Christmas Trees & Monkeys (17 page)

BARK! BARK!

They’d never hear him over the damned dog, anyway.

Bark stepped forward, remembered the fence. It paced sideways. Quince wondered if the dog had been fed since the old woman kicked off. The thought sent a small wave of pity, and dread, through him.

BARK!

At the fence, Davey didn’t reach for it as much as leap upon it like a crazed animal.

Quince shouted to mask the sound of his friend hitting the fence. He shook his head, stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry. He stared the dog in the eyes. Big wet eyes reflecting meager light around it. Quince’s own shouts and meaningless taunts were drowned in a sea of BARK! BARK! BARK!

* * *

When David heard Quince he smiled and thought,
What an idiot
. He waited until Bark seemed appropriately preoccupied then walked forward.

He had to be careful where he hit the fence. Most important was to avoid the three copper wires running along the bottom, middle and top. The darkness wasn’t going to help him much with this. As soon as he was in the air, he would no longer be grounded and therefore safe. Apparently Robin had forgotten about birds sitting on power lines, even
if
the makers of the fence hadn’t. The copper leads were ground wires. If he hit one, the circuit would be complete - his body the breaker.

He leaped forward and hit the fence as quietly as possible. Nothing. Not even a buzz in his ears. For the girl’s sake, he took in a sharp intake of breath, released one hand from the links as if about to fall back onto the ground.

Feigning a massive internal struggle he reached up, as close to the top as possible without hitting either the ground wire or pole running along the top of the fence. Like its counterparts stuck into the ground every eight feet, the top pole was a primary grounding rod.
The third rail
, David thought. Getting over it would require a sizable leap. No way Bark wasn’t going to hear
that
. Still, he’d be back over before the mutt could even turn around. David wondered what Quince must be thinking, since he hadn’t let him in on the deception. His friend never had a very good poker face.

* * *

“
Yaaaa, sucker!!! Bite this!” Quince thrust his pelvis forward and Bark slammed into the fence again. A pained yelp, followed by BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

The boy danced in a tight circle, careful to prevent the dog from moving too much left or right, risk it seeing Davey who was nearly at the top of the fence already. He tried to ignore the tiny voice relegated to the back of his mind,
Bark probably hasn’t eaten in almost a week
.

“
Boody boody boody,” he whispered, puckering his lips for a kiss. Bark wanted
so
much to chew his head off. Easy to read a dog like that, he thought.

BARK! BARK! BARK!

“
Bark! Bark! Bark!” Quince echoed. He wondered why the old lady hadn’t snuffed this monster a long time ago and gotten a Pekinese like other people her age.

BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!

“
Bite Me!”

* * *

Robin knew what the fence was like. She’d tested it herself to gauge what David would have to endure. She’d been able to hold her finger to the links no longer than a couple of seconds.

A barrier that potent shouldn’t be legal. Still, knowing the jerk wouldn’t get more than an inch or two off the ground gave her courage to suggest the bet. If nothing else, it might stop his incessant staring in class, turn his gaze down a few notches. She’d insisted the dare be carried out tonight, before either of the boys had a chance to check out the juice for themselves.

Watching David reach the upper links, she was certain no normal person could have lasted this long. Meanwhile, his retarded friend kept distracting Bark with his own unbridled hysteria. Robin Fae no longer felt the scales tipping her way, watching this boy - willing to fry his brain for a quick tumble. She surprised herself by becoming more aroused the higher he climbed. Just before everything went to hell, Robin wondered if maybe New Hampshire wasn’t such a bad place to live after all.

* * *

OK. Have to make this quick.
David sagged down on his weight, preparing both to pull himself up and over in a single heaving swing, and to add to the dramatic play we was undertaking. It needed to look as if he was about to fall, unable to take any more pain.
Yea, right. Keep wishing, bitch.
He sagged further, then tightened his muscles and pulled upward.

He didn’t make it. David landed flat-bellied on the pole and draped over the top of the fence.

* * *

Quince saw his friend reach the top. He’d done it - climbed what amounted to a small mountain of electricity. Robin
had
to be fucking impressed. At the moment, however, Davey seemed to be stuck at the top.

BARK! BARK!

“
Yea, yea!”

Bark paced side to side, never taking his eyes from him.
Good doggie
, Quince thought.
Just keep looking at me
.

In a pang of envy and still shoeless, Quince reached with his right hand and curled two fingers around a link. It must have been his overactive imagination the last time. Electricity coursed though his arm, hitting his brain, squeezing his eyes.

Still he tried to hold on.

As in a dream he saw Bark lunge, the flash of teeth, no yelp this time but a quick retreat. When the world came back into focus, Quince was sitting on the ground, crumpled and dazed.

The dog had just pushed him off the fence.

“
What the hell did you -”

The pointer and middle fingers of his right hand were gone past the second knuckle. They erupted like a volcano, spewing inky blood down his arm, onto his leg, dripping to the ground. All he could do was whimper, then scream.

* * *

Every nerve, every pore in David’s body begged him to let go and fall back. But hanging midway over the fence, he didn’t know which way “back” was. A numbing blanket spread along his belly, up his arms and legs, into his head. It sucked his balls into his throat.

Let go
, his brain screamed.
Fall. Do SOMETHING.

The dog’s paddock blurred below him, melted into the screaming form of Quince beyond. The scene fuzzed into a spotty mesh of colors which bled away to grainy black and white. David wondered if his eyes were melting.

Something sizzled in his ears. He tried to throw himself off, but his body had fallen asleep. All he could do was rock himself back and forth. At least he
thought
that was what he was doing. The world turned upside down. Through the blackness filling the corners of his vision, David watched the ground slam into his face.

The unrelenting assault on his senses cut out. Bright spots lingered around him like moths. David’s numb legs bent over him, dragging him sideways. His face twisted against the dirt and the world kept spinning. The moths scattered. He saw ground, fence, trees, finally sky.

Everything stopped. Bright, bright stars overhead.

* * *

Bark chewed on the bones and gristle from Quince’s fingers, then licked blood from its muzzle.

Thump
.

The dog turned, saw David lying within the fence. Normally, caution would tug at its instincts, forcing the dog into a slow circle as it growled in warning.

The blood in its mouth sang,
More there. More there
.

Bark swallowed and trotted towards its meal.

* * *

David couldn’t move or turn his head. He saw nothing more than the million pinpricks of light above him and heard only the rustling of the budding trees outside his vision. Then he felt it, the rhythmic
thump, thump
of Bark’s heavy paws running his way.

* * *

Robin watched the dog running for the fallen boy and waved her arms.

“
Get away! No, Bark, bad Dog!” She slammed against the fence. If she was hit with electricity she didn’t feel it.

Bark stopped a moment over David’s body, tilted its head sideways to consider whether the girl was worth its attention. She wasn’t. The dog sniffed David’s leg and took a tentative step backwards. The boy didn’t move. A slower approach, more sniffing.

Robin shouted, “Someone help us, please.”
Stupid
, she thought. If nobody had heard Quince they wouldn’t hear her.

Bark stopped sniffing and bit David’s calf. Just an experiment. A bite and another quick back-step. No reaction. The dog wagged its tail and bit down a second time.

* * *

David slowly regained feeling in his body, but for some reason couldn’t move. The first bite was a simple pressure on his calf. The second sent thin glassy spikes up his leg. Tugging, more pressure, this time higher up his leg. His thigh.

Not down there. Not down there. Please.

David could only see a large black bulk moving below his line of vision. The new pressure on his leg let up suddenly, then returned. Heavy, metallic shards of pain. He tried to determine which part of his body -

No, no, no.

Bark clamped down on David’s crotch and shook its head from side to side.

* * *

Robin shoved a broken branch through the fence. Bark skittered sideways, just out of reach.

Across the way Robin thought she saw Quince stumbling away backwards. The boy was mad with panic, holding his arm and howling unintelligibly.
Oh shit
, she thought.
Now what
?

She looked around, registering only that the dog was backing away, David in tow by his balls. She ruled out the possibility of climbing the fence.

Across the yard Quince disappeared behind a small outbuilding.

Robin ran into the woods. The boy who was being eaten alive within the fence screamed, but she never looked back.

This isn’t my fault
, she thought.

* * *

Bark held fast and dragged David towards the doghouse. Its senses were overpowered by the gushing taste of blood. It shook a mouthful of flesh and denim loose, then paused a moment to chew.

* * *

When David tried to scream again, something caught in his throat. His arms flopped uselessly at his sides. He understood what the dog had just done, from the sudden emptiness in his gut. An overwhelming physical sensation of loss, like losing a tooth magnified a thousand times.

No pain, not even the glass spikes of earlier. His body had fallen numb below the waist. He wondered if he’d broken his back in the fall.

David swallowed hard, managed to scream, “Help me,” but the words came out as gurgles. He coughed, flexed his fingers. They worked better now.

He might have a chance.

Bark dug its teeth into David’s other thigh. The numbness blew away. Pain burned through his body, into his skull. The air around him crinkled, then collapsed into blackness. He tried to yell, to fight the onset of this new, terrible darkness.

The ground raked his skull as he was dragged towards the doghouse. He tried to kick with his free leg. Something went loose in his gut. The blackness around him solidified. New shards of glass in his belly, tearing into him.

Someone help me
.

* * *

Quince held his wounded right hand against his chest and staggered into what he prayed was a tool shed. The bleeding hadn’t abated, but he’d glimpsed what the dog was doing to Davey and knew there wasn’t any time. He’d find a way to stop his own bleeding later.

He pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and looked for... what? A weapon, he decided, maybe something to climb the fence with. He tossed a shovel aside with the tip of the flashlight, considered the garden shears only for a moment. A splinter from the old floor dug into the bottom of his foot.

Outside David screamed one long, horrible wail.

A pick-ax, the curved blade narrowing to a point on one side and flattened like a hoe on the other, leaned against a pair of moldy fence posts. The fiberglass handle was bright orange. Quince didn’t know whether fiberglass was safe against electricity, but when he pocketed the flashlight and grabbed it the head was reassuringly heavy. He carried it with his good hand and stumbled outside.

Glass broke nearby. Quince wondered if it was his mind shattering.