Free Puppies

It's been a while since I posted something here, so, I thought to satisfy your disturbing need for something vile and evil, I'd post a super short story that doesn't seem to want to find a home anywhere else. This piece came about, as so many of my stories do, through a real-life event. Well, not so much an event, at least for myself, so much as a simple discovery. I was driving home from the post office one afternoon when up ahead in the middle of the street sat a cardboard box lying on its side. As I drove past I saw it had written across a side in kids handwriting (or a very sloppy adult. One never can be sure around here) "Free Puppies" in bright pink Sharpie. It was open on the side I passed and I could see no puppies, free or otherwise. The story just popped into my twisted mind almost immediately. It's just a weird, kind of funny, twisted story.

Free Puppies

by Guy Medley

artwork: stolen from Google

Sarah pulled the corner onto Meadow Lane, steering her car toward home. She was exhausted from a week of the same weekly bullshit at the office and was more than ready to get some relaxation in during the weekend. But, she knew that wasn’t likely to happen. The kids would be demanding of her every second, while their father would demand they remain out of his way as he wrote. He was home every day, writing, or so he claimed. But she knew his routine: get up and write for two or three hours, then spend the rest of the day eating Cheetos and watching Sports Center, or as he called it, partaking in a “creative interlude.” The bastard, she thought angrily. He writes one best seller and now he thinks he’s Stephen fucking King.

                
 As she neared her driveway she saw something lying in the middle of the street. As she got closer she saw it was the cardboard box the neighbor kids had been using to house the litter of puppies that their dog had delivered a few weeks earlier. The hand scrawled “Free Puppies” in neon pink marker, was plainly visible, written across one side, which now faced upward, as the empty box was now lying on its side. That’s odd, she thought as she swerved into her driveway.

                
 Then she saw the florid streak of blood that trailed from the dark maw of the upended box. It seemed to stretch from the box in the street up and over the curb and onto the sidewalk. She followed it with her eyes as she parked. It continued across the sidewalk and up the walkway to the front porch, and beyond. “What the hell?” she stammered. Had something happened to the puppies, or to the neighbor kids? As the horrid thought of kids being mowed down in the street with puppies blossomed in her mind, she rushed from the car toward her house, following the dark grisly trail to the door.

                
 She burst in through her front door, fear and worry growing steadily with each step, as the trail leading her way now contained bits of fur and chunks of god knew what. She threw her briefcase down on the foyer floor and rounded the corner into the living room. Both of her children were sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, a mound of bloodied fur surrounding them both. They were covered head to toe in blood and vile guts; fur sticking to them at odd angles and in clumps as if they themselves were sprouting an animal’s coat.

                
 Neither child looked toward their mother as they continued, what to her horror, she realized was play. They swung the ragged remains of puppies around by their legs and tails, flipping them into the air as they giggled and laughed. Blood covered the floor in a thickening pool. It congealed on the sofa and curtains and lamps in a splatter pattern Pollock would have been proud of. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked, her eyes wide with disgust. “Where is your father?”

                 
The children paid her no attention, continuing their macabre game, wringing the last of the blood from their once living toys. Sarah marched over to her youngest child and spun her around to face her. “Why are you doing this, Becky?” The girl looked up into her mother’s eyes with eyes that were as black and soulless as a skull’s, and smiled wide. Even her teeth were colored pink with blood. “Jesus, what are you doing?!” she shouted at them both. Donny now looked at his mother and smiled as well. Sarah’s blood chilled at the sight of them both.

                
 “Where the hell is your father?” she asked again, backing away from them, tremors of fear now gripping her.

                
 In unison they answered in voices as foreign to her children’s lips as that of the devil’s himself. “Zirnek demands the blood.” They then went about their play.

                
 “Zirnek? What’s Zir…?”

                
 “Zirnek demands the blood,” they both interrupted, once again in perfect, chilling unison.

                 
“Goddammit, what is…?”

                
“Zirnek demands the blood,” they uttered again, still playing with the bloody corpses.

                
 “Who the fuck is Zirnek?!” she yelled, tears beginning to stream from her eyes. She stumbled and caught herself as she staggered backwards toward the hall, away from the things that were her children when she had left for work this morning. She had reached the archway to the hallway and foyer when she bumped into something solid and soft. She spun around on shaky legs to see her husband standing behind her. His bloodied face lit up with a wide pink smile as he looked down at his wife.

                 
“Zirnek demands the blood” he said in a dark raspy voice that was nothing like his own.

                 
Sarah’s eyes grew to saucers as she saw the large kitchen knives he held in each bloody fist.

                
“Zirnek demands MORE blood,” he said as he lunged.