There's a Good Dog...

by Chris Middlehurst

  Then her chest collapsed in on itself, spilling her insides onto the floor where the killer had sliced her belly from the bottom of her tail to the top of her throat. She fell apart onto the floor like a pack of cards, twitching and whimpering on the pub carpet. Then Mina’s eyes went white and she lost consciousness. The last thing she felt was a feeling that she was being lifted up into the heavens, then pulled apart and stretched over the living tissue of another body. Nice way to go, eh?

  I never would have got close to that dog if I hadn’t worn the cat they loved over my limbs like some grotesque silently twitching blood-pumping overcoat. But Mina’s smell was so strong that the dog woke up and didn’t see in the darkness the mad flesh-eating maniac that was wearing its best friend as an invisibility cloak. The stupid thing actually started pawing me into its lap. Practically guided me to its silently heaving breast. Made the grisly work a whole lot easier, I’ll say.

  “’Scuse me, love? You a working girl?”

  “No!”

  “Course you’re not, you lazy cow!”

  “Hey, leave the lady alone, tosser.”

  “Fucking what?”

  “Come on then!”

  Doooong! Oinz! Bong! Smash! Prrrrraow! Ooof! Slam!

  Pause.

  “’Scuse me, love? You a working girl?”

  Ah, the Mucky Duck. Still, the place has its charms, I suppose. We always sit by the entrance of course, just in case we have to make a quick getaway if things get a bit hairy. They usually do when we’re in, usually fifteen minutes before last orders are called. The ladies of the night are off this week looking for customers on the motorway and the locals are getting restless, starting to pick on ivy leaf village student girls that have lost their way and are asking for directions at the bar. They’d have more luck finding a cat playing in a swimming pool.

  Speaking of pool, there’s that old codger in a ratty Christmas jumper and a lop-sided Santa hat again trying to teach a girl in a plastic leopard-skin skirt how to play pool.

  “Okay, okay, goooood! Now, just make sure when you hit it that you hit it square in the middle so that-”

  She misses.

  “Hahaha! I’m terrible at this!”

  “No no no, now look, all you gotta do is put some chalk on it, babe. Here, like this.”

  “I think I can chalk my own cue, thanks very much!”

  The man gloats.

  “Little girls think they can do lots of things!”

  I feel Greg turn to a muttering twitching blob of blushing flesh filled with drink like a blister about to burst. He’s kicking at the chair next to my ear with a soaked pair of cello-taped trainers that might once have been white but I’m not too sure anymore. I prick my ears up. I’ve got to hear this.

  “So what do you do,” Greg gulps his beer down nervously and affects the local vernacular. “...Matey?”

  The man just looks at him. There is a pause. I sense that Greg is forcing a smile. Trying to pluck up the courage to try again.

  Greg blinks hard, then looks down at me on the floor, as if looking for inspiration. The Goddess Muse that I am, his face lights up at me, he clicks his fingers and looks back up to the man across the table.

  “Hey! Nice shoes, man!” They are not nice shoes. But Greg is feeling the effects of the half-pint and he’ll be damned if anyone is going to ruin his evening tonight.

  “Nice shoes, maaan!” He repeats. “I can see my bloody face in them!”

  The man mutters something unintelligible. Greg leans in.

  “What was that, buddy?”

  “I said you bloody will do in a minute when I kick your fucking brains in, mate.”

  We quickly move to another table.

  “I just wanted to give him some space, that’s all,” he told me after a few minutes. “He looked like he needed some.”

  At least we didn’t hide in the toilets like the last time Greg got flustered in here. He’d somehow managed to smash someone else’s drink by accident onto the floor and had drawn the attention of the inebriate congregation towards our secluded little spot. I remember he got up nervously and dragged me with him towards the swinging saloon-styled doors leading to the toilets.

  “Just taking him for a jim riddle,” he smirked. “Don’t worry, he’s house trained!”

  The skeleton faces of the locals stared back. One of them spat at the floor, looked back at him, then squashed the spit with his shoe. Just as I heard someone shout “Hey! I paid good money for that carpet!” me and Greg were safe in the pale comfort of the toilet. Or so we thought. Greg went for a jim riddle or whatever that was, sniffing uncontrollably behind one of the cubicle doors as I surveyed the urinal walls, trying to avoid the piss pools. There were phone numbers and messages all over these greyish-green walls. The phone numbers of enemies scrawled just above the urinals with messages reading “Call Me” or “If you wanna bone, pick up the phone.” I could’ve done with a bone - a chicken one - but somehow I didn’t think the message was meant for me. A particularly nasty one had an arrow pointed next to the space between the lowest urinal and the ashen toilet wall that read: “Dale T. was raped here.”

  Some more creative closet poet has graced the mirrors with a few homespun haikus, their pens the lost fake nail and the sharpened beermat.

  Swimming till I cum

  In the blood of my cousins

  Is by-the-beach fun!

  For a self-confessed

  Timid eunuch Dick can be

  Such a massive prick.

  Ah! The restroom poets! The unacknowledged constipated of the world! I imagine those fuckers gleefully loading the soap dispensers with their own faeces. Filling the condom vendors with broken glass and the hand dryers with festering road kill from the previous decade. The only collectables from that period in our history. I shudder to think what that evil-looking toilet attendant does with his black gloves. They look like they’ve been encrusted with nails, drill bits and the kit satchels of sadistic dentists.

  Open wide, sir. This won’t hurt a bit. That’s it. Good. Now if I could just...slip this scalpel all the way down your...that’s it. You swallow that down good, now. You might feel a slight sting but it’ll pass, I can assure you.

  Those gloves are shaking my limbs with fear. I wonder what he does when he puts a welcoming hand over the face of some unwitting student or PR type blinded by the effects of cheap vodka and ketamine and he...actually no, it looks like he’s helping the poor sod. That’s nice.

  Back in our usual place we see a blond-haired youth in a blood-red soaked rain jacket lumber awkwardly through the saloon doors like a cowboy in a public health warning film. You can tell he plays on being the student type trying to get out the rain but I can see the crowfeet by the sides of his eyes: he still looks young for a 32 year-old loser who probably still receives phone cheques and teddy bears from his overbearing beastly witch of a mother who’s all winks and smiles with the neighbours one minute but then turns on him viciously and pecks at him for not ever bringing back any company to the house. His red jacket was probably some present he reluctantly accepted from his poorly uncle who in turn probably got it from a rich trophy friend of his who only calls him once a year to speak to his wife. I can tell the man-boy is embarrassed by its brightness since when all the owl eyes of the hags and swags in black leather jackets stare at him he tugs at it guiltily like a little boy hiding under his older sister’s dress.

  He semi-strides-semi-limps his way to the front of the bar which parts like the Red Sea caught on fast-forwarded film. Then he nods his head to the far corner of the pub not far from where we are as if expecting somebody but you can tell from his slight stutter when the Joe Buck bargirl cocks her head at him smiling as he asks for a b-b-beer p-p-please that he hasn’t opened his mouth to anyone apart from his gaunt reflexion in at least a week b
y now if not two. He looks like he stands outside the doors to the pub for half an hour before suddenly turning around walking off then turning back towards it again but this time smashes his head against a hanging plant pot before he goes inside in the desperate hope that he will a) look already half-pissed and b) look a bit more like the brawny vampire wide-boy he sees in the mirror that no one else does least of all in the Mucky Duck anyway. Nervously fumbling for change as she pours the pint and holds her gaze at him he looks away and nods towards his imaginary companion by the most isolated corner in the room. Once he’s jerked the coins onto the bar making sure he avoids the bargirl’s cupped hand he limp-strides to his spot, desperately hoping that no one will notice that he is totally alone and oh so totally alone. But I notice. He might think he’s Mister Andy Nonymous over here but deep down he knows he’s been seen and after a few glances at the ceiling then at his shoes he turns towards me slightly and I try and smile at him but he blanks me and pretends to look furtively around the whole pub. The tease! Then he starts fumbling nervously with his pint glass making patterns with his finger curling around the froth and flicking it absent-mindedly at the rim making a little cik! every time he does. I know as well as he does that the wetness below his raincoat sure as hell can’t be rain. Red jacket man-boy crosses his legs.

  The girl by the pool table squeals. I hear the clatter of a pool cue. The table swallows up another ball with a clang. It distracts me from red jacket man-boy. I look back towards him. The doors vibrate with the force of customer rejection. Red jacket man-boy is gone. And Greg kicks me back to reality.

  “I’m going to win this! I’m going to win!”

  “It’s your foul and it’s my turn!”

  “Bollocks! You’re just a sore loser!”

  “You’re distracting me, you stupid...!” He can’t think of another word. She laughs. He snarls back. “Go stand over there! Go on! Go stand over there in that corner like the naughty little girl you are! Go on! Get! Where I can see you!”

  The sound of smashed glass twitching on the floor.

  “Okay, Jesus, calm down!”

  “Stand over there! Do it now! Stand over there! Where I can see you!”

  “Okay! God! It’s only a game! It’s only a bit of fun!”

  “I’ve got a twenty pound bet on this outcome, you stupid woman!”

  “God! What are you like?”

  This could get interesting. I sit up and stare up from beneath the table at them. The girl has hoisted her pelvis on top of the corners and is swinging off the pool table, her legs shaking with the effort. One of her panther slippers floats gracefully to the ground. The old regular is levelling up on the other side of the table to take a shot. His furrowed brows seem to be pushing his head onto the cue. He takes aim, curls his right hand around the back end of the cue, tongue hanging out with the concentration. In this frozen position, he almost looks like the dead Labrador, only this time dressed as a retired Christmas elf. The girl giggles and swings up and down.

  “Take your time, poppa!”

  “Shut up.” He pauses, face screwed into a sneer. “Now you wouldn’t be trying to distract me now, wouldja?”

  The girl giggles, runs a bangled arm through her blond hair and pouts playfully nudging the pool table gently with her feet.

  “Now what makes you think that, eh?”

  “Better not be,” the grumpy old bastard mutters. He grits his teeth and tenses, his knuckles boiling white as he grips the cue with all his might.

  Phwhack!

  Pop!

  “Oh!” She laughs and moans in mock imitation of Shirley and the lapdogs. What a girl! She reminds me of a squirrel I once took up the tail side back when I was a puppy on the Sheltons’ estate. Beautiful thing. Fearless as it circled one of the many royal oaks on the family grounds, its little grey arms full of acorns for the harvest. Hard working little thing. Absolutely fearless. Until it felt my breath blowing down its back. It dropped more than a few acorns that day, I can assure you.

  Phhhhhwhack!

  Double-pop!

  “OOOOOH!” she wails.

  “There goes another one!” he cries, more interested in knocking his stupid balls in the hole than the girl on the other end riding the table. Each time he’s potted a ball in her corner she’s winced, moaned and grinded against the hole. Can’t he see she’s crazy about him? Probably just playing hard to get but at his age, I wouldn’t waste time counting the pennies in the jar. I’d fucking spend them. I stick my head back under the table where it belongs. I know my place.

  Ding! Ding! Ding!

  “Last orders, ladies and germs! Last orders!”

  “Hey, fuck you, arsehole!”

  “Well, you’re certainly not getting anymore, my man!”

  Ding! Ding! Ding!

  A sea of feet rushes from one end of the pub carpet to the other. A barrage of angry voices. Electricity is back in the room. I look up. The girl is still gyrating on the pool table all by herself. Her pool-playing maniac of a partner has gone with the others. This is my chance. I rush towards her, panting with the sudden effort as I realise how much time I’ve spent sitting on my tail. She twists her head at me and smiles sweetly.

  Then I see the bulge in her skirt. A fat erection just like mine. Suddenly she doesn’t seem so sweet and I detect a bit of a beard where the lipstick has chafed. She puts her hand back up to her hair as she’d done before and adjusts her wig. The head underneath it is bald and spotted as a jay’s egg. Ow!

  My saviour! Whilst it wrings and twists my neck and I feel like I know how a chicken must feel in its dying moments with its Adam’s apple waiting to be popped by the farmer’s fists I still thank the powers that be that Greg the shit still doesn’t trust me enough to let me off my leash. Thank you, Greg! Thank you!

  Obviously this has worked. The creature in the dress turns away and readjusts its wig in a little hand mirror.

  “Okay, poochie-pooch! Time to go homey home!”

  Fuck you thank you fuck you thank you.

  We pass the naked doctor by the lamppost again, but this time he is off the ground. The stethoscope is lashed around the top of the post and his neck seems to have got stuck in the middle. He is swinging against it, peacefully twitching in the wind. His head is bent down low obscuring his face, a trail of orange vomit snaking down his pale goose-bumped body. I glance down at his feet and realise that he wasn’t completely naked after all: he did have one shoe still attached to his left foot. I glance up at Greg but he’s too tired of getting away from the Mucky Duck to notice. He drags me into the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  “God damn it, Mrs Steadman! The poor thing’s sexual organs will be eroded for good if this treatment you insist on performing continues the way it’s going!”

  “But doctor!”

  “How many times do I have to tell you your dog is fine? This is the third time you’ve taken him to me this month! It’s getting ridiculous. You’ll castrate the poor thing. Who knows what’s going on through its head right now!”

  “But I just want to be sure-”

  “Mrs Steadman, if you ask me it’s not the dog that’s sick.” He pauses. “It’s you.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say, doctor?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. This dog’s had more needles stuck inside it than a Mexican voodoo doll.”

  Patterns of squashed bugs line the eggshell walls, adding shades of mucky brown to the dirty grey. Ugh. The misery of the veterinarian’s. I had to share a ball with a beagle that had a brace round its neck. At first it was fun lifting the ball up with my teeth just to the side of him so every time he tried to bite at it he just bit the white rubber of the brace but it did start to get a bit tedious after a while. I’d much rather torture a healthy animal. There’s a picture on the wall of a man-child with cancer
ous moles in his eye sockets and a wasp’s nest beard sucking on a sickly yellow lollipop. Next to that is a sign with a white stick man praying into a toilet bowl that reads: “Smelly faeces? Headaches? Call this number. You could have pancreatic cancer.” Shit. I must have had it all my life. Just below the sign one of those white parrots with the yellow crest sits perched on a meter stick by the reception desk, half its neck chewed off. Its owner, a plump spectacled girl with curly hair keeps replacing its bandage when it turns purple with blood. Every time she does this, the animal bites at her fingers with its vicious-looking black beak and yells:

  “HERRO!”

  in a high-pitched screech. She tries to help it but it keeps slashing at her until she bursts into tears and sits down again in the waiting area. I give the animal a baleful look, but it just ignores me and stares dumbly at the gash in its neck, still shrieking:

  “HERRO!”

  to its burst arteries leaking blood onto its white wings. I thought those fuckers were meant to be smart. Obviously this is the village idiot of the species.

  “But, doctor-”

  Shirley getting hysterical again. Why does she take me here so often? I almost wish I did have a disease that I could pass onto her if only it would make her shut up.

  The TV set in the reception area beeps and whirrs into life before fading into a re-transmission of the latest television serial featuring the evil Todd Baron, swashbuckling mermaid-beater of the seven seas. In this latest instalment of the aquatic saga, Todd has captured the sensuous Bianca, Princess of Hammerhead Reef and daughter of Pedro the Royal Clam. In a particularly nasty turn of events, Todd Baron and his sneering assistant Dr Schnitzelgrüber have tied the Princess to a Giant Goby fish whose stomach has been filled with enough rocks to sink him to the bottom of the seabed. After tying her with seaweed to the poor rock-swallowing fool, Todd explains his intention to whip her skin to shreds and toss it to the local mako sharks. Bianca desperately tries to free herself from the dying Goby, but each struggle of her barnacled body only tightens the knots of seaweed, cutting into her skin and releasing little ribbons of crimson blood into the ocean. Todd Baron orders the sniggering Schnitzelgrüber to stand back, anchors his toes firmly into the seabed, and with one hand working away at the stiffening bulge in the front of his swimsuit swings the whip back with all his might. Bianca’s underwater screams are stifled when she swallows a stray piece of coral. Coughing and spluttering, she turns away from Todd and bites into the goby’s flesh to try and absorb the pain. The goby’s eyes dart back and forth quizzically as she bites into his soft belly.