| Courtesy: pitbulllovers24.com |
Today’s Prompt:
You’ve been
outside digging a large hole for several hours when you realize that you can’t
recall why you’re digging it. Retrace your steps to try to discover your
motivation.
Word Count: 1,181
The mind is a monkey, but you
already knew that. The shower was beginning to pack heat. I was all over that
pit, to get it over with and get the hell outta dodge. And right then I
discovered all that dirt-digging business had scrambled my brain. I couldn’t recall
the hell I was doing in that hole. Ain’t that a big laugh? I put my back to the
grind for hours and now that it’s almost ready for what-the-hell-I-know-not, my mind flips out. I just couldn’t
conjure up an image that fit in that pit.
Here’s what I did, I threw my
memory in reverse.
I remembered picking up the axe
and going round the house to the backyard but let’s go further than that. I
remembered coming home from work and wondering where the hell the pitbull was.
That dog has got some voice on him and he’s never shy about showing it off. He’s
always out of the house like an acrobat shot from a cannon whenever he hears my
car approaching the house, nevertheless when I came home that evening the hound
was MIA. I was thrown, to state it mildly. I whistled for the thing but it was
like wishing for the moon. I registered my wife did not come out of the house
when she heard me call out for the dog, and my internal alarm system went off its
rocker. That bull never strayed nine yards of my house. Unlike some of the
neighbor’s dogs that went hunting in other people’s trash cans and were worse
off than those almost unbearable stray cats.
Impale them all, I would if I
had half the chance. I stepped out the car and approached the house. A man’s
not gonna turn away from where he hangs his hat just cause his dog’s AWOL and
his wife ain’t gon’ come out for an explanation. Besides, it was only a dog if
you get my picture. It’s always gonna be a dog when you get right down to it. I
stepped away from the vehicle and came towards the house. And first thing I
notice, there’s a nasty stain on the coating on the wall. I fumed from both
ears. A man can only do so much painting in one calendar year and not break up
into a spray of colors.
“The kids are gonna pay,” I says to myself. “Watch if
they don’t pay.”
When I got up close to see the
blotches on the wall for it was, it’s a different image entirely that flashed
on the walls on my mind. It looked like blood. Hell, it was blood. It spread all over the porch and formed a coating on the
stoop. “It’s all my damn imagination,” I says to myself. “It’s DreamWorks shooting films in my brain is
all.”
But let’s step back to before
that time; flashback to the previous day’s journey home. I bet it’s got a lot
to do with all this and that damn pit. Let’s not forget why this story is vital.
I met a guy pitching dog food
at the corner of the street. Saw a few familiar faces buying it off him, too. I
was tempted I gatto admit and hell, I got out the car and made a go for it.
It’s been a while since I actually brought something home for that pitbull; wife’s chores I tells myself whenever it
crossed my mind. You see sometimes, life gets in the way and you forget the
most beautiful things in the world are the ordinary stuff. Dog food wasn’t
cheap, either. But I admit there was something strange about the guy, something
that ought to have turned me off if I hadn’t been too involved with guilt of
neglecting the dog.
The weird dude gives me the
once over and thinks, you can see it pasted right there on his face, daddy
dreams of getting son a little puppy for his birthday and wants to start with
dog food.
Sure,
why not, I thinks. I get the dog food, three cans in all and feed
the dog myself after I get ‘em home. The pitbull ate all three cans and gave
one long stupid belch.
That was all yesterday. This
morning, we woke to find Bully the
dog had put on extra pounds during
the night. He walked with a bearing and gait like that professional wrestler
called Mark Henry.
Standing by the porch, the
memory of my dog’s magical weight program earlier that day overwhelmed me and I
broke into a run. I didn’t go busting through the door all at once, I’ve
watched enough Hollywood movies to know that would be the most stupid thing to
do. I stepped over the blood coating on the floor trying not to think what such
level of blood loss might mean to the donor,
whoever it was.
I peeped through the keyhole
and saw what had become of my pitbull, I saw one dark specter, a big brown lump
almost slithering over the floor. His paws had almost but disappeared and he
had blood all over his jaws. I hated to think whose the blood was and of what was
left of my family. I backed off the door, leaped off the stoop as briskly and
lightly as I could but it wasn’t enough to fool a pitbull. I heard it slamming
its weight into the door trying to get out and it would, too. It was five times
the weight and size of any pitbull I’d ever set eye on.
I ran for the car. Popped the
glove compartment and heard screams coming from the neighboring houses. They
were probably having their own taste of special dog food. I fumbled around in the glove compartment till I clasped
an object in my hands. I swung around as first; the door bulged outward like
plastic under the weight of the bull and then exploded into a million splinters.
Only one word rang through my
mind as the slitherin’ bastard splashed into the boulevard and lurched towards me.
It was this word, eyes. The eye is
the most vulnerable organ in most creatures. And it was what I aimed for when
that thing came for me. I plunged my pen into its left eye and leaped away. It
rammed its weight into my and watched in alarm as the impact tossed the vehicle
a few feet into the air. It writhed in pain but only for a few seconds and then
it charged at me again, blinded in one eye, and fueled by revenge. I ducked
into the garage. When the thing that used to be my dog slithered in, I was
waiting with a sawed off shotgun. I let it slide up close then aimed the
shotgun at the second eye and triggered the weapon.
The result was tremendous. It
tore off one half of the thing’s head and scattered fragments of skull around.
That’s why I was digging the
hole; I was going to bury the mutant bastard.
Eneh
Akpan
June 28, 2013
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