Strange Tails

Potbelly wandered into town, the pads of her cracked paws smarting from pine-needled fields and hard, flinty sidewalks. She was hungry.

Food, though, had to be avoided. The Twinkie bar needed to stay inside her for as long as possible. It may be of little use when finally she birthed it back into this world but she had a purpose at least; a purpose, that is, beyond ram-raiding dog food.

What was her life anyway? The same old same old, on and on, until one day she’d be too old to reach the shelves, too old, even, to bother shushing Squirrel. Slowly perishing, just like that chuck steak at the deli counter. What about adventure? What about the great wild yonder, where she could follow her instincts, gallop free, catch a field rabbit, or … no, maybe not. She couldn’t kill a living thing. She may be a carnivore, but she wasn’t an animal. She was her own worst enemy, that’s what she was. Well, at least this was something. A purpose.

Springville, the sign said. One dusty Main Street, a few tributary roads with things best not explored, probably home to a few disheveled stores, looted, partially burned, utterly scary. The out-of-town plazas were safer. Less like a movie where the little dog gets it.

Here was some good news, at least: no clothing outlets, no burger chains, and no UPS store. An old-school town. One small and solid-looking post office stood defiantly at the end of Main Street, unscathed, but better still, leaning apologetically against it, was a library. This is why she had come.

Like the post office, the library looked wholly intact. Apparently, in the great rush to survive the gathering apocalypse, no one was in urgent need of borrowing a Harry Potter. The window was undamaged, the door firmly closed and locked. Potbelly couldn’t be sure about the locked part, she was never very good with rotating handles, but her best efforts lead to no buttering of biscuits and no swiveling of knobs. So what to do?

Time to practice a little trick Squirrel once successfully deployed. It required positive thinking. Mainly to block out the many times he’d deployed it and failed miserably.

She waddled about for ten minutes until finally locating a crashed car with a conveniently limp side mirror hanging just in reach. The mirror needed only a few healthy tugs to pry it free. Gingerly, Potbelly picked up her fractured prize and trotted back to the library. She had definitely not seen a rotting scalp peeking above the edge of the open car window. Definitely not. Positive thinking.

It took three hours of angling the mirror at the sunlight and into the eyeline of swooping, scavenging birds before success came—during late evening, just as the summer sun had given up its work for the day and was about ready to flop on the couch of the horizon. A large raven flew low enough to be disoriented by Potbelly’s reflected glare. Full speed it rushed, and beak first, into the bottom left-hand corner of the library window. Soon after, she caught another.

“Sorry fellas,” she said aloud. “Guess I am a killer after all.”

When the second bird hit she found the glass sufficiently damaged that when she pushed it with a nervous snout it moved. It moved again, and on a third push the embattled pane decided enough was enough and crashed to the floor, sharp and loud. She leapt back, anticipating the drop, closing her eyes in defense.

When the debris settled she picked her way through its jagged remains. Inside, she scanned the library’s shelves. Again the low sun worked in her favor, reaching far enough into the room for her to read the section headings—if the library faced any other direction than west she would have had to lay down and wait for morning.

The reference section contained several maps, including one of Ohio, and one of the local area. On tiptoes she pushed out the folded documents from the rear of the shelving unit, sometimes needing the wheeled stool, flipping them open with her small, tractive rhinarium, and then manipulating them with her slobbery tongue. Patiently she flicked through their musty innards, long since superseded by computers, trying to locate a clue. Their pages tasted of dry yeast and pepper.

Corabelle Road she found, and Corado Drive, Coronation Street, even a Crap Court–what were they thinking–but no hide nor hair of a Coral Lane. No town of Coralane, and no Silence either.

“Coral Lane, Coral Lane,” she muttered to herself.

By now the sunlight had stepped farther back, pulling shadows in its wake. Succumbing to drooping eyes she flopped onto her side and fell asleep. In her dreams she kicked out at a squid-shaped David Bowie, singing into a green laser microphone, while in the background there crooned an evil army of seven-legged Spiders from Mars.