His fur was the color of piss, that golden color you don’t want to look at too hard, and splotched with mud, grease, and something darker.
One ear was half bitten off. The other seemed to stand straight up, unmoving, like a badly made wooden prosthetic.
One lip was split, I think; it seemed blurry at this distance.
He licked his balls. And his dog’s lipstick stuck out, fully twelve centimeters long, pink and waving.
Thousands of unwanted puppies in there.
He wasn’t threatening; I felt sorry for him. He was like a big boy with the reputation of being a bully, who has never hurt anyone.
But when we got close to the yellow dog I realized he was perfect, no bits missing. An illusion to seduce us to come closer. Gina stepped right up to him.
“Gina! Come back!” but she wouldn’t.
“If I comfort him, he will send me a companion. A lifetime companion,” she said.
“Come live with me!” I said. “We’ll take some gaze dogs, rescue them. We’ll live okay.”
He reared back on his hind legs and his huge skull seemed to reach the trees. He lifted his great paw high.
Around our feet, the vampire dogs swarmed. I grabbed one. Another. I sedated them and shoved them in my carry bag.
The yellow dog pinned Gina with his paws. The vampire dogs surrounded him, a thick blue snarling band around him.
I threw my last two gaze dogs at them but they snapped at them too quickly. I had no gun. I picked up three rocks and threw one, hard. Pretended it was a baseball and it was three balls two strikes.
The vampire dogs swatted the rock away as if it were a dandelion. I threw another, and the last, stepping closer each time.
The yellow dog had his teeth at Gina’s throat and I ran forward, thinking only to tear her away, at least drag her away from his teeth.
The vampire dogs, though, all over me, biting my eyes, my ears, my lips.
I managed to throw them off, though perhaps they let me.
The yellow dog sat crouched, his mouth covered with blood. At his paws, I thought I saw hair, but I wondered: What human has been down here? Who else but me would come this far?
I backed away. Two sleeping vampire dogs in my bag made no noise and emitted no odor; I was getting away with it. They watched me go, their tongues pink and wet. The yellow dog; again, from afar he looked kindly. A dear old faithful dog. I took two more vampire dogs down, simple knock out stuff in a needle, and I put them in my bag. A soft blanket waited there; no need to damage the goods.
I picked up another gaze dog as I walked. This one had a gouge in his back, but his fur was pale brown, the color of milk chocolate. He licked me. I put him down my jacket, then picked up another for a companion.
It took me hours to reach the top. Time did not seem to pass, though. Unless I’d lost a whole day. When I reached second waterfall, there were the same fishermen. And the families at first waterfall, swimming, cooking and eating as if there was no horror below them. They all waved at me but none offered me food or drink.
The souvenir salesmen were there at the top. “Shells?” they said. “Buy a shell. No sale for a week, you know. No sale. You will be the first.” I didn’t want a shell; they came from the insects I’d seen below and didn’t want to be reminded of them.
I called a cabbie to take me to my hotel. I spent another day, finalizing arrangements for getting the dogs home (you just need to know who to call) then I checked out of my room.
The doctor was happier than I’d thought he’d be. Only two dogs had survived, but they were fit and healthy and happily sucked the blood out of the live chicken he provided them.
“You were right; you work well alone,” he said. “You should dump that husband of yours. You can manage alone.”
I’d just come from visiting Joe and his dry-eyed gaze, his flaccid fingers, seemed deader than ever. The nurses praised me up, glad there was somefor him. “Oh, you’re so good,” they said. “So patient and loyal. He has no one else.” Neither do I, I told them.
A month or so later, the doctor called me. He wanted to show me the dogs; prove he was looking after them properly.
A young woman dressed in crisp, white clothes answered the door.
“Come in!” she said.
“You know who I am?”
Leading me through the house, she gave me a small wink. “Of course.”
I wasn’t sure I liked that.
She led me outside to the backyard; it was different. He’d tiled the hole and it was now a fish pond. The yard was neater, and lounge chairs and what looked like a bar were placed in a circle. Six people sat in the armchairs, reading magazines, sipping long drinks.
“He didn’t tell me there was a party.”
“Take a seat. Doctor will be with you shortly,” the young woman said. Three of the guests looked at their watches as if waiting for an appointment.
I studied them. They were not a well group. Quiet and pale, all of them spoke slowly and lifted their glasses gently as if in pain or lacking strength. They all had good, expensive shoes. Gold jewelry worn with ease. The doctor had some wealthy friends.
They made me want to leap up, jump around, show off my health.
The young woman came back and called a name. An elderly woman stood up.
“Thank you, nurse,” she said. It all clicked in then; I’d been right. The doctor was charging these people for treatment.
It was an hour before he dealt with his patients and called me in.
The vampire dogs rested on soft blankets. They were bloated, their eyes rolling. They could barely lift their heads.
“You see my dogs are doing well.”
“And so are you, I take it. How’s your son?”
He laughed. “You know there’s no son.”
He gave me another drink. His head didn’t bobble. We drank vodka together, watching the vampire dogs prowl his yard, and a therapist would say my self-loathing led me to sleep with him.
I crawled out of the client’s bed at two or three a.m., home to my gaze dogs. They were healing well and liked to chew my couch. They jumped up at me, licking and yapping, and the three of us sat on the floor, waiting for the next call to come in.
SNOW ON SUGAR MOUNTAIN
Elizabeth Hand
When Andrew was seven, his mother turned into a fox. Snow freed the children from school at lunchtime, the bus skating down the hill to release cheering gangs at each sleety corner. Andrew got off last, nearly falling from the curb as he turned to wave good-bye to the driver. He ran to the front door of the house, battering at the screen and yelling, “Mom! Mom!” He tugged the scarf from his face, the better to peer through frost-clouded windows. Inside it looked dark; but he heard the television chattering to itself, heard the chimes of the old ship’s clock counting half past one. She would be downstairs, then, doing the laundry. He dashed around the house, sliding on the iced flagstones.
“Mom … I’m home, it snowed, I’m—”
He saw the bird first. He thought it was the cardinal that had nested in the box tree last spring: a brilliant slash of crimson in the snow, like his own lost mitten. Andrew held his breath, teetering as he leaned forward to see.
A blue jay: no longer blue, somber as tarnished silver, its scattered quills already gray and pale crest quivering erect like an accusing finger. The snow beneath it glowed red as paint, and threads of steam rose from its mauled breast. Andrew tugged at his scarf, glancing across the white slope of lawn for the neighbor’s cat.
That was when he saw the fox, mincing up the steps to the open back door, its mouth drooped to show wet white teeth, the curved blade of the jay’s wing hanging from its jaw. Andrew gasped. The fox mirrored his surprise, opening its mouth so that the wing fell and broke apart like the spinning seeds of a maple. For a moment they regarded each other, blue eyes and black. Then the fox stretched its forelegs as if yawning, stretched its mouth wide, too wide, until it seemed that its jaw would split like the broken quills. Andrew saw red gums and tongue, teeth like an ivory stair spiraling into black, black that was his mothers hair, his mothers eyes, his mother crouched naked, retching on the top step in the snow.