Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

  She makes me confirm for her that the thing is real, and that it’s dead, and that it’s not a dog.

  I do.

  She asks if I’m on drugs.

  I’m not.

  She seems like she thinks I might be a little crazy.

  I sit on the bed. The Zoro bleeds and bleeds. I think it should smell awful, but it doesn’t. It’s kind of sweet actually.

  For a second, I think about how looking into its eyes made me feel, and I’m really glad the magazine is empty. It’s like doing that made another version of me, somewhere in my head, and his eyes are black and his fingers end in talons and all he wants to do is destroy things. But I can feel him shriveling up, shrinking away. He terrifies me.

  A stillness comes over me. I know that I can move if I want to, but instead, I pretend that my limbs have turned to stone. I shall not move. I try to breathe shallowly so my ribcage doesn’t expand.

  Someone has probably heard this. The 1911 is not quiet. They probably called the police.

  What would I say when they got here?

  I should probably call them next, just so they don’t came in guns blazing and kill me.

  I’m not going to call because my hand is encased in rock, and it is attached to my arm which is also encased.

  I’ll just wait and see what happens.

  Some time passes, and there are footsteps in the hallway. A voice.

  “Lincoln?”

  Oh, I know her.

  Hi Gwen.

  Who’s your friend?

  “This is Dan. Don’t laugh, but he’s an honest-to-God wizard.”

  “A Praecant,” he says.

  Hey Dan.

  They see the Zoro. Gwen grabs me and gets me off the bed. Dan pokes the Zoro with his finger.

  “You killed it,” he says. “Nice.”

  Gwen walks me to the bathroom. I’m still trying to breathe as little as possible.

  She turns on the light. In the mirror, there’s someone with her I don’t recognize. She grabs a washcloth and turns on the hot water. She’s telling me things, and I only notice the tone of her voice but none of the words. It’s good to hear her.

  I watch her gently clean the blood and dirt off the person in the mirror.

  There are scratches all over his face, and a huge bump forming under his left eye.

  “It’s okay,” she tells us. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I hear a chirp from outside, through a loudspeaker. Blue and red lights play in the hallway.

  I see Dan walk past the bathroom door.

  A few minutes later, he comes back, and the lights are gone.

  “I talked to the police,” he says. “They’re cool.”

  This means nothing to me.

  “Let me take a look at you,” he says.

  Gwen puts the toilet lid down and helps me sit.

  Dan gets on his haunches in front of me.

  “Did it touch you?” he says.

  No.

  “I said, ‘Did it touch you’?”

  No.

  “Wow. Okay. This is pretty bad. I’m going to take a look.”

  Dan touches my face with three fingers. I can feel them kind of tingling, one on my chin and two on my cheek.

  I get the sense that someone else is walking around in my house.

  I try to get up. They hold me down.

  “Take it easy,” says Dan. “That’s normal.”

  After a few minutes, things get really confusing, like, I want a pencil for breakfast and can smell loud.

  Then, they clear up.

  He touched you?

  I just said that.

  DID HE TOUCH YOU?

  Yes! And everything was going really weird before, and then it went away.

  Okay. What next.

  Dan tells me about magic and being a Praecant.

  What did he tell you?

  It’s some kind of genetic disorder, and it happens randomly. There’s no hereditary component. Beyond that, he has no idea how it works though. At any given time, there are probably between ten and twenty thousand of them in the world, although most of them don’t have any idea the kind of potential they’re packing.

  They always seem to be a little off though, kind of counter-cultural. There’s probably a linkage to other things in cognitive development and maybe actual brain chemistry that push things in that direction.

  He said that?

  I guess not. That’s just my speculation.

  Anyway, there isn’t really any kind of governing body or anything. For the most part, Praecants are too arrogant or libertarian or whatever to be able to effectively self-organize for any period of time. They’ve tried it, but it doesn’t work very well.

  What did he tell you about Pittsburgh?

  That it sucks, mostly. Haha, no.

  It’s called the Pittsburgh Neutral Territory, because it’s really hard to do magic there. The extreme air pollution from the steel mills for more than a hundred years laced the entire area with elemental iron. Personally generating magic that’s more than trivial just doesn’t work. The iron eats it.

  There are ways around it, but they’re rare.

  Pittsburgh is kind of a meeting place for Praecants who don’t agree. It makes it harder for them to turn each other into frogs while they’re negotiating. It’s managed by a Congress, but I don’t even know if they’re elected or anything. Whatever, it’s still pretty loose. Praecants are weird.

  Anyway, magic is real, but we live in a kind of damp spot for it.

  What did he tell you about the Zoro?

  Oh right.

  That.

  There are animals that come into contact with magic. Sometimes it’s just free-floating, but sometimes it’s because someone was using it nearby, either accidentally or deliberately. It only affects a very small number of them, like people. But if they have the wiring for it, and they’re near it enough, it changes them.

  Most of them home in on more magic. They crave it, not to eat, but just to bask in, like a dog basks in bad smells. This makes them dangerous to Praecants because when they find you, they usually think that the best way to do this is to rip you to shreds and roll around in the mess that’s left afterward. Praecants try to keep the population down, for obvious reasons.

  The Zoro is a mutation of what usually started as a coyote. While it sniffs out magic like the other things, it’s also sensitive to depression and sadness. Probably why it found me and tracked me.

  What happened with the Zoro? What did you do with it?

  I’m calming down, which is hard. The whole “fighting for your life” thing seems to have flushed the really bad thoughts out my head at least temporarily.

  We are trying to figure out what to do with the body. It was probably a good two hundred pounds. I start asking a bunch of questions like Where does the energy come from to make the magic? Isn’t it a violation of the second law of thermodynamics? Is it mental? Is it organic? And Dan didn’t know any of the answers. He says that most Praecants don’t waste their time thinking about stuff like that.

  I call bullshit. I know there’s a weird monster’s dead body in my bedroom, but I call bullshit on him.

  Show me some magic.

  “I can’t. We’re still in the city. Too much iron.”

  I’m not asking him to change the weather or conjure a catsnake. Do something little.

  He thinks for a minute, then gets a big smile.

  “Give me your phone,” he says.

  I hand it to him, and there’s a moment of confusion.

  He holds the phone out to me and shows me a video.

  It’s the three of us in the bathroom. I’m panting like a dog, and then I pee in the bathtub. Gwen is saying “Oh come on. That’s enough.”

  So, you magically made a video appear on my phone?

  “Nope,” he says, then plays a different one. Gwen was shooting this one because he has fingers of both of his hands on my face, and he’s saying words that seem to not make it the
whole way into my ears.

  “You handed me your phone, then I used Sentistry on you. I made you my thrall, made you act like a dog, then erased your memory of it. It probably felt like losing your train of thought for a second to you, but that whole thing took about five minutes.”

  That’s illegal.

  What?

  That’s illegal. Sentistry for personal control is outlawed.

  Okay. Basically, he hypnotized me. I don’t see the big deal.

  It’s different. He could have made you kill yourself or transfer the contents of your bank accounts to him or driven a truck through a crowd of school kids.

  Okay. That’s different.

  I was impressed.

  I tell him about my undergrad in biochem, and how I’ve sat in on two autopsies with a med student friend. The scientist in me is going crazy to get some answers.

  “Well, what are you saying?” says Dan.

  I’m saying that I want to cut this thing up and get some damned answers.

  He is all over that. He wants to help me.

  We drag the Zoro into the bathtub so it stops bleeding all over my bedroom. That’s going to be a nightmare to clean up. The blood is thick enough that I’m able to scrape it up with a coal shovel that’s in the shared garden shed out back. We put it in a bucket and flush it down the toilet, a bit at a time.

  Dan assures me that the police won’t be coming back, and it’s not like I killed a person, so we just had to get things regular clean, not clean clean.

  No bullet holes in the walls. I guess I’m a great shot under pressure.

  We spend about an hour getting my room back into a respectable state. It’s very gross, but you just keep telling yourself This is not blood. This is not bone. This is not guts. And it works out okay. You engage your mechanical nature, and then you’re just scrubbing a floor or a wall. When I got the apartment, I griped that the bedroom had rolled linoleum flooring–who puts linoleum in the bedroom!?–but tonight I’m super glad.

  I have an idea. I text a buddy of mine up in Butler county that has a part of his garage sectioned off for deer butchering. Can I swing by tomorrow and use it?

  Turns out, he’s out of town for the rest of the week, but I’m welcome to come by. The keys are under the big rock behind the gnome in the backyard. Just clean up when I’m done. His girlfriend left him last year, so no one else should be there.

  We load up the car and head over right away.

  This was your idea?

  Of course. Dan is not the most intellectually curious person I’ve ever met.

  Let’s move ahead a little.

  Woah. That’s weird.

  Hey, what’s going on here?

  Never mind. How often did Dan come to your apartment?

  I’m sketching out the basics of how I think magic probably works, and I’ll admit that the place is looking a little bit mad sciency. Dan keeps bringing me food, and I keep eating it. So, pretty often I guess. Four or five times a week at first.

  There’s a lot to cover. I’m going to speed this up…

  Everything’s… going fast? This is weird.

  I’m working, and Dan comes in … I’m stumped and not making any progress on the power sourcing, and he shows up … has a small lantern … flame never goes out … it’s hard to pull this together because it’s all flowing into impressions…

  working

  eating and here he comes again we’re talking about weapons and threats

  i have ideas and he’s always there … tell me what to do dan …

  need more info and finally have sparkle running … first circuit boards made

  it’s weird now seeing it’s too fast how could i do that … why are there two things at once … confusing … two versions on top of each other

  you’re doing something to me

  Keep going

  this … hurts

  i want out

  coming and going really fast … did i really not see anyone but dan and brigit and gwen … there had to be others …

  everyone’s moving … blur … i don’t like this … someone’s at the door

  it’s

  moving slow like things should

  it’s

  a dog

  Lincoln! shouts the dog

  * * *

  I opened my eyes, and it took me a moment to orient myself. I was … where?

  An apartment, clearly. Nicely kept. My wrists were zip tied in my lap. I was sitting in a sturdy wooden chair. The last thing I could remember was the worst headache possible, but I could sense only a wispy vestige of it now. There were four people in the room with me, all men. Two of them wore blue blazers. One stood directly in front of me.

  He looked surprised.

  An instant later, he didn’t look like anything because a gigantic Rhodesian Ridgeback clobbered him out of my line of sight.

  “Lincoln!” a voice shouted.

  I wasn’t thinking super clearly, but when someone says your name your head kind of swivels in that direction of its own accord. That’s what mine did.

  The apartment door lay on the floor in pieces. Walking through it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  Gwen, dressed in the leftovers of my magically protective gear, Fox gripped tightly in her hands. She took aim on the man nearest to me and started firing. Each time she did, an airy thwip sounded from the gun and something in the room got crushed. She wasn’t the best shot.

  After five or six pulls, she finally connected with him. It must have hit him square on because his chin went down like a giant had thrown a downward jab at him, and he crumpled onto the floor. The other two men that weren’t pinned to the ground under a hundred and fifty pounds of dog had recovered from the surprise of seeing Gwen and Babd come through the door.

  One jumped toward a cabinet on the far wall, and Gwen started pumping the trigger again. Particle board cracked and splintered, and he jumped back. Babd had her teeth on the throat of the one who had been in my face. She held him there, and he seemed to have given up struggling.

  The other two exchanged glances. The one gave a kind of shrug.

  Tentatively, I stood up. My legs were tingly and half asleep, but I managed to do it.

  “Hey Lincoln, think we ought to just back out of here?” said Gwen.

  Holy shit it was good to hear her voice.

  “Well,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on all of the guys at once, “that depends on if they’re going to let us.”

  Babd pulled her teeth from the man’s throat for a second.

  “Will you let us?” she said.

  I’m not sure, but I think the guy on the ground may have shat his pants a little.

  I started to stretch up onto my toes. I was sore all over, and my legs were pins and needles. I wanted to be able to run if I had to. I flexed my quads. It hurt, but they responded.

  “How about the two of you join your buddy on the ground?” said Gwen. “Face down.”

  The one looked at the other. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  Then, he jerked to the side behind his partner.

  Gwen pulled the trigger, trying to track him, and hit the one in front. A tooth went flying, and he spun almost the whole way around as he was thrown backwards. His buddy, the person who’d just purposefully ducked behind him to avoid being shot, was on the move.

  He closed on me quickly, grabbed the front of my shirt right at my throat and squeezed it hard so it made me choke. Great. I really, really didn’t want to get the hell beaten out of me again.

  “Gwen!” I said.

  The man was pretty big and had enough leverage on me to keep swinging us around so that I was between him and Gwen. She couldn’t find a shot.

  “Put the gun down,” he said. By the way he was pulling me around, he must have actually had some kind of martial arts or combat training. “I’ve got my finger on his throat. I can open it up with a word.”

  Well now, that was different.

  Whet
her he was bluffing or not, I didn’t care. No throat-opening allowed.

  Instead of pulling away from him like I had been, I shifted my weight and fell toward him. He did exactly what he should have done, which was to push me away. Now he had me at arm’s length, which was perfect. I looked him in the eyes and snapped a kick into his crotch. I aimed up through his bellybutton to make sure that I didn’t waste any of the energy.

  He tried to protect himself, but it was too late. A solid shot.

  Instead of hitting him again, I took advantage of his loosened grip to fall straight down onto my butt. With me out of the way, Gwen pulled the trigger several times.

  You know what they say. If the kick in the balls doesn’t get you, the girl with the magical gun will.

  She scanned the room.

  “Okay,” she said. Then she started laughing a little. “I can’t believe I just did that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was the awesomest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thank you,” said Babd.

  I’d missed her too.

  Gwen pulled a little lock blade out of her back pocket.

  “Babd,” she said, “make sure that loser doesn’t move. I’m going to cut our loser loose.”

  She popped the zip tie with the knife.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m thinking that if we just try to walk out of here,” said Gwen, “this one isn’t going to let us go without calling someone.”

  The man under Babd started shaking his head violently.

  “You’re clearly a man of strong moral principles,” said Gwen. “Babd, back off please.” She raised Fox.

  “Hey,” I said. “I have a better idea. Concussions aren’t any fun. I think we’ve done enough damage already.” I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what was going on, but I had the distinct feeling that the better we conducted ourselves, the better things would be in the long run.

  Across the room from us, unnoticed until now, was another person. He was zip-tied to a chair and had duct tape over his mouth. His eyes were wide like golf balls. Clearly, they had the tools here to immobilize Praecants.

  A minute of looking around found the zip-ties and duct tape. I quickly popped some tape over everyone’s mouths, including the doggy doormat. I made sure that everyone was breathing, and that no one’s noses were obstructed. I really didn’t want anyone dying.