by Raven Black
My wife slept. The pain medication had done her well. I kissed her forehead and left to ride the elevator down to the food court. Here it was difficult to determine if the food was bad because of your nerves, or because the food was bad altogether. I figured pizza was a safe bet and I sat, remembering how to eat, to swallow.
An older, heavyset black woman in pink scrubs was eyeing me from across the dining area. She picked up her pack of cigarettes and fountain drink to take a seat at my table.
“You the dog guy?” she asked.
I didn’t answer her, only looked at her suspiciously. “They said a tall, thin guy. Plus you’ve got the maternity ward bracelet on.”
“I guess I’m the dog guy,” I said, pushing away my tray, pizza untouched.
“Glad I’m not the only one that’s seen that goddamn hell hound. They cut my hours and stuck me with the geriatrics after I called animal control on that dirty son- of-a-bitch.” She took a big, long draw off her drink.
“Little black mutt?”
“Yucky Eyes, I call him. That’s the one.”
“What the hell is it?” She got wide-eyed and moved her straw up and down frantically. “Mmm – I don’t talk about that kind of thing no more. I got a job to keep.” She checked around for eavesdroppers. “I just wanted to let you know you ain’t crazy,” she whispered. She gathered her things and heaved up out of her chair.
“What can I do about it?”
“There’s a man upstairs I can take you to see. Those damn dogs are all he talks about.” She shook the pack of cigarettes at me. “First I gotta smoke.”
The floor she worked on now was one above the maternity ward. Old men and women tiptoed around in loose gowns, dragging IV stands. We scurried past the front desk to avoid creating an excuse. She led me into a warm room where a man, maybe in his mid-fifties, sat on a bed covered by a stiff white sheet, watching television.
“Have you come to prod me again?” he asked the nurse. “You’re not that lucky. This young man’s up from maternity. We gotta dog down there.”
He motioned me in urgently. The nurse left and the door closed behind me.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, pointing out a chair next to the bed. He turned the TV off with a shaky hand. “New father?” he asked.
“Brand new.”
“And the baby’s had some trouble?” “Her first breath was shit.”
“Tough break. When did you last see the dog?” He put on a pair of greasy reading glasses.
“Maybe an hour ago. He sneaked into the NICU.” “Black, was he?”
“Yeah. A mutt.”
“With sick, yellow eyes? Am I right?”
I nodded at him.
“They’re all the same breed. Doom dogs. Places of death – places like this – draw them like flies.
“Why can’t everyone see them?”
“I don’t know for sure. Those of us who can must have something in common.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Never look the bastards in the eye. That’s the main thing. I’ve got a big one there behind you in the corner. He’s been trying to catch my eye for years.” I looked behind me at the empty corner. “Don’t worry. He wouldn’t waste his time with you. It’s the old stuff the big ones want. Maybe death just thinks we’re all big bottles of wine. Finish one off and pop the cork off another. This one’s just about got me. My damn blood pressure. He’s already gotten me twice.”
“How do you mean?”
“Three looks. That’s all they need to suck you down.
The big one there, he comes around when my blood pressure is up. He wants to catch me off guard. They’re patient like that. He’ll just sit and wait for me to lose my composure.”
“You can’t get rid of them?”
“You can get well. They’ll lose interest then and go off to find an easier cork to twist.”
“One of the twins downstairs got an eyeful.” “You’re lucky the little ones don’t open their eyes much.”
“So this mutt, he takes the twins and then he’s on to my child?”
“Unless she gets well before then, or unless you can glue her eyes shut.” The patient looked at the door suddenly. “My big boy’s run off now,” he smiled. “I must be pulling through.”
I peeked out the door. The nurses were all headed down the hallway toward another frantic alarm. My new friend came waddling by with a stethoscope around her neck.
“You got to go,” she wheezed.
I shut the door.
“Finally,” the patient said. “Someone older and sicker than me.”
“You can get them off your scent – just like that?”
“Not for long.”
“And will they leave this place?”
“I doubt they’d leave behind a guaranteed meal. I’ve never seen one out in the world.”
“Good luck,” I told him and checked the hallway again. The nurses were quiet now. The alarm was dead like the patient it was plugged in to.
“Remember,” the man said. “Three looks. That’s all you get.”
The young father was asleep in a chair. I checked on the twins through the glass. They had skin like dried fruit and their chests fluttered sporadically. No sign of the doom dog. My daughter was sleeping peacefully.
Her color had much improved. There was a new nurse on duty, a redhead. The way she glared at me from her station made me certain she had been warned about the man and his dog. I kept my distance. I found an empty chair in the waiting room and closed my eyes. Sleep took me eagerly.
It could have been five minutes or five hours. They only way to tell time in a hospital it by who’s on duty – watches make no sense here. It was still the redhead. She was in the NICU with half a dozen white coats removing wires from the smaller twin. He was lifeless and gray. The father had waited his turn and now that the doctors were through they allowed him to hold the limp thing in his hands that was supposed to be his son.
The doom dog sat in a rocking chair, bloated, licking his paws. His efforts had paid off and it was evident that he had increased in size. Even his coat took on a healthier sheen. If only the father knew that one of Death’s dogs sat a few feet away leisurely preening its claws, he would take him by the throat and squeeze the stolen life out of it. The young father wouldn’t have noticed me, deep as he was in despair, but I decided that the rest of this moment was better left unseen. The doom dog slept, pus dripping from his closed eyes like thick mustard.
“They brought you a cot,” my wife said from a fog.
“I’m not tired.”
“How’s my baby?”
“Better, I think. The doctors were busy. One of the twins died.”
She was asleep again. I had watched them open her up like a carry-on bag to dig out the baby.
The view from our recovery room was poor. All you could see was a section of the roof and a small triangle of the night sky. They didn’t want you to fall in love with the place, even though the cost per night was more than the best resort in Mexico. Something was wrong with my left hand. It was stiff and purple on the places it came in contact with the dog. Touching him for that brief moment was like plunging my arm into a cooler to fish out a drink. Still it stung. A few of my nails were loose in the bed. I was able to wiggle them like ripe baby teeth. It was frostbite plain and simple. Would the scent of my now dying fingers bring the dog, I wondered. It was no mystery why he took his meals with his eyes. Any direct contact would spoil his intended meal. Perhaps now I was a rotten fish to be ignored. Fine by me. I would have to find him something more appetizing and bring it to him on a silver platter.
I quit watching the sunset in our little triangle of sky and collapsed on the musty cot.
A sliver of sunlight cut through the room like a hot scalpel. My wife wasn’t in the bed. In the hallway an orderly pushed along the morning meal cart. I found my wife in the NICU. The nurse buzzed me in reluctantly.
The baby slept in my wife’s arms, wires tra
iling back where she was tethered to the monitor. The doom dog lay at her feet like a loyal pet expecting a well-deserved treat. He was larger again. I scanned the unit.
“Where’s the other twin?”
“Passed this morning,” my wife whispered, ashamed at the joy of holding her child for the first time.
“They’ve gone home,” the nurse interrupted. I wasn’t sure if she meant the parents or the twins. I jammed my black hand in a pocket.
“Aren’t more babies being born?” I asked the nurse. “Seems empty in here.”
“Slow week,” she said, smiling, and went back to her work.
I kneeled by the dog surreptitiously and showed him the dead hand. He sniffed it curiously. I thought for a moment I could convince him I was nearer death but it was useless. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I wasn’t a meal worth waiting for.
“You can’t be coming up here whenever the hell you want,” she said.
“I need to see him.” She looked around for her co- workers who were all evidently occupied with some other task.
“Ok, I’ll take you up. But go easy. His pressure’s up again.”
He was curled up in bed, staring at the floor. “Got a bad one in here,” he muttered. “Biggest I’ve seen.”
“Would you look at this?” I said, and showed him the hand.
“I told you there was no touching them.”
“You didn’t say it would turn my hand into a burnt match.”
“I made the mistake of kicking a doom dog ten years ago.” He lifted up his stiff hospital blanket revealing a stump. “Get me into the wheelchair,” he said, repositioning himself in the bed. He kicked over a tray of pills and they scattered on the floor. I knelt down and picked them up one by one. It took some effort, but I got him into the chair. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where to?” I asked him.
“I want to see that baby of yours.”
“What about your dog? Won’t he follow you down?”
“No. He’d only follow if he was worried about losing his meal. He knows I’ll be back. Big dogs like him don’t follow. They wait.”
I told the woman at the front desk he was my uncle and she let us into the maternity ward. My wife was in the hallway tottering in an awkward, painful way.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“We’re going home today,” she said. “I came to tell you it’s time to collect my things.” Her face was red and cheerful. “Who’s this?” She asked of the man I pushed in the wheelchair.
“I’m here to see the babies.”
“It is like a zoo, isn’t it?” she said with a quirky grin. “You have no idea,” he said.
“I’ll meet you in the room,” I told her.
A doctor stood inside the NICU filling out paperwork with the nurse.
“Those are discharge papers, I hope,” I whispered.
“I can’t see a damn thing from this chair.” He strained his neck. “Where’s the child?”
I went and stood at the window above her bed and glimpsed the dog growling with his white, hot eyes.
“Dammit, it’s back!”
“Don’t wake the baby, we might have her out in time. The doctor stood with a clipboard at his side, shooting the shit with the nurse. The baby opened her eyes slightly and the dog edged forward. “God dammit!” I yelled. “I’m going in there!”
The man reared back in his wheelchair, frantically twisting the cap from his blood pressure medication. I went and banged on the NICU’s door with my charred fist. I saw them through the small rectangle door, whispering no doubt about the likelihood of my insanity. I banged again and the doctor picked up the phone to call security down to drag me away. I looked for something solid, anything that could break through the chicken wire and glass, but there was nothing but heavy plush couches and nailed down tables with magazines.
The only thing I could conceive of shattering the window was the man’s wheelchair. He sat in it shoveling pill after pill into his mouth, gnawing them disgustedly.
“What the hell are you up to?” I asked him, exasperatedly.
“I’m helping.”
The baby was staring, perhaps now aware of the creature that sat at her feet, hungry for her last breath. But now the dog averted his eyes. He leapt over the baby and rested his paws on the glass. The man had captured his interest.
“What’s happening?” I asked him. He didn’t look good. The glass cracked violently and the dog soaked through the glass like snot through cheap tissue. He bounded onto the floor leaving only a greasy translucent smudge behind him. The old man squeezed his eyes shut.
“Back up,” he said through gritted teeth. The dog sneered and drew in great breathes, tasting the weakness that pervaded his chemically stricken body. This was a bite he could chew. “Back up,” the man said again. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or the dog. It leapt into his lap singing what remained of his thighs. The man opened his eyes. The two of them locked into a hypnotic gaze. The dog was euphoric.
“Back up,” the main said once more and this time he pointed a crooked finger in my direction. I took a few reluctant steps back. There was an exchange of what could have been liquid or light or both draining from the man’s mouth and nose and pouring into the dogs eyes.
A stain was forming in the ceiling panel above this flickering murder scene. It started as a dark, baseball sized water stain and grew into a large yellow and brown warped mass as if a filthy tube had overflowed on the floor above us. The massive wet head, and then the front legs of a gnarled and marbled Great Dane descended from the spot and quickly the entire body was lowered onto the tile by a disintegrating web of mucus and decay. The Great Dane stretched and shook the slime from its great bristled coat and took the smaller dog within its jaws and swallowed it like an anaconda would a paralyzed rabbit. The light show ended for only an instant before this new conductor struck up the final scene.
What life remained in the man was taken in for dessert and then the Great Dane was carried up into the ceiling panel again by an organic pulley system of sinew and varicose veins. The telltale stain quickly faded away.
Security arrived as it always does at the worst possible moment. The man lie, head back and eyes wide and steaming almost imperceptibly.
“Sir, is there a reason you’re banging down the NICU?”
“This man needs help,” I said numbly. Now their attitude changed and the doctors came from hidden doors to confirm what I had already known.
“He’s dead.”
Nervous men in suits came soon after, perhaps to determine who was at fault for this embarrassing oversight.
“If it’s all the same,” I told them, “I’ll take my daughter and go.” The discharge process was streamlined with amazing speed.
The nurse pushed my wife and child down the final hallway toward the humid warmth of the outside world. The last pieces of my hand crackled and fell away like cigarette ash.
“What happened to that man?” My wife asked as we breached the automatic doors.
“Some people get sicker when they go to the hospital.
Mail Order Mud
” by Karen DeCapp
“You’re a cripple.”
He’d been called worse.
“You’re a freak.”
Still heard worse.
“You’re stupid.”
Now they were just wrong. Emotionally crippled. Terrorizing freaks. And oh, so stupid. But they’d learn. They’d learn.
With a club foot, lazy eye, and spastic bladder, Brian Holton, unwillingly, had been assigned hell. The bulk of the assignment administered between ages six and eighteen. He was now twelve. Midway through.
And even at twelve, he comprehended the dangerous midway marker. Little Red Riding Hood midway through the forest met the Big Bad Wolf. Dorothy encountered the Wicked Witch of the West midway down the Yellow Brick Road. And Jack tripped midway up the hill fetching water. Coincidence that malaise, maniacal, massacre, menacing, and mi
sery share the same segment of the dictionary with midway? Fables indicated no.
Recess existed for the welfare of young minds. Brian referred to them as quarry quarantine. Restricted ground, enclosing packs searching for prey. One prey.
The prey with the most abnormalities. Bad eye, limp walk, several trips to the bathroom. Don’t need to look too far. Four eyes, brace face with freckles, Jenny Donner, was a distant second. Once she started to develop, japes turned to gapes. Brian didn’t have that out.
He was a seemingly uncomplicated, non-creative little boy restricted by his physical misfortune. Much like dyslexia held back Thomas Edison.
As time went on, the quarry expanded. No longer did quips begin and end on the schools four square painted blacktop, chalked hopscotch, and basketball hoops without nets playground. Now the burliest bully, Doug Thorr, put in over-time. His high-top tennies, pierced ear, and shaved haircut nearing a razor swipe, pushed boy to man, and harassment to hazing. Except little by little his teammates were dropping off. Sports, grades, girls, collectivism beyond detention halls.
On this Wednesday in May, blue sky, one cumulus cloud in the shape of a snowman, swift breeze, steady traffic flow, Brian walked home on the sidewalk. Doug, confidently, slowed Brian’s stride from the front, and Skip Nelson and Will Shane dogged him from the rear. Not even this blusterous May day shook a fluffy flake from the cumulus snowman. Odd.
“Should be home by…what…midnight?” Doug’s arm’s waved with his words, eyes glanced to Brian’s right foot dragging the pavement, while his reversed stride stayed in rhythm and Skip and Will laughed right on cue. Laughing at Brian meant not being a butt of the joke. At least, not at this moment.
Twenty pounds overweight, Skip no longer skipped to the ice cream truck. He waddled. He also used a portion of his allowance to buy a cone for his skinny sister who ran and stopped the faded white van for him.
The word ‘comply’ tripped up Will. Though he lived it, on an exam he spelled it with a ‘K’ and flunked usage. He also had trouble using a straw, and fainted twice during gym. Probably because of nerves and dehydration. But with Brian around to pick on, no one noticed.
