The Hand that Feeds.

It was at some point about an hour and a half before dawn that I realized I was being followed. Granted, I had inklings through the night, but nothing more than a goose bump or shadow half-seen in the periphery. It didn’t help that at the time, I was particularly drunk and may have had a mild concussion, but by the time I saw the yellow-orange lights in the hedge at the other end of the lawn, I was already almost certain I was being stalked.

                I was still holding a half eaten slice of sausage pizza , and my rattled, inebriated head didn’t exactly have the ability to process the ramifications of feeding wild animals what amounted to a grease soaked rag of cheese. The local Fox station had run a special on recent mountain lion attacks that afternoon leaving me paranoid, and watching the news can be about as bad for your decision making abilities as any controlled substance. Either way, I lobbed the pizza slice over to the hedge.

                It took a step, a cautious sniff, then nipped off a piece of sausage, and ran back into the hedge. Whatever it was, it was canine shaped, though by this time, my eyes were starting to swell up. Either way, I didn’t want to take the chance of walking home with a wild animal on the loose, so I reluctantly trekked back to the party.

                Nobody had called the cops that night, and the last dregs remained, either attempting to sober up or snoring off the booze on the floor. There were two people on the living room couch. One was my Ex, the other, was the reason why she was now my ex. Her beau rubbed his bloodied knuckles as he gleefully told the tale of the punk he “put in place” earlier. Some of the blood on his knuckles was his own, but most of it was mine.

                I snuck around them to the kitchen and fixed myself a tall, frothy glass of water. I stood by the sink, peaking out into the living room twice a minute waiting for Meat-head McGee and his new trophy to exit the festivities, whishing under my breath I’d see him on the news later as the newest name on the list of cougar victims. It was well into the morning when they finally left. I followed suit, and spent the rest of the weekend sleeping off the worst hangover of my life.

                Monday came with a knock on my door. The knock came with a very clean-cut police officer. I asked him his business, and he, in the professional matter-of-fact way that cops tend to break this sort of news, told me there was another fatal animal attack Saturday morning, and warned me to keep a look out. Stupidly, I asked who was killed, and he merely handed me a photo.  It took me a second to register that the messy pile of ground beef was, at one point, a human, another to notice the one remaining hand, and another to notice the bruised and bloodied knuckles.

                I politely waited until the cop left before I vomited.

                Work was mindless enough as usual. I spent most of my time watching my ex, who worked three aisles over. Her hands shook as she poured the seed out for the parakeets. Her bloodshot eyes slowly counted the bags of kibble. I wanted to say something, but I wisely stood in the background.

                Eventually, my manager called me into the back room where sat a greasy stain of a teenager in a black trench coat. I sat patiently as my manager, an even bigger, even rounder, even greasier stain of a man spat his grievances in my general direction. Something about, how because the Milkbones were in my aisle, it’s somehow my fault that one unkempt goth kid managed to steal pocketfuls of them on a weekly basis.

                The pubescent perpetrator, in question simply stared off into space as the fat man continued his tirade, fingers still clutching his ill gotten merch, for god-knows whatever reason. The kid looked like he couldn’t afford a basic bar of soap, let alone a full course meal. He was probably steeling them to feed his millions of siblings or his crack-whore mother.

                The manager regained my attention by threatening to take the cost of every lost doggy treat out of my pay check. My response was this: I flipped him the bird, threw down my apron, and took a pocket full of Milkbones myself on the way out.

                I sat on my now ex-manager’s Beemer simultaneously regretting my poor decision making and thinking how beautiful his car would look wrapped around a telephone pole, when I saw it. It stood in the shadow of an alley across the street, eyes still glowing that same yellow-orange.

                I approached cautiously. It was definitely dog-shaped as I remembered, but so black I couldn’t tell where its coat ended and where the shadow of the building began. I tossed it some of the treats in my pocket, which it greedily scarffed up. It looked at me for half a minute, and scampered away.

                That night, newspaper Want Adds in one hand, TV remote in the other, I flipped through the news channels. “Top story at 10,” said the anchorman. All I had to see was the first second of footage: a blue BMW nearly tied in a knot around a telephone pole. All I had to hear was “Witnesses report,” “Black dog,” and “Swerved to avoid.”  I turned off the TV, and I crawled into bed desperately trying to convince myself that I wasn’t guilty of two counts of homicide and severely traumatizing a rather nice young woman whose only crime was her poor judge of character.  I fell asleep to the sound of something clawing at my window, whimpering, panting. Even with my eyes closed, I could still see the yellow-orange glow painting my bedroom.

               

                The next night, I went to the park. Newspaper rolled up, I waited. I waited until I saw the glow of its eyes, and I chased it. But when I stopped running, it began to walk back to me, whimpering, tail between its legs.  I chased it again, but it just kept coming back! I threw sticks and stones at it. Anything I could find really, until one of the stones landed in a nearby bush, which promptly gave an exclamation of pain.

                I rushed over and caught the source of the sound by the coat. The more it struggled, the more the cheep fabric ripped until it came undone completely, spilling Milkbones everywhere. As I stood, holding half a trench coat, I watched as its owner fled into the night, looking back through his greasy strands of hair. Looking with those cold, sociopathic, teenaged eyes fixed on at me.

                When I turned around, the dog was gone. I stood for a moment wondering how many of the recent mountain lion attacks were just that.

                I went home, locked the doors, and turned on the computer. Right now I can hear his panting. He’s clawing at my door, sniffing it, looking for a way to get in. I am afraid to meet that yellow-orange glow head on. I’m afraid that what they say about some dogs is true: that they are only loyal to those that regularly feed them.