around me and try to detect movement. I hold my breath and try to make out the sound of padding doggie footsteps. All the while it’s as if there are little lines attached to my feet, drawing them towards the Beast and my salvation, as if I’m not consciously moving them anymore. As I draw closer my I feel that bubbling exhilaration in my chest pushing at the lid: almost there, almost there, quickly now, quickly, don’t fail at the last second, it would be such a waste. And that’s exactly when the Universe chooses to deny me, to turn my triumph into defeat, turn my heart cold. I grasp the nozzle of the fire extinguisher with a death grip as three sleek, dark forms emerge from behind the truck, and that’s when I remember the broken jar and spilled vinegar from the morning and all the food I have in the back of the truck, the driver’s side door that I was much too unworried to close and the open jar of jerky on the driver’s seat. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Dan. Dan. Danny boy. Don’t panic. Maybe they are friendly. Maybe their stomachs are now full of jerky and they’re not hungry anymore. Hungry enough to do that to another dog, one that’s even bigger than them. Hungry enough to no longer recognize me, an upright standing primate, as their master, a possible provider for them. Calm. Calm. Don’t act too quickly. Don’t make unnecessary enemies.
I hold my hand out. “Hey there doggies.”
That low rumble, like a thunderstorm forming in the distance. Like those six pit bulls before they recognized me, the six dogs I now so surely wished I’d brought along. This is not looking good. Synchronized it is terrifying, that pre-bark beginning deep in their chests. Despite this, I press closer with my hand out. I see one of the dark forms pull back a little, then forward to snap. I yank my hand just in time. I pull back. The other dogs circle closer, sensing weakness.
“Fuck you doggies,” I say and depress the trigger on the fire extinguisher. I hear their yelps as the cooling CO2 cloud washes over them. They pull back, covered in fine particles that glimmer a little in whatever soft light is bouncing around. At least they’re easier to see. I keep pumping, pushing them back, getting closer to the car and the pistol wedged in the side pocket. I adopt this strategy: they pull back and seem to shake it off and come at me again and again I depress the trigger and beat them back again. They try attacking from different vectors and I swing the nozzle all around me in a one eighty arc and beat them back some more. I’m two hundred feet to the car and seriously thinking about bolting for it: it’s so close. I keep at it, two hundred feet left, one eighty, when the damn thing, the thing that’s been keeping me alive or at least not fatally mauled decides to give up the final puff of ghost. The last few CO2 plumes sputter out of the tip and in their place are three dogs enraged to the point of frothy rabidness, growling and drooling, the sharp, bright pinpoints of the center of their eyes seeming to play, over and over again the scene of my bodily and bloody dismemberment.
My hand tenses on the handle. I try to remember the few scant swings I had practiced in the library.
The dog on the left moves first, seemingly the smallest of all three of them. He’s fast, faster than I would have thought but I swing almost instinctively. I catch the dog with the blunt end of the extinguisher in the side of the neck and the thump is more solid and crunching and sickening than I’d imagined. I see the dark body go flying, deflected by my blow, past me. That’s when a searing pain tears through me, starting in my forearm and making me see even in the darkness an almost blinding neon red. I scream and oddly enough hear the reverberations of my scream reflected back to me from the empty faces of the skyscrapers fronting the broad plaza. I wrench backwards instinctively and the pain multiplies tenfold. I scream
Dan. Dan. Danny boy. Don’t panic. Maybe they are friendly. Maybe their stomachs are now full of jerky and they’re not hungry anymore. Hungry enough to do that to another dog, one that’s even bigger than them. Hungry enough to no longer recognize me, an upright standing primate, as their master, a possible provider for them. Calm. Calm. Don’t act too quickly. Don’t make unnecessary enemies.
I hold my hand out. “Hey there doggies.”
That low rumble, like a thunderstorm forming in the distance. Like those six pit bulls before they recognized me, the six dogs I now so surely wished I’d brought along. This is not looking good. Synchronized it is terrifying, that pre-bark beginning deep in their chests. Despite this, I press closer with my hand out. I see one of the dark forms pull back a little, then forward to snap. I yank my hand just in time. I pull back. The other dogs circle closer, sensing weakness.
“Fuck you doggies,” I say and depress the trigger on the fire extinguisher. I hear their yelps as the cooling CO2 cloud washes over them. They pull back, covered in fine particles that glimmer a little in whatever soft light is bouncing around. At least they’re easier to see. I keep pumping, pushing them back, getting closer to the car and the pistol wedged in the side pocket. I adopt this strategy: they pull back and seem to shake it off and come at me again and again I depress the trigger and beat them back again. They try attacking from different vectors and I swing the nozzle all around me in a one eighty arc and beat them back some more. I’m two hundred feet to the car and seriously thinking about bolting for it: it’s so close. I keep at it, two hundred feet left, one eighty, when the damn thing, the thing that’s been keeping me alive or at least not fatally mauled decides to give up the final puff of ghost. The last few CO2 plumes sputter out of the tip and in their place are three dogs enraged to the point of frothy rabidness, growling and drooling, the sharp, bright pinpoints of the center of their eyes seeming to play, over and over again the scene of my bodily and bloody dismemberment.
My hand tenses on the handle. I try to remember the few scant swings I had practiced in the library.
The dog on the left moves first, seemingly the smallest of all three of them. He’s fast, faster than I would have thought but I swing almost instinctively. I catch the dog with the blunt end of the extinguisher in the side of the neck and the thump is more solid and crunching and sickening than I’d imagined. I see the dark body go flying, deflected by my blow, past me. That’s when a searing pain tears through me, starting in my forearm and making me see even in the darkness an almost blinding neon red. I scream and oddly enough hear the reverberations of my scream reflected back to me from the empty faces of the skyscrapers fronting the broad plaza. I wrench backwards instinctively and the pain multiplies tenfold. I scream
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