Fog in the Garden (Chapter One)

The kitchen was splayed with trash and mess. In one corner was small table littered with ancient soda cans and wrenches. A dim light hit the table from an oddly placed hole in the wall which was rimmed with tattered towels right below a warped cabinet.

A man came into the kitchen and retrieved a full can of RC from the table in the corner and then walked out screaming. "HEY, BITCH!" His voice cracked like a dying engine. "Hey, BITCH! Why don't you come and break your fast!" He left the kitchen and a girl walked in bumping shoulders with him and retrieved a soggy bundle of pancakes out of a clean pot in the putrid sink. She stared at it for a while and then dropped it in the dog bowl underneath a makeshift awning which had been installed above an arched doorway. A floppy looking dog came from the darkness of the door and cocked his head out, sniffing the bundle of sloppy pancakes.

The girl didn't want to watch the dog get such a horrible meal so she turned around and walked over to the small table in the corner and picked up one of the wrenches. There was a slurping sound behind her---the sound of the dog eating.

She walked out of the kitchen with an anxious look in her velvety green eyes. She didn't eat her breakfast which had been waiting for her beside the coffee maker. One egg and more pancakes. Leftovers.

. . . . . . .

The dogs layed with his hanging cheeks splayed on the cracked concrete floor, looking through the hole in the wall below the cabinet. The clouds outside were moving at an immoderate pace, racing one another like grey rhinos in the sky. The dog was always hungry. Always craving.

The girl's breakfast was still up there on the counter, waiting, alone.

The dog crossed the kitchen with its stubby legs and sniffed the air below the food. Good God. Food.

"Won't you come down for me," said the dog. "Can't you come down?"

The girl came in again and gave the dog a nice pit-pat on the head. Scarlet blood stained her clothes and face and arms and feet. She was a walking devil. Her eyes seemed to be glowing with hunger.

The girl reached over the counter, her arms concealing themselves from the dogs view. The dog barked and the girl jumped, pulling her arms back to their sides. She looked down at the dog. It was growling.

Her eyes scanned the walls and empty wrappers. All the bullet shells scattered at the base of three motocross trophies on a high shelf.

Her throat ripped with a violent scream, loud enough to be heard from two blocks away and the dog dug its teeth into the flesh and bones of her left hand. Two fingers immediately ripped from the confinement of her hand and fell into the back of the dog's mouth.

She tried to back away and tripped, the back of her head thumping on the corner of the counter. The dog went to work on her right hip and tore a fresh flab of meat, dark blood spilling from underneath the raising chunk.

As soon as the dog was satisfied it ran back into its hole, bringing the girl's hip flesh along.

She layed there for a while, looking up at the roof. A net was holding back thousands of dead corpses behind the net. Dead faces glared at her through empty eyes. A drop of blood fell onto her nose and mixed into her tears.

She gasped and a face came to life behind the net. "Oh, baby," he said. "That's a nice cunt. . . . Why don't you come on up here and let me down and we'll have nice time together. Fellatio, bitch. Deep-throat sex!"

A drop of semen fell through the net and landed in her eye. She screamed and made an attempt to get up and fell back down on her elbows.

There was a sound which resembled rapid breathing. The man up there was either fucking a carcass or doing something more malicious. The sound of tearing roap filled her ears and mixed with the growling of the dog.

She got up clutching the wrist of her injured hand and starting walking towards the divider between the living room and the kitchen.

The dog jumped from its hole and ripped at her calf. She fell to the ground once again and the net snapped above. The multitudes of corpses fell ontop of her, smashing at least six of her ribs and stopping the dog in its path with a jaw locked on her calf.

Death was close, she knew it. . . .