The Pit Bull by Tom Hamilton	Part 1 Part 2 appear in this issue.
conclusion

The fog was drifting past its still frame like it was the trick shape of some dark log on an icy lake. I could not see the curve of its snout, nor the sneer of its teeth, just the drab silhouette of what appeared to be a black body. It looked relaxed, unhurried, as if it knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. Confident that it could close the distance between us in three kinetic steps. Sure that it could tear my throat out whenever it wished. I stood frozen, like a cat or a raccoon which had just been chased up a tree. Afraid to move and terrified to stand still.

The wetness seeped through my clothes as God continued to piss onto the plains. (and the boy in the bright teal football helmet purposefully takes it off, so he can kiss the brunette cheerleader who is dressed in rasta flag baked yellow, rubber ball red, rich house lawn green and the blue in which those weeping see the world through.) Still, it just sat there, sizing me up. Its head turned slightly, but I still could not tell whether or not the look on its face was quizzical or viscous. I reached into my jeans groping for a pocket knife or a razor blade. Anything to defend myself after the inevitable charge, and could only come up with my keys. Which I quickly arranged into spikes between my fists.

“RRRRRRRGGGHHH!!!”

I heard it growl again. This time a bit more drawn out, lower, meaner. Cutting through the live silence like a pick ax. I was too afraid to clutch at my chest and the panic began to escape. I tried to speak, to call out to it as if it were a person, but the air in my throat would not drag across my vocal chords and no words found the silver blackness. It came off the haunches as if it were about to spring. Then, an anomaly occurred:

Like during the miracle at Fatima, a dancing red sun found its way through an impossible hole in the dense clouds. Just when I was positive that the day was gone for good. This unlikely light exposed a second chain link fence which was no more than fifteen feet away. I did not even bother to risk a glimpse at the Pit Bull,

I broke and ran... my arms flailing in a girlish dervish... drizzle and tears of loathing and ridicule chromed on my dry, chapped cheeks... I did not hear the dog bounding... Yet I knew that it was behind me as sure as the Sun would dip behind the seam of the horizon... In three frenzied seconds I was near the fence... I jumped like a pole vaulter long before I normally would have... The anxiety charging my limbs with a superhuman level of athleticism... I catapulted myself onto the links... Climbing before I even clutched them... I felt the scrape of yellow canine teeth narrowly slide off the back pocket of my black Levi’s... That same animal head crashed up against my boot on its way to the ground... I reached the top of the fence quicker than an escaping burglar... The off balance dog must have curled into a ball... For I heard the musical chime of the links as it rolled up and collided with the fence... I quickly cleared the spikes and hopped down from the top... Absurdly afraid that it could somehow still reach me up there...

But this was just an alarmed assumption. The fence had to be a good ten feet high. No dog, cat, puma nor mountain lion could leap that high. As I hit the ground, the air hissed out of my lungs, the terror squeezing out, vanishing like the end of a song. My cap, which had flown off, floated down as softly as an open parachute, landing miraculously back onto the top of my head. I turned towards the spot where the dog should have hit the fence as I straightened my hat properly. I wanted to see the look on its retarded, animalistic face. I wanted to revel in the helplessness that it would feel in the wake of my escape. I really did hate those f***ing, filthy beasts anyway. Always s***ting and pissing all over the ground. Barking loudly and stupidly as people were trying to talk. I wanted to stare right into its feeble, canine mind. Glare at it, with a seething blue hatred and gray disdain. A sentiment so ill, that even something with a brain the size of a dime could understand and feel it. A piercing voiceless underhanded eye which said: “I beat you. You couldn’t catch me!!”

But there was nothing there. It was gone. It must have scurried back into the gloom as quickly as it had rushed into the light. Too bad. It would have been fun to humiliate it even more than I already had by getting away. I sighed heavily and looked around at the tan fields. I swore that this would be the last time that I would ever walk home.

I brushed the straw off of my Levi’s and resumed walking (Pedaling, Pedaling) Looking for any sign of the direction home. Where I just wanted to bury my head in an oversized pillow and ethereally advance to, what would have to be, the better world of dreams. A place where the bright colors did not torment me so. A place where you could eat a meal without a round, white, life jacket of flub hanging over your belt loop. A place wher...

“GRRRRR!!! “

I lapsed in my tracks, shocked to hear the growl again. When I turned around, I could make out the outline of the Pit Bull, sitting on the other side of the fence, crayoned over by the darkened links. I thought that I had walked the length of a football field, yet, the fence was still only about thirty feet away. Maybe I had gotten confused, and walked parallel to it without realizing it. Even though I knew that it was impossible for the canine to clear that wall, the sound still startled me. Especially, since it was a strange, garbled growl, Not like a dog at all, but more like... a fake sound. Like someone or something trying to imitate a dog. I stared at it for several seconds, waiting to hear the growl again. Realizing, that I needed to hear that growl again. But no bark started from its stoic and silent head. I picked up a branch and flung it towards the animal, hoping to incite it to sound off. The spinning stick landed a little short and slightly to the left of the dog’s local. But still close enough so that it should have been startled. Yet it did not flinch one centimeter. I walked around looking at the ground for a few seconds, until I found a concrete rock. Breaking into a ‘Rick Sutcliffe,’ baseball pitcher’s windup, I fired the chunk at the fence. It banged heavily off the links, intercepting a trajectory that would have surly smashed the animal’s face in. Still, it did not move. I could not even hear it breathing or panting. It was as motionless as a taxidermy trophy.

Not wanting to think about the dog, or anything else anymore, I began jogging away at a brisk pace. Leaving the chain link fence and the Pit Bull behind. I refused to look back, although I could feel its eyes on my back like the shine of an infra-red laser. Much in the same way that I had felt the truck’s passengers leering after me earlier. I stumbled over something which nearly turned my ankle. When I slowed to inspect it, I found that it was a fragmented piece of concrete, which had probably been abandoned by some, long bankrupt, construction crew. Still, after studying the junked piece, I could not stop my gaze from returning to the fence. Which was somehow no more than twenty feet away. The dog was still sitting right there of course, like bait inside a crabbing cage. (She mopped on the purple lipstick and pulled on the fishnets, because she knew that he would see her sitting in the first row.) I began walking backwards, unable to look away. When suddenly, the dog flinched. I heard a noise coming from the vicinity of its head. Almost like... Almost like a yawn, accept that I couldn’t tell whether or not its mouth had opened. Its back arched slightly, yet the powerful shoulder muscles did not move. But something else did, like a large velvety spider was squirming on its shoulder. But that wasn’t it either, it was more like... almost like... the membranous webbing of a wing.

I violently vomited onto the briars as my stress and fear reached an incomprehensible level. Then just as quickly, the ruination turned to rage and I roared at my tormenter. “BUT I BEAT YOU!!! YOU COULDN’T CATCH ME!!! .” (But you couldn’t catch the rainbow girl!) I took off again. This time running all out. Sprinting as fast as my legs would spin. I came to another chain link almost immediately. I slammed aboard and cleared the complicated summit in all of four seconds. It can’t clear the fences, It’s just not possi... (She lay her yellow and purple pompoms beside the quarterback’s bed.) The cold air hurt my sore throat. Another chain link. I didn’t remember seeing all these f***ing fences out here. McDonald’s should have been right past the mall. I just want a damn Quarter Pounder. (She had memorised all the latest, greatest cheers.) I crested the fence easily, tirelessly fueled by the terror. Running again on the shining grass almost before I hit the ground. (but after the game(s) were over, he pretended like he didn’t even know her.) Field after fence after field after fence after field fence field fence field fence field fence field fence field fence

I do not know what it was that I stepped on. That, which caused me to lose my balance and hurdle down the grade, as helpless as a tumbleweed. But it felt as if someone had stuck out their leg, intentionally causing me to trip. A hollow sound rang out. Like my calve had been whacked by an aluminum baseball bat. I fell endlessly down a high hill. Even though there were no hills on the famously, flat as a tortilla- pancake, Texas landscape. I felt my knee bang off of something solid, causing it to shift or maybe dislocate inside the skin. Then a green pain blazed from my thick, door knob ankles all the way up to my oily groin. I finally came to rest at the bottom of the slope, scratching up against yet another chain link fence. Although when I looked up through muddy eyes, I could see only flat prairie.

I drug my arms out from underneath my collapsed body. My limbs now shining like the wet grass. I hugged my throbbing knee, in an effort to hold it into place. But nail shaped slivers of agony continued to glow within the injured ligaments. So I slowly turned my head back, to stare across the brown chessboard of that flat hill. The fog had lifted somewhat, and the stars had chased the sun behind the rim of the horizon. Yet still, at about fifty yards from where I was felled, I could see the unmistakable outline of a Pit Bull canine. No fence separated us and I could see none of the barriers which I had so desperately lunged over. I expected the beast to charge at any second. But it only sat quiescently. As if this entire contest had never really been in doubt.

I wrapped my numb fingers around the octagon shapes of the frozen links and tried to pull myself up. But my knee would not bend at all, having rapidly stiffened until it felt like there was a barbell where the joint should be. The injury was obviously more serious than I had first considered. When I tried to put my weight on it, a siren like agony ensued and I slumped back down onto the drenched turf, the aluminum links still clutched in my chilled digits. The toll from the frenzied fear and the frantic climbing had finally caught up to me, and the exhaustion was holding me on the ground, with some help from the thumb of the wind.

Defenseless against the fence, tears of hopelessness and heartbreak sizzled down my cheeks like boiled oil. After a few seconds, I heard a fluttering sound behind me in the dark sky. Like an unfurled tarp flapping in a hail storm, then, something landed softly and skillfully on the sod beside me. (You knew it all along.) For a second I was afraid to look up, choosing to keep my frigid features pressed against the sopping ground. But when I felt something licking at my neck, something with a cold muzzle and a hot tongue, I knew that the time had come to turn and face my barren fate.

I could see how someone would have mistaken it for a dog, especially during dusk’s caffeinated light. It had four limbs alright, but the front two were curved dramatically, deformed, like tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex legs. Except, that there were large human hands, with stubby fingers, covered in plush brown fur attached to their ends. The back legs were longer with exaggerated, horse ankles which were closed off by hard shell, farm animal hooves. Which it was crouched on, as had been its custom through this entire dusk-mare.

One thing which could not be fully appreciated when simply viewing its drab silhouette, were the ghastly details of its horrendous features. The ears were pricked up, like a wolf or a Husky’s, and once again it was easy to see how I could have come up with the bogus conclusion that I was being stalked by a dog. The hairs on its head did appear canine in nature, but they stopped short of trespassing onto a bare and hideous imitation of a human face. The eyes were an oval, translucent and solid brown, through and through, without a hint of whites at any angle. There was no nose to speak of, but rather three flat, snot slathered nostrils, which were arranged like thumb holes in a bowling ball. At first glance, the mouth appeared to be like that of a normal human being, Until suddenly, a hidden dog’s snout shot out from within the man mouth, and a slobbering tongue quickly cleaned both sets of teeth before disappearing back inside the head. It wore a matted, tangled beard underneath an oddly octagon chin, which weaved its way into connecting hairs on a puffed out and muscular chest. The hairs were braided until they exposed bare spots, and the bare spots helped the twine shape letters which formed foreign words. Incantations and spells from some ancient and evil nation which had long ago been destroyed by the wrath of God.

I sat there stunned for the better part of five seconds, hypnotized by this obscenity. I was not frozen in place and I was no longer afraid to move, I was merely resigned to the fact that moving would lend me no favor. Because, for all my complaints and alleged disparities, my sins were many: Greed, gluttony, cynicism, hate, sloth, jealousy, envy, self pity, loathing and spite. I had called this monster to task at my shadow with my own psychic dog whistle. The trepidation in my tired heart beating like a buoyant beacon on a black ocean. Drawing this unholy creature to my wretched scent.

It didn’t really resemble a satyr, or any of the other creatures of Greek mythology, I could see how the Goths could have tabbed it for a gargoyle. Perhaps that’s what it was. I guess that I could still refer to it as the Pit Bull, since it had been commanded by its master to bull withered souls, which had already been burnt down to the embers, around the endless yet cramped Pits of Hades.

I heard the flapping sound again, and two rancid, furry wings flexed out from its back, blocking out what was left of the sky, their purple veins transparent even in the limited light. One of the horrible hot hands extended and locked roughly onto my helpless wrist, nearly drawing blood. Then, we took to the orange sky, outdistancing the drizzle and fog, my strength fading like piss emptying out of a bladder. My arm nearly breaking from the surprise of supporting the whole of my body weight. My cap flying off and vanishing into the dark wind. The wings were mighty, and they effortlessly pulled us higher. leaving the plains and this plain behind forever.

I don’t know why, but I had assumed that it was dumb, like an actual dog or some other animal. Until it looked down at me, the eyes changing to red pupils with bloody whites. Its brow furrowed a tender like a rug squelched by a door, and then, it spoke. With a gruff voice which stopped at intervals, like it was used to speaking a language of grunts, it said:

“...Don...t... worry...

...There... ...will.. ..be... ...no... ...more... ...bright... ...colors.”

Copyright © 2007 by Tom Hamilton