The Cop Shot My Dog So I Gotta Do Something

a short story

Man, I just can’t stop thinking about it. Can’t get Dubby’s cries out of my head. All them sounds just swirling in my brain like a blender that don’t never stop.  I hear Dubby right fucking now louder than my own voice, hear him yelping and whining, wondering why that cop shot him, wondering why I won’t help him, just wanting that pain to stop and wanting me to stop it and wondering if I don’t love him no more and that’s why I’m letting him stay in all that pain.

The cops came because Alice called them. She was drunk and getting outta pocket again. I had no choice but to smack her. Had to calm her down. You don’t know how she gets, man. Crazier than a shithouse rat for real. She was throwing everything around, threw a goddamn pot at my head. If she had gas and a lighter, I guarantee you she would have burned the house down. Crazy ass bitch. So I slapped her to calm her down some. And what does she do? Calls the goddamn cops. She has more warrants than I do, so you tell me if she was in her right mind that day. Easy math, y’all. She was out of it like I ain’t never seen before. And I only slapped her the once, just to get her to realize how crazy she was getting. Hard, yeah, but once. That’s it. And she did calm down a bit, but only so she could call the cops and act crazy again when they got here. That’s when it happened.

Dubby started barking when the cop car pulled up out front. Good boy he was, just protecting his home like he’s supposed to. Cops are all a bunch of pieces of shit who think they own everything, so of course that muffucker walks up to the door like he’s the one who’s been paying the goddamn rent for the past three years, something Alice never once helped in, I’ll tell you that. And what does this cop do when he gets here? Opens the goddamn door like it’s his to open!

So Dubby rushed at him. Now, I can tell you without a doubt in my heart that Dubby wasn’t about to do nothing to that cop ‘cept stand in front of him and bark his ears off. But what does the pig muffucker do? Takes out his gun and shoots Dubby. Like it was nothing, man! Like he was playing a game! 

Dubby ran away so fast, screeching and yelping, all the way to the other end of the living room. He sat in the corner, pushing his back against the wall so hard like he was trying to go inside it, like he wanted to escape from this place. And he looked at me. Those little black eyes, just looking at me, begging me to help him. All kinds of things were going on in my head at that moment, but I remember thinking if I could hug him and just, like, soak the pain out of him, you know? I’ll take the pain. Get it out of him, I’ll take the bullet. Put it in me, not him. Man, I swear to you I wish I was shot and not him and if I could have turned it back to make it happen I woulda done it. Anything so he wouldn’t look at me like that with those little black eyes like he was. 

Then this cop started screaming all kinds of crazy shit, talking bout ‘GET YOUR DOG UNDER CONTROL!’ This motherfucker shoots my dog in my house and then tells me to get my dog under control? He musta seen the hate in my chest, boy, cuz  then he puts the gun in my face! ‘GET DOWN! GET DOWN!’ You know the way cops talk, like they want you to make you mad and do something just so they can say some bullshit about their life being in danger and whatnot. They can do anything as long as they say that.

So I’m down on the ground, and I didn’t even mean to do it, but I see I’m right next to Dubby. And Dubby’s still crying, still trying to push himself back in that wall. I try to put my hand on his head, kinda console him, you know? And what does the cop do but stomp on my hand. ‘I SAID GET DOWN!’ Crazy muffucker. And that pissed Dubby off. He was bleeding, crying, breathing so hard it looked like his rib bones was about to snap, but he had enough energy to growl at that little pig bitch. Showed some teeth, that’s all he did. And what does the pig bitch do? ‘DOG NOT UNDER CONTROL!’ and he shoots Dubby in the head. He shot my Dubby in the head just like that. Dubby’s face popped like a big ol’ pimple. He was gone, man. In a damn second. And I swear, I felt like one of those big machines with the big claw they dig up the dirt with just came in and tore into my stomach and scraped everything out. I couldn’t move, breathe, just blankness, man. No. All I could say was no. I wasn’t even saying it on purpose, it just kept on coming out of me. No. No. No. Like I was broken or something. I guess I was.

---

That was about three weeks ago. After they killed Dubby, they threw me in jail on account of them warrants I told you about. I was in there just twelve days, but that was enough days to get me fired from my job and evicted from my apartment.  Alice went off somewhere, too. I ain’t got no idea where she is. Don’t care, neither. Bitch. And now I’m sitting here in my car, only thing I got left, parked about a block down from the house where that pig muffucker lives, with a fully loaded Ruger in my hand.

He got a pretty nice house, trees and grass look neat, little porch there to sit on and look out at the nice neighborhood, say hi to the nice neighbors. It’s dark. Almost 11. This is around the time he gets home from his shift. I look at the picture of Dubby I got printed and put on my dashboard this morning. Me and him when we went down to the lake last year. Alice took the picture. I try not to think about that part.

I don’t like wanting another person to feel pain and die. I want peace and love for everyone. If I could press a button, that’s the one I’d press. Peace and love. My grandma rest in peace woulda said something about forgive and let God take care of it. Maybe that’s what I should do. But what if God doesn’t do nothing? Maybe Dubby didn’t matter to God too much since he was a dog. Or maybe this pig muffucker does a bunch of good shit, save a whole family from a burning house and God says, ‘Come on in, buddy.’ And then God says to me, ‘You did all that bad shit here, here, and here, so your ass can’t come in.’ 

What if it happens just like that? Ain’t nothing right about it. Ain’t no justice. Sorry, grandma, I can’t let God take care of it. I can’t trust him. He ain’t been too good to me so far. But he’s been awful good to this pig muffucker with the nice house and nice grass, probably got a pretty wife and nice little kids, too. Maybe even a pretty little dog, though I doubt that. Not after I saw what he did to Dubby.

But what do I got? Not a damn thing now. No job, no home, no woman, and no Dubby. Dubby was all I cared about and they took him - God and this pig, they took him. Took him from me right in front of my eyes, probably laughing the whole time, too. God up there laughing his holy ass off like it’s some joke. Maybe it is a joke. We’re all just part of a joke God made up his own damn self and I’ll tell you this: I don’t like the muffucker’s sense of humor. Sorry, grandma, I don’t mean to call God a muffucker, but I’m just talking the truth and nothing but.

Maybe God really do work in mysterious ways and I’m too much of a dumbass to understand what’s going on. If that’s the case, then whose fault is that? I didn’t create none of this. I didn’t make me. They tell me God maketh everything, God taketh everything. So then, God made the pig crazy. God killed Dubby. God put the hate in my chest and the Ruger in my hand. God did this. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have. God did. 

And now here comes the pig. I can’t see if that’s his car yet cuz it’s so dark, but he presses his fancy garage door opener when he’s still a few houses down so he can just sweep right in that nice little garage without having to wait for it to open.

I get out of my car. I take the safety off my Ruger. I imagine Dubby walking beside me. I think he really is. I can feel him brushing into my left leg since he always had that funny walk. I can see it’s the pig’s car now - the blue sparkle of that brand new car paint. I can see it. I make sure I’m still in shadows. I am. Dubby is, too. Good boy he is. He knows we have to be careful. 

I think back to when I first got Dubby. I wasn’t looking for no dog, but I walked past that pet store on my way to the liquor store, and they had those dog shelter people there trying to give away dogs. And I just looked just to look. And there was Dubby, tiny little thing with those little black eyes, but they looked so big on him then because he was so small. And they just kinda dug into me. I couldn’t look away. So I took him. I didn’t even go to the liquor store. I took Dubby home and played with him and me and him were together ever since. My little Dub. 

I’m getting close to the pig’s house now. I think about how Dubby’s eyes looked when I first saw him and how his eyes when the pig killed him. That pig will never know either of them. He wouldn’t care, either. They make sure you don’t care about all that before they give you a house like this and a car like that.

Dubby getting nervous. He’s walking slower, trying a little to pull me away in the other direction. I tell him to come on, don’t be scared now, we gotta do this. He don’t want to because he ain’t got that meanness in him. I thought I didn’t, too. But maybe I do. Maybe I do just enough. 

We’re behind the front yard bushes now. The pig is pulling into the driveway. I can see his face. That face has been stuck in my mind ever since Dubby squealed across the living room. I done killed that face a thousand times in my dreams already and here he is, alive and well. 

Dubby wants to turn around, but that’s because he don’t know there’s nowhere to turn around to. I pull him closer to me. Don’t be scared, Dubby. You and me, we ain’t got nothing to be scared of now.