Stray
DANIEL SCHOUTEN
An old couple walks their schnauzer across the road. The dog scampers ahead as the oldies struggle to keep up. Shit. Groovy. Klein had promised Michonne that he’d walk Groovy. But after she left, he continued scrolling through reels of stoic quotes and ASMR haircut videos. He was dead meat. He could hear her now. I work all day while you fuck around on your phone, can’t even take the dog for a walk...
It was six o’clock. Michonne could be home at any time. Klein looks out the window. Jesus. Groovy had chewed through the lead and was in the process of shredding his blanket. You’re lucky she loves you. He slips down the stairs and grabs the lead.
After switching on the patio lights, he walks into the backyard to find Groovy pissing on the remnants of fabric. Klein pulls him away. He constricts the dog’s collar around his neck and attaches the lead. C’mon, pisspot.
They step out into the night. The old couple with their dog is already out of sight. Groovy and Klein stand by the roundabout connecting Christiansen Boulevard and Maddecks Avenue. The streetlight flickers above them. If they headed north, they would find themselves crossing the traffic-jammed Nuwarra road, but Klein also had the possibility of picking up a kebab and a coke before Michonne returned with a quinoa salad for them to share. If they headed west, then Groovy would find himself in seventh heaven. The central park. Expanses of empty lots. The shit of stray dogs and all the strange smells he could stick his nose into. Wheezing, Groovy pulls Klein west.
A young couple walk their German shepherd on the other side of the street. They wear matching outfits: dirty grey sweatpants, stained white t-shirt, and slides. Their heads hang limp as they walk. The shepherd marches beside them. Groovy stops, eyes the dog, and raises his tail. The shepherd’s ears stand straight like soldiers at attention. For fuck’s sake, please don’t.
Groovy howls and leaps towards the dog. Down! Klein pulls Groovy back. The shepherd stands very still, examining the smaller dog. Embarrassed, Klein waves at the couple as they look up at him. Are they siblings? They scowl, revealing a set of yellow teeth. Tangled, limp hair covers their face. Their noses, like a snout, protrude out from the mess. Ah, junkies. Klein disregards them and continues to pull Groovy away. The shepherd lifts his leg and pees, getting piss on his owner’s leg.
With the dog out of sight, Groovy seems to forget why he was carrying on in the first place. You little shit. He sniffs at the grass on either side of the path. Who are you smelling there? Klein felt for the mutt. Castrated, living alone with a species that lived on their phones and worked. Incarcerated in a cramped back yard, chained to a washing line. His only joy being to sniff piss in that brief thirty-minute window he gets out of the house. Occasionally, dogs bark, hidden behind fences and locked in houses, which compound into a droning wail that convenes in the street. Ah shit, ‘course I left my headphones on the couch.
A man in a suit locks his car and begins to walk towards his home. Groovy bounds towards him, wagging his tail. Stay! The lead jolts Klein forward. Groovy reaches the man and jumps up on him, licking at his face. The man pushes him onto the floor and steps back. He tries to kick the dog, but Groovy gets to his feet in time and the man misses.
Klein steps forward, ‘Hey, what the fuck man?’
A moment of silence, then the man continues to walk up his driveway, wiping at his suit. On reaching the front door, he pauses before pointing at Groovy,
‘He should be put down!’
Groovy looks up at Klein. Klein looks at his feet, then walks past the dog and pulls his lead, forcing Groovy to limp after him. Asshole. Klein kicks a pebble down the path. They continue to walk, reaching where the rock has landed, and Klein kicks it again. The pebble hits the edge of the sidewalk and lands on the road. Groovy hobbles behind him. Fuck’s sake, c’mon! He pulls the lead, causing the puppy to splutter and gag as he reaches Klein’s side. Wasn’t even worth taking you out.
Groovy stops. The lead grows taut between dog and man. Klein turns around and tries to pull him by the collar, but Groovy pulls back, distracted by something in the distance. Better not be that shepherd again. As Klein attempts to move the dog, he follows Groovy’s gaze to a cavalier watching them through a house window. Her head rests on the windowsill. Eugh! One of her eyelids is sewn shut. The other eye, covered in a cloudy film, peers out at them. He grips Groovy’s collar tighter and pulls but the dog leans further back, flashing a grimace at Klein. Don’t you dare. The dog lets out a high-pitched whine. Klein pulls harder. The barking around them continues to reverberate, drowning out any form of sound. Groovy begins to growl but Klein clamps the dog’s snout shut. Shut up!
Groovy shakes out of the grip and bites his master.
Ah, you fucking dumb mutt! Klein pushes the dog away and clutches onto his bleeding hand. He takes out his phone and sends a picture of the wound to Michonne. Look at what your dog did. Groovy licks the blood that trickles onto the concrete. Klein lets his hand fall into his pocket and quickly picks up the lead, pulling Groovy away before anyone witnesses what just happened. Looking up at the window, he finds the cavalier still staring, not at them, but at the space where they just were.
The whole street howls at them. Klein pulls Groovy back to the house. The dog resists, barking out into the street. Klein retrieves the keys from his pocket and tries to get inside, but his house key won’t fit the lock. The breeze makes his injured hand throb, and he cringes with each painful pulse. He tries every key, and none fit. Looking up to double check the façade, he makes sure they’ve arrived at the right house. I swear to God, if she changed these fucking locks again… Knocking on the door and expecting an answer, he receives absolute silence in return. Mad bitch. Klein tries every key again. None fit. The whole street barks at him. Groovy barks at him. Barking… barking… barking… Fuck off! Klein drops the lead and kicks Groovy away. The puppy falls onto his side with a yelp. Klein turns away and barges into the door. Again. Again. And again. But the door won’t budge. His whole arm now hangs limp, useless. He turns back… and discovers the lead attached to a now empty collar. Fuck! Klein runs out onto the roundabout, looking up and down the street.
‘Groovy! Groovy!’
He collects the collar and runs back west.
The couple and their shepherd have long gone. Fresh urine stains coat each tree that he passes. Klein continues to run down the street, looking left and right for the puppy. The pale glow emanating from the streetlights only reveals so much.
‘Groovy! C’mere boy!’
He runs past the businessman’s house, whose car has now disappeared. He runs past the house with the cavalier, who silently watches him behind her window.
Arriving back at the house, Klein tries to call Michonne, but his phone has died. She’s gonna murder me. He collapses onto the curb and lies back onto the wet grass, the burning in his arm replaced by a cold numbness. Wasn’t even my fault. After one long exhale, Klein shuts his eyes for a moment, listening to his pounding heartbeat. I was defending myself… he bit me. The murmur of the soft breeze sounds like a secret whispered between friends. The leaves mock him with their giggle-like rustling. As Klein lies there, he realises how quiet the suburbs have become.
Across the road, a greying chocolate labrador watches, a lead attached to its collar. Klein sits back up, spotting the old dog. You wanna attack me too? The labrador begins to limp away. Klein stalks the dog for a while before gingerly picking up its lead. He puts Groovy’s collar under the old dog’s nose, hoping the labrador will pick up a scent. The dog doesn’t seem to notice, looking straight ahead, cautious of the dark. Ah, fuck it. Klein continues to follow the labrador.
They walk in complete darkness at times, moving from suburb to suburb. Klein sometimes sees things that he feels like belong in his street – a neighbour’s house, a street sign, a hedge- but most things look familiar in these kinds of areas. The uniform silhouettes of each house, the cut of grass either side of the sidewalk, the distance between each tree. Everything in its right place.
That little shit Groovy. Michonne would kill him. Or dump him. She’d already given him the warning.
The labrador sits down after a while, quietly watching the space in front of him. This it? The dog looks back at Klein before beginning to trudge towards a house. Klein lets go of the lead. The old dog crawls underneath the fence, out of view.
After waiting for the labrador to reappear, Klein walks up to the front door and looks in through the window. Pitch black. Looking up and down the street, each one of the houses look dark inside, empty. Fuck this. Klein steps back from the door, tripping on something behind him. Looking down, a black affenpinscher’s scrunched up face scowls at Klein. The dog nips at his feet. Klein moves away before hearing barking somewhere close-by. A bark much like Groovy’s.
Klein shakes Groovy’s collar high up in the air as he runs towards the sound.
“Groovy! C’mon buddy!”
The affenpinscher scurries behind him, letting out high-pitched, staccato barks.
As he runs, Klein notices a pack of Scottish terriers play-fighting further down the road, but he can still hear the barking somewhere in the distance. As he passes, the terriers stop and scamper behind him.
Packs of Italian greyhounds, papillons, and toy poodles dash out from underneath each car Klein runs past.
The street soon becomes over-run with every type of canine. German shepherds, bulldogs, retrievers, beagles, poodles, chihuahuas, and dachshunds. Great Danes, boxers, cocker spaniels, basset hounds, and pugs. Havanese, Samoyeds, Dobermans, shih tzus, maltipoos, bullmastiffs, rottweilers, and corgis. Klein looks out across the sea of dogs. Cavoodles play fight with koolies as golden retrievers race zig zag with huskies. A gang of sausage dogs are shitting on someone’s lawn. Far ahead, he spots what looks like Groovy.
As Klein makes his way through the pack, he notices the shepherd sitting on the sidewalk. Examining the other dogs, the shepherd recognizes Klein and bares its meat-eating teeth, which could be a growl, but the noise is drowned out in all the baying.
The dog suddenly bounds towards Klein, leaping and knocking him to the ground. It bites savagely at his body, tearing his flesh, working quickly to get to his face. Klein struggles to get a hold of the dog’s throat. The shepherd bites down at his chest, but Klein grips onto the dog’s neck and kicks the hound off him. The shepherd lands with a yelp.
Raising himself up onto his elbows, Klein observes the pack of dogs surrounding the shepherd, who lies still on the road. From the pack, a poodle gingerly approaches the dog. She leans down, sniffs at him, nudges his limp body with her nose, jumping back when the shepherd begins to twitch and foam at the mouth. What the fuck!?
Klein scrambles backwards, back to one of the houses behind him. One of the chihuahuas notice him trying to escape, and yaps at him. The other dogs watch, then slowly stalk him. Klein turns, and, on all fours, begins to crawl quickly towards the house.
Crawling up to the front door, Klein throws the front of his body up and presses down onto the doorhandle. He slides off, his house keys falling from his pocket as he collapses onto the concrete porch. The leaves rustle behind him, a soft breeze murmurs in the street. The door creaks inwards, revealing the smallest gap into a dark room. Klein pushes into this opening, screaming out into the void in front of him. He opens the door and reaches in, desperately searching for any indent in the floor which he could grip onto. Scrabbling around, he finds a crack in the floorboards and begins to drag himself into the room. He stops and gasps for air every few seconds before continuing.
He hears someone approach behind him. A hand reaches down and picks up the house keys. Klein barks. Then barks again. He tries to stand, but only gets up onto his knees before receiving a kick in the ribs. As he falls back onto his side, he can feel the person tighten something around his neck, pulling him away from the door and out onto the sidewalk. C’mon, pisspot. He tries to crawl away but can only get so far ahead before the leash jerks him back. The stranger trails close behind.
Looking out from her window, the cavalier watches the dog struggle to escape.
Daniel Schouten is an emerging writer based in Greater Western Sydney. His short stories, inspired by the musings of three Russian brothers to a vengeful Danish prince, journey through spectrums of melancholy. He is currently completing a double degree in Arts and Communications, which provided him the semester-long opportunity to study in London last year.
