Christmas Trees & Monkeys

by Keohane, Dan

  * * *

  Robin watched the dog running for the fallen boy and waved her arms.

  “Get away! No, Bark, bad Dog!” She slammed against the fence. If she was hit with electricity she didn’t feel it.

  Bark stopped a moment over David’s body, tilted its head sideways to consider whether the girl was worth its attention. She wasn’t. The dog sniffed David’s leg and took a tentative step backwards. The boy didn’t move. A slower approach, more sniffing.

  Robin shouted, “Someone help us, please.” Stupid, she thought. If nobody had heard Quince they wouldn’t hear her.

  Bark stopped sniffing and bit David’s calf. Just an experiment. A bite and another quick back-step. No reaction. The dog wagged its tail and bit down a second time.

  * * *

  David slowly regained feeling in his body, but for some reason couldn’t move. The first bite was a simple pressure on his calf. The second sent thin glassy spikes up his leg. Tugging, more pressure, this time higher up his leg. His thigh.

  Not down there. Not down there. Please.

  David could only see a large black bulk moving below his line of vision. The new pressure on his leg let up suddenly, then returned. Heavy, metallic shards of pain. He tried to determine which part of his body -

  No, no, no.

  Bark clamped down on David’s crotch and shook its head from side to side.

  * * *

  Robin shoved a broken branch through the fence. Bark skittered sideways, just out of reach.

  Across the way Robin thought she saw Quince stumbling away backwards. The boy was mad with panic, holding his arm and howling unintelligibly. Oh shit, she thought. Now what?

  She looked around, registering only that the dog was backing away, David in tow by his balls. She ruled out the possibility of climbing the fence.

  Across the yard Quince disappeared behind a small outbuilding.

  Robin ran into the woods. The boy who was being eaten alive within the fence screamed, but she never looked back.

  This isn’t my fault, she thought.

  * * *

  Bark held fast and dragged David towards the doghouse. Its senses were overpowered by the gushing taste of blood. It shook a mouthful of flesh and denim loose, then paused a moment to chew.

  * * *

  When David tried to scream again, something caught in his throat. His arms flopped uselessly at his sides. He understood what the dog had just done, from the sudden emptiness in his gut. An overwhelming physical sensation of loss, like losing a tooth magnified a thousand times.

  No pain, not even the glass spikes of earlier. His body had fallen numb below the waist. He wondered if he’d broken his back in the fall.

  David swallowed hard, managed to scream, “Help me,” but the words came out as gurgles. He coughed, flexed his fingers. They worked better now.

  He might have a chance.

  Bark dug its teeth into David’s other thigh. The numbness blew away. Pain burned through his body, into his skull. The air around him crinkled, then collapsed into blackness. He tried to yell, to fight the onset of this new, terrible darkness.

  The ground raked his skull as he was dragged towards the doghouse. He tried to kick with his free leg. Something went loose in his gut. The blackness around him solidified. New shards of glass in his belly, tearing into him.

  Someone help me.

  * * *

  Quince held his wounded right hand against his chest and staggered into what he prayed was a tool shed. The bleeding hadn’t abated, but he’d glimpsed what the dog was doing to Davey and knew there wasn’t any time. He’d find a way to stop his own bleeding later.

  He pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and looked for... what? A weapon, he decided, maybe something to climb the fence with. He tossed a shovel aside with the tip of the flashlight, considered the garden shears only for a moment. A splinter from the old floor dug into the bottom of his foot.

  Outside David screamed one long, horrible wail.

  A pick-ax, the curved blade narrowing to a point on one side and flattened like a hoe on the other, leaned against a pair of moldy fence posts. The fiberglass handle was bright orange. Quince didn’t know whether fiberglass was safe against electricity, but when he pocketed the flashlight and grabbed it the head was reassuringly heavy. He carried it with his good hand and stumbled outside.

  Glass broke nearby. Quince wondered if it was his mind shattering.

  He saw the dog’s rump collide with the corner of the doghouse. Quince stared at Davey to see if he was moving. His friend’s white tee-shirt was dark, blood-splattered. Bark buried its muzzle against the boy’s belly, then the scene blurred away. All Quince saw was the fence.

  Ten feet to his left was the padlocked gate. He ran to it and hefted the pick over his head, using his damaged right hand only as leverage. He swung the pointed end downward.

  It slid through a link, just shy of the lock. Quince fell forward, managed to stop himself before hitting the fence. When he pulled the pick free no bolt of electricity ran through the handle.

  Small victories, he thought.

  His fingers throbbed. His blood made orange handle slick. He’d have one more shot. Again, Quince raised the pick, focused on the lock, saw where he needed to hit then swung down hard.

  The shackle snapped into two pieces, one half falling away with the lock’s case. The pointed end of the pick buried itself in the ground an inch shy of his foot.

  The gate swung open. Quince pulled his makeshift weapon from the dirt and noticed a metal bar stretched across the bottom of the entrance. He carefully stepped over it into Bark’s world. He was greeted by another low rumbling of thunder. At some point while Quince was smashing at the gate, Bark had raised its head from Davey’s belly and watched him. It bared red-stained teeth, the black fur around its mouth glistening in the moonlight.

  It’s too late! He’s dead! Turn around. It’s too late.

  * * *

  While Quince was fumbling through the tool shed, Robin Fae clambered onto the back porch of the Victorian and pulled a key from her pocket. She unlocked the glass door and slid it open. David’s sudden scream crawled up her back, but she could not stop.

  They’ll say it was you. The temptation to simply leave and let nature run its course followed her across the kitchen. She couldn’t consider that, couldn’t stop moving else the thought might take too strong a hold. She lifted the phone and dialed 911. Almost immediately a voice on the other end said, “North Conway Police Department, this call is being recorded...”

  “The dog’s gone crazy!” she shouted, holding the phone away as if the glow of the number pad might reveal her face to the man on the other end. “We need an ambulance!”

  She dropped the phone to the floor, hoping this hick town could trace the call as easily as a real city. A voice buzzed from the receiver, but Robin was already back outside, closing the slider, locking it and pocketing the key. She hesitated. The key. Only she and her father had one. The phone’s number pad glowed mockingly across the kitchen. She lifted an old dented milk box, long unused and half-filled with rain water, and tossed it through the glass slider.

  Then she ran, hoping no one would realize the mysterious intruder had broken into her grandmother’s house only after calling the police.

  She turned around, saw Quince stepping into the open gate. The dog could now escape any time it wanted. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She ran, welcoming the shadows, the cover, the embrace of the trees all around her. All the while, one thought played over in her head. You should have fed Bark. You should have fed Bark....

  * * *

  Bark approached slowly at first, but the dog’s hesitation couldn’t compete with the blood-lust and it began to run.

  Bark was fifteen feet away. Quince hadn’t thought of what to do next. He screamed and ran towards it, stopping suddenly to swing the pick ahead of him. It missed. Bark skittered to a stop.

  Quince spun completely around with the momentum
of the swing. The dog leaped forward. Quince kept turning, bringing the pick hard against Bark’s head. The dog yelped and staggered away. The blade had connected sideways. He hadn’t hit it right. At the most, Quince figured Bark had a cracked skull.

  The gate was directly behind him. All he had to do was turn and run, somehow get the gate closed.

  Davey’s leg twitched, as if pleading with him to stay.

  In one motion Bark stopped shaking its head and charged. Quince wasn’t ready. Two hundred pounds of black dog fell on top of him. He landed on his back and kicked at its belly.

  BARK! BARK! BARK! in his face, the smell of hamburger and blood.

  Bark opened its mouth and bit down. Quince slammed the pick’s handle between the teeth, all the while kicking and squirming. Claws from one paw ripped into his right side. He screamed. Bark backed away one step, pulling at the handle.

  At last, one of Quince’s feet connected with a soft spot in the dog’s underbelly. Bark howled in pain and the pick came free. Quince lifted it over his head, repositioning his grip. One end of the blade hit the ground behind him - he prayed it was the flat end. Bark lunged for his throat.

  Quince bent his legs under the dog for leverage and swung the weapon overhead. The point slammed into the top of Bark’s skull. The dog’s teeth scraped along his neck, but the jaws never closed. Quince kicked at its belly again as a bucketful of blood poured off the dog’s head into his face.

  He stopped kicking. Bark’s tongue slid from its muzzle, fell wetly against Quince’s Adam’s apple.

  It was a long while before he dared move. Then, carefully, the boy wriggled out from beneath the dead weight of the animal and turned his head. He spat out a mouthful of dog blood then knelt on the ground, vomiting in massive, wracking heaves. When he finished, the taste of Bark’s blood still lingered.

  He pulled off his wet shirt, wiped his face. His right side had three shallow gashes, but the bleeding from the lost fingers had slowed to a trickle. He didn’t think that was a good sign.

  Quince got to his feet and ran, fell, stumbled across the paddock. He couldn’t look for very long. Davey was ripped apart. Between the torn legs, his crotch was a hole with an exposed curve of tubing. The skin over his stomach had been peeled back like a grape’s.

  Quince sagged into a sitting position against the doghouse. Every time Quince wondered numbly if his friend was dead or not, Davey’s chest moved up and down, accompanied by bubbly wheezing. He considered going for the boy’s chewed-but-still-intact belt, wrap it around his own arm to stem what flow remained from his fingers. The idea of touching Davey anywhere made him look away.

  In the entrance to the doghouse, shards of white scattered among cedar chips. Quince tried to tell himself those weren’t bones he was seeing. The stumps of his fingers throbbed. Blood trickled, spent. What the hell was he going to do? The gate was open, but he no longer had the strength to pull himself up.

  The yard beyond was a blur of tears. Quince tried to focus, look for any sign of the girl. There was none.

  He closed his eyes. The air felt warm on his face, comfortable. He shook himself. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “No sleeping, now.”

  Nevertheless, the sensation of warmth filled him again. Quince fought to keep his eyes open, focusing on the trees, watching the dark leaves sway back and forth. From the distance drifted slow, desperate wails which Quince hoped were police sirens. Eventually his eyes closed and the old woman’s yard disappeared.

  — — — — —

  About “Lavish”

  Ah, “Lavish”. So close to my heart, this. An epic tale if I ever wrote one. So much so that it became the basis for my novel Margaret’s Ark, which, as I revise this introduction, is wandering about the editorial ether somewhere. But more on that in a moment.

  Why “Lavish” for a title of a story dealing with a modern Great Flood? Friend and fellow writer Fran Bellerive had this idea-starter gimmick we used to use in our now-defunct writers group in Worcester. You close your eyes, randomly open the dictionary and point. When you open your eyes you have to write something related to the word you’ve chosen. One day, the word was “Lavish”. Aside from the usual meaning - produced with extravagance and profusion, or immoderate in giving or bestowing, the dictionary had a third definition: a torrential downpour of rain.

  Well, that was a different enough to get the brain going. I thought of floods, then the Great Flood. Where would one go to get away from a flood? The mountains. OK, the next question - and sometimes these extra questions we ask ourselves as writers make all the difference - what kind of flood could occur which would make even the mountains unsafe?

  “Lavish” was born from the answer to this question. It’s a modern take on the Great Flood. (And it was written years before 2012 or EVAN ALMIGHTY were even random ideas in Hollywood.) What if God tells thousands of people to build an ark, and then wait for a new flood? These people have to convince others to help them, join their “crew” as it were. Not an easy task, I’d wager.

  Now, a WARNING: as mentioned above, “Lavish” became my upcoming (I hope) novel Margaret’s Ark. “Lavish”, barring some character differences, one significant event change and a few Biblical corrections I needed to make in the novel version, is the last chapter of the book. So if you’d rather wait (can’t guarantee how long – keep in mind it’s the end of 2010 as I revise this intro and this original collection came out in 2002), skip this little tale and come back at a later date. Otherwise, I’ve kept the story as-is, without trying to incorporate any of the significant alterations inherent in the longer-form version.

  Lavish

  They ascended the ramp two by two, not to honor any sense of history but from necessity. Husbands helped their wives along the narrow passage. Children ran on deck as if in a new playhouse. Unlike its predecessor, the vessel housed no animals. Exceptions were made for those who steadfastly refused to abandon pets.

  Under white hot desert skies or snow-heavy clouds, the ships waited. They sat like sentinels not in water, but on grass or sand or rock. Two by two the passengers climbed atop their backs. The arks held them aloft above the laughter and derision of those gathered to watch.

  * * *

  “Mothers will cling to their babies and howl for mercy. One will scream Take me but spare my child. She will watch her innocent one disappear under the waves. In weakness and despair, she will know the ultimate horror, before falling into suffocating darkness herself.”

  The preacher’s name was Jack. Like a scarecrow come to life, he moved through the crowd, joints popping in his knees as he twisted among the tourists standing in line for the ferry. Some feigned interest as they glanced nervously across the water towards the Statue of Liberty. Others stared in rapt fascination at the spectacle hobbling before them. Battery Park swarmed with a thousand souls, some vacationing, others eating business lunches from the multitude of hot dog and sausage carts. They were all a captive audience; Jack’s impromptu parish.

  As he preached, his eyes never focused on anyone in particular. From moment to moment he did not know where he stood or to whom he looked. God’s words and vision flowed through his brain, slowly ripping him to shreds from the inside as he strove to open the minds and hearts of his audience.

  “God’s plans for me don’t include survival. When the deluge comes, I will be cast into oblivion with the rest of you.”

  A murmur of disapproval rippled across the crowd. This pleased Jack. It meant they were listening. “Yes, that’s right. We will die for certain when the flood comes. But if one of you can hear me, can heed God’s words, then maybe what I say doesn’t fall on barren ground.”

  “I heard you.” The speaker was a young black man, stepping hesitantly forward from the crowd. He looked as thin as the preacher, all but lost within a New York Giants jacket made for colder seasons and larger physiques. “What are we supposed to do?”

  Jack tried to blink away the sweat from his eyes. “You want to know what you can do?”
/>
  “Yes.” The young man grabbed the preacher’s hand. “Please tell us. Tell me.”

  Jack smiled. “There’s nothing you can do.” The grip on his hand tightened.

  “First you say it’s not too late. Now you’re telling us we’re going to die. Why don’t you stop rambling like some crazy man and tell us what to do!”

  Jack laughed, oblivious to the pain in his fingers. “There’s nothing left to do. The end will come in a few minutes. You should have listened to me three months ago, when God’s plan first revealed itself.” He moved closer until their faces almost touched. He continued in a whisper, “But it’s still not too late. Your body might perish but your soul’s not yet dead.”

  The young man released Jack’s hand and pushed him away. “You’re nothing but a psycho. I’m sick of you and all the other Jesus freaks telling me I’m going to die. Maybe I should just kill you now.” He grabbed Jack’s shirt in two skinny handfuls. “Huh? Would you like that?”

  Jack paid no attention as the young man tried to shake him. For the first time his eyes came completely into focus. He said, “There are others?”

  * * *

  Bernard Myers held a crystal glass in one hand and shaded his eyes with the other. Nothing hung over his head but distant wisps of clouds drifting over the Montana foothills. The eastern edge of the Rockies rose behind him, out of sight behind the crowded miles of forest. When his host resumed speaking, Bernard took a sip of his drink and tried to listen.