The Mad and the Macabre

- 11 -

Charlie lay in bed, Liz asleep next to him, thinking that he'd never felt so content. He was pretty sure his performance hadn't been very good, but she'd seemed reasonably satisfied and she certainly hadn't complained. Charlie figured he had the benefit of her two-year dry spell working in his favor.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, Liz woke up and began to kiss his chest. "Are you still frisky?" she asked.

Charlie nodded.

"We should do it in a way that honors our doggies," she said, getting on her hands and knees.

Charlie spent all day Sunday at Liz's apartment. They watched a couple of movies and took the dogs for a couple of walks, but spent most of the time in bed. Charlie tried to imagine her strapped down to the table in his basement. It was a repellent image.

He left Sunday night with a kiss and a promise to see her again after work the next day.

* * *

Alicia walked over to his desk as soon as he sat down the next morning.

"You are such a slut," she whispered. Charlie felt his face turn red and his ears burn as she walked back around the corner, giggling.

* * *

"So do you think I have a girlfriend now?" Charlie asked Kutter, as he put on the dog's leash right after getting home. "I was only there one night, so I guess it counts as a one night stand, but I spent all day there, too. Don't you usually leave first thing in the morning if it's a one night stand?"

Kutter, as always, provided no useful feedback.

When Charlie went over to her apartment, Liz greeted him wearing nothing but a string bikini and some freshly applied chocolate on her nipples. Charlie decided that she was indeed his girlfriend.

* * *

March 24th. The night of the new hunt.

It used to be like Christmas six times a year. In the days prior to a hunt, he'd be so filled with excitement that he could barely control himself. He'd spend hours sitting in his living room, opening and closing one of his pocketknives, fantasizing about where he'd cut first. Had to start with the extremities--fingers and toes. He didn't want a victim to bleed to death too soon.

Tonight...he just didn't feel like it.

He was enjoying work a lot more these days. Sure, he'd still quit if he won the lottery, received a surprise inheritance, or got a higher offer elsewhere, but the day went by much more quickly now that he interacted with his co-workers in a friendly manner. His relationship with Liz was going wonderfully. He was relatively certain that she considered him more of a "boy-toy" than a "soul mate," but Charlie had never been anybody's boy-toy before and he liked it.

He didn't need to hunt anymore.

Didn't need to kill anymore.

And so, on this particular March 24th, he was not going to roam the streets hunting for prey. He was going to put on the iPod he'd just bought last night, put on the "Walking Kutter" playlist, take his Boston terrier out for a nice long stroll, and then go out with his girlfriend.

"This is where I found you," said Charlie, as Kutter sniffed the bench. "If I hadn't taken you home, you would've been a dog Popsicle. Kutter the dog-flavored Popsicle. That's no way to end your life, buddy."

As usual, the park was empty. They really needed to promote this place better. Charlie unhooked Kutter's leash and played fetch with a rubber ball for about fifteen minutes. Then, on one throw, Kutter ran in the opposite direction, toward the street.

"Wrong way!" Charlie shouted. It wasn't a particularly busy street, but he could hear a car coming. "Kutter! Get back here!"

Kutter kept running. Charlie took off after him.

Charlie could see the car now. A small one, but Kutter was headed straight for--

The car took a left turn, putting Kutter out of potential danger.

Charlie saw what Kutter was running for. A dog on the other side of the street. "Kutter!" he shouted. "You stop right now!"

Kutter stopped, then went into a barking fit. Charlie hurried over to him and snapped the leash onto his collar. "Don't ever run off like that again," Charlie said. "You could've been hit by a car! Do you know how worried I was?"

He glanced across the street again. Now there were two dogs. Big ones. The one he'd seen first was a big black dog--a rottweiler, he thought it was called. He thought the other one might be a pit bull but he wasn't completely sure what pit bulls looked like, just that they were vicious, mean dogs. And the two men holding their leashes didn't appear much friendlier.

"Time to head home," he said. Kutter barked at the dogs again. Brave but stupid.

"Hey there!" said the first man, waving to Charlie from across the street. "How's it going?"

Charlie didn't answer. He tugged on Kutter's leash to draw his attention away from the other dogs and began to walk down the sidewalk.

"Don't walk away from us!" the man said. "We just wanna see your dog!"

Charlie kept walking for a few moments, then stopped. He really didn't want to talk to these guys, but if they decided to turn their scary dogs loose he could be in a lot of trouble. He had a knife in his inside jacket pocket, so if they intended to mug him he'd take them by surprise with a blade to the face.

Kutter growled as the men and their dogs approached. Charlie shushed him. They probably wanted nothing more than to laugh a good laugh about how they had big monster dogs and he had a silly looking clown-faced dog. Or else they just wanted directions.

The men walked their dogs across the street. They were both smiling, but they were some of the least friendly smiles Charlie had ever seen. He wanted to pick Kutter up to keep the dog out of harm's way; however, that would prevent him from using the knife if the men truly did intend to mug him. Though he wasn't worried about losing money, since he only had seven dollars in his wallet, some muggers got mad if you couldn't pay them off and stabbed or shot you to vent their frustration.

The men were of equal height--probably over six feet tall--and both had facial hair, though the first had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee while the second had an unkempt full beard. The first man seemed to have bathed much more recently than the second.

"Nice dog," said the cleaner man.

Charlie tightened his grip on the handle of Kutter's leash. "He's mine."

"Nobody said he wasn't."

"What do you want?"

"I thought I already said that we wanted to see your dog." The pit bull sniffed at Kutter, and Charlie took a step back, pulling Kutter away. "It's a pretty nice dog. How much does one of those things cost these days?"

"I didn't steal him."

"Why would you think that we're accusing you of stealing him? I'd think that the owner of such a fine dog would be used to people wanting to see him."

Charlie took another step back. "Keep your pit bull away from him."

"Pit bull? This isn't a pit bull. This is an American Staffordshire terrier. And even if he was, you're not one of those people who think that pit bulls go around mauling babies, are you? They got a bad rap. Pit bulls are great dogs if the owner takes care of them. When you hear about them ripping some kid apart, it's almost never the dog's fault."

"I don't have any money," Charlie said.

"Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid." The man laughed, but there was no humor to it. "We've seen you around and we liked your dog. You're acting like you have a guilty conscience. You do something you shouldn't have?"

"I need to get home," Charlie said.

"Why?"

"I'm meeting my girlfriend."

"Then by all means, don't let us keep you." The man gestured grandly toward the way Charlie had been walking. "I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a man who's gonna get himself some."

Charlie led Kutter away from them. Behind him, one of the dogs growled.

"None of that, Bear," said the first man. "He's going to get himself laid. Let's not ruin his night."

Charlie wanted to run, but didn't dare. He settled for walking very, very quickly, tugging hard on Kutter's leash when the dog tried to stop for sniff breaks.

* * *

Charlie and Kutter sat on the couch. What had those men wanted? Were they simply jerks? Were they friends of Byron? Maybe Byron had never really owned Kutter, and these men were after him to take the dog back.

"You're being ridiculous," Charlie said out loud. It wasn't part of some elaborate hoax.

Then again, Byron might not have been Kutter's original owner. Charlie might be his third owner, and one of the men in the park might have been the first.

If so, why wouldn't they just ask for him back? Why be all weird about it?

Either way, he didn't feel like going out with Liz tonight. He called her, claiming that he was sick to his stomach (which was technically true, even if he blamed it on food poisoning) and cancelled their movie date. She told him that she hoped he felt better tomorrow, and made a very pleasant suggestion for an evening activity if he did.

Charlie wished that he could report the men for harassment, but having the police investigate why he might have people angry with him was probably not the best course of action. He'd just have to wait this out and be on the defensive.

Kutter didn't seem distressed by this. Charlie wished he could be more like the dog.

Charlie wasn't sure what to do the next morning. He didn't want to leave Kutter at home--what if the men broke in and dognapped him? Liz would probably let him drive over and leave Kutter there for the day, but he'd still be leaving Kutter unattended, and her place might not be any safer than his if the men were following him.

So he called in sick. Bob was fine with it.

"I can't do this forever," Charlie told Kutter. "They don't give me many sick days each year. But I'll protect you. I promise."

Charlie kept three guns--fully registered--around the house in case of emergencies. These "emergencies" were supposed to be in the almost inconceivable case that one of his victims escaped from the basement, but dog defense was an even more valid purpose. He didn't want to keep a gun on his person, since he couldn't bring himself to trust that it wouldn't go off accidentally, so he took the one in his sock drawer out and rested it on the coffee table for easier access.

Under normal circumstances, it would've been a very pleasant day, since he did very little except watch television and hang out with Kutter. He took Kutter for a couple of cautious walks and saw no sign of the men. If he was lucky, they'd simply been a couple of creeps who were having fun messing with him, and his life could return to its standard level of paranoia in a couple of days.

* * *

What his day job needed was a new policy where dogs were allowed to accompany their masters to work. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Charlie asked Kutter. "You could sleep under my desk all morning, I'd take you for a walk at lunch, you could go back to sleep all afternoon, and we'd go home. That would solve all of my problems."

He thought it might be funny to send Bob an e-mail with that suggestion, adding a smiley face to the end to make sure Bob knew he was joking. But it was getting close to time for his annual performance review, and he didn't want Bob to think that he was using humor as a brownnosing tactic.

He took Kutter down into the basement and set some cardboard boxes on their side for Kutter to hide in if it came down to that. They weren't very good hiding places and he didn't think that Kutter would figure out what to do with them, but Charlie wanted to keep open any options he possibly could. He gave his dog some extra petting, then locked him in the basement.

Around noon, Charlie became too anxious at work and told Bob that he needed to take a half day off.

When he hurried down into the basement, Kutter ran out of one of the boxes, perfectly fine.

"We can't live like this," he told Kutter. "It was just a couple of stupid men playing a joke. They haven't come back. We'll probably never see them again. Only an idiot would keep worrying about them, right?"

* * *

The next evening, as Charlie poured some dry food into Kutter's bowl, there was a knock at the door. He finished pouring the food, walked into the living room, and looked through the peephole.

It was both of the men. And their dogs.

Charlie backed away from the door, slowly and carefully, hoping that the men hadn't heard his footsteps.

The knocking grew in intensity.

"We know you're in there," said the man who'd done all of the talking before. "It's rude to leave guests waiting out on your porch."

Charlie picked the gun up off his coffee table and shoved it into the waist of his pants. He pulled his shirt over the weapon, but it was too obvious--it looked silly. And he still didn't trust it not to go off in his pants. If he opened the door and immediately shoved the barrel into the first man's face, he ran the risk that the man might simply pluck the gun from his fingers and turn it on him.

He decided to keep the gun in his hand and sit on the couch. If they broke in, he'd shoot them. He had neighbors, so they had to know that they couldn't make too much of a ruckus or somebody would call the police, even if Charlie himself couldn't.

Kutter joined him.

The men continued to knock on the door, but didn't say anything else. After a couple of minutes, they left.

"Don't worry," he told Kutter. "If they try to hurt you, I'll kill them."