Rob Suarez

I caught his scent on the air a good five minutes before he ambled over the hedge into my yard. I mean, really, who couldn’t? Sure, being a dog, and a German Shepherd at that, I have an enhanced sense of smell over you humans… but, for the love of biscuits, even one of your wheezing, stuffed up, human noses could have picked up this guy’s scent. What do you humans call it… stench? It was a putrid mixture of fermented grapes, urine, and burnt weed. That’s what you would have picked up wafting over the hedge. I also picked up fear, rage, excitement, and… desire. It was late into the night and I figured I wouldn’t make a ruckus so long as Stinky over there stayed to the street and just kept on keeping on. No need to wake the family. Little baby girl was surely sound asleep. They could all sleep soundly because they know… I protect the family.

Sure enough, Stinky stopped for a minute, assessed the large sliding glass doors, and figured it would make for an easy take. He tittered and sputtered with nervous excitement. Wow! Was this guy in heat or just really messed up – or both? His eyes darted from side to side as he cased the backyard. It was kind of funny, really, he just flitted about like a hummingbird… but with much less focus. He hadn’t seen me yet so I pawed up beside him quietly. The low rumbling of my best growl began deep in the recesses of my throat. I let it ooze out slowly through my bared teeth. It was hard to keep the snarl going since I was suddenly bombarded by the scent of fresh urine soaking into his pants.

Now, normally, this would have been the end of it. Stinky would have realized that a ninety five pound German Shepard was about to have him for dinner – metaphorically of course – and he would have had the good common sense to bolt out of the yard and never come back. I should have known that Stinky did not “have the good common sense”. Common sense, after all, was the least common of the senses… especially among humans.

I’m embarrassed to say that it caught me by surprise, but it did. Having watched him stumble and jitter through the yard, I never thought that he would have been that fast. Before I knew it, his balled up fore-paw came crashing into my snout. I think I bit my tongue because I tasted blood. It really didn’t hurt too much, but now I was mad. Ever since I was a little pup, I was taught never to bite, but for this guy… for this guy I was willing to break the rules.

Just as quickly as he had clocked me on the snout, I doubled back around and exploded off of my hind legs. He brought his fore-legs up in a feeble attempt to deflect my attack but my open jaws found their target. I clamped down with all of my might as we both toppled onto the ground. He opened his mouth and attempted to scream but I pulled back sharply with my neck and shoulders. With a short, wet, tearing sound, I ripped out his throat. His scream tried to find its way from his lungs, through his larynx and out of his open mouth, but instead the air escaped noiselessly through the gaping opening where his Adam’s apple used to be.

I let the chunk of flesh, muscle and cartilage drop from my mouth. The late night breeze played across my whiskers and felt cold on my blood soaked fur. The taste of his blood intermingled with my own. His blood tasted… weird. I had only ever been fed those dry, tasteless nuggets of food that the family so proudly presented to me in that shiny bowl, but somehow I just knew that this was not what human blood was supposed to taste like. There was a hint of something metallic, like when I licked the shiny food bowl, but there was also something else. I’m still not sure what it was, but I knew that at that singular moment, when his blood commingled with mine, that everything was suddenly very different.

I reeled back onto my hind legs. On my hind legs! Can you imagine? My mouth burned. When I swallowed down the blood and foaming saliva, the heat left its mark down into the pit of my stomach. I threw my head up to the moon to howl in pain but no howl came out.

I screamed. It was a blood curdling scream that caught me by surprise. It was a human scream.

The light next to the door on the back porch flicked on and my eyes tried to keep up with the scene before me. Colors. Millions of colors. As many colors as there were scents flooded into my brain and I covered my eyes with two blood stained hands.

“What the…!”

I dropped my hands and looked up to see my family’s alpha male standing in the doorway. He was mostly naked except for some red and white coverings around his midsection. Hmmm… red, like the blood that covered me. I had never notice that blood had that color before. I had never noticed any color before. I sat up proudly and let him see how well I had protected the family.

“Oh my God! What did you do to my dog?”

I looked down at Stinky, but all I saw was a bloody tangle of black and tan fur spasming inside of a pile of filthy clothes. Blood and bile and gore poured out of the gaping hole that used to be his neck. My neck?

I looked down at my own body… pale, scarred, and naked. What was happening to me? I tried to pick up something in the air… but my senses seemed duller. I tried to whimper, but I couldn’t make the sound come out. I tried to curl my tail in underneath my legs, but I had no tail. I tried… to be me, but I wasn’t me anymore.

My eyes looked up at my alpha male. Tears poured out of my eyes and carved gullies into the blood that was drying on my face. Though my senses were dulled, I could easily sense the fear and confusion in him.

Every thing’s gonna be OK. I protected the family.

I’ll just go up to him and rub my snout in his leg and everything will be fine. I bounded over the bloody pile of spasming fur, and bolted as fast as I could toward my alpha. Damn these stupid hind legs! They just didn’t respond like I was used to. I toppled over once or twice before I got the hang of them. My alpha backpedaled into the house as I approached him. Oh? He wants me to come inside? I managed to crawl up onto the porch steps just as he emerged back into the open doorway. My bladder emptied onto the steps like I used to do when I was a puppy and he came out to see me.

“No! Stay back!”

Trembling, he raised his hand at me. I was so excited to be with him. I protected the family and now he wants me to come inside. Inside! I bounded towards him. Oh how I wanted to jump up and place my forepaws on his shoulders. How I wanted to lick his face. Maybe… maybe he’d rub my tummy.

I protected the family.

A loud crack and a bright flash erupted from his outstretched hand. An invisible leash snapped my head back and stopped me in mid-bound. Was I leashed up tonight? No. No, I know that I wasn’t leashed. When I landed, I was partway on the grass and partway on the porch steps. Colors began to leave my vision as quickly as they had entered. Good riddance. They were confusing. My sense of smell had begun to come back. Gunpowder. Wet, bloody fur. Stinky’s clothes. Death.

It all went kind of numb just then, but I do remember one fleeting sensation that I had never felt before. My tongue wagged out of my mouth and I felt my cheek muscles tighten up into… what do the humans call it, a smile?

Well, at least now I could finally sleep… I protected the family.

The End

(c) 2007 Rob Suárez

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.