This was about two years ago, in the middle of the summer. My friend Jim and his hetero-lifemate Mark(my asshole brother) went on vacation together, leaving their house empty. They had planned on boarding their two dogs while they were gone, but those plans fell through when the lady who ran the place hurt herself in a fall or something. So it came down to me to see to the safety of their dogs for the week.
I was delighted to do it. They had a small sheltie named Lady and an enormous Great Pyrenees named Barkley. I love Barkley, he is the best dog. I regularly go over to their shared home to hang out with him and ignore the filthy humans present.
On night two of dogsitting I heard Barkley pawing at the door to go out. I grab leashes, hook the beasts up, and head out. I was watching Lady sniff a tree for a few minutes when I heard Barkley bark at something and go off sprinting. I shouted for him and braced the leash, only to hear the cord snap when tension was put into it. Barkley, sensing freedom, bolted like a stabbed rat, streaking along the long line of the property. I shouted and started after him and managed to trip on a branch obscured in the darkness and ate dirt. By the time I’d gotten up, I’d completely lost the dog.
I hustled Lady back inside and started after my brother’s dog. I reached the edge of the property and pushed the weirdly dense brush to get to the other side. Their property butted up against a radio field, just a big, empty lot with high metal towers blasting 5G cancer into our bones.
I shouted for Barkley and started looking around, hoping the dog hadn’t gotten far. Thankfully, his white coat stood out against the darkness and I saw him walking towards me after only a minute. I could see he was holding something in his mouth, something like a tree branch hanging out of his jaws. I crouched down and he came right up to me. I started petting him, feeling relief that I hadn’t lost my brother’s beloved pet. I froze when I got a good look at what he was dragging though.
It was an arm. It was a fucking human arm.
I was understandably surprised by this and tried to slap the limb from his mouth. He did that thing that dogs do when you want something from them and started scampering off with it, like it was a game and not a travesty. I eventually got a hold and pulled on the dead wrist, his jaws locked on the bicep. We played a grotesque game of tug for a few second before I whapped him on the snoot and he let go, seemingly embarrassed and confused. I looked down at the limb. It was dark skinned, slender, with long, painted nails. A lady’s arm.
I hunted around for a bit, in kind of a daze. It didn’t take me long to find the rest, pieces of a person laid out in the ruts of the field. It seemed like it was all of her, but I wasn’t all that willing to check. I started sprinting back to the house when I realized that I needed to put the arm back where it was. I don’t know if it was the smart thing to do, but I did it. I am not proud I did it, but I did it.
I got back to the house and called the police to report a dead body. They said they would send some officers over to investigate and that they would be there in a few minutes. Sitting in a living room that is not your own waiting for the police to come look at a body your friend’s dog savaged is a situation so surreal feeling it should have it’s own word. I jumped when the police knocked on the door and must have looked like a crazy person when I opened it because both cops put their hands on their guns.
I led them to the field and showed them the body. They got a lot more serious at that point and asked for my statement. I started giving, omitting only that Barkley had tried eating the lady’s arm. I half-remembered that an animal that eats human flesh has to be put down as a precaution, like they couldn’t be trusted. And in my fight or flight addled mind, making sure Barkley was safe was beyond paramount. So I said that I found the body while I was chasing him around the field, not that he’d tried to eat it.
The rest of this is post-knowledge. My lie ended up fucking up the cop’s timeline as animals scavenging on a body is a benchmark for body decomposition. Thankfully, they got the guy who killed her immediately. It was her brother. They arrested him and he confessed in custody. He’d killed her for… money I think? He dumped her in the field just to delay the cops finding her until he could flee the country. But if it wasn’t for his confession, my attempt to save my brother’s dog would have let a murderer go free.