Maraschino Cherry Dog

This is a short story  I’m thinking about extending into a longer piece. It was based off a prompt giving me the first sentence. 

The dog was the color of a maraschino cherry, and what it had in its jaws I couldn’t quite make out at first, not until it parked itself under the hydrangeas and began throttling the thing.

“Hey, hey stop that!” I knocked, or perhaps banged, pounded even, on the kitchen window. “You put that poor creature down!”

The dog chose to ignore me, instead snapping the cat’s thrashing body with a whip of his head. The cat went still and I heard myself scream involuntarily.

The dog answered my helpless wail by tearing out the cat’s throat and spitting it onto my lawn. I wanted to look away, wanted to back out of the kitchen and into the living room with the only window to the outside I could control. I wanted to run past the living room and into my bedroom where a basket of yarn and knitting needles waited for me.

But I couldn’t move. I stood at the kitchen sink and stared out of the window to a world that wasn’t mine while the cherry colored dog littered my yard with blood, and flesh, and meat, and when I saw a bone I finally looked away to throw up in the sink.

The dog didn’t eat any of its catch. Instead, after strewing its entrails across my lawn, he looked up at me. He met my eyes with two bottomless black pits of his own, and in that moment I knew it was never the cat he was there for but me.

It took three extra pills to calm down that afternoon, two blue, one white. When Michael came home I had already knit him a new scarf and a set of mittens. They were supposed to be Christmas red, but the color just kept reminding me of blood and cherries. “Do you like your present?” I displayed them for Michael after he kissed me on the forehead and set down his briefcase.

He looked at the new addition to his collection, “It’s summer.”

“Never to sunny for another layer of protection my dear.”

He nodded, “Of course not.” I got another kiss, this time on the cheek.

“You’ll have to clean to the yard.” I said this with a calm restraint.

“I mowed just this weekend.”

“No,” I shook my head, “I mean, yes. I know you mowed. But there is a mess by the hydrangeas.”

“A mess?” He eyeballed me suspiciously, “How?” I couldn’t blame his question, of course I couldn’t have made a mess outside, and kids tended to avoid our house. Seeing me through the windows always made them uncomfortable.

“It was a dog.” This was all I could manage.

“Some mutt digging up holes?” He nodded, satisfied with this explanation. “Don’t worry dear, I’ll fill them this weekend.”

“Not holes, a cat.”

“I thought it was a dog?”

I nodded, although I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a demon of some kind, “You better go take a look.”

Michael grabbed a flashlight and walked out of the doors and out of my domain. I watched him anxiously out of the kitchen window as he reeled in horror. He ran back in, “What did you do?” He yelled at me as he fumbled under the sink for plastic gloves and a bag to dispose the body.

“I told you, it was a dog! He ripped a cat apart this afternoon.”

This stopped him short, “A dog? A dog did that? How is that even possible? It looked like its head had been sheared right off.”

I shook my head, “It was horrible, just awful. Disgusting. And you think it was me! How? I haven’t left this house in years! The dog was taunting me! Looking right in my eyes as he tore it apart!” My voice was rising to a piercing shriek and I felt the blood rush to my head.

The world went black.

 

The next morning I woke up in my bed. Michael told me that I had fainted. He said not to worry about the dog, that he had cleaned up the mess and that he was sure it wouldn’t be back. He gave me my morning pills, one yellow, two blue, then a kiss goodbye on the cheek and told me to get some rest.

That afternoon the dog came back. I was doing the dishes when I noticed it out of the window, sitting under the tree on the edge of my yard, staring at me, transfixing me, daring me to stare back. I tried to look away, but the farthest I got was my reflection in the window. His eyes seemed to bore through the pupils in my reflection and back at me. I was locked in. I followed his gaze as it flickered from a squirrel running up the tree, back to my reflection. The squirrel, me, the squirrel, me. We stood there for what felt like forever, watching the squirrel skitter from one branch to the next, watching my pupils expand.

Then, the dog burst free of our spell and leaped at the tree. His strong jaw clamped down and the carnivore’s razor sharp teeth sunk into the squirrel’s thin skin. Hot blood sprayed across the lawn, staining the grass. Matted fur stuck in teeth.

I watched in horror.

This time the dog buried his kill under the hydreanas. Those were Michael’s favorite.

When my husband came home that night I decided not to tell him what happened. It would just worry him, and upset me reliving the trauma. He would find the body this weekend anyway, while he was out gardening. Michael always worked on the hydrangeas when he was home on the weekends. They were, after all, his favorite. Well, he would find the body then.

“How are you?” This was asked with concern over my homemade meatloaf.

“I’m fine. How is your dinner?”

“Good, good. And good to hear. You know I worry about you. Still taking all your medicine?”

“Always. But, you know, if you are worried you could stay home tomorrow. Take a sick day, god knows you have some.”

He smiled down at me and gave a sad shake of his head, “Now honey, you know I can’t do that.”

“No of course not, couldn’t miss a moment’s opportunity outside of this house. Away from me.”

“Now you know that’s not fair.”  He lifted a bushy eyebrow, “Most people don’t spend their entire lives inside the same four walls.”

The next day the dog was back. He sat on the edge of the yard, watching me all morning. He watched me and I watched him. For what felt like hours we sat there, eye to eye. Watching eachother.

I’m not sure how long we were locked this way, but I know it was until after school got out because at some point a little girl walked up. She was wearing pigtails and stockings. I screamed when the dog launched after her. I filled my lungs and wailed so loud the glass windows shattered and the wooden walls splintered. I screeched and the world spun around and the whole house blew away. I screamed until my lungs burst and all of me with them, and when I had finally run out of air the dog was gone and the house was gone and I was sitting next to Michael’s hydrangeas covered in blood from the school girl dead in my lap.