IS

The morning came as if it had no idea about the night that it followed. The early sun broke onto the day with a crisp luster, bringing with it the laughter of children’s voices and other sounds common to another ordinary summer day. And yet, even within the warm and pleasant times of what would be considered normal, and uneventful, a grey cloud had found its way to Clayton Township.

The local morning news was buzzing about the disappearance of one of its own; a Clayton Township police officer. Officer Dan Daniels had never showed for duty the previous night, and according to his fellow Officer and best friend, Officer Frank Williams, foul play was to be considered in the case.

“The last thing he said to me was that he was going to check something out, follow up on something that was bothering him,” Officer Williams said in a televised interview. He then refused to comment any further.

The reporter continued by claiming that Officer Daniels, as well as his car, a brand new all black Chevy Camaro, had both been missing since they were last seen exiting the police station parking lot, at approximately 10:15 Wednesday night.

A witness, who chose to remain anonymous, said that Officer Daniels sped hastily from the lot, as if he was in some kind of hurry.

“He has yet to be seen, or heard from since. If you have any information on his whereabouts, you are asked to please contact the Clayton Township Police Department,” The beautiful, dark-haired reporter ended. “Reporting live from the Clayton Township Police Department, I’m Toni Parcelli, Channel Seven Action News.”

I sat there on the couch across from the TV, quiet and unresponsive, feasting on stale, dry cereal from the box; worried and scared. I was doing my best to ignore that feeling, when Scott suddenly appeared the other side of my glass door wall again. This time he stood in the bright sunlight that found its way through the thick maple tree branches that blanketed the deck. He looked tired and unruly. I waved him in.

“Did you see it? Did you see the thing about Daniels?” he asked, all revved up and loud with nervous excitement.

“I just saw it,” I answered, doing my best to stay calm; the total opposite of what now stood before me, this time without his gun of choice.

“Holy shit! Danny D, just like you said!” he anxiously agreed, more nervous than remorseful. “What happens when they find his body, I wonder?” he asked.

“They won’t,” I stated, just before tipping the box to my mouth.

“Huh?” He looked confused.

I chewed a little before explaining myself. “They won’t find a thing.” I paused to chew a bit more. “I’m not sure they’ll even find the car!” I finished, setting the box on the end table next to me.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Because that’s what they do,” I responded. He plopped himself into a chair, as I stood up and walked over to the infamous door wall to finish my speech. I looked out through the bright sunshine and glass. “They clean up their mess. They don’t leave…” My speech was cut short by the reality of seeing my shed door unlatched, and half open. My heart began to work harder. “Scott, can you tell me why my shed is open?” I calmly asked, not really expecting an answer.

“Your shed’s open?” He quickly rose to his feet to see for himself.

Just then, the front doorbell rang. He and I looked at each other. It was quiet again, almost as if we had imagined the same thing. We were frozen and speechless, waiting to see what would happen next

It rang again.

“Maybe they’ll go away,” Scott said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be so paranoid!” I answered. “Hell, it could be the paper boy, or even someone selling something, for all we know.” I traveled to the front room and inconspicuously peered around the large window curtain… “No, it’s a cop,” I calmly reported.

“Fuck!” he whispered loudly.

“You calm your ass down and act natural!” I whispered back, pointing at him with controlled authority. I took a deep breath, let it out, and opened the door.

The sunlight poured in, hurting my eyes, and standing there in front of it was Officer Williams.

“Hello,” I greeted him, trying to look natural myself, which would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that I resembled someone who had previously gone rounds with a professional MMA fighter.

“Whoa! Mr. Stone? Mr. Joshua Stone?” he asked, as his eyes traveled over me, taking mental notes of my condition.

“Yes, I’m Joshua Stone. Can I help you, officer?”

He looked through the screen and past me, and then back to me again. “You mind if I come in for a second, Mr. Stone?”

“Not at all,” I replied, stepping aside to make room for his large stature.

It was definitely intimidating. He moved through the door and stepped up onto the landing next to me. Clad in his dark blue uniform, I could smell the faint scent of Old Spice and bubble gum, as he chewed away. Dispatch was coming through over his mobile radio.

“Well, I don’t know Mr. Stone. By looking at you, I would say you’re the one in need of some help here.”

I looked to the floor with a smile, and began shaking my head as if someone had told a bad joke. At this point, I wished someone had.

“You mind telling me what happened to you?” he asked, with seriousness in his voice that elevated my anxiety to another level.

I just knew that Scott had to be freaking out by this time. Hell-–I was. Just as I was about to test the ability of my imagination once more, Scott made some kind of random noise from the back living room. This sparked the officer’s attention.

“Your family home, Mr. Stone?” he asked, as he peered past me again.

“No, actually, they’re in Florida. They’ll be coming home tonight.” I turned and looked in the direction he was staring. “That’s my neighbor, Scott. Scott Timmerson.”

Scott heard his introduction and stood up with a goofy smile on his face, two rooms away. “Hey!” he called out, looking as though he had just got caught with the farmer’s daughter.

All the while, my newly excited imagination was conjuring a story to explain my condition. Williams moved to the kitchen, and I followed. He stopped and began looking over the area for anything suspicious. Scott just stood there, still with his stupid smile that looked as though it hurt his face. His eyes glanced to me with fear, as Officer Williams asked the same question again without even bothering to look at me.

“So what happened to you Mr. Stone?” He inquired. “I mean, you look like you could use some serious medical attention,” he said, then turned to me with an arrogant smile. There was no room for pause. I knew I would have to give him a reasonable answer–-and right now, if it were to seem plausible. I could feel his stare.

“Yeah, that was unfortunate.” I started. Now I could feel the combination of both their eyes on me, with only one pair willing a good answer.

“I was trying to get a cat out of the tree.”

“That tree?” Williams asked, as he moved to the door wall to look at the large maple.

It was then that I realized the noise we heard earlier from this room was Scott doing his best to conceal the blood mural that still remained, foolishly forgotten. He had rehung the curtain, pushing it to the side to double its folded thickness over the sickening obscurity, which even now, could still faintly be seen forefront to a bright day behind it.

“I missed my footing and fell, hitting a few branches on the way down… pretty stupid, actually,” I ended.

“And pretty painful too, by the looks of it!” he said. He looked back out onto the deck again.

“I guess that would explain the blood stained t-shirt on your deck,” he stated.

Fear flooded over me once more. All I could think of, aside from the fact that he was within inches of a picture painted in blood, was the vision of my knife cocooned inside of a shirt that now had his attention.

“Yeah, I’m pretty bad about picking up after myself,” I explained with a smile of my own.

Scott remained there, now with his mouth opened. I quietly prayed that Officer Williams wouldn’t investigate the shirt any further. I thought I would puke when he reached for the door handle.

“Radio Clayton 41” his radio called.

Williams answered. “41 Clayton. Over,” he responded, turning and walking back to the front room. We could hear the rambles of his voice and dispatch chatter back and forth, as Scott and I held our breath. He soon entered the kitchen again. “I have a call I have to respond to right now. I may be back later to ask you some more questions,” he said.

“And what’s this regarding, Officer?” I asked, as I caught him turning to leave.

“The disappearance of Officer Dan Daniels,” he responded.

“But-–”

“I’ll be in touch. I’ll see myself out,” he said, cutting me off. And then he was gone.

As soon as his car door closed and he started to pull away, Scott shouted an order of his own.

“Get that shit off the glass!” he yelled. “And what did you do with the gun?” he added.

“It’s in a drawer.”

“Thank God for that!” he stated.

“Good thing you were thinking, Scott,” I said, as I headed for a razor blade from the junk drawer and some Windex and a rag from under the sink. I pushed the curtain to the side, and slid open the door. “Hey! Do me a favor and pick up that shirt, will ya?” I said as I started to scrape the hard, crusted blood away.

As I stood there and Scott moved past me, I contemplated telling him about Hercules, and what I assumed had happened to him. I wanted to tell him about the frightening experience I had last night, after he left me. I wanted to tell him that the blood I was cleaning away from my door was most likely remains from Dave’s dog; the very same friendly teddy bear of a beast that the whole neighborhood had grown to love over the past several years. And then I noticed how quiet it had become. I wondered why he was taking so long with such a simple task.

I continued scraping. “Man, this shit is really hard to get off!” I complained. And then I started to feel the sorrow come back. I had to tell Scott. If for any reason, at least to vent to someone. I had to release my pain.

“Scott!” I called out. It remained quiet behind me, still. “Scott, I have to…” and then I turned around to find him standing lifeless in front of my shed; a human statue, overcome with what had presented itself to him from within the half opened door.

He couldn’t speak. I was afraid to.

“Hey, Buddy?” I called out as I moved toward him. He looked as though he was hypnotized by whatever was inside. I was deathly afraid. I actually stopped before I reached the point of being able to see what he could see.

“Scott! What is it?” I asked.

He finally turned to me with an expression on his face I had never seen before. Then he looked down to the bloodied shirt in his hand and tossed it away as if it was diseased. He looked into the shed, and then back to me again as if he was going to cry. “Shit, Josh!” he said, astonished, and then he leaned forward and threw up.

The sun was in my face by the time I was at the right angle to see inside for myself. I glanced to Scott one last time before committing myself to whatever had mortified my best friend. I moved forward just a little more as the sun left my eyes and I entered the reality of intense and overwhelming surprise.

There, stretched and torn open, exposed in all its horror, was what used to be Hercules. I dropped to my knees in emotional pain and disgust. Scott was still throwing up, unable to come to terms with his find. I was sickened by the vision, but unlike Scott, I had seen worse. To me, the reality of who it was and what had been done to him outweighed the grotesque hideousness of his remains that had been put to display. I leaned back and screamed long and hard to the sky, finally releasing all the anger and pain that consumed me until I had no breath left. I collapsed in tears. Soon, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw Scott, humbled and wiping his mouth, also in tears.

We dug a large hole behind the shed and secretly buried him, he and I. We also made a pact to never tell anyone what had happened to poor Hercules.

The Gust family would be better off living with the idea that he ran away and never came back, or whatever other conclusion they would come up with to help them sleep at night. Anything was better than the truth.

After he was down and covered up, we raked pine needles and other ground material over the freshly turned soil. I would have preferred to bury him somewhere else, but we were without options, seeing as how it was daylight, and my family would be coming home later that night. We stood there for a few minutes after it was finished and done with.

“Why the hell would he do that to Hercules?” Scott asked. “I’m assuming it was that white freak of nature, right?”

“Oh yeah,” I responded, feeling the anger burn inside me.

“But why Hercules? He was just a big dumb-–” and then he paused when he felt an overwhelming sense of sadness take him over. “I really loved that damn dog!” he finally said, choking on his last words.

“I did too, Scott. And that’s why it did it. To get back at me, to torture me.”

“He fucking hates you that much?” he asked.

“It, Scott. It hates me that much. We’re not talking about a person here. Hell–-we’re not even talking about something human! We’re talking about–-it!” I said. I tossed the rake aside and looked him in the eyes. “And tonight, once my family are all asleep… It’s going to die!”