The doordog had a heap of dog in him, a whole heap. He was standing upright, on two clenched hindlegs, and that was the just about the most human thing about him. His muzzle was long and matted with dirt. His teeth were crowding his jaw, his pink lips drooling a bath of foam. He patted each of us down in the small hallway. Finding nothing on Mandy and Twink, finding the gun on me. He took the gun away in his clumsy paws and hung it on a coat hook and then shooed us up the dark stairway, after the Karli. ‘Top floor,’ he growled.
I took one step forward, and felt the soft squelch as I brought my foot down.
Oh yuk!
The stairs were covered in dogshit.
So were my shoes.
So I followed Twinkle like a mad dancer, one foot here, one there, between the dungheaps, moving up to the dim landing.
The top step led straight into the kitchen. Along one wall were nailed the carcasses of dozens of dreamsnakes, shimmers of green and violet. Three dogmen were eating there, out of bowls at the table. The room was in darkness, but you could smell the meat they were eating, and lumps of it were falling to the floor as they slobbered at it. The smell was sweet to my nostrils, but I couldn’t work out why. It was certainly having an effect on them; the more they ate, the more they howled. One of them fell on the floor, landing in some of his own shit. It didn’t bother him, just kept on rolling around, like he was having some kind of trance.
I don’t think they even knew we were there.
Karli took one sniff into the kitchen and then raced out of the room, following some more succulent dog scent, along a corridor, and then up the next flight of steps, Twinkle pulled along by the tight lead.
I hung back for a moment, Mandy just behind. There was a closed door to my left. The door ahead of me was slightly ajar, so I pushed it open. The room was bathed in darkness, with a smell like dog sex coming in waves. One whiff of it and I was back in the pink Vurt, Bitch on Heat, Cinders urging me on. And when she looked back at me, it wasn’t Cinders, or Desdemona; it was the Game Cat there, smiling in the dog’s eyes.
No.
Not now. Do this alone. No feathers.
I brought myself down.
A lone dog girl was lying on a black carpet, her long tongue licking down between her split legs.
The room smelt like porn. Dogporn. Porn for the nose.
The bitchgirl looked up at me.
She had eyes of the brightest human blue, set amidst a face of fur.
I couldn’t look into those eyes.
I closed the door gently, and then turned to the door on the left. Mandy was no longer with me. Where was that girl? No matter. Do it alone. Check every room. Keep looking—
A tiny noise. There! Listen! A tiny noise just coming in, almost lost in the howling from the kitchen. I pressed my ear against the left side door. There it was. The sound of alien flesh rubbing up the wrong way against planet Earth.
I pushed the door open.
Slowly.
Do this slowly, holding the breath, keeping cool.
I went into the room.
There was a smell of bad meat, a rancid haze that clogged at the senses, bringing thoughts of death.
The Thing was in the room.
I could hear him calling me, in that strange tongue.
The room was dark, dark as all the rest, but I could just make him out there, his fat bulk. The curtains were closed, just a glimmer of a streetlamp filtering in. In the shadows I saw a thin shape moving. It was bent over near the Thing. A dull glint came from its fingers. The shape moved slightly as I stepped inside, lifting its head up towards me, and I saw the snout dribbling, a slow turn of its thin long face.
The shape howled, high pitched.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a young dogboy and he was crouched over a bed. The Thing was tied down to the bed with old dogleads. Dogboy had a breadknife in his paws, and he was cutting chunks from the Thing’s stomach. Beside the bed lay a bowl. Some meat was in there already. My mind jumped back to the kitchen, what I saw there as we passed—the dogs eating and the sweet aroma of the meat.
Sudden flash of me arriving back down in the real, the Thing pressed up on top of me, that sweet aroma rising from his skin.
Those dogs were eating the Thing! Bit by bit. Letting him regenerate between meals. And then cutting some more muscle off, taking that featherless flight into Vurt, direct to the flesh.
Something snapped just then. Something happened.
Not sure what. But during it I felt the cut of the breadknife on my arm, up just past the elbow. Didn’t hurt. Even though I saw the red spurting onto my jacket sleeve. The dogboy was howling as I picked him up.
Go take a flying fuck, dogshit!
Dogboy made a fat sound against the wallpaper, and then slid and crumpled. He lay there, broken, whimpering.
I went over to the Thing. My arm just starting to hurt now, but I managed the straps alright, cutting them with the breadknife. The Thing didn’t move. Didn’t even make a noise. He just lay there, weak-hearted. He’d lost a ton of weight over the lost weeks, eaten away; his alien metabolism battling hard against the cuttings, but not quite keeping up. I unwound the leads from the bed, and then wrapped them around his soft body a few times, making a harness. The Thing was muttering now, in that thick tongue of his. I tickled him on the stomach, where he liked it. Maybe it did some good. He was so thin I almost felt that I could carry him alone. So I slipped the leads around one shoulder, and then around the other, took a deep breath, and pulled him up.
I had him up there, aloft and free, his alien voice calling to me. Couldn’t make out a word but it sounded like comfort anyway, like he was glad to be carried.
I walked back to the landing to fetch Twinkle and Karli.
Up the next flight to the top floor. Another two doors waiting. The floor had been cleaned recently, and it made a nice change, to be stepping lightly, free of the shit. I was covered enough already. A note pinned to the stairwell read ‘No dirty paws beyond this point. That includes you, Slobba!’ It was written in Bridget’s hand. Both doors were closed, but the one straight ahead had a flicker of blue light around the jamb. And the slightest hint of dog smell coming through, mixed in with flowers.
The Thing was weighing down on my shoulders.
I heard Dingo’s latest love ballad—Venus in Fur—playing softly.
And then the voice, ‘Is that you, Scribble?’
Bridget’s voice from behind the door.
I had the Thing. I had Curious Yellow. I could have just ridden out of there.
Instead I went on through.
DAS UBERDOG
‘How could you do this, Bridget?’
She raised her sleepy head from the bed to look at me. Her eyes were loaded with dreams, and a red flush coloured her usually pale flesh. She was lying on a ruffled bed, wearing just a man’s white shirt and a lace of shadow-smoke. The room was dark except for the play of light coming from the candle on the window ledge. It had an azure flame; the palest blue light gently shining over the room.
‘The candle’s there for you, Scribb,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d find me.’
‘I guess it took me too long,’ I answered.
There was a man lying in the bed, covered by sheets. He had a handsome face on him, long brown hair; maybe just a trace of dog. One hand lovingly stroked Bridget’s neck, whilst the other held open a book. I could see the title in gold, embossed, the sonnets of John Donne.
The bedroom looked clean and human in the candle’s glow, full of the smell of flowers and incense. I guess this was more of Bridget’s work; an attempt to mask the smell of dog. The flowers did a good job, but only just; the aroma of dog lingered like one of Dingo’s bass notes.
And I got the picture of Bridget gardening this small human space, in the middle of Turdsville. What was that girl on? What was the motivation?
And why am I the last person to ask this?
Karli was on the bed with the young couple. She was trying to nu
dge the sheets back, getting her nose under there, her pink arse on display, raised up. Twinkle was sitting in an armchair, watching Karli’s game.
I was watching all this from out on the landing, through the now wide-open door, with the breadknife still clutched, tight, in my right hand.
Bridget lit a cigarette in the blue shadows.
‘We’ve come to take you out of here,’ I said.
Bridget turned back to me, her mouth full of smoke, giving me that old-time sleepy smile. ‘Look at the Thing,’ I c