Billy Manslaughter And The Metamorphic Dog

Doctor Sabia cleared his throat. “Tell me about your dreams.” He said. “Have the nightmares gotten any better? Is your friend still in them?”

I barely heard him because as always, I was staring longingly out the window. I wanted to get out of that place, it had almost been two years. The huge oak tree outside was just getting its spring foliage and I didn't want to spend another summer at “Fox Run.”

It was late in the afternoon and the sun was still out, which meant the days were reaching out towards summer. My appointments with Doctor Sabia were getting less and less and later in the day which simply meant I wasn't such a high priority anymore. Actually, that was a good thing, it meant they were getting ready to send me home.

Outside with the sun slowly going down it looked like all the other buildings on campus were on

fire, of course they weren't, but the sunset made it look that way.

Suddenly for just an instant my face felt clammy, and my neck got tight. It was gone almost as quickly as it came and when I looked up Doctor Sabia was looking at me. “Was that him?”

“No!” I lied. If I let on he was still there the good doctor would never let me go home.

“You know it was destroyed?”

“I don't care,” I squirmed as I felt a bit of a panic attack coming on. “I told you I don't think about him anymore.”

“You don't blame him?” He asked.

“No, of course not.” I replied.

“Well Billy, your parents and I both feel you're ready to get out of this place. What do you think?”

“Yes!” I cried.

“By the way I like your poem, but I think you should consider changing the name.” He added.

Visitations home had been few and far between in the last two years and it had always been with a staff and only for one day. They were always telling me, “You’ll get used to it.”

But I never did. Nope, not for one minute it always felt like I was dancing with two left feet. I had hardly known my father. I had been one of his business trips flings. She lay alone in the gutter two and a half years ago, the victim of a hit and run. Her only crime had been walking home late from her second job.

My mind, like a flower, was new and open, a candle's faltering first moments, and still nothing was real as I sat in the front seat next to my father. I wished for spring on the inside of the car as we rode the windows all up tight. The car stunk of spray so as my stepmother's hair wouldn't blow, not a wisp. Waves of light reflected off the highway and with a hundred miles down and a thousand to go I erased myself and sat there quietly like I was made of stone. A Metamorphic Dog to be abused and kicked around.

Just then as if on a wave of tarmac our exit appeared. Oh joy, I thought, almost home. Before the lavish gates on top, the liquid stone, behind fountains made of marble stood my home sweet home. But it was neither sweet nor truly home for me.

When my darling stepsister the beautiful Broom Hilda stepped out to meet us an almost inaudible groan escaped my lips. “You stop!” My Father hissed. “She's your sister.”

To be smothered into the ample breast of someone fat and smelly that you truly hate is nothing but disgusting even for a teenage boy trust me. A moment before the encounter a rather strange expectancy came over me. A sense that it was all bullshit and for my father’s benefit.

The only good thing about coming home was Firecracker, my golden retriever and he was very excited to see me. He had been a gift from my mother just before she died and he may well have been the only one that was really happy that I was home. We immediately got down to wrestling. “Hey guy did ya miss me?” I laughed.

He was a million kisses that was who Firecracker was. My Mother had named him that because he was the only dog that she had ever owned that wasn't afraid of fireworks. You could pop them off all day. Firecracker didn't give a shit. Everything good was what Firecracker was to me. Hours a day since I had come to live with my father, he had kept me in the light and out of the shadows. He was my best friend and now we were back together again.

Deer were everywhere in the town of Rhinebeck yet as we walked Firecracker had to sniff out every spore and he did. It was his job. We made our way through meadow grass alive and on fire with spring, and through the fragrant clover, Firecracker’s tail snapping from side to side and his muscular neck tense. His coat was soft and short golden brown in color and sometimes his movements blended in with all that was, and he seemed to just disappear. He moved through the tall bush like a shadow unbound. “I'll be back, we're just going to take a little walk.” I yelled to my father as I followed Firecracker into the woods.

An owl was fastened to a limb, his long claws wrapped around it tight. We were the light, like the beam of a flashlight, we broke up the darkness and sent it scurrying away in all directions. In the blink of an eye, we were inside like a half-lid above the waves we could see both the sides of the forest green and the approach to the light. The underbelly gooey and unseen only consisting of the greenest green.

So, this is the side of you that you keep hidden, I thought. Of course, I wasn't thinking about the forest anymore I was self-diagnosing my aversion to every good event in my life. It seemed I had balled it up tight and stashed it away in a stone statue of a dog and it had been the focus of my loathing.

Just then Firecracker took off between two pines and the sunlight shining through them for an instant turned him to pure gold and then poof he was gone. When I went through into the open light it was not pure gold it was pale blue with an emerald arm that reached down to the Hudson, but my dog was nowhere in sight and then he appeared as if out of the mist. He stood completely motionless; his hackles rippled. His eyes never moved; they just stared straight ahead as two white tailed deer pranced across the meadow and were lost to the golden reeds of Tivoli Marsh.

Firecracker growled deep down in his throat. “What is it boy?” I whispered. But as I watched a puff of smoke seemed to rise into the air like from a campfire. Time to go. I thought they were probably hunters. Firecracker lunged forward and barked, and the deer were gone. So quickly that I didn't even see them disappear, but I knew they had. Even before I could focus my mind told me they were gone. I knelt next to my dog and asked him. “What was that?” Of course, he didn't answer but I had the feeling he wanted to.

We walked back to the house under a bird-less sky in utter silence. The shadow of the woods was now cast over my shoulder as the sun was slowly setting. I remembered part of a poem I had read once.

Those two lines had haunted my nightmares. Maybe not haunted, I thought? But they had definitely appeared and left an impression. Night terrors had been my constant companions and my only friends from way back then. I was there calling the wind, calling her name, calling her back. I missed her. I knew what it meant to be lonely, and I knew what it meant to be free. Touched with pain my life had changed miles across an endless sea. To move on meant to lose her and that I couldn't bear.

Abruptly the day exhaled, and the night fell a chill came across the meadow bound by timeless glades. Firecracker and I sat on the huge veranda which to me was just a giant porch. The cushions of the chairs were so soft that they smothered me with love. It was as if my mother was right there, and I was leaning back into her ample bosoms.

Firecracker looked up at me inquiringly as if to ask, “what now?”

I stepped down off the porch and of course Firecracker followed. A dark cloud suddenly passed over the full moon, and it seemed to be coming across the meadow towards us, drawn like smoke to an open window. A chill went down my spine. Despite the fact that Firecracker was a noble and brave beast he stepped back cowardly behind my legs. My eyes quickly scanned the tree line and the curve of the forest as the quickening passed over us.

No soft chorus of natural things returned, no nightingale's song, or the arthritic creak of the crickets, nothing just an uncomfortable silence. Firecracker danced around, he seemed unsettled by the uncanny. Still, I stared out across the meadow as if expecting some stalker to appear in the moonlight.

Finally taking my own sweet time to give my surroundings a good look, I said. “Nothing out there buddy.”

He replied with a throaty growl.

Other sounds slowly began to mix in. The sound of water gurgling through the pipes in the basement and the flush of the upstairs toilet as well as the sound of Broom Hilda playing the piano in the den. It was only 6:20 and the Manor House was coming alive for the night.

I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was 3:00 AM. Firecracker trotted into my room widening the crack in the door with his nose so he could get through. I hadn't slept a wink and I was starving. At the hospital there had been no snacks after 8PM when the kitchen closed but I was home now. That was right I was home, I thought with a laugh.

Firecracker reached his paw out to shake hands as he climbed onto the bed and because I was the one that taught him that trick, I had to respond. “Good boy!” I crooned. That didn't turn out to be a good Idea because he just kept wanting to do it over and over again. Ninety pounds of dog on your chest can make it really hard to move. “Get down, get down, get... come on.” I huffed as I pushed him off.

A vague brand of disquiet surrounded me as I went down the huge marble staircase in the dark. The house was silent and everybody else was fast asleep like good little boys and girls. The moments I spent on the stairs and making my way through the dark house to the kitchen were filled with furtive looks and tense body language. I had never liked that house.

Knowing his banging around would make too much noise I had closed Firecracker in my room and just now I was hearing his faint protests. If he got worse, I might have to go back I thought before he woke up the whole house. But so far so good I'd have to keep my fingers crossed.

The figure was suddenly just there. “Jumping Jesus!” I cried. My legs were shaking, and I thought I may have squirted a little pee. I stared at it trying to see if it was real or just a trick of the light, but I was pretty damn sure there was someone standing right there in the darkened doorway peeking out at me with red like demon eyes.

The Manor House was not harmless, and I knew that. I had heard the servants talking, especially Leon, the old black man who took care of the place. “This place has been around for a long time there Billy, and it's got many stories to tell, and many lies to keep. Best thing we can do is let the old girl sleep. Don't you think so Billy or are there more metamorphic dogs to kill? What do you think there Billy Manslaughter? You see the way I got it figured it was self-defense and in my book that makes it manslaughter not second-degree murder. Life and death is what it was Billy. Life and death and it was you or it one of you had to win. I'm glad it was you.”

Just then the manor smelled of split pine and I heard the backdoor in the kitchen opened and someone stomped their feet. The figure in the doorway was gone; it had just faded to black like those old movies. I quickly made my way down the hallway to the kitchen where a slightly older and grayer Leon was loading the wood stove. He got a big smile on his face when he saw me and gave me a big old bear hug. “I figured I'd have to wait to see you until noon. What's got you up in the wee hours?” He asked with a big toothless grin.

“Hungry, “I replied. “How about you?”

“A little slower but I can still get it stiff, so I guess I'm doing better than most men in their seventies. Don't have a lot of volunteers these days, but I can't complain, I always got Polly and her four pretty sisters.”

“You know what I mean. How are things here really?” I said.

“There's a dance between predators and prey around here and once you learn the steps you okay.” He said. Even in just the glow of the wood stove I could see him nod his head and smile. He closed the door and started for the back; he and Franny had a studio apartment in the loft of the barn. I had always worried someday they'd get too old to make it up those steep wood steps, but it hadn't happened yet so what did I know? Leon and Franny had been really good to me when I first came to the Manor, so I wanted to look out for them too. He had been the first one to find me after the incident. If I had been able to choose, I would have ended my life that night, but he wouldn't let me. “Illusion and reality,” he had told me, “Sometimes things ain't as they appear.”

The truth was that my mother hadn't died in that accident that night. She had laid in a coma for months and when I couldn't stand it anymore, I undid her chains and set her free.

Leon put his big rough, calloused hands on my shoulders. “Your Dad never went to your Mother's Funeral because of his guilt. Nobody wants their mistakes to come up and bite them in the ass and lay the truth on their doorstep, but he loves you boy he truly does. The decision had been yours to make because you knew her best and you did it and it's time to move on metaphorically speaking, right? He had used the word wrong on purpose, I knew it. It's time to kick the metamorphic dog down the road Billy Manslaughter.”

Suddenly he started dancing and singing right there in the kitchen, slapping his leg to keep time.

Suddenly it felt like a great weight had been lifted from my chest. “You mean I'm not crazy?” I asked.

“No more than the rest of us Billy boy, no more than the rest of us.” He said.

THE END

Bio: Timothy Wilkie is a local hero in the Hudson Valley. From his music to his art and storytelling. He's an old hippy and a storyteller in the truest sense of the word. He has two grown sons and loves to spend time with them. His writing credits include Aphelion, Horror-zine, Dark Dossier and many more.

E-mail: Timothy Wilkie

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