Kreative Kue 246

Kreative Kue 245 asked for submissions based on this photograph:

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John W Howell is the author of the John Cannon trilogy of My GRL, His Revenge, Our Justice and Circumstances of Childhood, co-author of The Contract, and blogs at Fiction Favorites.

Good Boy by John W. Howell © 2020

“Why is he sitting like that?”

“I don’t know. I think he is trying to show me something.”

“Is that it boy. Are you trying to show us something?”

“Ask him if Timmy fell in the well.”

“Don’t be an idiot. There’s no Timmy around here.”

“Worth a try.”

“No, it has to be something else. Did you take him for his walk?”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t let me take off his sweater.”

“Is he running a fever? Did you feel his ears?”

“Yes, I mean, No. I mean, I felt his ears, and he has no fever.”

“Come on, boy. What is the problem?”

“Like he is going to tell you.”

“Wait, he’s pointing at you.”

“He hasn’t moved his paws.”

“I mean with his nose. Do you have something of his?”

“No. Although on walk, he wanted me to run with him.”

“Did you do it?”

“Yes, for as long as I could.”

“Uh-huh. What was that, ten feet?”

“No. I would say a half a mile.”

“Well, if I were to guess, I would say he wants you to sit.”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“Intuition. Sit.”

“Okay, then. There. Happy?”

“Now, he’s looking at me.”

“Maybe, he wants you to sit.”

“No, I think he wants me to praise you. Here let me pat your head. Who’s my good boy? Such a good boy. There’s my good boy.”

“He’s walking away.”

“See, he wants you to behave like a dog.”

“I suppose next he’ll want me to eat out of his dish.”

“No, he’s pretty particular about his dish. Do you feel you bonded with him?”

“I’m not sure about bonding, but could we do that ‘good boy’ thing again?”

This moving tale is from Na’ama Yehuda, who blogs at https://naamayehuda.com :

On Guard! by Na’ama Yehuda

“How long will he be this way?”

“Dunnow,” Plucky shrugged. “But let’s get this done before he loses concentration.”

“I wanna waive something in front of his eyes. He looks so hypnotized!” Shimmer shifted excitedly from foot to foot. This was so thrilling!

“Don’t you dare!” Plucky’s hiss almost made actual sound. He bobbed his head in an effort to contain it. “Let’s get to it! Blue is good but even he can’t keep this up forever.”

Shimmer nodded distractedly.

“Coming or I go it alone?”

“Coming, coming…” Shimmer nodded and sighed in one. She didn’t want to miss anything. She wanted to see everything! She wished she could be in two places at the same time. She tore her eyes off of the dog, whose nose barely twitched and whose eyes never left the cockroach that was held in the blue-gray pigeon’s beak, just out of the canine’s reach. Blue was so courageous!

Plucky was already on the move. Shimmer stepped behind the brown bird’s sparse tail feathers, trembling with suppressed flutter. This was her first heist.

The window was open. The dog had forgotten a biscuit on his cushions. They were going to sneak into the room and steal it.

My effort was

Every dog has his … sausage?

D’you like my training jacket?

No, it isn’t like a training bra or training pants that babies use. I’ve been clean and dry since I was a pup – and that was a while ago, I don’t mind telling you. And before you ask, I ain’t about to grow man-boobs or whatever the equivalent is for fat dogs. I may be a bit of a porker, but I’m not that bad.

No, the idea of this is to make me stronger. There’s about a kilo and a half of weights sewn into the jacket. That’d be ten to fifteen kilos on the average human. There’s a sausage dangling from a string up there. I can see it. I can smell it. If I close my eyes I can practically taste it. Fair makes me drool, it does.

They want me to jump up to try and grab it, but I’m wise to them. They’ll judge how high I can jump and lift the sausage just a little bit higher. That way, they reckon, I’ll jump more and more and get stronger each time.

But I won’t give them that satisfaction. I can sit here looking at it longer than they can sit there looking at me. You know what they’re like with their kids, don’t you? They play a silly game, like hiding behind their hands then opening them and shouting ‘boo’. Cracks the kids up, it does, so they do it again… and again. Eventually, they get tired of it and stop. And the kid screams. Why? Cos the kit ain’t bored of it. It wants more, but they can’t keep it up.

You wait. In a minute, one of them will say that they can’t sit here all day watching me, that I can’t get the sausage without jumping for it and that when they come back, they’ll know if I’ve jumped high enough. So they’ll go away.

Ever heard of telekinesis?

Heh heh heh…

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On to this week’s challenge: Using this photo as inspiration, write a short story, flash fiction, scene, poem; anything, really; even just a caption for the photograph. Either put it (or a link to it) in a comment or email it to me at keithchanning@gmail.com before 6pm next Sunday (if you aren’t sure what the time is where I live, this link will tell you). If you post it on your own blog or site, a link to this page would be appreciated, but please do also mention it in a comment here.