Have You Seen Me?
This is a horror short story that I couldn't find a place for. I thought it could live here for now. I'm trying this whole Substack thing out still but there will likely be more where this came from.
I don’t like dogs. Never did. And before you ask what’s wrong with you or tell me oh, you just haven’t met the right dog yet, just listen. There’s nothing you can say that’ll change that. If you’d found yourself ass up on your neighbor’s lawn after baseball practice at twelve years old with their rabid beagle named Penelope tearing into your thigh like it was a turkey leg, you’d have made up your mind too.
So, when Van first told me she wanted a dog, I didn’t know what to say. I kinda hit the panic button. Van didn’t know about Penelope. Back in college, when she’d asked me about the marks on my leg, I told her the same thing I told everyone else: I’d crashed on my bike.
The funny thing was, I don’t even know why I’d lied. I guess I still felt embarrassed that a twenty-pound beagle had kicked the shit out of me when I was almost fully grown. I can’t think of anything less sexy than that.
“Be serious,” I said.
“Dude, I am,” Van said.
I could feel myself spinning a little, and not because I was surprised that she’d wanted to talk about dogs. It seemed like every couple we knew from college was getting fur babies. Maybe I was just worried that adding one more thing to our lives would upset the delicate balance that was keeping our relationship above water. Or maybe it was as simple as the fact that I didn’t want Van to ever find out about Penelope. I was scared what she’d think about me when she finally saw me as that terrified little kid, covered in blood.
“I think it would be good for us,” Van said.
We were sitting on our tiny couch. She was pressed up against my shoulder, holding her laptop open to a local shelter’s website. Paradise Paws. She pointed to a scruffy Shih Tzu that looked like the shaggy end of a mop.
“I mean, look at her,” she said. “Isn’t she cute?”
Dutchess. Age 4.
A picture of the dog in question stared cross-eyed at me from the screen. It looked like an opossum but with more hair. The photo made me think that all those Medieval paintings of dogs were actually pretty accurate.
“That thing?” I said. “It looks yippy.”
“Oh, I see what this is,” she said. “You don’t want a small dog because it’ll make you seem less tough.”
“What? That’s not what I said at all. I—I just don’t think I’m ready for a pet.”
I was hoping that that one would buy me a little more time. Maybe if I could distract her for long enough, it would just go away like the time that she’d been trying to plan a month-long backpacking trip to Chile. Van was a dreamer who loved to come up with plans and forget them as soon as the next one came along. I was praying this whole dog thing was just another one of those because I was already getting visions of a little hairy demon raking its claws against the floors and gnashing its teeth at me the second she left for work.
“It’s a dog, not a baby,” she said. “It’s just—Since Bea and Conor got theirs, it always looks like they’re having so much fun.”
Bea was Van’s friend from freshman year. Bea and Conor had this perfect little life in San Francisco. They were both software developers with more money than they knew what to do with. Now they had a perfect little golden retriever. In Bea’s Instagram posts, they both had coordinated outfits like they were dressing for a J.Crew catalog. Their dog smiled back at me in every photo like it knew it was the shit.
Milo’s first hike. Another rainy day, another dog park. One year as dog parents.
The more captions I read, the more I wanted to vomit.
“What about this one?” Van said, pouting and widening her eyes. “She looks sweet.”
Peanut. Age 2. Beagle.
I hadn’t meant to, but when I saw that beagle pop up on Van’s screen, its beady black eyes like a lifeless doll’s, I nearly lost it. I jumped up from the couch like it was about to spring out of the laptop.
“Jeez. You okay?” she said.
“I’m allergic to dogs,” I said quickly.
“Really?” Van said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I get hives. Real nasty ones. I need some water. Do you want water?”
“I know!” Van said like she’d just solved the world’s problems. “What about a labradoodle? They’re hypoallergenic.”
“Just stop,” I snapped. “I’m just not getting a dog. Okay?”
“Ugh. Don’t do this tonight.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are. It’s your typical Owen bullshit,” she said, rolling her eyes. She did the rest in a high voice that I guess was supposed to be me. “I hate everything and it’s all about me.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I just wish you’d leave some space for me.”
Van was the most patient person I knew. It took a lot for her to say something like that. I should’ve just shut up and taken the loss, but I didn’t. I had to open my stupid ass mouth to say something else.
“If you want a dog that bad, I can always move out,” I said.
I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe part of me wanted to push her away like I’d already done with everyone else. Or maybe I’d wanted Van to be right about me. If she knew I was a selfish asshole, then it was her fault for getting close enough to get hurt.
“Screw you,” she said.
She got up and grabbed her jacket not even looking at me before she slammed the door. I was alone, standing in the living room. From the coffee table, the picture of the beagle stared at me from Van’s laptop until I forced it shut.
#
Van and I had been living together for the better part of two years. It was steady. At least most of the time. The problem was that I was starting to feel like every day we did the same little orbits around our one-bedroom basement rental near Jefferson Park in Tucson. It was all we could afford right out of college. Not gonna lie, it was probably all we could ever afford unless one of us stumbled on a stash of gold hidden in an old mineshaft or a hollowed-out saguaro in the Catalina Foothills.
Right around when we were reupping for the third year of our lease, we’d been fighting a lot more. It wasn’t totally her fault either. I’d been losing my cool more than I wanted to. A lot more actually. It sounds stupid, but I kept feeling like everything was out of control. Like somehow I was sitting shotgun as someone else drove my life off a bridge.
When Van left for her teaching job at the middle school, I worked from home out of our little shoebox or one day a week in the office at the cell that they gave me. It was hard to not feel like I’d wasted years of my life in college just to be plugged in as an email chatbot or a blank mannequin sitting in virtual meetings.
And when I wasn’t there, I was trying to do everything I could to make the rest of my time disappear. I spent too many hours scrolling through endless feeds or playing video games. Especially video games. Trapped in these little gameplay loops. Point multipliers flashing on colorful screens. Dopamine holes. Shedding hours killing endless hoards of whatever decided to move. Splintering parts of myself into different characters and their worlds until everything in my life was far enough away that I didn’t feel it. Beast Vanquished. Wasted. You died. Flawless Victory.
My life felt so fucking small.
Van and I didn’t talk for a day or two after we fought. She went to stay with a friend from college. It’s why I’d eventually caved. Didn’t take much time alone to convince me that I couldn’t let my life get any smaller. So, we got a dog.
My only rule was no beagles.
Van decided she wanted a labradoodle. I felt a little guilty when she said that part of the reason was because of my allergies, which, between you and me, never existed. She found this breeder through a friend of a friend’s mom. We couldn’t afford to get a labradoodle puppy, but the breeder happened to be looking for a good home for one of her dogs that couldn’t have puppies of her own.
“Beans is a sweetie,” the woman had said over the phone. “Just seems in a funk. She’s probably a little depressed. A new family is just what she needs.”
She was practically giving the dog away. Even though she lived all the way out near Sedona, all we had to do was hand her a couple hundred bucks in a Walmart parking lot a ten-minute drive from our place. You know the one near Plum Acres? Yep, that’s it.
That weekend, we brought Beans home. She was scraggly with orangish hair that hung over her eyes. The fur around her muzzle was long like a mustache, which served old English aristocrat. Beans was also big. I wasn’t really happy about that part. The breeder had said that she was somewhere around 40 pounds, but from the first time I saw her, I knew she had to be 60, maybe even 70. When she jumped up on Van’s shoulders she came up to her eyebrows. Van was a six-foot-tall shooting guard who had walked on at Arizona. I was a five-nine nobody who could definitely get worked by Van, and now also Beans, in the paint.
But the thing that bugged me most about Beans was her eyes. The second day we had her, Van took the dog to the groomer to get out the matted spots in her fur. Aside from a much-needed bath, she also came back with her shaggy bangs chopped to the point where you could see her them.
Something about them was all wrong. I don’t know how else to say it. It wasn’t the fact that they were a deep yellow like a drawing of a cat. Or the way that her stare bored holes into the back of my skull. It was that they looked more human than animal. The way that they held on you like they knew exactly what you were thinking.
I did my best to ignore the flashing red light that was going off in my head every time I accidentally made eye contact with our new dog. Also, Van didn’t say anything about them, so it made me feel like maybe I was just being paranoid. Besides, those first couple of weeks with Beans were some of the best days we’d had in a while. We were spending less time curled up in our separate corners on our screens. We went on walks. We stayed up late talking like we used to. Everything just felt way easier than it had been, like all the pressure that had been building between us and pushing us in different directions was suddenly gone.
The part I never would have expected was that Beans and I were friends from pretty much the start. Usually, dogs didn’t like me. I was more of a cat person. They probably smelled that on me. I don’t think I could count the number of times I’d been barked or growled at. But from the first day we got her, Beans was different. That afternoon we’d brought her home, she started following me around the apartment and she didn’t really stop.
When I worked from home, Beans was my shadow. She’d tail me into the kitchen and sometimes even into the bathroom. I couldn’t give her enough pets if I tried. The way she whined when I was on a call or playing games made me feel guilty, so I got her this mini stuffed labradoodle with apricot-colored fur and black button eyes so she could have another friend. It looked just like her. She’d carry it everywhere and cuddle up with it under my desk for her naptime. It was adorable.
Van was a little jealous that the dog liked me so much. She pretended like she was joking, but she started to bring it up often enough that I knew that it got to her a bit. She said I was feeding Beans too many treats. Spoiling her. But how couldn’t I when she put her paw on my leg or did a little spin? If I’m being honest, it was fun to rub it in. I’d say that Beans and I were pretty much best friends. That she told me everything.
One night after dinner, Van and I were rewatching The Princess Bride on Van’s laptop. Beans was lying in the crack between our legs and sleeping with her head on my chest. She made happy grunts as I scratched behind her ears.
“You can’t tell me you don’t love her,” Van said.
“No proof,” I joked.
Van pulled out her phone and took a photo of Beans and me. Then she turned the screen to show me. In the picture, I was cheesing as I looked down at the sleeping dog.
“Caught you red-handed,” Van said.
“Whatever,” I said.
“I told you you would love her when you got to know her.”
“You think it’s the same with having kids?” I said.
“Definitely,” she said.
Van inched her body closer to my shoulder so that our noses were almost touching. Her eyes closed as I kissed her. It was the first time that we’d ever talked about something like that. I probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for Beans. Since we’d got her, we were close again. Maybe even closer than we’d been in college. It was funny how just taking care of something together could do that.
It was a stupid thought, but I honestly was thinking about telling her about Penelope. Maybe we could laugh about it together. I could finally put the whole thing behind me. Crawl out from underneath the four-legged shadow of that rabid beagle. But I also didn’t want to ruin that moment. Van’s arms curled around me. My hand pressed in the space between her shoulderblades, pulling her closer. I wanted to stretch those minutes out. Live inside of them for days at a time. So I kept Penelope to myself. The trouble was the longer I waited, the bigger the beagle seemed to get.
I was kissing Van when Beans tried to push between us. She licked my cheek, then went to do the same to Van’s ear. Both of us laughed as we tried to keep her away. She just lapped at our hands instead.
“Alright that’s enough goofball,” I said to Beans. I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and gave her a little kiss on the top of the head.
That was the best I’d felt in a long time. It was nice to not have to pretend that everything was good. It just was. For a second, I thought that maybe getting a dog was the best thing we’d ever done.
#
That’s when the weird stuff started to happen. It was little stuff at first. Beans stopped eating her dry food. Then somehow, she started getting into the refrigerator. In the middle of the night, she ate a whole two pounds of raw chicken and a tub of ground beef. She’d also somehow weaseled her way into a jar of pickles. I’d found the glass smashed on the kitchen floor the next day in a puddle of brine.
Next, she was stealing from the cabinets and the pantry. We did everything we could to keep her out while we couldn’t watch her. First, we put in a gate between the living room and the kitchen but that didn’t last more than a day. I caught her opening the latch with her snout a couple of hours after I installed the thing. We also tried a crate, but it was pretty much the same thing. She’d always find a way out. I honestly thought it was funny. I didn’t know that was only the start.
One day while Van was at work, I had to take Beans out so that she could pee. We lived right across from this dog park. No, I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those. I’d rather go free diving with sharks given my track record with other dogs. But I thought we could walk by on our loop around the block to let her see her neighbors. At least maybe she could sniff one or two through the fence.
When we crossed the street toward the slab of fake grass, two dogs were already inside. Some dude was throwing a tennis ball to a slobbery rottweiler. A pissed-off-looking chihuahua lay in the shade under one of the benches.
When we got closer, Beans tensed up on the leash. I didn’t understand what was happening until I heard the barking. The two dogs in the park ran right at us. They howled and pushed their snouts up against the fence.
It all happened so fast. My first instinct was to back away, but I forgot about Beans and her leash. I tripped on the slack and fell ass-first on the sidewalk. The dogs were going even crazier now, snarling and jumping up on their hind legs like they knew they had me. The chihuahua’s whole head fit through the gaps in the bars and was gnashing its fangs only a couple of feet from my face. I was sure that was going to be the last thing that I saw before I died. A blur of hooked canine teeth and slobber before they tore the meat from my bones.
I know it sounds stupid, but it didn’t matter that those dogs were on the other side of the fence. In my head, I was ready to fight for my life. All I was thinking about was getting away. So, before I could stop myself, I slammed my heel right into the front of the chihuahua’s snarling teeth. There was a hollow crack when my foot connected with the dog’s snout. It let out a startled whimper before staggering back from the bars with its tail between its legs.
“Did you just kick my dog you freak?” the guy with the tennis ball said.
I know it looked bad. I guess I could’ve explained to him that I didn’t mean it. That it was just my history with dogs. That this unspoken vendetta they all seemed to have against me had made me paranoid. That it had driven me to the point where I was afraid one of them would finally finish the job that Penelope started. But I was still so on edge. The barks from the Rottweiler didn’t help. Each deep woof landed like a punch.
“Maybe if you could control your stupid dogs none of this would’ve happened,” I said. There was an angry shake in my voice.
“I should kick your ass,” he said.
He grabbed his Rottweiler by the collar and put himself between the dog and me like he was protecting a helpless child.
I stood up, taking his threat as my sign to leave. I tugged at the leash to pull Beans away from the park fence, but she froze there like her paws were cemented into the sidewalk. The hairs at the base of her neck stood straight up. She’d been still the whole time. She hadn’t even made a sound. A smile curled up at the corners of her lips like she’d been enjoying herself.
For days after our run-in, I expected to get some nasty vet bill or hate mail from the dog owner, but nothing ever came. It was a week later when I saw the missing pet signs hung up outside the same park that the whole thing started to not sit right. The flyers all looked pretty new. It reminded me of all those years ago when Penelope went missing, and the owners had blanketed our town and the miles around it with her face. But out of the dozens of dog posters in front of the park that afternoon, one really stuck out.
Have you seen me? Hank. 4 years old. Rottweiler. If found, please call.
#
A few days later, something woke me up in the middle of the night. That usually never happened to me. I could sleep through anything. It was one of the few things I was good at. If someone broke into our house, they could steal the pillow from under my head, and I wouldn’t wake up. But for some reason that night I did. There was this loud bump from the kitchen. When I rolled over, Van was breathing heavy. She had on this green sleep mask that made her look like a giant fly.
There was the creak of a door closing and the scratches of paws across the floor. My first thought was Beans. I went down the hall toward the living room and kitchen, sure that it was just her scrounging for food. The dog bed in the corner was empty. I didn’t think that was weird, if anything I was even more confident that Beans was eating through our stash of Cheetos again, but when I rounded the corner to have a look into the kitchen, everything was wrong.
At the end of the dark hallway, two little points of green light stared back at me. It was that kind of glow that animal eyes get when it’s dark. Still, that wasn’t why I started to panic. Sure, the eyes were creepy but it was the second realization a moment later that crushed the air out of my lungs. The eyes weren’t at dog height. Whatever was at the end of the hallway was standing on two legs, frozen in place. They were taller than me.
After all those missing dog fliers I’d seen, my first thought was Beans. I had this horrible feeling that whatever was in my house had something to do with the other missing pets. What if she was hurt? What if it already got to her? I called for her in a shaky voice, praying that I was wrong. I made an effort to not break my stare with the intruder. I was hoping that maybe if I could make enough noise or take up enough space, I could distract it from Beans. But right when I called her name, the shadow started to move. It was coming toward me with outstretched arms.
All I could do was scream. Or at least I thought I did as I backed into the living room, tripping over the coffee table in the dark and smashing into the floor lamp. Glass flecks from the shattered bulb scattered as I hit the ground. Without thinking, I crabbed backward, keeping my eyes locked on the opening from the kitchen. I was chased by the scratch of claws raking across the wood. In seconds that thing would come tearing around the corner. It would have me.
Then the lights came on.
“Owen?” Van said, rubbing her eyes. “What’s going on?”
All I could do was stutter like an idiot, pointing to the kitchen. Van stepped around the glass to get a closer look.
“Don’t!” I shouted as she stood in the doorway, staring down the hallway.
I was sure that Van was a goner. In seconds that shadow would be in our living room and wrap its hands around her throat, but nothing came.
Then Beans shuffled in from the kitchen, carrying her stuffy in her mouth. She had her head lowered like she was in trouble for stealing food scraps from out of the garbage again.
“What did you eat this time?” Van said before rubbing her behind the ears. Beans let out a happy grunt before shuffling over to me. She laid down next to me on her back giving me the universal sign of an urgent need for belly rubs. I gave her little pats with the hand that wasn’t stinging like crazy.
I guess I was just relieved. Beans was okay and whatever I’d seen at the front door was gone. Maybe in all the screaming, I’d scared it off. Or maybe it was just late enough that I’d seen something that had never been there in the first place.
“You okay?” Van said, crouching next to me. She squeezed my shoulder.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just spooked myself I guess.”
“Let me see your hand,” Van said.
She held my palm up. There was a chunk of lightbulb poking out through the skin. The long shard of glass leaned up toward the ceiling like it had suddenly forced its way out of me.
“Come on,” Van said calmly. “Let’s fix you up.”
As she helped me to my feet, Beans tried to lick my face. I smelled something horrible on her breath. It forced its way into my nose and curdled the air. And that’s when it hit me. Under all that heavy sourness, there was that unmistakable metallic edge. The same one you get when you open a pack of ground beef and pour the juices into the sink. Blood.
Beans smelled like something dead.
#
For the next few days, I wasn’t feeling right. I could feel myself shutting down. Avoiding things. Pulling away like I had a habit of doing when things started to get overwhelming. I wasn’t sleeping well either. When I tried, I’d picture the shadow at the end of the hallway. Its yellow eyes burning like little fires.
I should’ve told Van when it happened, but what was I supposed to say? Hey babe, I’m pretty sure a demon let itself into our house the other night.
Still, whatever I’d seen definitely wasn’t sitting right no matter how many times I tried to make sense of it. It was the details that really stuck. Like how that thing had left without a sound. Or how Beans had shuffled into the room just after with that awful breath. How she’d smelled. The more I held those things up to the light, the more confused I felt.
It was those stretch of days that I dreaded the moment that Van would leave for work and I’d have to be alone with the dog. It wasn’t anything Beans did. She seemed just as happy to follow me around or beg me for treats. But it was the little stuff that started to get to me. The eerie silence of the two of us alone in that house. The way that she stared at me for hours without stopping. Her too-human eyes searching me as I scrolled through my emails at my desk, pretending that I didn’t notice. The way that every dog we passed on our walks went ballistic.
I tried my best to push it to the side. Lock it away like I’d done with Penelope. Plus, Van just seemed so happy. I didn’t deserve to ruin that. The problem was the more I tried to keep in that bad feeling that something was off with Beans, the harder all the signs were to ignore. And then I just cracked.
Just a few nights after I’d seen the shadow, I was playing a video game when Van called me into the living room.
“Owen, you have to see this,” Van said. She was laughing.
I paused my game and walked down the short hallway. Van was sitting on the couch with her phone out and pointed at the middle of the room. A Beyonce song was playing from our portable speaker. It was only when I got to the doorway that I realized what was going on.
Beans was standing upright on her back legs doing awkward slow spins. She took tiny steps like a toddler who was just learning to walk. Her front legs were tucked tight to her chest. Her favorite toy, that mini version of her, dangled from her mouth. I froze. Beans did too. Our eyes met.
That was the moment that it finally clicked into place. The raw meat. The park. The missing dogs. The glowing eyes at the end of the hallway that were just a bit taller than me. I knew. Everything about Beans was all wrong. It had been from the start.
“What a weirdo,” Van said. “Did you teach her this?”
For a second, I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. It was like someone was strangling me. Beans sniffed in my direction and crooked her head sideways. She knew what I was thinking. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. And after all that, she still wagged her tail like she was happy to see me. She trusted me even though I knew the truth.
That was her biggest mistake. I was smart enough to know there was only one way that the two of us could keep a secret that big. And there was no chance in hell that I was gonna find out what happened to that Rottweiler.
“Get away from her,” I said to Beans, stepping toward the not-dog.
Beans looked panicked as she dropped back on all fours. As much as that killed me, I was doing what I had to. I had to protect Van. Protect myself.
“You heard me!” I shouted.
Beans lowered her head.
“What’s wrong with you?” Van said smacking me on the shoulder.
I didn’t budge. Instead, I got closer to Beans with my hand raised over my head. Beans just put her head down and stared up at me. Van placed herself between me and the not-dog and shoved me in the chest.
“Jesus, Owen! What’re you doing?”
She looked confused and hurt all at the same time, like I’d been about to hit her and not Beans.
“Will you just listen to me? There’s something wrong with Beans,” I said.
She just looked at me like I had five heads before turning back to the not-dog.
“He doesn’t mean it,” Van cooed to her.
Beans just stared right at me. Those yellow eyes tearing invisible holes into me. I’d betrayed her.
I grabbed Van by the wrist, practically dragging her away from Beans. Looking back on it, I didn’t mean to squeeze her as hard as I had. When we got to our room and I let go, I realized what I’d done. She took a step away from me, rubbing the red spot where I pulled my hand away.
I understood how it looked. I apologized as much as I could, but I was busy with locking Beans out. I wouldn’t let her in our room no matter how much she whined or what Van said.
Then the doorknob jiggled, clicking against the lock. Beans wanted in. She was bellowing now. A strangled screech that changed pitch and shapes the longer it was held until that one voice sounded like others. Coyote. White-tailed deer. Maybe even human. I screamed back. I told her that she needed to leave, or I would make her.
“Owen, please,” Van said.
She’d backed away from me toward the opposite corner of our room. I tried to tell her everything. That Beans wasn’t what we thought. She just shook her head from side to side. It’s possible she just didn’t believe me, but the faraway panic in her eyes said otherwise. I think it was that the true realization had been too awful. Maybe even too painful. If Beans wasn’t a dog, then who had we let into our bed? Who had we trusted with the most intimate parts of our lives?
When I grabbed the boxcutter that I kept in the drawer beside my bed, Van cried softly and told me to stay away. She said she’d call the cops, but I didn’t want to use that blade unless it came down to it. I also didn’t really have a choice. If Beans had made those dogs disappear, she could do the same thing to us.
Trust me. After I’d heard those noises, opening our door was the last thing I wanted to do. But I was scared. I’d been backed into a corner. So, I did what any animal would.
I threw it open and charged down the dark hallway, letting the boxcutter lead me forward. I could feel every hair standing up on my body like I was about to get struck by lightning.
But when I burst into the living room, my feet came out from under me. I slid face-first onto the floor, landing in a warm puddle. It smelled awful. The stuff was also slippery as hell. I didn’t understand until I saw the lump of fur pooled at the center of the mess.
It was blood, and I was covered in it.
Beans’s body was lying in front of me. She was split down the middle, splayed out in two halves. The guts weren’t the worst part though. What messed me up the most was that her eyes were missing, and the sockets were all stretched out. Her face looked like a Halloween mask with no one underneath. Like the skin had been peeled away from the inside out.
Around the corner, there was a bump from the front door. Then another. It took every ounce I had left to force myself upright from where I sat on my knees in that puddle. The door was open, swinging against the stopper. Down the long hallway, there was a trail of bloody footprints leading from the living room to outside.
Even though all the crap in the news probably told you they were mine, there’s just no way those belonged to a person. They were narrow with an aggressive arch. The toes were misshapen like they’d been bound. Crooked like they were used to being forced into spaces where they didn’t fit.
I followed them. I tried to get a look at whatever had left them behind. When I pushed open the door, there was only the dark street and the empty dog park. But that wasn’t it. Beans’s stuffed labradoodle with button eyes was waiting for me on the stoop. It stared up at me from the welcome mat, sitting at attention.
#
Back in the living room, I started to swipe at the mess with a clump of paper towels, but it was no use. There was too much blood. I felt like I was gonna throw up. And no, not because of the dead lump that had been my dog was staring at me with its eyeless sockets. It was because I was afraid.
It was the intensity of that feeling that made it all come rushing back. Penelope tearing into me. Her fangs red with my blood. And then the hollow thud of my metal baseball bat crushing against the side of her head. Once, twice, and three times until that little beagle stopped moving.
I know I should have just told everyone what happened. But I guess I just panicked. I was a kid and I’d seen something die. What was I supposed to do? Ring my neighbor’s doorbell? Sure, most people knew that Penelope was a little brat. Her non-stop barks played on a loop in our neighborhood, but she’d never hurt anyone. A “sweet baby” with a spotless record. What made it look even worse was the way I’d lost control when the adrenaline took over. Her little velveteen head was a red pulp on the lawn.
Without thinking, I’d wrapped up the beagle in my bloody sweatshirt and stuffed her into my baseball bag. It was dark when I finally left her out in the woods, nestled in the hollow of a tree like a secret.
I realize how this all sounds. What you probably think of me. But you have to understand that there isn’t a day where I don’t hate myself for what I’ve done. I guess it’s my fault for believing that I deserved anything better than staring down at what was left of a dog that I’d actually loved.
That was how Van found me. I was standing over the body, holding that little stuffed animal and the box cutter, coated in pieces of what was left of Beans as we knew her. There was pretty much nothing I could say at that point. That wasn’t her fault. It was a hard sell. I knew that. She just screamed and screamed like she suddenly saw me for who I really was.
Maybe under all that fur, Beans had been a monster. A beast with long claws and sharp teeth. Ready to eat you up piece by piece. Or maybe the whole time she’d looked something like me.
Thanks for sticking around. Here’s a song I listened to pretty much on repeat when I wrote this: