Robert Creekmore

I Wanna Be Your Dog

How Earl Jackson came to have Cole Hanson’s testicles in his hands wasn’t about passion, as so often is the case. Because rarely does lovemaking involve garrotting your partner’s nuts with baling wire. No, this was about a dog. 

Earl found himself living alone in his mother’s house. That came to pass because of the cancer that took root in her throat and mouth.

“I dipped since I was nine-and-half and ain’t nothing bad ever happened to me,” she repeated like a mantra up until the malignancy spirited away her voice. The entirety of her would follow three months later.

The downtown bungalow was more than a century old, livable but in need of repair. Regrettably, his pay at a local auto parts store was so abysmal that it would have been criminal in most European countries. So instead, the house decayed around him, further fueling his depression.

The malaise that cast over Earl’s spirit fed off his anima and grew similarly to the way the webs of fungal rot did across the floor joists beneath his feet. That was until one night when he saw something lying on the road. 

When Earl first caught a glimpse of it, he couldn’t help but think it looked like a large brown bean. However, beans don’t move on their own.

Further inspection revealed it to be a puppy -far too young to be away from its mother.

Earl took the helpless creature home and bottle-fed it. He would grow up into a pitbull named Remy.

***

Four years passed, and whatever cosmic alchemy holds the human species to the canine took hold with a firm grip. However, all things are temporal, even the love between a man and his dog.

***

Where the pair lived could crassly be called a ‘high crime area’. Though, Earl had never been the victim of it. This was especially true with the sharp ears and even sharper teeth of Remy sleeping at the foot of his bed each night.

The thing is, laws don’t matter when the criminals wear badges.

***

Earl Jackson’s doors were breached at four in the morning. Remy alerted him immediately.

He nudged the door open and exited the bedroom ahead of Earl, who had lifted an old machete from underneath his bed before following.

Just as he reached the bedroom door, Earl heard a rifle resound in his hallway followed by a sickening yelp. He rushed to the aid of his best friend without consideration for his own safety. 

There, just inside the front door, Earl was confronted with the outline of a man dressed in tactical armor, his face covered by a mask. He was pointing a semi-automatic rifle down at Remy who writhed and squalled on the floor in throes of immense pain. 

Remy’s back legs were paralyzed from a single round that had severed the dog’s spine. 

The home invader fired a round at Earl.  He missed his center mass and hit him in the right leg. This shattered his femur which left Earl incapacitated. 

Then two more shots rang out, followed by squeals and howling as the masked man had cruelly shot off both of Remy’s front paws. 

“I reckon he won’t be squeaking around on one of those stupid dog wheelchairs,” a gruff voice said laughing from behind the mask. “You should have restrained your dog, you stupid motherfucker.”

Earl said nothing, in shock but still aware.

“Oh, I see them angry eyes glaring at me. But ain’t shit can be done to stop me now, boy,” the man said as he placed the muzzle of his rifle against Remy’s convulsing skull and pulled the trigger.

A moment later another voice from behind the goon in the doorway shouted, “Goddamn it, Hanson! You stupid, fuck up son of a bitch. This was your raid.”

“Mr. Wilkerson is in custody. What else is there?”

“Mr. Wilkerson is white! That’s what!” the second man shouted, pointing down at Earl’s dark brown complexion. “I don’t even need to look at his driver’s license to know you got the wrong goddamn house!”

Both ignored Earl Jackson’s severe injury and continued their discussion.

“He sicced his dog on me and was armed with a machete. You know how they are,” Hanson said flippantly.

“The lot of them,” the second officer agreed, chuckling. “I reckon we’ve let him wiggle and jiggle across the bloody floor long enough. Might as well call an ambulance. If he dies, it means even more paperwork.”

***

When Earl woke, he was handcuffed to a hospital bed. It was overkill considering he had a full cast on his right leg and tubes running out of him.

The television had been left on an obscure cable network that was showing reruns of an equestrian competition. Though he’d never been interested in horses, Earl found himself transfixed. 

Time tarried on. The handcuffs eventually came off and the officer who’d been stationed at Earl’s door went away. Now it was a parade of lawyers and the acolytes who helped them suck meat from the bone when those acting on the government’s behalf did naughty shit.

The civil proceedings dragged on far beyond Earl’s acquittal and recovery. His coworkers joked about how he was already a rich man, but never believed it. Until one day he was, compliments of the city’s insurance policy.

In the interim, Officer Hanson was demoted. But, three months later he was repromoted to his former rank with a pat on the back and wink of an eye.

With the money, Earl Jackson bought a large farm east of town. There, he had a house built, and an indoor equestrian complex constructed. He opened it up as a training and competition space, often free of charge. 

***

Despite now being a vindicated pillar of the community, Earl had a grave secret. Buried underneath the well-appointed arena was a bunker. Inside was a singular resident, retired officer Hanson.

The same officer whose bass boat’s steering cable he nearly cut in two one Friday evening last summer. The next morning, Hanson pulled his trailered craft out and headed for the lake. Earl wasn’t far behind him, hauling his own vessel. Following from a distance, Earl watched as the cable snapped. This sent Hanson’s outboard flailing back and forth, which eventually caused the boat to capsize violently. Afterward, he scooped the retired officer’s body from the dark water. Following an extensive search, Hanson was presumed dead.

Upon arrival at his new subterranean home, Hanson was concussed and in and out of consciousness. Once awakened, he found himself naked, bathed in the kind of darkness that can only be found beneath the Earth’s surface.

Earl stood down the hallway of the underground complex and listened to the man who tortured his dog to death embody fear through screams.

“Oh Jesus, oh God, no! I was a good Christian, God!” Hanson exclaimed, who believed himself to be in hell. What other explanation could there be? 

After three days, he became weak from thirst and put up no fight when Earl Jackson entered the room.

Awake again, Hanson found himself, strapped to a thick board, limbs spread out like starfish. An IV was in his left arm, supplying life-sustaining fluids. 

It took Hanson a moment for his eyes to adjust when the lights were turned on. He could see the outline of a man standing in front of him. 

“Do you remember me?” Earl Jackson asked. 

“No,” he replied shaking. 

“Strange. I’ve spent years thinking about you,” Earl said as he looped baling wire around the base of Hanson’s testicles. He twisted it like a noose using a short piece of round wood cut from an old broom handle. Hanson winced at the sharp pain encircling his shriveled, gray man-pouch.

Earl kept saline bags and antibiotics flowing. He tightened the baling wire a little bit more each day. Over time, Hansons’s testicles turned purple and began to bleed. Eventually, the skin between his scrotum and body died. When his balls finally dropped to the floor below, they landed in a rancid collection of his piss and shit.

“You thought any more about who I am?” Earl asked the day Hanson became a eunuch.

“I killed your dog.”

“Yes. But now I have you to replace him. And, you’re already fixed,” Earl said, cackling.

On his way out, Earl extinguished the lights, eliciting infant-like cries from the belated castrato.

***

The next time the lights came on, Earl carried a black, pump action shotgun loaded to double-aught buckshot.

“No, no, no!” Hanson screamed.

“Don’t worry, you’re long from dead. I’m liable to keep you around for the rest of your natural life. Beforehand, however, I want to make some structural changes.”

Without warning, Earl Jackson shot Hanson’s left foot and ankle point-blank, which created a twisted menagerie of bone, tendon, and flesh.

“That’s the pain Remy felt,” he whispered into Hanson’s ear. 

One month later, Earl did the same to his right foot. Another month, a kneecap, then the next. Finally, both hands. 

Each wound healed into mangled forms – bones fusing to bones they shouldn’t have in a desperate attempt to become whole again. This left Hanson to walk on all fours. 

The day Hanson spit in Earl’s face, he pulled his tongue out of his mouth with a pair of needle nose pliers and permanently mangled it with the hot blue flame of a butane torch. 

After healing, Hanson became extremely docile. So much, so that when Earl began tattooing his naked body, he didn’t even move.

Earl’s work was based on old photos of Remy. Slowly, he tattooed Hanson’s entire body with the same patterns as his deceased canine friend. It took more than a year, but eventually, the retired officer’s entire body was covered.

***

Today was the fifth anniversary of Retired Officer Hanson’s boating accident. Earl Jackson visited the boat ramp and watched his widow lay a memorial reef as she stood beside her new husband, who just happened to be the second officer on the scene the night Remy was murdered. 

Afterward, Earl headed down into the bunker. 

Hanson no longer tried to speak. Instead, every time Earl entered, he rolled over and showed him his naked tummy. Earl patted him then hooked a leash to his collar. The same one Remy wore.

The arena above was empty. And for the first time, Earl took Hanson, on all fours,  upstairs. 

He led him around on the soft dirt. As before with Remy, Earl Jackson would tell this mute companion his innermost thoughts and feelings with more assurance than one could a priest. 

As he did, Hanson reached out with his mind, knowing he should be able to recall something, but couldn’t. What emerged from that blankness was a singular desire, to be a good boy.