Mr. Fowler's Dog

I used to live next door to a Mr. Fowler.  

A pompous, arrogant, but well-to-do man.  

Our houses were attached, but Mr. Fowler owned both.  

I rented what he owned, and he made me well aware of this. 

He had a dog named Hercule, an expensive looking poodle crossed with god-knows-what. It used to come into my garden using a little hole in the fence. This was where Mr. Fowler had taught his dog to foul.  

He had to have taught it.  

No dog is that vindictive.  

Especially one like Hercule, who gets scrambled eggs for breakfast. 

Hercule, who has his own personal trainer.  

My dog’s name is Sammy, he has dry biscuits for most meals – sometimes gravy. 

Fowler used to go to the Cotswolds a lot. He’d just wake up one morning and decide to bugger off for anything from two days to two months.  

One day, he had me take care of Hercule. I looked and looked around Fowler’s kitchen, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find any dog-food. I called Fowler, who was upset by the very notion, and told me to look in the in the garage. 

There wasn’t any dog food in the fridge, but there were packets of chicken drumsticks, thighs and even breast. There were beef and turkey burgers, sandwich steak and cumberland sausage. The kind of food that I’d save for an end-of-week meal. The kind of food that I could only really afford in the week after payday. I’d never liked Mr Fowler, but this was the first time I’d hated him. That hatred only got worse when I opened the freezer. 

No exaggeration - there was probably about two grand in meat in that garage.  

So yeah. 

I took some Turkey burgers for dinner. After a week of economy ramen, I was pretty chuffed at the concept. 

Fowler must have had some kind of obsessive disorder. I say this because the man actually noticed 4 missing burgers. Either that, or he’s got his place rigged with spy-cams. 

He was banging on my door - demanding the £5.50 for the stolen dinner. 

The audacity made by blood boil. I’d taken care of that dog, in lew of pay, or even rent reduction. Surely, I’d earned some dinner. 

I remember watching Hercule from my side of the garden. He was chewing on a huge chicken leg. 

I started to feel hungry – and watching plump little Hercule crunch down on bone and sinew made me realise what I wanted for dinner. 

After grabbing my largest kitchen knife, I scurried under the little hole in the fence. Hercule was happy to see me at first, jumping around with that kind of excitement synonymous with dogs. 

That excitement quickly stopped, and soon my fridge was fully stocked.  

 

 

That was a month ago now. 

 

 

Now, Hercule lives with Sammy and I, he doesn’t get burgers anymore but doesn’t seem to mind.  

Afterall, there’s a whole Mr. Fowler in the freezer to get through.

My friend in Hell (Short Story)

You get a little house in Hell, my friend told me all about it. 

A dingy little thing, with black slate walls, and barely any roof.  

The first day is for settling in.

It’s time to meet your neighbours, the damned next door.  

They come when you wake up, grab you off the floor and take you away. Then, for about 8 hours straight, they beat the living home out of you.  

This happens every day in Hell, and to everybody.  

Arms would be broken, fingers popped from sockets, skulls would get cracked, fibulas split in half with tibia, insides made outsides, eardrums penetrated, and eye-holes perforated... Then, some 16 hours recovery, before it all starts again.  

One evening, after a hard day’s beating, he saw his neighbour being dragged home. There was something  off.  

See, the neighbour, despite being beaten for the same 8 hours, didn’t look as badly beaten as my friend.  

My friend asked him, and he explained that he’d been in Hell for something like 3000 years. If my friend had to guess, by that point he himself had only been there a week or so – a mere handful of beatings compared to his neighbour.  

The neighbour said that he’d learnt to avoid hits. To dodge and duck from punches and kicks. He said that a few hundred years of practice is all it took to learn how to avoid the grappling monsters, and just one session to learn the golden rule: ‘Don’t try to hit it back, just dodge it until it’s home time, or else you’ll find yourself getting beaten over-time.’ 

Now, dodging an attacking Demon for 8 hours straight seems like a difficult thing to do, and don’t get me wrong – it is!  

But, eternity is an awful long time, and Hell is a place with very little else to do.  

Within 100 years my friend could dodge that first, 9AM upper-cut.  

Within a 100 more he could go unharmed until about 11!  

By year 500 he could make it to the end of the day with just a black-eye or a thick-lip.  

By the year 1000 he had mastered it completely, and by the year 1001 my friend had 0 marks, cuts or bruises anywhere on his person.  

At the end of everyday he’d say goodnight to the neighbour who taught him how. 

One evening, around year 1900, my friend got home to find his neighbour lying in the doorway. His arms were broken, his legs had been dislocated, he was covered head to toe in bruises, his neck had been cracked, his spine bent, his teeth pulled, his eye’s poked.  

My friend ran to comfort him. 

“What happened?” he asked. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” replied the neighbour, “I was feeling a bit stressed, so I took today off!”