. I remember one time; maybe three years ago, we were on a walk together. I decided it would be nice to take a walk by Allen Gardens, seeing it was a glorious fall day and I hadn’t been through there since I was a little kid. She was game for the idea, but when we got there, I saw that there was an off lease area for dogs and I had second thoughts. The last thing I needed was to walk in on their territory, where they had no leashes to hold them back and risk getting attack by a pack of insane animals set off by whatever is in me that sets them off. My girlfriend, Melanie saw me hesitate and convinced me that I was being ridiculous.

  I wasn’t, I know what’s what when it comes to me and dogs.

  She learned that day too, when only seconds after telling me that I was overreacting, eight dogs came charging at me and two hours later I was walking out of St. Michaels Hospital with sixteen new stitches in my leg. She felt guilty for a long time after that thinking that she was the cause of it, and when she sees the two scars on my leg, I can see the guilt behind her eyes.

  Which makes it even stranger that she would bring my mortal enemy into my house, as though it is something I wanted, something I had asked her for as a special present? It’s like brin
ging a blind person a book, or paraplegic a stepper. There was obviously no thought given to it, or if there was, I really need to start questioning this relationship.

  The day she came over, I knew that something was going to happen, just by the look on her face. When you are with someone long enough, you can tell when they have a secret, whether it is good or bad. You look into their eyes and you can see something there, as though it’s clearly written on the surface of their face in capital letters.

  SECRET.

  I didn’t want to spoil the joy she was obviously getting from having the secret, so I just waited until she was ready to tell me. We sat and had a nice dinner that she made, can’t remember what it was now, not that it matters, then after that she suggested we go for a drive. Figuring this was where she would do her big reveal, I agreed and when we got to her car, there it was, in a kennel in the back of her car. I didn’t see it at first, but when we were less than two feet away from her car, the barking started and I stopped and turned to her. She had a huge grin on her face, a smile full of pure happiness and pride that quickly melted away when she saw the look on my face. She asked what was wrong, but I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I didn’t need her to tell me that she had gotten me a dog for my birthday, it was right there in the back of her car in a beige kennel with a blue bow on the gated box. I wish I could have acted happy, surprised and full of joy over the gift, but it was a dog. I just looked at her, then the dog (which continued to bark insanely at me), and then back at her, seeing she had now crossed her arms in that way that told me she meant business. She asked me again what was wrong and I told her. I told her what she already knew, that dogs and I, we don’t really see eye to eye at all. I asked her why she had done it, hoping that this wouldn’t bring anger or tears and was glad to see it hadn’t. Instead she laughed a bit and took my hand, making me feel a little like she was about to talk down to me like she did from time to time, as though I was some kindergarten kid and she was my teacher. Her voice went up an octave and she seemed to end each sentence on an upswing as though there was a question mark at the end. As much as I loved her, that way she had of making me feel as though I was her son and not her boyfriend really pissed me off, but I could never tell her that because I knew it would lead to her crying and asking me why I was such a bastard like her father. Trust me, I had heard it before and would avoid it like the plague.

  She explained that she came up with this idea of getting me a dog after watching Dr. Phil that there was no reason at all why I should hate dogs or why dogs should hate me, that maybe I had just been around the wrong dogs. She said that if I had a puppy, raised it like an adopted father, then I would have a dog that didn’t go crazy whenever I was around, and by having a dog, I might get the scent on me that would calm down other dogs. I’m not sure what the hell she was talking about, or why she gets these ideas when she watches Dr. Phil, but I was at a loss. I thought about it as she walked over to her car where the dog was still yipping away and thought maybe she was right about this, that there was a chance that it could work if I gave it a chance. Even though the dog didn’t stop barking and growling at me, I decided to give it a chance, to take it home and hope for the best. I’m not the type of person that takes a lot of risks in life, I was never into extreme sports or doing crazy things really, but I love Melanie, and I wanted to make her happy. It was obvious that this was something she really wanted me to try, something she wanted to make better for me, and I wanted to make her as happy as any man can, so I agreed. We do a lot of things for the sake of love, things we don’t really want to do. Some men become Vegans, or grow a beard, take up line dancing or go to hippie drum circles. Women do the same by watching UFC and football, going to see bad movies and crappy bands or hanging out with people that have never picked up a book since leaving high school. We all do things for that thing called love, sometimes they turn out great and sometimes we regret them, as I do now. I actually started to regret it right away in fact.

  The dog, which we decided to call Krull (I’m an ‘80’s movie nerd), never stopped barking from the second it saw me. It’s still barking now while I’m writing this. It barked and barked. Whether I was trying to sleep, shit, eat or talk on the phone, it barked. The police came to the house at least seven times, and on the last one I was given a noise ticket. I tried to tell Melanie that it wasn’t working that Krull had kept me awake that first night and I almost got fired from work the next day for it, but she told me to stick it out, saying that Krull had to adapt, to learn who I was. She said that Dr. Phil said that dogs are like kids and need to be trained in good behavior, but I wasn’t buying it. The little barking, shit machine was driving me crazy, but I put up with it, feeling I had to for her.

  The only time Krull was quiet was when I went to work. I am sure of that. On the fourth day since I was given him, I came home from work and when I got to my floor, I waited by the elevator and listened, to see what it sounded like from the hall, to see what other people heard and was surprised that there was nothing at all. You don’t really appreciate silence until you go a long time without it, but at that moment, I really did.

  I also fooled myself into believing that it was a good sign that maybe Melanie and the good doctor were right and I just needed to give it some time. I started walking towards the apartment, and first my neighbor’s dog started to bark and was soon followed by Krull. I slumped a little as I heard him, knowing that nothing would change and I would be lucky to get any sleep, even if I stuffed my ears with cotton.

  That night I made a decision though, and not the obvious one of getting rid of the damn thing because Melanie would never go for it. The choice I made was to make a little room in the bathroom for Krull, get some doggie “pee pads”, put his food and water in there and I might be able to get some rest with him barking three doors away from my bedroom. With shutting the bathroom door, the hallway door and the one to my bedroom, as well as stuffing cotton in my ears and turning my fan on, I figure I would be able to drown the sound out of his bothersome barking. I know to some people that might seem mean, or bordering on some form of animal cruelty, but I was at my wits end with the barking and lack of sleep. One thing it showed me for sure was that I would probably not make a good father, I just am not one of those people that can really do without sleep.

  So that night I lay in bed alone, doing all that I could to make sure I didn’t hear the little bastard barking, and I tried to drift off. I figured all the steps I had taken and adding the white noise would do the trick and I could catch up on my well needed sleep.

  It did work and I was able to sleep for the first time in days. It was glorious. Krull never stopped barking, but I could barely hear it at all, just a distant muffled sound that music and television easily drowned out for me. There were a few other issues though, the main one was trying to feed him and give him water. What started off as simple barking, each time turned into heavy growling and him even snapping at me. I started having to bring a spray bottle in the washroom with me to avoid being attacked. He wasn’t a full size dog, but he was big enough and seemed angry enough to worry me and make me have to protect myself. Each time I opened the door to give him what he needed, or to clean the shit and piss that had built up in there over the previous twenty four hours from my last visit, Krull seemed to get more and more vicious, sometimes there was even foam at the edges of his mouth. I didn’t know much about dogs, having tried to steer clear of those most of my life, but I knew that the foaming and anger wasn’t normal. Then again, I also knew that dogs just hated me and part of me figured that it was just that long standing relationship that was the real problem with me and Krull. I had never put myself in a position where I was around a dog for any more than a few minutes, so I wasn’t sure if this was just how bad things would normally build up. I should have told Melanie about this, should have told her what was going on, what steps I had taken just so I could think and sleep in my own house. I should have, but I didn’t figuring that she would just not underst
and what I was going through, that she would just tell me that Dr. Phil said this would work and that I wasn’t trying.

  I don’t like keeping secrets from people, especially ones that I am supposed to love and care about, but every relationship has to have its secrets. There are certain things we just can never tell the people we love and that’s something that not everyone can wrap their head around. Sometimes we keep secrets from people to protect them, to shield them from things like the fact that a friend of theirs is bad mouthing them, your mom hates them, or that you once had genital warts. Other times it’s not so much a secret you keep, but something that you feel doesn’t really concern them, a personal issue that you are dealing with that will do nothing but cause stress to the person you care about. That’s what I felt about what was going on with me and Krull. It wasn’t something that I needed to deal with and I was, and telling her was bound to lead to a fight.

  And when she came over last night, it did just that.

  Melanie came over at eight last night to have dinner with me and watch a movie she had brought with her, but I can’t remember the name of the damn thing now. Not that it really matters; we never ended up watching it, or eating dinner for that matter. She walked in, looking as stunning as ever, wearing a black pencil skirt and white blouse that she knew I loved. She set the movie down and the bottle of wine she brought and the first thing out of her mouth was asking me where Krull was. I hesitated for a moment, not sure how she would react when I told her what I had been doing with the dog. Even though I didn’t really feel bad for keeping him locked in there, after all it was the only way I was able to get anything done, I knew she would probably be upset. She wasn’t a tree hugger or a P.E.T.A. person, but she did have her mind set in certain ways. I didn’t want to really tell her, but I knew there was no way I could not tell her now that she was over and would eventually need to go to the washroom. I took a deep breath, braced for the storm, and told her.