You think it can’t happen to you. We all think that, out of hopeful denial, perhaps, that we ourselves will be spared the impossible horror of it.
Then one day, you, like so many other poor souls before you, glance outside one disarmingly sunny afternoon, maybe while fixing yourself a cup of burnt coffee or dislodging a stray strand of hardened Ramen from the chipped counter, those sickly signs of your own existential unease, your particular hallmarks of that quiet desperation we all call routine, and, alas, your own worst fears are all at once realized.
You are gripped then in panic. Your palms go sweaty, the nether places alarmingly dank, your breathing all kablooey. Because it’s there. The thing they had talked about, on the far sides of high fences, where they themsleves were less protected. The thing that was never supposed to happen, not to you.
It has found its way, finally, past your best defenses, into your own personal space, your haven. Into your own life. It has found you. A swirling mass on the telltale pee-scalded centipede grass. The monster, the beast, the ravenous, that very most dreaded.
The Backyard Wallow Dog.
