Flash Fiction / Mad Dog Phone Call
That crazy dog is driving me out of my mind. It is a short drive, I know, but is this trip really necessary?
It is getting so that I cannot even sit down for fear of her surprise thumbtacks and whoopie cushions, like the secret teeth and tongue of an overstuffed armchair.
I am talking about my neighbor’s stupid dog: That scrawny excuse of one man’s best friend that yips and yaps and hypertrots around the block like a child’s mechanical toy in heat—the dog that is playing all these practical jokes on me.
Like the time she sneaked into my apartment and stretched Saranwrap over the toilet bowl. If you stretch that stuff tightly enough and put the seat down, you cannpt tell it is there until it is too late.
Or like the time she used magic markers to cover the windshield of my car with little colored dots to make me think I was hallucinating. I was halfway to the ER before I realized the spots were not in my mind.
Of course, I have complained, but my neighbor pretends not to know what I am talking about. He claims he does not even have a dog, let alone one that can throw a water balloon with any amount of accuracy.
But he is a filthy liar!
I have seen him coming home from work in the afternoon with milkbone yummies made to look like innocent fishing tackle, or the harmless evening paper. Treats for his Sweets—that is what he calls her, Sweets, as if the dog were a box of chocolates. I have also seen my neighbor out in the yard late at night, vacuuming pawprints off the grass by the light of the moon. No, sir. he is not fooling anyone, least of all me.
And I have had it up tp here and then some with his lunatic dog. Her little trick this morning made me late again for work, and this time they fired me.
I was just about to leave the apartment when the phone started ringing. I answered it in a funny voice, in case it was a bill collector, “Joe’s Pool Hall. Who in the Hall do you want?”
A voice that sounded like a load of bricks being dragged across the sidewalk said, “Your cow is in my garden again.”
“Is this Jim?” I asked, wondering if my friend, Jim had a garden. Even if he did, what was all this about a cow? I do not have a cow to my name, and Jim knows it. There is nowhere to keep a cow in a two-room efficiency.
“No.” said the scratchy voice, “this isn’t Jim.”
“I think you have the wrong number.” I said patiently.
“You better get that cow out of my garden before I slaughter it!” the voice hissed angrily. It sounded like a knife going through so much tripe.
“Listen,” I said, sounding like a message for proper telephone etiquette—it never occurred to me to hang up.”You have the wrong number. I do not have a cow!”
For a moment the caller was silent and I wondered if we had been disconnected. Suddenly, I heard muffled peals of laughter in the background and with horror I realized it was the neighbor’s dog.
“You say…you don’t have a cow?” she wheezed. “Well, that’s okay—I don’t have a garden!” And having said that, she went into hysterical paroxysms of dog laughter. It sounded like a fly being tickled to death.
Like an insane dentist in the mouth of a haunted house, I pulled the phone from the wall as if it were an evil tooth and sent it crashing through a window…
No doubt about it! That bitch is crazy and I am going to kill her.
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What a pleasure to read this. I love the word “hypertrots.” The pranks remind me of what we did in high school. Never thought of blaming it on a dog! And, a mechanical toy in heat! Bravo
2nd page typo: tp/to
Cow in the garden reminds me of Flannery O’Conner’s short about Mrs. May and the bull.
For flash fiction your words are well used, nothing wasted.
Nitpicking: are ellipses needed after 2nd last line.
I wonder, and that is good, if these are little girls torturing him.
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This was a great read. It had me wondering if the guy narrating was crazy, or if there really was an evil sixth sense dog ruining his life, prank calling, etc. ‘up to here’
Mechanical toy in heat? Dots? Vacuuming pawprints? I feel like I’m the one going crazy. Yet, it was so much fun getting there, because I kept wondering where we were going. And the end didn’t disappoint. This is definitely a view from the other side, how they arrived at this obsession.
My one real disappointment is you don’t describe the dog so she becomes real to the reader, even if she might not be real in the story, she’s real to the narrator.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. Nicely done.
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