My ex didn’t really like dogs, so after we broke up.
The first thing I did was get a dog and all the other things he didn’t approve of.
Jake was a black lab mix with a white patch on his chest probably 50 or so pounds.
I found him at our local adoption event, you donate whatever you can and they choose a pet for you and if you like the pet you can accept the adoption match. The event was focused on animals that were on a kill list and multiple shelters in the area were participating
So I went to the adoption event and a woman named Angela introduced herself to me, she said she had been fostering Jake and he was within the age range and size I was looking for.
He’s 2 years old, he’d been returned to the shelter because the family moved out of state and left him alone.
She tells me that it was through no fault of his own because he was an amazing dog.
Angela mentioned that he was a single pet kind of pet.
She asked me if I wanted to take him on a walk and she handed me his leash and I hooked him up.
I put his leash on him and he just stared at me.
I pulled the leash just slightly and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk and he got up and walked to the door, kind of ignoring me but being pretty obedient.
Angela looked at me from the window while I walked him.
I didn’t really feel a connection to him, he was aloof and never looked at me unless I wasn’t looking at him..
I told her that I liked him but would keep looking.
I handed her back Jake and she genuinely looked upset.
I kept walking around the event, and even volunteered to help put some of the dogs away into the vans to go home, hopefully to live another day, it was getting late and already dark when I made my way back to my car, and there was Angela with Jake, she was having a cigarette leaning against a car talking to someone it sounded like arguing, as I approached she looked up at me.
Please take him, I can’t keep him. He needs a good home.
She pleaded with me, clearly desperate.
I didn’t know why, but I said yes and before I knew it she was handing me the leash and walking quickly away towards the street.
The first few nights were fine. He slept under the bed and I didn’t really see him much.
He seemed like he needed some time to readjust to being a pet. I didn’t know how to connect with him, I’d throw him a toy and he wouldn’t come. I’d pour food out for him and he wouldn’t come out for it, but in the morning it would be gone.
I’m a pretty sound sleeper, but the sound of clawing under the bed a few days later woke me up out of a dead sleep.
I jolted out of bed afraid, I was sweating and my heart was racing.
I remembered I have Jake duh, and I call for him, he doesn’t come out, no surprise, I call for him again and I hear him clawing the floor and pulling himself out slowly from under the bed. His eyes wide and human-like, I patted the bed beside me and he looks at the bed for a second bit and sinks back down and crawls back under the bed.
Ignoring me further.
I only saw him for a second and the room was pretty dark, but he looked different somehow larger and more menacing. I must have been seeing things I thought.
I had a hard time falling asleep.
I wake up around 5 in the morning a few days later and go to my office across the hall and start to work. The way the desk is set up if the door is opened all the way and the bedroom door is also open, you can see under the bed a little bit. As the sun starts to come up, I notice a dark object on the floor, I can’t tell what it is, maybe the blanket fell off the bed but as the sun rises the shape becomes a more familiar shape, it’s Jake with his dark eyes fixed on me from under the bed. He grins at me his teeth look sharp and he’s drooling.
I closed and locked the office door, not knowing what to do, or what the hell that is under the bed, he looks so normal most of the time.
I call the shelter that hosted the event and tell them about Angela who said she was from a shelter out west, but the woman on the phone wasn’t really listening, and she had never heard of anyone named Angela from any shelters out west, she asked me to leave my name and number and she’d check the list again to make sure.
I kicked myself for installing the doggy door, it was so odd to hear the flapping of the door randomly as Jake came and went only when I wasn’t around.
I’m gonna let him out, call animal control and tell them that I found this random dog, he’s not chipped. I didn’t sign anything, Angela kind of just gave him to me.
I was wracked with guilt, so upset about how much I wanted a dog, and now im thinking of doing this, but idk what he was but he wasn’t just a dog.
I unlock the door, and I can hear jake in the bedroom, the door is somehow closed.
I sit in my office all night, waiting for Jake to try to get in.
He wouldn’t go outside after that,
Its like he knew of my plan and didn’t want to give me an opportunity to call animal control.
There were moments where he was a dog, and other times he was something else this dog-like creature, moving in a way animals just don’t.
I snuck out of the house once I heard the door flap and drove as fast as I could to a hotel, where I cried and screamed on the way.
I was finally free, out from under the watchful eye of my god damn shelter devil dog.
I got a 15th floor room with a balcony and a view of the ocean. As soon as I got into the room, I checked under the bed, the closet, the bathroom, everywhere for Jake.
For the first time in almost 2 months, I slept soundly.
I woke up and up that feeling of dread and fear that had been bubbling like a bad dinner in my gut was gone.
I stayed there for 3 days until my credit card bled.
I went back home and the first thing I noticed was my front door was wide open.
I wasn’t sure if I should go in, but I did and the thickness in the air is gone, the house seemed brighter and felt better.
I look around everywhere in the house and when I was convinced he was he’s truly gone, I sat on my couch and cried in relief.
My first thought after that was that fucking doggy door, and I ran to the garage and I grabbed some wood 2X4s and I screw 5 inch screws into the door frame, and call a handyman and schedule someone to come over and replace the door.
It had been almost 3 months since Jake left. And I’ve stopped seeing him sitting in the corner of the room at night, and I stopped hearing that clawing dragging sounds under the bed when it’s late and I’m almost asleep.
That is until last week I looked out my bedroom window because I heard an obnoxious repetitive knocking sound outside that was driving me crazy.
I figured it was a woodpecker we had so many of them in the woods behind my house, and if they land nearby I can hear them from any of the rooms on that side of the house.
The sun had gone down and it was almost dark outside.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving in the trees and a flash of red with black around it.
I focus my eyes and Jake grins at me showing big white teeth he looks straight at me, with the same no expression expression about 15 feet up in the trees behind my house.
I close the blinds, grab my gun from the safe, and put it out on my nightstand.
I keep hearing the knocking and I lock the door and pull the covers around me.
I don’t know how I’m ever going to sleep again.
I’m writing this from my mom’s house.
She only lives 20 or so minutes away from me, and I’ve been hearing sounds at night here too.