Sloth

Sloth

I had a cat once that ran away. He was passed on to me by some friends who emigrated and I won the contest to keep their cat. That was without even knowing I was entered for the contest.

Anyway, I kept the cat indoors for the regulation week, after which they were said to have forgotten their old home. But this one hadn’t. First chance he got, he was off and I didn’t see him again for two weeks. I’d given up hope of ever finding him when he turned up at the back door. He looked a bit thin, but he was a large cat and all the better for the enforced diet his adventure had demanded. I figured he’d gone all the way to his old home, a journey of more than fifty miles, discovered his owners had departed, and returned to the one place where he knew he’d be fed.

But I never had a dog that ran away. Until Brutus.

Brutus was a hell of a dog. Hence the name. A pitbull by both name and nature, he was the sweetest character one could wish for. Most of the time. Loved the kids and I mean that literally, not in the way you were thinking. He would let them climb all over him and pull his ears and tail, never got mad or even complained. But he hated the mailman.

And the mailman wasn’t that keen on Brutus either. I was there when they met and it was obvious that a certain dislike emanated from both of them from the first. The way Brutus looked at the guy and snarled quietly to himself was probably the cause but the way the mailman reacted didn’t help. He was waving his arms in front of him, telling me to keep the dog off him, and dancing around like a dervish. That was the kind of thing to entice a Yorkie, let alone a self-respecting pitbull in his prime.

I held Brutus back and the mailman backed away after leaving the mail on the drive. From that moment on I made sure that Brutus was locked within the house when the mailman made his rounds, so they never met again. It might have been better to introduce them to each other, making it evident that I expected there to be peace between them. Brutus would have understood but not that mailman. Never seen a better example of how to get a dog to chase you.

Keeping them apart worked well enough for several years and then Brutus disappeared. The whole property was fenced and Brutus understood well enough that this boundary was to be respected. We both knew that he could jump over even a six foot fence any time he wanted but, as long as the neighbours didn’t know this, the peace was kept.

So it was a total surprise to find that Brutus had gone one day. I searched the house and grounds, then the local area, but there was no sign of him. No one had seen him according to my enquiries and no reports of a ferocious monster of a dog wandering the streets came my way.

It was so unlike Brutus that I began to suspect foul play. Had he been lured outside by some juicy, dripping steaks and then poisoned? Or maybe he’d been dognapped and forced to participate in some illegal dog-fighting ring. I brought the police into the search but they didn’t hold out much hope. And printed leaflets and posters brought no results. After a month, it began to look as though Brutus had gone for good. Skip forward a year and I had given up all hope.

Then came the day when there was a scratching sound at the front door. It wasn’t the frantic sound of an animal desperate to get through the door but quieter, more polite, as though patiently expecting to be let in without fuss. Just a scratch, scratch and then a pause while waiting for a response. I opened the door.

Brutus stood there looking up at me, mouth stretched wide in a huge grin and tongue lolling from his mouth like a pink necktie. No effusive greetings, no jumping up and hugging, hardly anything more than a flash of recognition in his eyes as he saw me.

I was not so constrained.

Kneeling down, I clasped his neck and berated him, in an affectionate way, for the worry he’d put the whole family through. I patted his sides and could feel the ribs where there’d been muscle before. His coat was thin and dry, a sure sign of malnutrition.

The strange thing was that there was no response to my relief at his return. He stood patiently, bearing my advances but immobile and clearly just tolerating my excitement. In the end I stood aside and let him walk into the house. He headed for the kitchen.

I fed him and he attacked it as any dog will do, gulping it down without bothering to chew. But there was none of the overenthusiasm that I would expect from a starving dog. He just wolfed it down and then walked away when it was finished.

In the next few days I wondered often how Brutus had managed to stay alive so long. I supposed that he eked out an existence by hunting through garbage cans and rubbish heaps, but why stay away when he must have known how to return to a home where he would be fed every day? There was obviously a lot more to Brutus than I’d imagined before.

Once good food and rest had filled out his sides, he looked as healthy as he had ever done. But he was changed in character. There was still no aggression in him towards any member of the family but he lacked apparent care for us. He lived quietly amongst us, sleeping much of the time and displaying no interest in play or the usual activities that dogs love. It struck me that he had become lazy in his time away.

It was when he saw the mailman again that I knew he was not the dog we once had known. While Brutus had been elsewhere, I had lost many of my habitual methods of keeping the pair apart and one day I forgot to keep him inside until the mailman had passed by. Brutus got out and they met on the drive.

The mailman reacted as he did with any dog larger than a Jack Russell. He flapped his arms, tried to shoo Brutus away, and then turned and ran. The dog watched him go and then turned haughtily and strolled back to the house.

I had to face the fact then that Brutus had changed in some fundamental way. It wasn’t natural for any dog to refuse to chase something that ran from it.

For much of the rest of that day, I watched Brutus as he lounged about the rooms, finding the warmest spot and spreading himself out in it like a cat. I could see now that, not only had he put back the weight he’d lost while away, he was actually beginning to look a little pudgy in places. The dog was so inactive, he was getting fat. That was so rare in pitbulls that I could hardly believe it. The surprise made me speak to him.

“Brutus, you’re getting fat.”

And now we get to the really weird bit. You’re not going to believe me but it’s the honest truth, I swear it. The dog answered my comment.

Now, understand, it was not like those oddities where a dog has been trained to make sounds that could be interpreted as words. The voice was as clear as a bell and produced sounds that could not possibly be understood as anything other than language. Yes, there was a growly quality to it but each word was perfectly articulated and strung together with others to create a meaningful sentence. And there wasn’t a hint of a foreign accent to it. The best way I can describe it is that it was slow, deliberate and sonorous.

“Why should that concern you?” asked Brutus, a look of boredom in his eyes. He yawned cavernously afterward, as if to emphasise his words.

It’s not every day you have to think of a clever answer for a pet’s question and it was a few seconds before I replied. “Well, you know they say a fat pitbull’s an abomination. They’re supposed to be muscle all over.”

Brutus gave a quick hack of disgust. “The muscle’s still there. And I’ve been an abomination all my life so why should I care?”

“What are you talking about? There never used to be an ounce of fat on you.”

He gave me one of those haughty looks I was becoming used to. “Don’t assume that I mean the dog when I say ‘me.’ Your Brutus is merely a convenient conveyance for me now. My name is Sloth.”

I must admit I had no answer for this. It’s true that the thought had crossed my mind since Brutus’ return - that he might somehow have become demon-possessed. But I never expected to voice that suspicion aloud or, even worse, have it spelled out for me by the perpetrator.

Silence reigned between the two of us while we were locked in a sort of staring competition. Then Brutus - or Sloth - lost interest and dropped his head to continue his dozing.

And so it went for a few days. I continued to feed the dog in some sort of vague hope that he might get so overweight that his plans, whatever they were, would be stymied by an inability to move around. And he did get fatter but not enough to be a serious encumbrance to him. He moved slowly anyway, as if living up to his name, and I began to wonder what the point of this demon-possession could be. What diabolical scheme could be in the process of hatching from the somnolent bulk of our uninvited guest?

In the end, I decided to ask him.

“I wondered when you’d get around to that,” he replied. “Probably I shouldn’t tell you but I do enjoy seeing a victim squirm when they realise their fate. And the thing is so far advanced now that I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything about it. There was a slight danger that you’d have brought in some freak to do an exorcism but that time has passed now. You’re welcome to try but you’ll find you just can’t muster the energy for it.

“And that’s the hell of it, my friend. It’s all in the name, you see. As I am Sloth, I affect those around me. You must have noticed how things seem to be slowing down, how difficult it is to get up in the morning, how it’s been easier to phone in sick rather than go to work each day.

“You’re even finding it hard to think about what I’m telling you, aren’t you? That’ll pass in time, I assure you. In the end, you’ll die from sheer lethargy, from the complete lack of desire to do anything at all.

“But you won’t be the first. Your family is already well ahead of you and you’ll be able to watch as they go, one by one, through the door of complete nothingness. Shit, it’s all so boring, isn’t it?”

By an enormous act of will, I crawled away and fired up the computer. Entered the word “exorcism” in the search bar and found myself slipping away into sleep. Maybe in the morning…


Word count: 1952
For SCREAMS!!! Contest due 08.15.23
Prompt: A family dog runs away from home. He returns a year later to the delight of his family. But there's something different about him. Something demonic.