Dead Funny

by Robin Ince

Now then. Killing a dog. You won’t want to hear this. We did it in the shed, and not always when my parents were out. I don’t know why. It did occur to us that there might be noise and barking etc., but I think we felt untouchable. I could always imagine a scenario of being caught, but equally imagine being able to explain it all away. The first one we killed was hard because it was the first one. In actual fact, it should have been easy as it was a very little dog; one of those that look more like a rat. It never ceases to amaze me that people spend any time on these creatures, putting red bows on their heads and stuff. Anyway. Elliot stood in the corner panting; the dog was running round in circles. I think it was excited because it was in a new place. It took some courage to even decide how I was going to kill it, and it was made worse by having to narrate everything every step of the way for Elliot’s benefit. It made it all very firm and real. I think it might have stayed more in my head, not having to say it all out loud, if you know what I mean. I pulled down a hammer, hanging from two nails on the shelf, and braced myself.

  ‘What have you got? What have you got?’ hissed Elliot. The first strike: I missed it and hit the floor. The dog barked and growled at my act of aggression. After that point it occurred to me I might end up bitten, so I quickly thought of something. I grabbed a hessian garden waste bag that was crumpled up in the corner and threw it over the dog. It got out from under it quickly enough, and it took several goes to get it covered and then stand on the bag either side of the dog, pinning it tight to the ground underneath. But I did it. It was then much easier to hit the bulge in the middle of my legs without feeling nearly half so sickened. It squeaked on the first hit, then kind of whistled, then stopped altogether after about twenty smacks with the hammer. I don’t know why but I started counting the blows out loud, like it was an important part of the process. As if there was a correct number I had to get to. I suppose I stopped at twenty because it was a round number. Elliot said, ‘Is it dead? What does it look like?’ and it was in his asking what it looked like that all remorse or sadness or upset for what I had just done, completely and utterly disappeared. Fuck this stupid cunt dog. My brother was blind because of it. It deserved to die. I lifted up the sack. At first I couldn’t pull it away from the mess underneath. I had hit so hard in places that the material was pushed in and out of the dog and it was mangled. I stopped bothering in the end and folded the whole thing in on itself and took it to a bin in the park. I just walked along casually, with Elliot of course, and put the whole lot in the rubbish like it was nothing.

  The realisation that there were flaws in our plan came very quickly. On our way home from the park, after the first killing, we passed a woman talking to a sandy-coloured Labrador and Elliot whispered to me, ‘Oh God, I think that’s her.’ And thus it began. A spate of dog killings. Each one satisfying in the moment,, but lasting only as long as it took to walk past another possible candidate. Curiously, I never got annoyed about it. Elliot was blind, how was he supposed to know? Ultimately we realised this was going to be a little bit trial and error. Once that was understood, it was actually – and I don’t mean for this to sound ghoulish – quite fun. Aside from the fact they were all mistakes in regard to them being the wrong dogs, in our eyes (ha) they weren’t – because they were still dogs. We had moved beyond our own feeble search for justice, and our punishment had become far more encompassing. This was about the eradication of a much bigger problem. And so it followed that we began experimenting with different ways to kill dogs. I remember one spate of killings that were purely about how quickly and succinctly it could be done. Finding that ‘sweet spot’ that, with one blow, would kill it instantly. (I had read they kill pigs this way) I never managed it with one, but I think I did do it in three once. Anyway. We once tried to drown one, but it didn’t work, it kept getting out and splashed and thrashed most of the water away. And a paddling pool is not the best receptacle to drown an angry dog in fighting for its life. We needed a tin bath really.

  Other methods included cutting all the legs off first, then finally the head. This could only be attempted with the more ratty dogs as I previously stated. We tried injecting one using an old icing sugar pipe. Didn’t really work. Annoyed, I think we blow torched it with an old aerosol can. Stank the shed out though.

  I can’t remember when we decided that we had been getting it all wrong and it was the owners of the dogs who were actually to blame and not the dogs themselves. (The irony of this part is that some of you will be less appalled at our killing of the old women than the killing of their stupid fucking dogs.) I do know when it was, actually: we were sat watching That’s Life with Mum and Dad. Cyril had just done a funny limerick, and there was one of the many awkward segues into something more serious from Esther, when she turned her attention (yet again) to some child abuse or other, as was often the way. It was always shocking, but made worse because only moments before we had seen one of the team burst into song at a garden centre and grab a passer-by and made her join in. What I got from this report, which was about cruelty to animals, was that people who owned the animals seemed to be getting the blame. What I didn’t get from the report was any pang of guilt that I had been cruel to animals. It never even occurred to me. It just made me shift focus from the animals to the people.

  The first old woman (Elliot assured me she was the one) was very sweet really, and accompanied us back to our house without any fuss. I told her that poor, blind Elliot wasn’t feeling very well and would she mind seeing that we got home alright. As I have said, people go a little bit weird around blind people – silly really since they are the one set of people that can’t see how you are (or are not) behaving, but she readily said of course she would help. Her dog was big. I was secretly pleased we were going to kill her and not it. I wouldn’t have known where to begin, but as we walked along I thought, she would easily fit into two rubbish bags. We got to our house and I told her, if she wouldn’t mind, to put her dog in the shed, just out of the way, as our mum was allergic. She said of course and once she was in there I grabbed the dog hammer (did I mention it became known as the dog hammer?) and smacked her on the head with it. She was puzzled at first and sort of bent double. This gave me a nice pop at the back of her head which I hit with the claw part and wrenched free, pulling off part of her scalp and a bit of skull, I thought. Anyway, she was easy and it all went well. The annoying part was the ‘get rid’, which took ages as despite being little, she was still bigger than what I’d been used to. I don’t remember how many more we killed. I think probably about eleven or twelve. They all merge into one when I think back. There’s the odd funny detail: one of them, I remember, her false teeth flew out when I hit her head. I was laughing and Elliot was saying, ‘What? What’s funny about it?’ It was ages before I could tell him, I was laughing so much. Another one tried, quite quickly after the first blow, to grab me; she was quite strong. I hit her again and then, as she burbled on the floor, I cut her feet off with a saw. I chopped them off with her shoes still on, but I concede it was done in spite because she had actually managed to scratch me. (I told my mum that I must have done it playing. She didn’t care.) I don’t know why I did this, but because a lot of them were old, they nearly all wore glasses and so I began keeping them. I had about eight pairs when we finally met Mrs Lovelever.

  I knew it was going to be different when, as usual, we sidled up to her and I got her talking. Her dog was a collie, which I hated. When she spoke the dog ran off and she shouted in a clipped Barbara Woodhouse voice for it to come back. Elliot went white. I saw the colour drain from his face. I felt sick. He didn’t need to say or do any more. I knew this really was her. And that dog – that actual Lassie lookalike dog – was the cause of Elliot being blind. We both stood there for a moment and then I managed to get things back on track. I quickly used Elliot looking awful to ask if she would mind taking us home. At first, because I presumed she was a horrible cow, I worried she might not agree to it, but once again the blind card worked and she
came back with us.

  It was a long walk home. I wanted to have time to talk to Elliot. I wanted to ask him how he wanted me to do it. Did he have a preference? What had he particularly enjoyed the sound of? As it was, we got home and I did the usual thing of getting her to go to the shed. Elliot stood in the garden, almost too afraid to come in. His new role – since we had just been killing the owners – was to take hold of the dogs on their leads; get them out of the way whilst I did the deed. But he just stood there.

  ‘Come on, Mandy. Inside!’

  The old woman barked her order but the dog ran off. Elliot stumbled after it, out of the garden. I told Mrs Lovelever he would bring Mandy back. It occurred to me, once we were standing in the shed, that Mrs Lovelever hadn’t recognised the new blind version of Elliot. I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘You don’t remember my brother, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ she said.

  ‘My brother. Elliot. The blind boy we walked home with.’

  She looked confused and it made me feel incredibly angry. She didn’t even have the decency to remember the incident.

  ‘He got your dog’s shit on him and he went blind because of it.’

  It was then that she started trying to leave the shed. I was annoyed that Elliot wasn’t there to see it, but of course he wouldn’t see it. I grabbed a screwdriver and stabbed her with it. She tumbled back and held the stab wound. After that she couldn’t speak. She tried to but all that came out was a kind of low gurgling. It was odd out of an old woman’s mouth. I finished her off quite quickly. It was not at all as I had imagined, but it is different when you go through the door. I had learnt that. It’s never as you imagine. I think there had simply been too much build up. It was like Christmas or birthdays. It was just over and done and that was that. I killed the dog as well of course. THE dog. I strangled it with wire. When I emerged from that stinking shed, dragging the dead dog on a wire behind me, my mother and father were standing there. There was no sign of Elliot.

  They looked at me in disbelief, appalled, I presumed, at the sight of the dead dog. I thought: wait until you see inside the shed!

  ‘Where’s Elliot?’ I said. That was when we heard it. Screech and thud. The sound of my brother’s death. He had run out into the road chasing the very dog that had blinded him in the first place, and was knocked down dead by a Mr Kipling van. Big cherry bakewells pictured on the side.

  Both Mrs Lovelever and her dog Mandy survived. I suppose because an ambulance was called they managed to save her. My brother – not so lucky. I went into a home as I was considered ‘troubled’. I never needed to admit to the other murders of either the dogs or the owners. I just said we wanted revenge and had targeted Mrs Lovelever. It was a ‘one off’. My grandparents looked after me when my parents couldn’t bear to look at me anymore. Which I thought fair enough. The day trips they said were to ‘normalise’ me.

  It was a long time ago now. I still don’t like dogs. It was only recently they told me I never had a brother called Elliot. But that can’t be right. I still have his stick and glasses.

  A Spider Remember

  sara pascoe

  I think we loved each other. It’s difficult to remember what he was like before. At least I know what’s happening to me, which makes it less scary.

  Or much worse.

  I said I loved him, out loud, to his face. And to other people. I like to get intense with my partners, analytical late nights drinking and listening to great music. I have a record player, which puts some people off me. Especially the neighbours. I felt very close to him for that first year. I was thinking about getting a tattoo of his name; I’d never done that for a boyfriend before, except once.

  He was very tall, so people always commented and made the same jokes and he had to repeat the same passive aggressive responses. I got neck pains when we kissed standing up. An achy echo of him remaining for hours after a lovely date. He was laid down at the end, so it would have been easier to kiss him. But I didn’t. He was no longer him.

  Even after a year, we were still learning about each other’s minds and behaviours. Despite the jazz-underscored introspective conversations at my flat, I didn’t even know he was scared of spiders until he woke up that night: ‘It’s on my face, it’s on my face!’

  I’m sitting here now wondering why the government are covering this up. If I’d had any idea of the danger . . . but then I guess no one would ever go to sleep at all. Die from that instead. That’s what happens: seven days without and then you’re gone. And psychosis from the third day, so there are similarities.

  ‘You’re dreaming,’ I had told him. And not politely. I hated him for waking me up.

  He was moving around stupidly. ‘I can feel it, it’s on my face.’

  ‘It’s just a bloody dream.’

  ‘it’s a spider.’

  He swam his lengthy limbs and I went back to sleep.

  In the morning he showed me it. Dead. He’d held it in his hand all night to prove that I should have been more sympathetic. Which pissed me off.

  ‘It’s still just an insect.’

  He was being so childish. ‘It was running over my face.’

  ‘You’re lucky you don’t live in Africa or something, or the jungle.’

  ‘I choose not to live there, because I hate spiders.’

  ‘You can’t choose where you’re born.’

  ‘I would have moved.’

  It wasn’t an enjoyable row. There was no relief afterwards from having purged a poison, found new equanimity. It was petty and I wasn’t going to apologise for not helping him kill an arachnid in the night. He needed to grow up about it. He sulked for the afternoon; I wished he’d leave. We watched TV to avoid talking. I made an excuse about an early morning to ensure I went to bed alone. When we caught each other’s eye we pretended to smile.

  Dinner that weekend was planned. I had a feeling he was planning to break up with me, the arrangements seemed so formal, and we hadn’t ‘made up’ properly. Our phone calls had been lists of what we had done, no laughter. I should have apologised, I look back now and wish I’d been nicer, but I didn’t know.

  In the restaurant I thought he seemed thinner in his face and a bit pale. Fragile. This is definitely it, I thought, despising him in preparation. We ate in virtual silence, my contempt for him oppressed me. He slumped with his head in his hands when offered a dessert menu.

  He was so rude to the waiter. ‘No. I can’t. Can you go away? I have to tell her something.’

  The poor guy left. Another poor guy looked at me.

  ‘Kate . . .’

  I made my face ready to say, ‘That’s fine, babe. That’s what I want too, to just be friends or . . .’

  ‘I can still see him.’

  ‘Who?’ I looked around for the waiter.

  ‘The spider I killed.’

  ‘What spider that you killed?’

  ‘The one who lived in your house.’

  I was relieved. Stupidly laughing. I must have loved him, I could breathe again, hysterically happy. His face folded into itself as he cried.

  ‘I’m sorry, babe, I thought you were going to break up with me.’ I spoke softly and tried to reach him across the table. ‘I’m not making fun of you.’

  ‘It runs about my eyes.’

  It was difficult to hear him, he was telling himself more than me.

  ‘I can see it, around the edges, and then straight across my . . .’

  I watched him cry and realised he was mad.

  I took him home with me that night, feeling responsible and not wanting to be. I lied positively, about a doctor helping him. I was thinking anti-hallucinatory drugs, he imagined some arachnid-killing eyewash. He left in the night and I didn’t wake up. I hoped he would be okay but didn’t know what I could do.

  I could’ve phoned him or believed hi
m but I didn’t.

  Four days later he found his way back somehow. Maybe a taxi had dropped him because he didn’t seem sure where he was. Banging on the door woke me up, the last restful night I’ll ever have. He dribbled words, dropping them separately and widely apart. A doctor. No one believed. Worse now. Many many. So lots. Prison. The hospital.

  ‘Do you want me to take you?’

  I needed to call someone, I couldn’t deal with this on my own.

  He shook his head and walked in circles around the room. Less and less control of his limbs as I watched him. His words became noises. I rang for an ambulance, gave them all the details. ‘It’s a psychotic attack, he thinks he has spiders in his eyes.’

  His hands swiped at his eyes as he swirled about the room. I was reminded of zombies. A body living with no one left living in it. The doorbell squawked as he fell flat on his face. I heard his nose break, and I saw the back of his head.

  His hair was moving.

  Screaming, I ran to the door, tried to get out as the paramedics pushed their way in. They were wrapped in plastic, now I know why. There was a woman in a suit, she caught my arm, held me back.

  ‘They’re in his hair, they’re in his hair,’ I tried to explain to her.

  She shushed me angrily and pulled me into the front room, we stood near my record player. Next to the sofa. Where I used to chat and drink and live.

  They were wrapping him in clear plastic sheeting and I could still see the red rim under his hair. The edge of the nest, as they streamed out, hundreds of spiders swarming from his skull. Small, tiny, harmless spiders.

  ‘It doesn’t usually get as far advanced as this. It’s a bad case. I’m sorry about your friend,’ the woman said, not sounding sorry.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ I said. I should have been sick or something, done something human. Instead I just stood there as she gave instructions to the crew. Tests. Incineration. Lies about cause of death to relatives.