Snarl

by Steve Carr

The last customer to leave at closing time, Wilson Tramain stumbled out of the Chirping Bird Saloon into a cold drizzling rain that had turned the sidewalk glossy. The saloon’s neon sign that hung in the window shined a blood-colored light on the pavement. He took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his shirt pocket and then zipped up his nylon jacket and raised the collar up around his neck. As he glanced up and down the empty street he took a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and took a long drag on it, turning the tip of the cigarette into a glowing momentary flash of fiery red. He wadded the empty pack, tossed it in the gutter, and watched as a rivulet of water carried it away. He put the lighter in a jacket pocket, turned, and headed for home. He didn’t feel drunk – not as drunk as he usually was after spending an entire evening in the saloon – but he had to walk slowly, balancing himself with each measured step he took.

At the crosswalk a block down he stopped, leaned against the lamppost, and spent several minutes smoking while watching the few cars that passed as they appeared out of and disappeared into the darkness. The drivers and passengers were lost in the shadows inside the cars, the faces of those who stared at him, seen only as momentary flashes of pale skin, if seen at all. When the taillights of the last car to pass faded in the distance, he tossed the butt of the cigarette into the street and then crossed. Mid way across the street he saw a dog standing in the doorway of a dress shop with only the ambient light of night making it visible, its breed unrecognizable, but it was the size of an adult German Shepherd. He had a phobic fear of dogs, no matter their size, and had been terrified of them since he was age nine and was mauled and nearly killed by one. He kept a wary eye on it as he continued walking, reaching the other sidewalk with perspiration running from under his arms and down his sides and feeling as if he was going to vomit. When he stepped up onto the curb, he heard it, the dog’s snarl, guttural and threatening. The dog hadn’t moved, but stared at him, its eyes gleaming like embers. Staggering, Wilson began to run and continued running the remaining three blocks to the steps to his apartment building. There he collapsed against the railing, breathless, his head and heart pounding, and looked to make sure the dog hadn’t followed him before he began up the steps and went into the building.

* * *

His mouth feeling as if he had been chewing on dirty wool socks all night, Wilson took another swig of mouthwash and swished it around for several moments before spitting it into the bathroom sink. He bent over, put his cupped hands under the running water, filling his palms, and splashed it on his face. When he rose up and stared at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror he let out a shocked gasp, imagining for a moment that what was looking back at him from the glass was the dog. He blinked, hard, and seeing his own face, he let out an audible sigh of relief. He turned off the faucet and left the bathroom. In his bedroom he stepped over the clothes he had worn the night before that were strewn about on the floor. The room reeked of stale whiskey and cigarette smoke. At the window, he stared out at the row of apartment buildings across the street, all the same as the one he lived in, red brick and four stories high. Puddles dotted the sidewalk. He raised the window and drank in the cool, damp air that rushed in. Like every Sunday, the street was as quiet as a morgue. He hacked up a glob of phlegm and spat it out the window before turning to see Celia’s rose-colored scarf hanging on the hook on the bedroom door. He crossed the room, grabbed the scarf, and held it to his nose and inhaled the fragrance of her perfume that clung to the silky material. He then bunched it up, went to the dresser and shoved it in a drawer filled with women’s scarves, hosiery, mufflers and bandannas.

He gave the idea of taking a shower a moment’s thought, decided it could wait despite the stench of sweat that wafted from his body, and then dressed. He went into the kitchen, fixed a glass of orange juice, adding a shot glass full of whiskey to it, and guzzled it down. He then put on his nylon jacket, grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes, Celia’s keys that were on the dresser, and left his apartment. He lived on the third floor and as he went down the stairs the aromas of coffee and frying bacon assaulted his olfactory senses. The smell made him gag. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten anything. Celia had commented that he was too thin and should eat more. He shrugged it off. Celia made several observations about his looks – his mustache needed trimming, his hair was oily, he should get his teeth cleaned, the scars that remained on his shoulders and chest from the childhood dog mauling were disgusting – but she had slept with him anyway.

When he stepped outside, his attention was immediately drawn to something moving in the window of the first floor apartment across the street. It was a dog much like the one he had seen the night before, peeking out between the curtains, there for just a moment, and then it vanished.

“I have to get a grip," he said aloud. “My imagination is playing tricks on me."

He walked down the steps and turned at the bottom, trying to keep from looking at the window as he walked away.

He looked back anyway.

At the corner he got into the cross-town bus.

* * *

Leaving him in a cloud of diesel fumes, the bus pulled away from the curb and merged into a steady flow of traffic made up mostly of parishioners from the local churches heading home. He lit a cigarette and took several puffs before he began to walk up the tree-lined street bordered on both sides by small two-story homes. This was Celia’s neighborhood, where she hadn’t invited him to, but he had visited it often enough since meeting her to keep an eye on her. In the middle of the night it looked different, like foreign territory, less welcoming. “Curiosity killed the cat," his mother often told him when he was a child, but his curiosity was an intoxicant, like liquor.

The sudden barking of a dog from one of the backyards sent shivers up his spine. He stopped, glanced around to make certain he was safe, and then continued on. Dead leaves snapped and crumbled under the soles of his shoes, emitting barely audible but distinctive firecracker-like pops.

At the house several ahead of where Celia lived he passed by the chain link fence that enclosed the yard before abruptly freezing at its gate. On it hung a black and red “Beware of Dog” sign. In the darkness of night he hadn’t seen it before. Then he heard a dog’s snarl, but it wasn’t coming from anywhere inside the fence. He slowly turned and saw standing in the shadow of a tree, what looked to be the same dog as before, only now he could see it more clearly. It was a mixed breed with brown fur and black markings on its back. Its lips were curled back and its sharp teeth were bared. Drool, like clumps of soap suds, dripped from its mouth. Its tail slowly swished from side to side as if being controlled by the dial of a metronome and its entire body trembled. Wilson felt the warmth of his own urine running down his leg.

Without thinking, he began to run. He sped past Celia’s house and didn’t stop running until he reached the much busier Scarlet Street. There, he ran into the Sunrise Diner. He slammed their glass door closed and held it shut for several moments, wheezing and panting, watching for the dog, but it didn’t appear.

“You okay, honey?" a voice asked from behind him.

Winston turned. The name tag on the pale pink waitress uniform worn by a young, pretty redhead with a bob cut, was Marlene. There was a pitying look in her expressive dark green eyes as she gazed at him, scanning his appearance from his shoes to his head.

“You okay?" she asked again.

“I was being chased by a vicious dog," he stammered. “I hate dogs."

“I’m a cat person," she replied. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee or something. Have a seat in that booth by the window and I’ll bring it to you right away."

“Just a glass of ice water," he said as he walked toward the booth she pointed to and sat down.

When she turned to go behind the counter, he watched, noticing the long strings that hung from her apron. He then glanced up at the exposed skin on the back of her neck. He closed his eyes while under the table, his hands clenched, twisted and turned.

* * *

By the time Winston returned to his apartment it was late afternoon. The shouts of the neighborhood children who were playing football in the street carried through his closed windows, muffled, but loud enough to keep him from napping on his living room couch. He took small swigs from his last bottle of bourbon, cursing under his breath at not having bought more the day before when the liquor store down the street was open. In one hand he dangled Celia’s keys from his fingertips, shaking them to hear them jingle the same way she had the first time they met at the Chirping Bird Saloon. She was several times above him in every way imaginable so it surprised him when she agreed to come home with him that first night, and to return several times after that, despite her complaints about him. He quickly realized, however, it was she who had him on a leash, not the other way around. She was so secretive about her life, not willing to have him at her place or to introduce him to her friends at the saloon. His curiosity about her drove him insane.

He missed her, but not terribly.

He sat up and pitched the keys onto the coffee table, landing next to a Sunrise Diner check receipt that had Marlene’s telephone number scrawled on it. He took several swallows of bourbon and then stood up, waited for the room to stop spinning, and then walked into his bedroom, carrying the almost empty bottle with him. He placed the bottle on the dresser and then opened his clothes closet. On the floor lay a rolled up rug. Celia’s feet in her ruby-red pumps (“The same color as Dorothy’s slippers," she had said) stuck out of one end.

“Why do you women make me do this to you?" he mumbled, thinking of Celia and the four women who preceded her. “Maybe Marlene will be different.”

He pulled the rug out of the closet and left it in the middle of the floor and then went into the bathroom. He stripped out of his clothes, showered, shaved, and doused himself with aftershave. When he came out he stepped over the rug, got clothes out of the closet and changed into them. He then grabbed the bottle of bourbon and sat on the edge of his bed and stared out the window.

* * *

At nightfall Winston stood up, smoothed out the wrinkles in his pants, and dropped the empty bourbon bottle into the waste basket already filled to capacity with other empty bottles. He then took his rarely used cellphone out of a dresser drawer and called Marlene. It rang several times before he was directed to leave a voice message. “Meet me at that Chirping Bird Saloon I told you about tonight around ten," he said. “I have an errand to run before that." As he put the phone back in the drawer he muttered angrily, “I hope she’s not playing games by not answering her phone." He then went into the living room, put on his jacket and filled its pockets with cigarettes, a lighter and Celia’s keys. He walked back into the bedroom, hoisted the rug over his shoulder and then left his apartment. He quietly went down the stairs and out of the building. By the time he reached the dumpster at the side of the building, he was breathless and his legs were wobbly. Just before he raised the cover of the dumpster he thought he heard the snarl of that dog. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up. He quickly glanced around and not seeing anything he threw Celia into the dumpster and shut the cover. He walked out to the sidewalk, brushed off his clothes, and headed for the bus stop. As he sat on the bus bench he smoked several cigarettes as he toyed with Celia’s keys.

* * *

When Winston was nine years-old he walked by the Griffith Auto Salvage lot every day going to and coming from school. The lot was filled with junked cars and surrounded by a tall fence. At one corner of the lot sat Rudy’s dog house. Rudy was a large mastiff who was kept chained to a pole that was impaled into the ground in front of his house. Because he was a surprisingly sweet-natured animal, Rudy was there more as a visual deterrent than anything else, although “Beware of Dog” signs were posted in several places on the fence. Every day that Winston passed by he stopped long enough to throw stones at Rudy and poke at the dog with a long branch that he stuck through the links in the fence. Over time, the dog grew more and more agitated and aggressive any time Winston appeared. The dog growled, snarled, snapped its teeth and barked at the boy until one day it broke free of the pole, leaped over the fence and pounced on Winston. The boy would have been mauled to death had he not been saved by a passerby carrying a concealed weapon who shot Rudy in the head just as the dog was about to bite into the boy’s neck.

Winston never told anyone what had provoked Rudy to attack him. Had it been known that he taunted Rudy and had he been asked why he had teased the dog the way he did, he would have answered, “I was curious to see what he would do.”

The incident had left him traumatized in regards to dogs from there on, but didn’t change his curious nature.

It was that same curiosity that led him to wonder how a woman would react as he strangled her to death.

* * *

The sky was filled with a blood moon when Winston stepped off of the bus. Its reflection cast a crimson glow on the street where Celia had lived as he walked beneath the trees, kicking at the dead leaves being blown in his path by chilly breezes. He kept his head down, his shoulders hunched, willing himself to be invisible to anyone who might see him just as he did when stalking the women he dated. Other than the rustling of the leaves and creaking tree branches, it was quiet. He cautiously approached the yard with the “Beware of Dog” sign on its fence, and then quickly rushed by it, keeping his eyes and ears alert to any sign of a dog. When he reached where Celia had lived he stood on the sidewalk for several moments staring up the dark windows of her second floor apartment.

“Now, lets see what you were keeping hidden from me," he mumbled as he took her keys out of the jacket pocket.

He slowly ambled up the walkway to the door that led to her place. There was three days worth of mail stuck in the slot in the door, the number of days she had been dead. He put the key in the lock and turned it.

A dog’s snarl sounded, seeming to come from every direction at once.

He nervously glanced around, stammered “my imagination," and then opened the door.

The large dog with brown fur with black markings stood on the mat at the bottom of the stairs. Its fangs were bared. A deadly growl arose from its throat just before it leaped at Winston and sunk its teeth into his Adam’s apple.

Winston fell backward, unable to scream, too paralyzed with fear to fight off the dog.

The last curious thought Winston had was, I wonder what it feels like to be dead?

The End