Mutinous Dog
The last known writings of one Norman Crayon, esquire

I write to you, dear reader, from the brink of madness. It lies on the border of the world you inhabit and the world of darkness; it is a sickening sepulchral haze of tortured souls and a smell that can only be described as ‘pain’. How I came to be here is a most singular and disturbing tale. Singular yet potentially plural, as many of you sit snug and content, unaware of the dread danger surrounding you like a friend’s embrace. A danger that is sniffing you and tasting the sweet salt of your flesh. The danger may be curled up in front of your fire place as you sit perusing a volume of history written by one of the learned Greek scholars. Yet the unknown danger may be a greater menace than fire escaping its steel and glass enclosure and charring your corpse as easily as it sates itself with the writings of Plutarch. The danger may be greater even that that posed by the Achaeans to the noble citizens of Troy, or that the deadly Minotaur posed to the nubile virgins thrown into his maze.

But do you, at home, need to lie uneasily at night, getting no comfort from your fluffed bed as unrest tugs at the sheets and makes your toes frigid? Maybe I am just an unlucky soul. Many of you dance the sweet tango with Lady Providence without fear of stumbling or tripping. But when it comes to the dance of destiny I have the two left feet that so many men of this era dread when attending the balls and dances of this most social of ages. And we all know you cannot dance with a dog; they merely hold on and try to move their feet.

But back to my madness; I still teeter on the brink and have not yet, thank the lords, descended into it fully. Yet the warning of it, the tale, could save you though it be too late for my wretched carcass. It could preserve your grim sanity from the encroaching plane of unreason. You could stay forever in this blessed dimension where enlightenment reigns and the horrors of the netherworld cannot wander.

Alas, I cannot engage in overwrought hyperbole much longer. A demon of insanity is coming for me. I must recount my tale of mortal terror quickly. I must make haste and download the awful evidence of the campaign of torment onto my hard drive and upload it to the Content Management System. But can any technology host such fearsomeness? Do the words travel across copper wire like a ghost dispatched to a remote corner of the world to strike fear into a gentle browser’s soul? I know not, for my mind has no time to entertain such concerns, as madness is nearing me, and I must begin my tale. The tale of the Mutinous Dog.

June 5, 2006

I awoke this morning early, as is my habit, to read of the news from the large metropoli of New York and London. Being a gentleman of the Anglosphere who is resident on a far flung archipelago I feel somewhat removed from the comings and goings of the major centres of culture and commerce, so I find joy in sipping my morning beverage whilst filling my mind with the activities of my English-speaking big city brethren.

But first a word on my reading arrangements: I sit at an antique bureau Mazarin desk in a thick smoking jacket with a heater that warms my feet and slowly turns the area below the desk into a small tropical cavern. In this little nook my loyal dog will curl up at my feet and we enjoy the accumulating warmth together in a delightful arrangement that lends comfort to my body and succour to my mind.

Yet this morning I sensed a change in my loyal companion. Instead of hysterical joy at my rising, I was greeted with grudging recognition. His tail yet wagged, however it did not escape my notice that upon the digestion of his breakfast biscuits the tail hung limply between his proud hindquarters like the broken wing of a dying albatross upon the deck of sailing ship marked now for death by this ill omen.

Nudging past my legs he walked brutally upon my shoeless toes, then flopped down like a dying elephant blocking the flow of warm air to my tender, hairless legs. “What, ho!” I exclaimed. “You accursed hound, you know my routines and proclivities. Away!!!” I bellowed giving him a firm kick to the rump to send him rightly scurrying from my study.

As I turned back to my news reports I felt his eyes piercing the back of my head. “The cur, I will not give him the pleasure of attention” I muttered to a Paul Krugman column. Near on a minute later I heard the tinkling of his collar, a noise that would come to signify so much of what is horrible and inhuman in this sorry narrative, as the dog descended back down the stairs to the sleeping quarters of my house. I feared then that refuge in the clear thinking and logical reasoning of Mr. Krugman would be of no aid to me.

June 7, 2006

Two days passed with my hound behaving as if normal. But on this particularly chill evening (was the cold wind a metaphor for the arrival of evil, as many a ghost story has told us?) as I prepared a nutritious meal of sweet meats and seasonal vegetables, another event of ominous portent occurred. As is my dog’s penchant he weaved around my feet searching for scraps, hoping that fate will be his friend and slacken the grip of my index finger and thumb on the mouth watering salami I had on my cutting board.

As I delicately sliced the salami my eye caught sight of an unknown man wandering in my garden. Now my garden is famed throughout the area, it is often opened to the appreciative public in spring, so I did not appreciate some plodding clod in workman’s boots trampling about willy-nilly. I always take care to plant tulip bulbs in the winter, and as any keen cultivator will know, the ground above those valuable Liliaceae can look like a muddy patch until those delightful blossoms break ground and are in their full bloom, at which point they raise the tenor of the soul; even the soul of one so hoarse as the great galoot trudging about my flower beds that evening.

I called a halt to my cooking (not something I do lightly - a second here or there can be the difference between success and failure) and started for the rear of the house to confront this man. Yet my dog did not follow, he took just a mere, trifling look at me then stared back at the salami with his eyes in a slothful reverie. I was flabbergasted. “What have I got you for you foolish swine. I don’t feed you on meats greater than many families eat in a year for you to shirk your guarding duties. Get thee out thine dog door and investigate.” But the impudent cur only deigned to turn his attention from the salami to me for one chilling moment more. In that moment his eyes said to me, “You’re on your own”.

“Fine” I declared and strode out the door to find a lowly servant of the electrical utility firm checking my wattage counter. “Hullo guv’nor” he said to me as he wandered to my rear gate.
“Good evening, sir, and keep to my brick path on future inspections”, I replied, my tone underlining the meaning of dispatch in my words.

Yet worse was to come than trampled bulbs. When I returned to the kitchen I found my precious salami gone, and a pool of translucent drool on the floor below the chopping board. My dog, that twisted mutinous hound, had ruined my evening meal and was now sitting idly in the living room gazing insolently at me while his tail slowly wagged side-to-side in freakish mockery of a happy, contented canine.

June 9, 2006

This afternoon it happened. The act that I feared. Here in this house where we live alone, my dog turned from friend to foe. Why? I can not say. Is it a relationship gone stale? Have my attentions to his grooming and stomach rubbing been so remiss that the foolish beast, who puts so much stock in these pleasantries, let a simmering rage (I hazard to guess that all inferior beasts have some rage aimed at the masters) be stoked to a raging conflagration? I do not know.

Why did I not get out sooner? Why? Why? After the two shocking incidents I forgive you for thinking me a stubborn, suicidal fool. Yet there are so many questions and I know not how to ask them. Despite training and nurturing my mind at the finest schools and following through on the finest personal habits of reading and debate, I find I have nothing to grasp. Something is in that dog that is not understandable by science or reason. Something I overlooked. Something I did not take seriously until now. Something I thought, prayed, was worms.

Yet, what could a whelp of 50-pound-an-3 offer a gentleman who is a member of the Hunting Club? I will tell you, but I must tell you quickly as madness begins to engulf me: Surprise. Surprise is his threat. He is always around, as much a fixture of the house as the kettle and settee. Surprise is how it happened.

Only fragments remain to me now, blood, pours from my side, starving my brain of life fluid….

…a dinner party…Beatrice Merriwhether, my beloved….a ring….it’s in my hand…and there, her father, her mother….even her impressionable little sister who is the source of so many titillating rumours at the Club…

I…I…I speak….a question to Mr. Merriwhether…..Beatrice blushes….her mother, she is beaming….then a growl from the darkened door way….panic now….blood….

my beloved…my new family….my new wealthy family….they are being torn into bloody strips no thicker than a railway bond of which they are a significant holder….and which I will now never be….

….I hide beneath the stairs…that’s where I am now….here…I have caught up and now scribble my notes in real time…I hear my dog's collar tinkling as he paces back and forth….there is a scratching….a keening wail….my dog…my loyal dog wants to join me in here…he wants to curl up at my feet as is his habit…..

...madness comes for me….my dog…my sweet dog….I need my dog if I am to confront this….I reach for the door and let him in….

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