Pooky

Fred Hobson returned home after an early October afternoon at the local VFW, where he had been drinking cheap draft beer with the other old cronies. He was in a foul mood, as he had lost yet once again in the weekly fantasy pool. Pooky, his wife’s new beloved miniature Doberman, was curled up in Fred’s recliner in the living room. Fred picked up the little dog and tossed him to the floor. “Stay out of my chair, you little bastid,” he snarled. If Harriet hadn’t been so attached to Pooky, Fred would have cheerfully tied him to the car bumper and gone on a cross-country road trip. Pooky sniffed disdainfully, uttered a low growl and ambled into the kitchen where Harriet was preparing dinner. “Hello, dear,” she called out to her husband. “The meatloaf will be done in a few minutes.” Fred merely grunted, and turned the television to ESPN. Harriet bent down and patted Pooky on the head. “Is daddy being mean to you again?” she crooned. Pooky fixed his dark, gleaming eyes on her, and she stared back, her hand pausing in mid-stroke. They remained fixated on one another with their eyes locked in a sinister moment of mutual understanding. Harriet Hobson rose and walked to the knife block, and selected the largest butcher knife. She turned and slowly approached the living room door, as if in a trance. Fred obliviously sat in his recliner with his back to her, watching television. The noise of Sports Center covered the sound of her approach, and Fred sat and cursed at the scores of the previous weekend’s games, not knowing that his wife of forty years stood just behind him with a knife raised. Harriet silently plunged the knife into the base of Fred’s neck, just behind the left clavicle. The long blade sliced cleanly down into his heart, which immediately began pumping blood through his entire chest cavity instead of pulsing through intended arteries. Fred died instantly, without even knowing anything had happened. Harriet then pulled the knife deftly from out of the near bloodless incision with glazed unfocused eyes, and neatly sank the blade into her own chest. The self-inflicted wound was perfectly aimed, and she crumpled to the floor. Pooky sat in the doorway and watched silently, his beady Doberman eyes gleamed briefly red. Harriet and Fred’s grandson, Steve, found them the next afternoon. He had come over to pick up Fred for a golf outing at the country club. Soon, police were swarming the house, and quickly determined that it had been an obviously successful yet malicious murder–suicide attempt. Pooky patiently sat quiet in the corner of th living room during the fanfare, and licked Steve’s hand when he finally noticed the little dog and reached down to scratch behind an ear. “Hey there, little buddy,” Steve said with a deep sadness weighting his heart. “I forgot all about you! I bet you’re starving to death, huh?” He picked up Pooky and took him into the kitchen in search of some dog food. “What are we going to do with you? Somebody’s got to take care of Grandma’s little Pooky,” he said, pouring a large bowl of Chunky Chuck Wagon Kibble. He scratched the dog’s ears some more and sat him down to eat. Pooky ate ravenously, and Steve smiled as he watched. Steve decided to take custody of the dog until legal arrangements could be made. None of the family members argued, since he was the only one who came to visit regularly over the last several years, and the only one who offered. He loaded the bags of dog food, and assorted dishes and toys into his trunk when the police were done with their investigation, and put Pooky into the passenger seat of his Explorer. Pooky rode around with Steve almost everywhere he went for the next several weeks. Steve had become attached to him, and hated to leave him home, cooped up in the house all day. On a Wednesday, three weeks after he took Pooky home, they were headed downtown together. Steve stopped at a red light, and reached over to scratch Pooky behind the ear. Steve’s hand stopped in mid motion as he and the dog locked eyes in a moment of clarity. Pooky’s eyes appeared coal black, but flashes of thriving flame seemed to be visible deep within them. The light turned green but Steve sat, transfixed. At last, he heard the sound of car horns behind him, and pulled out across the intersection. Steve drove on in a daze, and seemed to possess tunnel vision as they sped down the street. The Ford Explorer rapidly approached a tee intersection and directly before them was a restaurant, with large white-linen clothed tables out front under a green awning. It was lunchtime and the restaurant was packed with people. Steve drove straight into the middle of the crowd, and the SUV smashed through tables and people, and then through the plate glass window and over several more tables, finally coming to a stop when it hit a main support beam halfway across the floor. When it was all over, seventeen people were dead, including Steve. The airbag had deployed when he hit the window, which forced his head back against the seat. Simultaneously, a large jagged piece of glass sailed through the open car window and lodged in his throat, nearly severing his head from his spine. Steve’s eyes remained open, but there was no expression of surprise or shock. To look at him, you’d think he was listening to a boring lecture, or waiting in line at the bank, except for his being dead with a nearly severed neck. Pooky came through the crash without a scratch, and was eventually found curled up in the passenger floorboard of the bloody Explorer. A young policeman pulled him out, and took him outside to the sergeant in charge. “Look at this, sir. He was in the vehicle. What do you think, should I call animal control to come get him?” the young corporal asked. Sergeant Collins petted Pooky, and scratched under his chin. “Nah, let’s just bring him down to the station,” he said. “The family will probably want to take him this afternoon anyway, so there’s no point in bringing those money-suckers into it. You know what they charge to get your gol’durn dog back? Seventy-five freaking bucks!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t send anybody’s dog down there, if I could help it.” He picked up a piece of half-eaten steak from the mess on the ground and gave it to the corporal. “Here, put him in the backseat of my squad car, and give him this to eat. I’ll take care of him ‘till this guy’s family shows up at the station.” No family came to claim the dog, and Pooky ended up staying at the station overnight. He was sitting on Sergeant Collins’s desk the next morning, eating a doughnut, when the day shift arrived. “Look at this little guy,” chuckled Sergeant Collins. “Isn’t he something else? I may take him home if nobody comes to claim him today.” Pooky stood up on the desk, stretched, and looked straight into the man’s eyes. The smoldering blackness of Pooky’ stare seemed to suck the liveliness right out of Sergeant Collins, and at last he sat back and sighed. Pooky returned to his doughnut, just as the corporal who had found him walked over. “Morning, Sarge,” he said cheerfully. “I see you’ve still got your new sidekick.” He pulled a doughnut from the box. “Sit down, Turner,” Sergeant Collins said coldly. “Okay, okay, sorry,” Corporal Turner, muttered. “What’d I do now?” Sergeant Collins gave him an icy stare. “Are you sleeping with my wife, boy?” he finally asked. Turner choked on his doughnut, and managed to spit it out on the floor. “Wh-what?” he sputtered. “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve never even met your wife, except for that one time at the Police Ball... where is this coming from?” He sounded genuinely confused, and was blushing furiously. “Well, I think you are,” said Collins. He pulled out his service revolver and cocked it. “I think you have been for a long time.” He emptied the gun into Corporal Turner’ chest from four feet away. Three other policemen in the room leaped up, and one of them quickly shot Sergeant Collins three times, twice in the chest and once in the head, killing him on the spot. Pooky simply sat on the Sergeants desk eating his doughnut, and never even flinched at the noise. After finishing the cakey morsel and licking the desk clean of stray flecks of blood stained doughnut glaze, Pooky jumped down off the desk, and in the confusion following the brief gun battle, no one noticed a little miniature Doberman slip quietly out the door. He trotted lazily down the street and turned into a deserted alley just a few blocks away, stopping alongside a putrid dumpster filled with rotting fish bones and discarded cat skins tossed from the nearby neighborhood Chinese restaurant’s flimsy kitchen door. There he began to transform; all his doggy hair fell out, and his small body grew and contorted. Twisting until at last, he completed the shape shifting process and stood proud and massive in his truly sinister form. The miniature Doberman known as Pooky ceased to exist and Lucifer stood, then threw back his horned and leathery head and laughed a maniacal dark snicker. “Oh, how I love my little holiday’s up here,” he chuckled to himself. Satan suddenly evaporated and returned to the depths of Hell, already making plans for his next years visit to earth. A small piece of paper much like one of those found in fortune cookies fluttered to the ground where he had stood, and it bore this message: “Don’t be so quick to laugh when someone says ‘my dog told me to do it’...lucky numbers 6,6,and 6…”