Family of Four
by H.J. Dutton
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Lewis first mentioned it at dinner. “While we were walking home from school we saw him. You know, on the street that goes past the church.” The remains of his mutilated steak drenched his plate in juices.
His brother Oliver joined him. “Yeah. At first he just watched us from a distance. He’d follow us, though, sometimes over a full block. And no, we didn’t approach him. We did what you told us to do. Low, eyes to the ground, hand out. You should’ve seen him, Dad. Came right over and licked our faces. Friendliest dog I ever saw.”
Justin eyed them, fork jabbed into his own steak. “A stray.”
Both the boys squirmed. “Yes,” Lewis admitted.
Justin sat back in his chair.
“He’s not filthy, though!” Oliver cut in.
“Uh-huh.”
“Honest! He’s a little thin, yeah, but that’s probably ’cause he’s had to survive on scraps. Not mean, either. Never growled or snapped at us, not once. Just whined and cried and wagged his tail. Only difference between him and a pet is he doesn’t have a collar. He’s all on his own, Dad. I mean, just last week it rained, what, four days in a row? He probably got caught in that. All on his own, out in the cold and the rain and–”
“Okay.” Justin sighed.
Lewis, eyes wide, leaned forward. “Okay?”
“I’ll have a look at him. Then, maybe.”
Across the table the boys beamed at each other.
“Maybe.” He pressed the fork into his steak, making it bleed. “And only until we track down his folks.”
At the front door, a scrape was followed by muffled barks. With a screech of the chairs, the boys shot up and bustled to the door. Justin followed them. Staring at the door, he frowned, then reared back as the boys opened it to a beast.
The dog’s shoulder blades stood level with the boys’ chests. A mix, by the looks of it. Against the storm door it pressed its snout, hot breath pooling over the glass. Before the boys could open the storm door, Justin made to pull them away. Too late, though. Oliver flung it open, and the thing bounded in.
From beneath mats of untrimmed fur, its eyes glared at Justin. It all but pounced on the boys. They cheered. “Boys,” Justin tittered, “you said it was a dog, not a bear.” They cackled as the dog hunted them through the living room.
“Ain’t he cool, Dad?” Lewis chirped as the behemoth bit his wrist. Cringing, Justin inched over, ready to rush in and separate them. The dog let go, though, and bumbled after Oliver, who had tugged on its tail. Seemed tamed enough, but he’d keep an eye on it, just in case. As it pursued Oliver through the dining room, tail thrashing, it pulled its lips back and showed its teeth. To Justin, the gesture looked like a smile.
The boys named it Bear. The following day, Justin kept his eyes fixed on it as it roughhoused with them, poised to spring off the couch at the first snarl or snap. On Monday he’d be back in the office, and that meant for three hours of the day the boys would be home alone with it. Before Sunday was through, he called his neighbor Tracy. Just a few hours in the afternoon, he told her. He’d give her the Hulu password and let her take whatever she wanted from the fridge as long as she kept an eye on that dog. Yes, she’d be more than happy to, she texted back.
That night, when Justin tucked the boys in, Bear hopped on Oliver’s bed. “Nuh-uh. Off,” Justin said. When it curled up, Justin repeated the order. It took another two times for Bear to get the message. When Oliver complained, Justin lied and said he didn’t want fur over everything in the house. “If you tell him he can hop on a bed, you may as well tell him he can hop on anything.” Before Justin went back downstairs, he tested the doors to make sure it couldn’t nudge them open. It stared after him.
He stayed up an hour or so after that binging Dexter and listening for telltale scratching sounds upstairs. As he stared at the TV, eyelids fluttering, the couch’s springs creaked. He hadn’t moved. Yawning, he glanced to his left. There it was, paws on the cushion and staring straight at him. “No, Bear.” He sighed. “Off.” It got off immediately. Justin squinted at it, working his mouth. Just earlier, the thing had ignored his demands to get off Oliver’s bed, and it had only obeyed when he’d raised his voice. He didn’t think it actually understood what his commands meant, let alone its own name. Justin sagged into the couch and continued watching TV, two white specks glinting at him.
After work on Monday, Justin brought home, along with groceries, a dog bed, an armful of toys, three bags of Purina Pro Plan, and a bag of pig ears and rawhide. The dog attacked the rawhide bag the moment Justin set it on the floor. Without telling the boys, he sent out a Facebook post, complete with a photo, asking neighbors for help finding the dog’s folks. Over the next day, replies from neighbors trickled in. None had ever even seen it before. Another day and still nothing. By then the dog had sewn itself to the boys’ hips, pushing between their legs, barging into the bathroom with them, and hopping onto their beds.
Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he’d sit the boys down and tell them the dog would go to a shelter. No, not one of those SPCA shelters they heard about at school, one where he’d stay for a little while, before a family who could give him a good, lazy life took him in. It couldn’t be helped, he would say. He just didn’t have the money. Tomorrow, man. Gotta rip that Band-Aid off tomorrow.
Then tomorrow came, and though he hyped himself up at the office, he never got to doing it. Tomorrow, he told himself again, and then that tomorrow came, and the talk again died on his lips. Every afternoon, all afternoon, the dog and the boys chased each other about the house. As it raced after them, it showed its teeth. Squealing, tugging, wrestling, biting. Justin hadn’t seen the boys jump around and laugh like that since their mother left.
He took it upon himself to start housebreaking Bear. Food training seemed like a good place to start. If the boys got too close to its bowl, Justin couldn’t risk it biting their little fingers off. Each day he made sure to feed Bear at the same time and confiscated the bowl just after he finished. Later on, he tested the waters and rested his fingers on the bowl’s rim. He braced for at least a low growl or a baring of teeth. Maybe even a warning bite. He crouched in case he had to jerk back. As Bear loomed over the bowl, he stared at the hand, then huffed and ate as usual. Sometimes, after he finished, he’d nudge Justin’s fingers away. As if proving a point.
In fact, Bear seemed to try and prove a point at everything. Like when he caught on to the “sit,” “wait,” and “down” commands on the first or second try. Or when, during rough bouts of play, he would immediately take his mouth off the boys if Justin so much as raised his voice. A few times, in the corner of his eye, he caught Bear grinning at him, yellow teeth glaring in the afternoon sun. Maybe he wasn’t a stray after all. Someone must’ve taught him to do all that. That, or he had some border collie in him. Days passed, and Bear found a snug spot in Justin’s routine. At the end of week two, he Venmo’d Tracy, and mourned the little dent in his bank account.
Later that night, he was on the couch, eyes aching from the TV screen, when the springs creaked. Bear, paws on the cushion, eyes locked on him. Half asleep, he stared back at Bear. Maybe he wanted to see how Justin would react. Justin opened his mouth to tell him off like usual. Instead, he shrugged, leaned back, and patted the cushion. “What the hell,” he muttered. Bear froze for a moment, then hopped up and curled into a ball. It dawned on Justin that, at some point, they had become a family of four again.
“I’m hooome!” Justin called as he shouldered through the front door.
The boys didn’t answer. No trademark clicking across the floor from Bear, either. In one of the boys’ rooms, probably. Usually, even when the boss kept him late at the office, the boys rushed down the stairs to greet him. With the lights off, the house beyond the staircase fell away into shadow. The boys never remembered to turn the lights off.
Brow creased, he called again: “Dad’s hooome!” Nothing. Only the tick of the clock, the hum of the fridge, and the echo of something dripping upstairs. The bathroom sink again. He jammed his hands in his pockets and sighed through his nose. At the foot of the steps, he kicked off his shoes and padded halfway upstairs. “Yoohoo!” he called. “Anybody heeere?”
Again, nothing. That bad a day, huh? If for whatever reason the boys were giving him the silent treatment, maybe he ought to let them come to him. Chill on the couch with a Coors and Remington Steele for company. Good chance they were already out cold, which, in that case, their mood would blow over come morning. Turning, he made for the foot of the stairs, where the moon made a lanky shadow of the baluster.
A man stood there.
Justin froze. His breath stuttered in his throat. Raw panic, rawer than any he had known in his life, exploded through his veins.
The man stared back at him. Stark naked, his bloated gut glistened with sweat. Justin seized the banister. “Sir,” he breathed, working his mouth, “what are you doing in my house?”
The man did not answer. He raised a hand to his mouth. Still staring at Justin, he sucked his fingers.
“What are you doing in my house?”
The man smiled and showed Justin his teeth.
| EXHIBIT FOUR: Return to “Flowers“ | Proceed to the next Gallery Three: Tricksters attraction, “It Hungers“ |