Strange Tails

Potbelly awoke to the returning sunlight. It tickled the jagged edges of the storefront glass, seeming as morning dew on a cobweb. Outside, birds sang of this and that, and in those fuzzy few moments of half-sleep she imagined they sang of their fallen comrades.

She focused her eyes on a bullmastiff looming over her.

“Get up,” it growled.

“Huh?” For a moment all she heard was growling, but then, the words.

“Get up or you die here.”

“Are there any other choices?”

The bullmastiff snapped its jaws with precision, clamping and withdrawing just a few millimeters from her nose. It gave her a swipe across the midriff and strode over her, revealing itself to be most definitely a he. “Get up!” he barked.

Potbelly rose, carefully, avoiding the large bucket head so close. Against the rough nylon carpet she felt the untreated cracks in her paws. Still the growls from her assailant intermingled his instructions.

“Move! Outside!”

She acquiesced, stumbling forward and limping, a peripheral eye on an escape route or some handy weapon. A large chunk of glass presented itself, still embedded in one side of the window frame. She altered her course to be a bullmastiff’s width away from it and then slowed to a stop.

“Keep going,” ordered the dog, his voice immediate and clear, the growls now absent.

“I need assistance getting over the frame. I’m hurt.”

“Assistance?”

“I need you to lift me or something. Maybe if you came to my side, helped me over.”

“Just keep moving.”

“I mean it. I’m hurt.”

The muscular creature ambled forward. “Not that such a dangerous idea would occur to such a sweet thing like you, but I’ll clear off some of this sharp stuff first.”

A few hearty whacks of his tail knocked the glass onto the sidewalk. She watched, disappointed.

“Here,” he said, turning back to Potbelly. “I’ll put my head under your belly, nudge you over.” He grinned in a way she would have described, in a more relaxed encounter, as a little inappropriate.

“Second thoughts, maybe I can make it after all,” she said, and leapt over easily.

“Not so fast, little one.” He leapt too, and in another bound overtook her.

She peered up at her new guardian, a halo of morning light around his square, bristly cranium. It would have been a nice day if it wasn’t for the death threats.

“Listen,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

“No. Keep walking.”

“Not even a little bit? Clearly you’re not a dumb animal. I mean, you can talk.”

“Of course I can talk,” answered the bullmastiff, a little offended.

“They can’t all you know.”

“Who?”

“The others.” She waved a paw into the middle distance, and at the birds.

“Just follow me. All will become clear.”

“What will?“

A third voice interrupted them.

“Is it a bird?” hollered the voice. It was loud, yet somehow small. They looked about but saw only buildings and sky.

“Is it a plane?” the loud-yet-still-small voice continued.

The two dogs circled, bumping into each other, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.

“Having trouble telling the difference? Call 1-800-You’re-A-Loony!”

The bullmastiff growled. Something was wrong. Something was even more wrong when a tubby gray squirrel landed on his back, claws out, gripping the exposed skin of his neck.

“No! It’s Super Squirrel!” yelled the furry blob.

The bullmastiff howled in return. Ten tiny but exceedingly sharp claws dug deep into his neck, and eight more, just as sharp, yanked at his ears. The dog bucked at his chubby Toreador but couldn’t shake him. The more the bullmastiff reared up the more sprigs of blood bloomed from his head.

Yelping, the dog flipped onto his back to crush his assailant. Just as quickly Squirrel scurried around to grip an exposed belly, deliberately clamping in piton claws every inch of the way. Squirrel eyed him, snarling, and the bullmastiff, realizing the size of his foe, stared back boggled-eyed, embarrassed as much as shocked.

Squirrel’s advantage soon disappeared. The dog rolled again, trapping Squirrel beneath his forelimbs, and for the first time he could feel the pungent heat of the dog’s breath. Large teeth opened before him like a bear trap. He winced and writhed but could not break free. He closed his eyes waiting for the pain to come.

But it didn’t.

His foe stiffened. The deep huff and puff of his canine abdomen throbbed, but nothing else moved. Tentatively Squirrel opened one eye. Above him stood Potbelly, a large chunk of glass in her mouth, the fat end wrapped in a paperback novel, the sharp end pressed hard into the bullmastiff’s throat.

“Mot mo faft,” she said, her mouth clamped around the book.

The bullmastiff shifted, testing her, but the weapon only pressed farther into his trachea.

“Met mack hon his mead,” said Potbelly, her jaws full of danger.

Squirrel watched agape, not understanding what she meant.

“I med, met mack hon his mead!”

“Oh, right, get back on his head.”

With several shoves Squirrel extricated himself from the weight of the heaving chest and scrabbled back onto his perch. The bullmastiff whined from the shoving, which forced the razored glass farther into his throat. Squirrel regained his grip on the bullmastiff’s ears, digging in his claws, and in a cockney accent that somehow he knew from somewhere, leant in and whispered into his ear.

“You’re fuckin’ nicked, sonny.”