by Jeff Strand
Kutter kept running. Charlie took off after him.
Charlie could see the car now. A small one, but Kutter was headed straight for--
The car took a left turn, putting Kutter out of potential danger.
Charlie saw what Kutter was running for. A dog on the other side of the street. "Kutter!" he shouted. "You stop right now!"
Kutter stopped, then went into a barking fit. Charlie hurried over to him and snapped the leash onto his collar. "Don't ever run off like that again," Charlie said. "You could've been hit by a car! Do you know how worried I was?"
He glanced across the street again. Now there were two dogs. Big ones. The one he'd seen first was a big black dog--a rottweiler, he thought it was called. He thought the other one might be a pit bull but he wasn't completely sure what pit bulls looked like, just that they were vicious, mean dogs. And the two men holding their leashes didn't appear much friendlier.
"Time to head home," he said. Kutter barked at the dogs again. Brave but stupid.
"Hey there!" said the first man, waving to Charlie from across the street. "How's it going?"
Charlie didn't answer. He tugged on Kutter's leash to draw his attention away from the other dogs and began to walk down the sidewalk.
"Don't walk away from us!" the man said. "We just wanna see your dog!"
Charlie kept walking for a few moments, then stopped. He really didn't want to talk to these guys, but if they decided to turn their scary dogs loose he could be in a lot of trouble. He had a knife in his inside jacket pocket, so if they intended to mug him he'd take them by surprise with a blade to the face.
Kutter growled as the men and their dogs approached. Charlie shushed him. They probably wanted nothing more than to laugh a good laugh about how they had big monster dogs and he had a silly looking clown-faced dog. Or else they just wanted directions.
The men walked their dogs across the street. They were both smiling, but they were some of the least friendly smiles Charlie had ever seen. He wanted to pick Kutter up to keep the dog out of harm's way; however, that would prevent him from using the knife if the men truly did intend to mug him. Though he wasn't worried about losing money, since he only had seven dollars in his wallet, some muggers got mad if you couldn't pay them off and stabbed or shot you to vent their frustration.
The men were of equal height--probably over six feet tall--and both had facial hair, though the first had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee while the second had an unkempt full beard. The first man seemed to have bathed much more recently than the second.
"Nice dog," said the cleaner man.
Charlie tightened his grip on the handle of Kutter's leash. "He's mine."
"Nobody said he wasn't."
"What do you want?"
"I thought I already said that we wanted to see your dog." The pit bull sniffed at Kutter, and Charlie took a step back, pulling Kutter away. "It's a pretty nice dog. How much does one of those things cost these days?"
"I didn't steal him."
"Why would you think that we're accusing you of stealing him? I'd think that the owner of such a fine dog would be used to people wanting to see him."
Charlie took another step back. "Keep your pit bull away from him."
"Pit bull? This isn't a pit bull. This is an American Staffordshire terrier. And even if he was, you're not one of those people who think that pit bulls go around mauling babies, are you? They got a bad rap. Pit bulls are great dogs if the owner takes care of them. When you hear about them ripping some kid apart, it's almost never the dog's fault."
"I don't have any money," Charlie said.
"Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid." The man laughed, but there was no humor to it. "We've seen you around and we liked your dog. You're acting like you have a guilty conscience. You do something you shouldn't have?"
"I need to get home," Charlie said.
"Why?"
"I'm meeting my girlfriend."
"Then by all means, don't let us keep you." The man gestured grandly toward the way Charlie had been walking. "I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a man who's gonna get himself some."
Charlie led Kutter away from them. Behind him, one of the dogs growled.
"None of that, Bear," said the first man. "He's going to get himself laid. Let's not ruin his night."
Charlie wanted to run, but didn't dare. He settled for walking very, very quickly, tugging hard on Kutter's leash when the dog tried to stop for sniff breaks.
* * *
Charlie and Kutter sat on the couch. What had those men wanted? Were they simply jerks? Were they friends of Byron? Maybe Byron had never really owned Kutter, and these men were after him to take the dog back.
"You're being ridiculous," Charlie said out loud. It wasn't part of some elaborate hoax.
Then again, Byron might not have been Kutter's original owner. Charlie might be his third owner, and one of the men in the park might have been the first.
If so, why wouldn't they just ask for him back? Why be all weird about it?
Either way, he didn't feel like going out with Liz tonight. He called her, claiming that he was sick to his stomach (which was technically true, even if he blamed it on food poisoning) and cancelled their movie date. She told him that she hoped he felt better tomorrow, and made a very pleasant suggestion for an evening activity if he did.
Charlie wished that he could report the men for harassment, but having the police investigate why he might have people angry with him was probably not the best course of action. He'd just have to wait this out and be on the defensive.
Kutter didn't seem distressed by this. Charlie wished he could be more like the dog.
Charlie wasn't sure what to do the next morning. He didn't want to leave Kutter at home--what if the men broke in and dognapped him? Liz would probably let him drive over and leave Kutter there for the day, but he'd still be leaving Kutter unattended, and her place might not be any safer than his if the men were following him.
So he called in sick. Bob was fine with it.
"I can't do this forever," Charlie told Kutter. "They don't give me many sick days each year. But I'll protect you. I promise."
Charlie kept three guns--fully registered--around the house in case of emergencies. These "emergencies" were supposed to be in the almost inconceivable case that one of his victims escaped from the basement, but dog defense was an even more valid purpose. He didn't want to keep a gun on his person, since he couldn't bring himself to trust that it wouldn't go off accidentally, so he took the one in his sock drawer out and rested it on the coffee table for easier access.
Under normal circumstances, it would've been a very pleasant day, since he did very little except watch television and hang out with Kutter. He took Kutter for a couple of cautious walks and saw no sign of the men. If he was lucky, they'd simply been a couple of creeps who were having fun messing with him, and his life could return to its standard level of paranoia in a couple of days.
* * *
What his day job needed was a new policy where dogs were allowed to accompany their masters to work. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Charlie asked Kutter. "You could sleep under my desk all morning, I'd take you for a walk at lunch, you could go back to sleep all afternoon, and we'd go home. That would solve all of my problems."
He thought it might be funny to send Bob an e-mail with that suggestion, adding a smiley face to the end to make sure Bob knew he was joking. But it was getting close to time for his annual performance review, and he didn't want Bob to think that he was using humor as a brownnosing tactic.
He took Kutter down into the basement and set some cardboard boxes on their side for Kutter to hide in if it came down to that. They weren't very good hiding places and he didn't think that Kutter would figure out what to do with them, but Charlie wanted to keep open any options he possibly could. He gave his dog some extra petting, then locked him in the basement.
Around noon, Charlie became too anxious at work and told Bob that he needed
to take a half day off.
When he hurried down into the basement, Kutter ran out of one of the boxes, perfectly fine.
"We can't live like this," he told Kutter. "It was just a couple of stupid men playing a joke. They haven't come back. We'll probably never see them again. Only an idiot would keep worrying about them, right?"
* * *
The next evening, as Charlie poured some dry food into Kutter's bowl, there was a knock at the door. He finished pouring the food, walked into the living room, and looked through the peephole.
It was both of the men. And their dogs.
Charlie backed away from the door, slowly and carefully, hoping that the men hadn't heard his footsteps.
The knocking grew in intensity.
"We know you're in there," said the man who'd done all of the talking before. "It's rude to leave guests waiting out on your porch."
Charlie picked the gun up off his coffee table and shoved it into the waist of his pants. He pulled his shirt over the weapon, but it was too obvious--it looked silly. And he still didn't trust it not to go off in his pants. If he opened the door and immediately shoved the barrel into the first man's face, he ran the risk that the man might simply pluck the gun from his fingers and turn it on him.
He decided to keep the gun in his hand and sit on the couch. If they broke in, he'd shoot them. He had neighbors, so they had to know that they couldn't make too much of a ruckus or somebody would call the police, even if Charlie himself couldn't.
Kutter joined him.
The men continued to knock on the door, but didn't say anything else. After a couple of minutes, they left.
"Don't worry," he told Kutter. "If they try to hurt you, I'll kill them."
- 12 -
"Dammit!" exclaimed Charlie as the warm liquid splashed into his face. He wiped the soapy water out of his eyes. "Quit shaking!"
Kutter tried to jump out of the tub, but Charlie blocked his escape and pushed down on his back. "This isn't hurting you," he said. "You want to be all nice and clean so that people know I'm taking good care of you, don't you?"
The dog obviously had other priorities, such as getting out of the tub as soon as possible. The slippery, soapy animal slid out from underneath Charlie's hands and leapt out of the tub. Charlie grabbed for him and missed. Kutter ran out of the bathroom.
"Not on the couch!" Charlie shouted.
Kutter jumped up onto the couch and shook again, spraying suds all over. This was better than vomit, Charlie supposed. He picked Kutter up, hugged him to his chest, and carried the struggling dog back into the bathroom. He pushed the door closed--which he should have done in the first place--with his foot and then set Kutter back into the tub.
"Don't you want to smell nice?" he asked. "Not to be rude, but you don't always smell so good. This is expensive shampoo just for dogs. Not every dog gets this kind of treatment, so you should be counting your blessings instead of being a pain in the neck."
He scrubbed Kutter some more, then pulled out the plug and let the water drain out of the tub. "Almost done," he said. He turned on the warm water and filled a plastic bowl, then gently poured it over Kutter. After a few bowls of water, the soap was rinsed out of Kutter's fur and Charlie dried him off with his fluffiest towel.
When Charlie let Kutter out of the bathroom, he ran happily into the living room, then rolled around on the floor. Charlie was glad he'd vacuumed.
* * *
Somebody called in the middle of the night from a blocked number, but didn't say anything. They hung up after about ten seconds. If Charlie'd had a whistle handy, he would have blown out the caller's eardrums.
* * *
Kutter stood at the door and let out one sharp bark, indicating that he was ready to be taken for a walk.
"Why aren't you a cat?" Charlie asked. "If you were a cat, you could just use a litter box and you'd never have to go outside."
Technically, he never had to let Kutter outside anyway, but the cleanup would be unpleasant and the dog would be miserable. He wasn't going to let those cretins ruin his relationship with his pet. He put on his jacket, and put the gun in his inside pocket.
Charlie had been altering his route every time these past couple of days, figuring that the men probably weren't watching his home from an unmarked van, and so if he kept his path unpredictable he wouldn't run into them. He hated having to do this. He almost hoped that he'd run into them tonight, put a bullet in each of their throats, and end the problem.
Almost. Not quite.
It was a nice, long walk, and both Charlie and Kutter had a great time. Then, as he dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his door, the two men and their dogs ran onto his front porch. They must have been hiding by the side of the house.
He threw open the door and quickly stepped inside. Before he could pull the door shut again, the man with the goatee stuck his foot in the gap and blocked it. Charlie yanked harder on the door, hoping to break the man's foot or even pop it off, but he wasn't strong enough and the man easily forced the door all the way open.
"Can we come in?" the man asked.
"I have a gun," said Charlie.
"We're not going to hurt you. We just want to talk."
Charlie and Kutter cautiously backed into the center of the living room as the men and their dogs came inside. The man who hadn't said anything yet closed the front door. The rottweiler and the pit bull (or whatever it was) growled and strained against their leashes, which looked like they might snap at any instant. Charlie wondered if these were the kind of dogs that fought each other while people bet on them.
"Were you worried?" the first man asked.
"What?"
"All this time. Were you worried?"
"About what?"
The man laughed. "Let's make a rule that during this encounter, we'll all respect each other's intelligence, okay? I'm talking about the way we entered your lives. Were you worried?"
Charlie shook his head.
"Bullshit. Do you know when I was worried?"
"No."
"When my sister didn't come home." The man reached into his pocket and took out a piece of folded white paper. He unfolded it and held it up for Charlie to see. "Recognize her?"
Charlie did. He'd been crying over her eight months ago, when she died on his table too soon. "No."
"Sure you do. Think back."
"I've never seen her."
"Never? You're saying that you recall everybody you've ever seen in your entire life? People in line at the grocery store? That's a pretty impressive talent. But you know her. She made a lot of bad decisions, and she got herself hooked on all kinds of shit, but she was the only thing I had. I kicked her out of my place so she'd get clean. You took that chance away from her."
"You have the wrong person."
"I do not have the wrong person. I made damn sure I had the right person. The cops may not care about a homeless junkie, but she was my goddamn sister and you murdered her!"
At this point, Charlie didn't think that lies were going to do him any good. He also didn't think that the man would accept an apology. So he said nothing.
"What do you care about?" the man asked. "Just that dog, right?"
"I have a girlfriend."
"Yeah, but that's nothing. You've got no emotional investment there. I don't even have to hear what you're saying to each other to know that. She'll dump you as soon as she gets a better offer, and you'll mope for a week and move on. You don't care about her."
"Okay."
"That dog, though. Man's best friend."
Charlie shoved his hand into his inside jacket pocket.
"You packin'? What are you going to do, shoot both of us and our dogs? You think you can do that before we get you?"
Charlie fumbled with the gun inside his pocket for a moment before he managed to pull it out and point it at the man who did all the talking. The man did look a bit worried, but not worried enough.
"Put the gun down," the man said. "You prey
on the helpless, like the sorry piece of crap that you are. Even with a gun you're not going to stop big strong guys like us. You're pathetic."
"I'm not pathetic."
"Yeah, I think you are."
Charlie wanted to put a bullet right between the man's eyes. Unfortunately, even at this close range he wasn't sure he could hit his target, and the man was absolutely right--two men and two huge dogs were more than he could handle.
"Do you want money?" Charlie asked.
"Money? Are you kidding me? This isn't about blackmail. At this very moment it's about your life, so why don't you put the gun away so we can take it out of that area?"
Charlie had no idea what to do. A bloody shootout wasn't going to end well for anybody. If these men really meant to kill him, they would've done it sooner instead of stalking him. He wasn't good at talking his way out of situations, yet this might be one time that he had to.
He put the gun back in his inside jacket pocket, then held up his hands to show that they were empty except for the handle of Kutter's leash.
The man let out a loud whistle that hurt Charlie's ears. "Kill!"
Both men released their dogs.
The dogs moved like a blur, and as the dogs struck him Kutter let out a high-pitched yelp that was like a shriek of pain and terror. The yelp didn't stop as Charlie reached into the snarling mass of dogs, drops of blood spraying into the air, screaming and trying to rescue his pet.
Jaws clamped down on his arm, but he couldn't feel them.
Charlie kicked at the rottweiler as hard as he could. He was off balance and panicked and the kick bounced harmlessly off the dog's side. The rottweiler shook its head back and forth rapidly, ripping away Kutter's skin and fur.
His second kick connected with the rottweiler's snout and the dog let out a yelp of its own. The other dog pulled its jaws away from Charlie's arm and bit down onto Kutter's ear.
With a burst of adrenaline that he'd never felt in his life, Charlie yanked the bloody mess of Kutter out of the fray. Both dogs pounced on him, and at any other time Charlie knew that they would've knocked him to the floor and probably mauled him to death within minutes. But he held his footing. He had to protect his best friend.
