The dog across the street is something like a Doberman—slick black hair, slim frame and pretty damn big. Until that night, her sheer size had been lost on me—she had refused to make friends. On a normal day, she barked at me from the safety of her front porch, as if scolding me for even looking her way, until that night when she was staring at me through the shadowy glass of the storm door. A succession of sound rapped like knuckles against the doorframe, as if she were shouting, “Let me in!” I hardly recognized Royal; her panting distorted her face into a half-grin, half-cringe-like expression—teeth exposed and tongue bouncing rapidly in time with the heaving of her chest.
I frowned at first, crept toward the door, and moved to unlatch its silver lock. My muttish hound dog failed to alert me that the beastly sized animal had approached. Any other evening, my dog would be coming out of her skin over the trespasser. I’d barely managed to crack open the door before a blur of black clung to my side, desperately trying to squeeze past me. What the hell? I pushed her back, the storm door crashed shut behind me as I joined her in the darkness. I expected her to flee. Weirdly, her hips pushed into my thighs, clung to me instead. Panting, tail wagging, moving with me as I took another step. We were seemingly long-lost friends reunited. All right, maybe all those times I cooed at her from the side of the road really paid off.
Except, that thought didn’t really make sense, did it? It’s against a paranoid’s nature. I brushed her fur back with the pads of my fingertips, feeling the sudden maternal urge to comfort her. I questioned her, a one-sided interrogation, puzzle pieces taking shape. She didn’t really watch me as I repeated the motion—hardly looked at me, actually. No, her eyes were fixated elsewhere ... across the street. Humans are innately creatures of habit, set in their ways, comfortable in a routine. Rarely do they change—hardly ever is it coincidence when they do. Animals are hyper aware of danger. One piece clicks together with the next.
Alarm bells frantically echoed in my head as more pieces started shifting together, one odd detail after another. The blinds were completely drawn; those are almost always open. Their front door was shut; they never close the door when Royal is outside. The porch lights were on; they’re usually off by now, the neighbors assumingly asleep inside. Packages sat on the edge of a step; those were delivered hours ago. She wouldn’t let me go back in without barking all over again; was she trying to tell me something?
One unfamiliar detail, maybe even two, would be reasonable on its own, but this many? Fissures formed amidst attempts to rationalize the sudden change in temperament, the bizarre breaks from routine, the stiffness in my chest that I couldn’t seem to shake. Every worst-case scenario took a breath of life. I felt myself gripping at Royal’s fur, as we stared together, synonymously.
My neighbors were dead.
Hayden Petty | Franklin