That's Not a Dog!

Oh look! Another post. That can't be right... This one I wrote as a silly cheer me up for Adrian when he was doing his silly commute. He was so tired that it took him 2 sittings to read it the first time.  And it's really not that long...

That's Not a Dog

I first saw one when I was walking home from the pub one night. Out of the corner of my eye a shadow leaped across the space between two buildings. I turned my head immediately, but it had gone. I tried to put it to the back of my mind. It was always playing tricks on me late at night. The thing was, that wasn't the last time I saw one. I soon started to see them everywhere. A large, dog-like shape leaping stealthily from building to building. I had no idea what they were doing or why they were there.

It wasn't long before I saw them during the day as well. Always just out of sight, and always gone when I turned my head. I tried asking people around me if they saw anything, but no-one ever did. I tried to forget them. If no-one else could see them, then they weren't real; plain and simple. Why is nothing ever simple?

A few weeks after that, I noticed people started getting sick. It may have been happening earlier, but I didn't think anything of it until then. I wouldn't have linked them at all, but they seemed to cluster around the places I’d seen the shadows. I still may not have realised, but they started appearing in the news. An epidemic apparently; though no-one knew of what.

I didn't know what to do. Should I tell someone? Who'd believe me? Sure, I'd never been arrested, but I was no pillar of society either. What if they thought I'd lost it and hospitalised me? No. I'd keep quiet and see what happened. Perhaps it was all nothing. I clung to the hope that I was imagining it, but I knew I was just kidding myself.

What I didn't imagine was the deaths. I started to make a note of all the flats and houses I'd seen the shadows go into and then the people who got sick. I worked out that there was a wait of about four days. Sometimes the shadows would visit more than once and then someone else would get sick. Everyone was washing their hands constantly and wearing masks, but what they really needed to do was shut their windows. I had to do something; but what?

Then I saw one at my house. It was trying to squeeze through the small gap I had left underneath my window. It was a sweltering night, but I reasoned that something that big would never fit through such a small gap. I was right to an extent, but a snuffling, scuffling sound woke me up. I stared straight at it; well as straight as I could out of the corner of my eye. That was my first mistake. It saw me looking and, for a moment, stared back. Then it was off, leaping from wall to wall as it fled down the street.

I phoned Becky and told her I needed a place to stay. I packed a bag and caught a night bus to her place on the other side of town. Shit, I thought, I've really done it this time.

Becky was great. She gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit and, when she saw that I was in no mood to talk, went back to bed. I was going to have to tell her something, but that could wait until morning. Right now I had to lock all the windows and shut the curtains. I couldn't let them find me again.

I spent the day trawling the internet, even though I was supposed to be working. It was a quiet day; so I think I got away with it. I probably forgot a hundred things I had to do, but that was tough, I couldn't concentrate. I found out a lot. I wasn't the only person who'd seen them. God I love the internet! There were even groups who claimed to have seen them. I was a bit dubious about a couple of them, but one seemed promising and was quite close. The people all seemed to have jobs and looked reasonably sane. It couldn't hurt to go along.

I nearly left after the first ten minutes. I take it back. They were all crazies. After introducing themselves they began to rant about government conspiracies to thin the population. That kind of shit. I was just about to leave, when I noticed someone in the corner. Nobody spoke to her, but they all nodded her way as they took the small platform at the front of the room. I waited until the end; learned that it takes all sorts to make a world, and tried to smile non-threateningly as they went off in small chatty groups. She walked over.

"The meeting's over" she said wearily. "If you've got something to say it'll have to wait until Tuesday".

"I wanted to talk to you, if that's ok?"

"If you must" she replied, not even looking at me as she continued to stack chairs in neat little piles at the sides of the room.

"They can't really see them can they?"

At this she stopped dead. She didn't turn around, but carefully placed the chair she was holding back on the floor.

"I don't think I understand you" she said, her back still to me.

I decided to go for broke. She was surrounded by crazies, what would one more hurt?

"The dogs. The shadows going into people's rooms at night and making them sick."

Hell, I sounded like a three year old. She'd never believe me now. But her answer confused me.

"Who told you about that?" she said in a cold voice, as if I'd been doing something wrong. Like I’d been…oh. It hit me.

"I can see them too" I answered "Well, sort of; out of the corner of my eye. Every time I've seen them go into somewhere the people get sick."

At least I'd progressed to sounding like a ten year old. I still felt like I was a foot high and I'd been caught stealing granddad's gooseberries again. I held my breath. She paused for a long time. I wondered if I should say something else.

"You'd better come with me" she said finally and stalked out of the room. I looked briefly at the chairs, some stacked, some still in irregular rows, then my brain seemed to catch up with what was happening and I hurried after her.

She didn't speak or look round once as we strode to her place. I hoped it wasn't far. It was hot and I was already slightly out of breath. I'm not that unfit you understand. I walk most places, but the tension was getting to me and I wanted this over. Not much further and she turned abruptly entering a gate to the right. She unlocked the door and then, for the first time, turned to look at me. If anything she seemed a little disappointed that I was still there. She ushered me inside and shut the door.

Inside it was pitch black and stifling. She turned on the light and showed me into the living room. I heard the clinking of cups and the roar of a kettle and guessed she was making coffee. I hoped so. The coffee at the meeting had been terrible and I had only managed half a cup. I wondered if it had been on purpose.

She came in with a tray and steaming pots of coffee and tea. Yes, I decided. It had been on purpose.

"What are we going to do about it then?" I stared. She hadn't even put the tray down.

Her name was Linda. She had first seen one about a month ago, on her way back from a party. Like me, she'd dismissed it as too much alcohol. Unfortunately for her, she knew the person behind the window. In less than a week they were dead. Cause of death undetermined. They decided it must have been some type of severe virus. After that she kept an eye out for any more shadowy dogs in the middle of the night. She saw them everywhere, but like me, only out of the corner of her eye. That's why she'd started the group. It was just a chatroom to start with, but like me, she'd thought that the others sounded pretty genuine. She'd rented the hall and arranged for them to meet. Half-way through her first meeting she'd lost control. There were others in the group; much more forceful than she was, and they quickly took over, spouting conspiracy theories and secret drug trials. She'd stayed on, just in case someone genuine appeared, but they never had. She'd even stared seeing a psychiatrist, just in case. She'd come to half believe she was hallucinating herself.

I went back to Becky's that night and we both decided to let off a bit of steam. We hadn't been out for ages and needed a catch up. I hate to think how much we got through, but the sun was coming up when we finally reached home. I was just about to suggest I open the bottle of vodka I'd hastily packed, along with too few of my clothes, when I saw it.

At first I just thought it was just the bush casting a shadow, but a car went past. The bush's shadow moved, leaving a thicker, inkier shadow crouching underneath. This time it was not the corner of my eye, I was looking it full in the face. I couldn’t help the feeling that it wanted me to see it. What I had thought to be a dog was definitely no dog. Its back was covered in dusky grey scales that rippled as it growled. Its eyes were jet black and reflected the leaves of the bush and the house behind. What was worst was the mouth. It was long and pointed. It didn't open and contain the massive jaws and teeth like I'd imagined, but instead a sort of long scaled tube with lips that twitched menacingly at the end.

I grabbed Becky and ran. We were almost run over by a taxi. It sounded its horn loudly, but he must have seen the terror in my face, as he rolled down the window and yelled "get in". Becky, of course had no idea what was happening and was quite grouchy with me. The taxi driver didn't look too impressed either. He stopped a couple of roads over and asked what the hell had happened. I thought fast.

"There was a man crouched under the bush. I saw a flash, it looked like a knife".

He seemed satisfied. He didn't demand his fare at any rate. He didn't stick around either. It looked like Becky was going to meet Linda. That would be interesting. I wondered if we'd be any safer there if we went knocking on her door when it was only just getting light.

It took me longer to find Linda's house again than I had expected. In all the drama earlier I hadn't been paying as much attention as I should and, after the night I'd had, all the streets had started looking the same. Eventually I found it more by luck than memory. It was another baking hot night and everyone in the street had thrown their windows wide open. Except this one. This one was shut up tight and was pitch black, except for a small chink of light all the way around the door. This had to be the one. I knocked. Becky tried, and failed, not to giggle behind me. I hadn't had the guts to explain what was going on, on the way over, and she'd obviously made up her own mind that it was a prank or something. I'd have to tell her something when we were inside, but then we'd be safe and I could relax a bit.

Linda opened the door. I wasn't sure at first. I thought that maybe the chink of light had just got fractionally wider.

"What are you doing here?" She hissed through the gap "And who's she?"

I leant forwards and tried to think what to say, but she must have decided it was safer to talk inside and opened the door just wide enough for us to squeeze in.

Her lounge looked a lot stranger now I saw it through Becky's eyes. One wall was stacked high with books. There was a computer in one corner, a few pictures on the walls, a sofa and a coffee table. There may have been other things in the room, but they were all covered with computer printouts about dogs, aliens, shadows and anything else vaguely related to the things we'd been seeing. Becky was staring wide eyed at it all. She was still swaying slightly; and then, without warning, she fell asleep.

"That was handy" said Linda, in a way that was not altogether nice.

We sat talking over coffee and a softly snoring Becky, talking about the dogs or Not Dogs as we'd decided to call them, and deciding what we were going to do. It was quite clever really. We were going to be eco-terrorists; or even better, get eco-terrorists to do it for us. We were going to collect as much manure as possible and dump it on everyone's front gardens. The resulting stench would make everyone close their windows and voila! No more Not Dogs breaking into people's houses.

It sounded so simple. Go to all the right chat rooms; collect all the right people; buy all the right stuff; and then over the course of a couple of nights, spread the manure. No such luck! After a week we had one person, and I was pretty certain he was undercover police making sure we didn't actually do anything. People were dying everywhere. A couple of my friends were sick. I had to do something fast. Linda and I argued a lot, but we knew that we weren't really arguing. We were both frustrated. In the end I stormed out and went to the pub. It was probably the most stupid and best thing I've ever done in my life. The Not Dogs were everywhere. I'm sure some of them saw me, but I didn’t care. Linda's house was stifling, in more ways than one, and I had to get out.

I ended up getting completely plastered and talking to this crop dusting guy down from Dundee. He was a laugh, probably why I got so drunk, and I told him all about it. He chuckled all the way through and told me I should write it down and try and sell it to someone. I said yeah. Sitting there, in the bar, some of my friends propping up the far end, it felt like a story. Something you'd hear on the radio late at night. I smiled all the way home. I'm not quite sure why I went home. It must have been some kind of instinct. I didn't see anything anyway. If there were any Not Dogs, they didn’t bother me. A lot of the houses were boarded up and some of the street lights were out. It was nice to be home; in my own bed.

I woke up the next morning to hammering on my door. It took me a while to realise that it wasn't just my head. I staggered to the door and the stench was unbelievable! It hit me like a fist. It didn’t do my hangover any good I can tell you. I was then rudely turned around and my hands cuffed and you brought me here, not including the couple of times we had to stop for me to be, well, unwell. Sorry about that.  I really don’t know what else to tell you. We tried, we failed. Anyone in the pub could’ve heard me. I thought at the time they thought it was a joke. They thought I was a joke; I was pretty far gone. You can’t send people to jail for what they thought about doing though. Can you?