Mutt

You know those scenes in cartoons where one of the characters gets a whiff of pie and suddenly levitates and floats toward the pie? That’s exactly how people feel when they smell the apple pie my mom used to make. She made one hell of a dessert. When she passed away I stopped eating anything sweet. I moved out of my house and changed personas, I was depressed, no doubt. But the woodland eden I’d moved into had so much whimsy and was so secluded, with hundreds of apple trees surrounding the rustic home. The sweet, sweet smell of crisp cider was like nectar to a bee; when I found it I felt my heart beat again. My mom would’ve loved this place.

I tried to put the old life behind me, so I bought this house. I thought it would be the perfect place to write with no distractions and maybe stop grieving my mother. I missed writing stories and her reading them with that light in her eyes, like she was genuinely into the book, she was my motivation to continue. My office window looked over the front yard, the hedges following the porch. Just looking out that window kept my mind flowing, watching the birds fly around the feeder. It’s beautiful.

I get up from my chair and close my laptop. I walk into the kitchen, take the packaged chicken that’s thawing in the sink, throw it on an old skillet, and place it in the preheated oven. I make my way to the living room while it cooks, throw my feet on the coffee table, and reach over to turn on the lamp. The dim yellow light covers half the living room. I pick my book off the armrest and begin to read from where I left off.

The book swallows me; I get lost in the intense pages filled with terror and screams. When the book is finished I look at the clock hung above the window. My eyes freeze when they land on the yard — eyes staring back at me, yellow and feral, fixated on me while standing in a pile of apples beneath the trees. I feel the color melting off my face like paint dripping from a canvas. I forget to breathe. My fingers and toes go red from clenching the couch cushions. I sit still until I can imagine what it could possibly be.

A wolf? I live in Kentucky — there aren’t wolves around here — but it’s so lupine. It’s too big to be a regular dog. A… human? No. It has the ears of a canine and eyes sallow and sentient, uncanny almost. It has a snout like any canid; its fur is shaggy and blends into the dark that surrounds it. I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing with slow, deep breaths, like some yoga instructor. I open my eyes again — it’s gone. Completely gone.

I try to chalk it up to some trick of my mind. Maybe I’m hungry. Oh crap. I hastily turn my head toward the kitchen. Smoke is rising, mostly hitting the range hood but some flooding the rest of the room. The smell hits me and I crinkle my nose. I jump over the back of the couch and run into the kitchen, fling open the oven door, and swat away the smoke. I grab oven mitts patterned with little red roses and reach into the smoke pit. Not being able to see what I’m grabbing, I pull the tray out and throw it on the stove; the intense heat almost burns through the mitts. I open the window next to the stove to let the rest of the smoke out and sigh in relief — until there’s loud banging on the door.

I practically jump on the counter. The noise startles me; the bangs grow louder and more violent. Panic settles in. I can practically hear the paint being scratched off the door. Then it stops. I stand in shock, my heart pounding out of my chest. Slowly I start to calm, but the silence is interrupted by the nasty sound of a snarl behind me.

The wild beast’s head smashes through the window, slavering and foaming at the mouth like some rabies-induced creature. It gets halfway through, digging long black claws into the wood as it struggles to pull itself up, still chewing the burnt, charred chicken — bone and all. I run upstairs, my head dizzy from adrenaline. I make it to the top and look down: the mutt is at the bottom, ravenous, slobbering and growling while showing crooked teeth. It stands up almost 6 feet tall. The feral beast rises on its hind legs like a man in a suit, its ragged fur matted.

I get to the bedroom and lock the door. I swear I can feel the doorknob rattling, like it somehow grabbed the knob and is trying to open the door. What the hell is this thing? It goes quiet again and I can almost breathe. “Click.” The room goes dark — it flipped the breaker. I can hear the manic brute walking back upstairs like a grown man. The room fills with rattling and scratching again. I curl up behind my bed, my hands clawed in my hair, wanting it to stop.

The door crashes open. I snap my eyes open and stop rocking back and forth. The silence is unbearable in that dark pit of a room. I feel tangled fur wrap around my ankles; a scream rips from my lips. It drags me out from behind the bed. I grab the leg of the bed; claws dig into my skin, peeling it back. I hear my blood hit the hardwood floor. My jeans rip to shreds. I can’t see anything — I only hear every rip and the scrape of claws on bone. My hand loses strength and slips from the cold metal bed leg.

As I lie helpless on the floor, the beast’s silhouette looms over me, slinging parts of my clothes and layers of my skin all over the room. A rotten smell from its mane mixes with the metallic tang of my blood, slithering up my nose. I’m too weak to fight back. I try to get up, but my hands slide on the puddle of my own warm blood. Slowly losing consciousness, I can feel my organs sliding down my stomach and onto the floor where I lie defenseless.