Ray Collins
He glared at the screen with a look of dull-witted disgust and then closed his laptop. Nothing was happening tonight: his imagination, such as it was, wasn't giving up the goods. He set the hot computer onto the faux-leather ottoman, stood up, and walked into the brightly-lit kitchen.
He was housesitting for his in-laws, Timothy and Trisha, who were visiting family in Raleigh. Ordinarily, his wife would be either doing this herself or at least accompanying him during this paid-for sitting around in someone else's house, but she was in India on company business for two weeks. So here he was.
His in-laws ran a tight ship: everything in the room was in its place. Nowhere was this fastidiousness more apparent than in the kitchen. Pumpkin-colored Tupperware canisters were stacked beneath the phone, beside the sink, next to the paper towels, each of them filled in varying degrees with Oreos, Nilla wafers, individually wrapped packs of Saltines, Sweet & low, Milkbones, and one of them, surprisingly, with about six cans of Vienna Sausages. Its presence was a mystery to him because, to his knowledge, no one had ever eaten the things. He walked to the fridge and opened it. Pepsis, of both the regular and decaffeinated varieties, and a few bottles of water crowded the back of the top shelf. Aside from condiements, the other shelves were empty of enticements.
He closed the door, wanting a Pepsi but thinking ahead to the pang of guilt he'd feel after chugging an extra 150 empty calories. He looked over to the plastic toddler pen which had been placed where the kitchen table used to be. Two Schnauzers stood inside, on their hind legs, their paws hooked over the edge, watching him. He'd grown up with a succession of loveable dogs, one of whom, Rufus, had been so adorable and well-loved that whenever he was mentioned by any member of the family, it was in tones of reverence and regret, as though he'd been another child who'd died tragically and too young, rather than just a good pet. He'd gone through his life thus thinking that his default setting was set to love dogs. But these two animals had proven that assumption false.
He'd grown to hate the Schnauzers.
They were wild and neither of his wife's parents had spent so much as an entire minute training the animals since they'd picked up the two males from the same litter seven months prior. They were eight months old and thusly too old for a pen like this, but as they were nearly feral, it was the only surefire way his in-laws had to control them. They were a miserable pair and required nearly constant supervision. Every so often, they fought terribly. They'd done so earlier that day, in fact. They often began the same way.
Sometimes, when sitting out in the living room, one of the Schnauzers would get a hankering to mount the other. Neither was particularly submissive, so the intended mountee would make the prospect difficult for the mounter by constantly moving his inviting rump out of grabbing range. Sometimes, if the mounter couldn't be dissuaded, the two Schnauzers would stare each other down and then rear up and grapple on their hind legs like sumo wrestlers and quietly clutch and slap for a moment. Just this much effort was typically enough to get the aggressor to shift his attention elsewhere, but on rare occasions, the grappling would devolve into a growling, screaming, knock-down drag-out dogfight where, and of this he was sure, if he or someone else wasn't present to break it apart, one dog would tear the other's throat out. He'd never in his life heard dogs fight so ferociously and the sound if it, a weird snarling howl, scared him. But during today's vicious Schnauzer fight, he found himself waiting to break it up.
He told himself he'd stopped himself from grabbing one hot and stocky dog off of the other because he wanted to see if it would blow over by itself, to see if their terrifying shrieking made the intensity of their fighting sound worse than it was, but in truth, he knew the fighting was exactly as bad as it sounded, that these dogs had clicked into some wilder part of their natures that demanded the drawing of blood, and he also knew the real reason he'd waited was because he did hate them, and he wanted one of them to hurt the other. Fortunately, his better angels had prevailed and he'd broken it up.
Standing in front of the open fridge, he stared back at the two black-eyed unblinking Schnauzers, and felt not shame that he'd briefly encountered something in himself so antithetical to his usually genial and kindly nature, but rather the same cool hatred that had stayed his hand. In those dark gleaming orbs he sensed a need, usually suppressed, to fight for food, fight for mates, kill for primacy. At the same time, he thought he understood the perfect equanimity with which his forebears would have dispatched animals, just like these two, who'd made the mistake of displeasing them.
Fucking dogs, he thought.
He walked past them and back out into the living room, sat down, picked up the laptop off of the ottoman, opened it up, and began finally to write.
He was housesitting for his in-laws, Timothy and Trisha, who were visiting family in Raleigh. Ordinarily, his wife would be either doing this herself or at least accompanying him during this paid-for sitting around in someone else's house, but she was in India on company business for two weeks. So here he was.
His in-laws ran a tight ship: everything in the room was in its place. Nowhere was this fastidiousness more apparent than in the kitchen. Pumpkin-colored Tupperware canisters were stacked beneath the phone, beside the sink, next to the paper towels, each of them filled in varying degrees with Oreos, Nilla wafers, individually wrapped packs of Saltines, Sweet & low, Milkbones, and one of them, surprisingly, with about six cans of Vienna Sausages. Its presence was a mystery to him because, to his knowledge, no one had ever eaten the things. He walked to the fridge and opened it. Pepsis, of both the regular and decaffeinated varieties, and a few bottles of water crowded the back of the top shelf. Aside from condiements, the other shelves were empty of enticements.
He closed the door, wanting a Pepsi but thinking ahead to the pang of guilt he'd feel after chugging an extra 150 empty calories. He looked over to the plastic toddler pen which had been placed where the kitchen table used to be. Two Schnauzers stood inside, on their hind legs, their paws hooked over the edge, watching him. He'd grown up with a succession of loveable dogs, one of whom, Rufus, had been so adorable and well-loved that whenever he was mentioned by any member of the family, it was in tones of reverence and regret, as though he'd been another child who'd died tragically and too young, rather than just a good pet. He'd gone through his life thus thinking that his default setting was set to love dogs. But these two animals had proven that assumption false.
He'd grown to hate the Schnauzers.
They were wild and neither of his wife's parents had spent so much as an entire minute training the animals since they'd picked up the two males from the same litter seven months prior. They were eight months old and thusly too old for a pen like this, but as they were nearly feral, it was the only surefire way his in-laws had to control them. They were a miserable pair and required nearly constant supervision. Every so often, they fought terribly. They'd done so earlier that day, in fact. They often began the same way.
Sometimes, when sitting out in the living room, one of the Schnauzers would get a hankering to mount the other. Neither was particularly submissive, so the intended mountee would make the prospect difficult for the mounter by constantly moving his inviting rump out of grabbing range. Sometimes, if the mounter couldn't be dissuaded, the two Schnauzers would stare each other down and then rear up and grapple on their hind legs like sumo wrestlers and quietly clutch and slap for a moment. Just this much effort was typically enough to get the aggressor to shift his attention elsewhere, but on rare occasions, the grappling would devolve into a growling, screaming, knock-down drag-out dogfight where, and of this he was sure, if he or someone else wasn't present to break it apart, one dog would tear the other's throat out. He'd never in his life heard dogs fight so ferociously and the sound if it, a weird snarling howl, scared him. But during today's vicious Schnauzer fight, he found himself waiting to break it up.
He told himself he'd stopped himself from grabbing one hot and stocky dog off of the other because he wanted to see if it would blow over by itself, to see if their terrifying shrieking made the intensity of their fighting sound worse than it was, but in truth, he knew the fighting was exactly as bad as it sounded, that these dogs had clicked into some wilder part of their natures that demanded the drawing of blood, and he also knew the real reason he'd waited was because he did hate them, and he wanted one of them to hurt the other. Fortunately, his better angels had prevailed and he'd broken it up.
Standing in front of the open fridge, he stared back at the two black-eyed unblinking Schnauzers, and felt not shame that he'd briefly encountered something in himself so antithetical to his usually genial and kindly nature, but rather the same cool hatred that had stayed his hand. In those dark gleaming orbs he sensed a need, usually suppressed, to fight for food, fight for mates, kill for primacy. At the same time, he thought he understood the perfect equanimity with which his forebears would have dispatched animals, just like these two, who'd made the mistake of displeasing them.
Fucking dogs, he thought.
He walked past them and back out into the living room, sat down, picked up the laptop off of the ottoman, opened it up, and began finally to write.
posted by Miller Sturtevant at 6:28 PM
0 comments
