Grief Season is upon us...
Natasha's troubled brother runs away after a fight with their mother.
I asked a coworker of mine to give me a writing prompt a while back. She gave me something like “Girl takes dog for a walk, dog runs away, she hears screaming in the distance.”
This story is the result of that prompt.
It’s set during what I’ve coined: grief season. When the world around us (In seasonal environments) starts to die, and the trees go from fiery to dull and grey, and the cold keeps you inside where you’re left to wait for summer to return.
Enjoy, and happy halloween!
It’s been two weeks since my brother Garrett turned into a dog. Mama always said she was gon’ kick his ass out one day, then he finally left after a fight they had. He came back as a dog a couple days later. Don’t know why, either.
Few days after he left, who my mom now calls “Pepper” shows up at the house looking real hungry and real sad, like he hadn’t eaten in days. When I first pet his salt and pepper coat, his tongue dropped from his mouth like a wet popped balloon, and I knew I loved him right away. Wasn’t exactly sure how much, though. Wasn’t until I saw him barking at the T.V. when his favourite show, Cub Scout Carl came on did I truly know is was him. Asked momma if we could keep him, and, at first, she said hell no, but she came ‘round. Always does. I think Garret leaving left a big hole she needs to fill. She’s pretty tough, though; and she ain’t skinny, that’s for sure; but I never knew how small she could really get.
She used to laugh more than ten times a day on a good day, but sometimes I come home now and she’s just sittin’ in the living room in her chair, lookin’ at the T.V., but that’s all she’s lookin’ at: a blank screen with her sad reflection staring back. She stopped turning it on after that news report about gang shootings taking young boys too early. She’ll have a cigarette burned down to the filter between her two fingers, a blister between ‘em and a pile of ash under her hand on the armrest and on the floor beneath. The only thing’s made her smile since he left’s been Garrett comin’ up, wavin’ his tail around like a feather-shaped baseball bat, knockin’ stuff off the coffee table onto the floor. Funny thing: if Me or Garrett ever knocked anything off that table when we were both kids, she’d raise her hand beside her cheek, back of it to us, make us flinch, talkin’ ‘bout: you’ll be eatin’ supper through a hose if you ain’t careful.
Nice to see her smile, though.
Nice to get out the house, too.
I take Pepper out every night, ‘least that’s what my moms calls him now. See: moms just sees a big ol’ German Shepherd mix with a wolf or whatever the hell he looks like now. I see my brother the strongest he’s ever been. I also see that if I don’t figure out somethin’ soon, my moms is gonna run outta money ‘cos he’s been eatin’ everything.
The stars are out, twinkling like when you stand up too fast but in a good way, but I always have this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach now when I have him on that leash, and it’s not because he’s stronger than me now, but it’s because he’s been sniffin around more, barkin’ at people, droolin hard. I gave him a whole club pack of ground beef just yesterday and he hoovered it up like a goddamn – well, like a wolf.
The park is always dark, and it used to scare me knowin’ there’s thugs around, but not anymore. Not with Garrett. He walks beside me, constantly lookin’ up at me, making sure I’m okay, or maybe wondering when the hell I’m gonna feed him.
Then, I see a raccoon waddle into the bushes, and I can’t even get a grip fast enough on the leash and Garrett’s gone and now it’s just me and the poorly maintained streetlights overhead, some of ‘em blinkin’, some of ‘em completely off.
Then I stop in my tracks because I see a man. He’s wearing a hood, and I can’t see his face. He’s got a knife. I tell myself that I’m dreaming, like it’s just my imagination, but I say “hello?” anyways, puttin’ the stupid ones in horror movies to shame.
“Whatchu doin’ all alone out here, little girl? Ain’t it past your bedtime?”
I put my pinky fingers in my mouth and let out a whistle. Garrett is gone.
“Need somewhere to stay tonight? huh? Pretty cold out here, Isn’t it?”
“Sir, my dad’s a cop. Best be on your way. Thank you.”
Dad’s been dead for six years. I’m twelve. Ain’t lyin’, though.
“I don’t see any flashing lights. Looks to me like you’re very cold, and maybe I can help you out. I see your grocery store brand clothes, girl. Can hook you up with some real nice –”
Buddy can’t even get the rest of the words out ‘cuz he’s seen something behind me. Something that made his eyes open real wide and run the opposite direction. He’s barely in the shadows as Garrett runs past me, and I feel the wind from his movement, see a few of his shiny coat hairs fly off, too.
They’re both taken by the black maw of the poorly maintained park lights. Fuck this city. Don’t they know that if they just replace a few lightbulbs that people could walk around without worryin’ about goddamn boogeymen?
The worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life fills the muffled silence of the park that’s surrounded by dead trees just waitin to be outlined with snow. I don’t know the man, and wanted him hurt for trying to scoop me up into the night, but the scream I hear rattles me to my twelve-year-old bones. Don’t think anyone’s supposed to feel that kind of pain, then he stops, and the silence is almost worse because now I’ve got this echo in my head of that sound. And maybe he grew up not knowing any better, and maybe he had kids, but I run towards the darkness that he and my brother dog had gone through, and I see something moving, and it’s a bit shiny, but only in places, and at certain ways it shines from the far away lights that actually work.
“Garrett?” I ask the darkness.
I hear an angry, but satisfied exhale from my brother’s snout, and I can see the cloud of air shoot down and spread across the ground because it’s grief season. Everything’s dyin’.
“You okay, buddy?” I ask him as I walk closer, and I drop to my knees when I realize he’s just ripped the man’s throat out and the guts from his belly is pulled out and trailin’ beside him, and Garrett’s lickin’ his lips like a dog eatin’ kibble, lookin’ up at his owner saying with his mind: This’ll do, I guess.
I empty my insides into the grass. Rice cakes, peanut butter, and pickles don’t taste as good comin’ up as they do goin’ down. I scramble to my feet and find Garret’s leash, then I take his ass home because I don’t know what else to do.
We get up to the porch and my mom’s bedroom light is off, which means she’s either asleep, or crying herself to sleep.
I see that Garrett’s face is covered in blood, so I grab the hose that’s hanging on the side of the house and I spray it towards the grass as he bites at it, because, even though he’s my brother, he’s also a stupid dog and his mouth only really opens and closes.
I do a double take, and I see he’s clear of blood, and I wonder what they’ll do when they find that man’s body, and I feel like I’m gonna hurl again, but I stuff it down because I ain’t gonna live like that and nobody’s gonna convict a dog of murdering a piece of shit child thief.
We get in the living room, and I plop down on my mom’s chair, and I forgot about the cigarette ash, slapping my hand in it due to the lights being dim. I breathe until my chest stops racing, and I’m smelling my house instead of the cool, iron-misted air I smelled back in the park.
Garrett puts his chin on my leg, and I pet him. I scratch under his chin and tell him it’s okay and that I’m sorry he’s a dog now but there’s nothing I can do because I’m not a witch or a doctor, but I tell him “maybe we’ll go on an adventure soon and look for one, or a fortune teller or something stupid like in the movies, and maybe we can get him back to normal so my moms can go back to yelling at us and being unhappy but in the right way.
Garrett lifts his head up, turns around, and he starts heaving like dogs do when they’re about to ralph, and before I can even think about what’s gonna happen next, he’s emptied a bunch of pieces of that guy all over our carpet, and now I’m back to gagging and I run to the sink to spit bile down the drain.
“Garrett,” I say between dry heaves. “What – the – fu – ”
And now my moms is up and she’s yellin’ at him, and she’s asking what the goddamn hell is all over the rug.
“He chased after a raccoon. Bad day for the little guy, I guess.” I wipe my mouth with my sleeve.
Did I lie, though?
“I didn’t see it happen, but he eventually turned up and I brought him home. Sorry, he must’ve brought his dinner home, too.”
“Did I hear you say your brother’s name, Tasha?”
I see a tooth, and the top of a human finger, praying my moms doesn’t see it. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Sorry. I guess I just miss him is all.”
She bends down to my level and gives me a hug. “I miss him, too, Tash.” I smell stale cigarettes and dirty bedsheets on her pyjamas; both things she probably hasn’t changed in two weeks. “Make sure you clean up after him baby?” She walks over the pile of viscera, bends down, and pets Pepper right on the top of his head. “I love you, little guy,”
She has no idea how much, really.