I’m part of a weird mailing group called the Tiny Terrors Story Exchange, and I just received a story in the mail which made me really uncomfortable, and I can’t get it out of my head. The stories are sent on cassette tapes by mail, so I transcribed it below.
The problem started when my family got a puppy.
It was a labrador, and we named her Bella - pitch black fur, with eyes that were far too human to belong to a dog.
God - the way that labrador used to look up at me, chin turned down, whites of its eyes showing all glassy and teary eyed.
If you accidentally said the W.A.L.K. word in my house there was no possible way you’d escape the guilt of Bella.
Admittedly, she was adorable, although she was a bit misshapen - in fact we began to call her Perogi because of the way she looked when she lay down, and the complimentary grunt as she did so, as if she were a 50 year old father of 4 certainly didn’t help dispel the urge to call her Perogi.
Family dogs always pick one person in the family they really bond with, and so she became my dog, despite it being my mother who picked her out from the farm litter, and walked her everyday.
Now, while it was my mom who walked her, when it came to food, I was the easy mark - the one Perogi could manipulate for seconds with those eyes that were too human to be hers. I don’t care what anyone says, your family pet knows enough to know who to bug when they want a walk, and who to bug when they want food.
If I was eating, Perogi wanted a bite - it started off cute enough, one for me, one for you, but as she grew so too did her appetite.
At first we thought it was the farm dog in her - growing up those first ten weeks in a litter on the farm, having food thrown into a trough like those puppies were a bunch of pigs, and having them clamer all over one another just for a bite to eat.
It’s common to see that in dogs you get off the farm - they barely breathe between bites, and she always wanted more, but Perogi was different - hungrier, and she’d let you know just how hungry she was.
I swear I could hear her try and enunciate the words….
One bite for me, one bite for you.
It became a mantra, I’d hear it over and over in my head.
One bite for me, one bite for you
Every time I ate, I would feed Perogi, and likewise whenever Perogi would eat, so would I.
At first it was only human food - eggs for breakfast, a sandwich at lunch, and chicken or steak for dinner, but I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming and crushing sense of dread creep over me when Perogi ate, and then I’d hear her speak in those nonsense sounds that dogs make when they try to imitate humans - but then looking in her eyes that were far too human to belong to a dog, I would hear the words in my mind in a voice that wasn’t mine.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
I’m not a particularly proud man but I couldn’t help but feel the shame as I knelt down and grabbed handful after handful of her kibble and shoved it in my mouth, but I just wasn’t able to shake the feeling that something horrible would happen if I didn’t.
It didn’t help but to convince me further that I as I crunched the hard kibble between my teeth, and I looked to Perogi, that her mouth was open just slightly and the corners were pulled back in what I could only see as a knowing grin.
One bite for me, one bite for you - the words rung through my mind as Perogi panted staring into my eyes with her eyes which were far too human.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
I ate and I ate until i was desperately thirsty - my mouth was drier then it’d ever been before, and so much so that when i went to swallow it felt as if I’d forgotten the way to do just that.
I began choking on the insides of my own throat, my eyes bulged and i looked about for answers to my dire state frantically as if I’d forgotten the most common sense motions and actions to solve the simplest human needs.
Perogi sat on her haunches, her lips pulled back in that sickly dog smile, as she panted.
In front of her sat a slimy bowl of water, a few pieces of kibble bobbed about it’s surface.
I was so thirsty, I plunged my face in - hardly waiting for any other thought to cross my mind.
The warm water hit my tongue and as it did I heard the words again
One bite for me, one bite for you
I knew then it wasn’t my voice, it wasn’t the whispers of my own voice in my mind, it was someone else’s, something elses.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
Perogi quietly chomped at the air, her teeth clicking slightly together, no sound but a tiny rush of air left her thin lips.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
As soon as my thirst was quenched, my stomach growled and spasmed in the pain of hunger - my mind could make little to no sense of the things I was feeling.
One bite for me, one bit for you
I could feel my belly bloat as the kibble I had eaten swelled and expanded with the water I had desperately gulped.
And despite the pain and the physical knowing that my hunger could not be my own, my mind was filled with the words.
One bite for me, one bite for you.
And so I ate and ate, and Perogi just smiled, and panted, and sat on her haunches watching me eat.
I thought it would stop when I was away from Perogi, but it wasn’t Perogi, it couldn’t be - she wasn’t the voice in my head.
I knew that, and still I couldn’t help but count the days as I chewed my lips till Perogi would die, and then maybe the voice would stop.
But that didn’t work either.
That didn’t work, and now you’ve got me strapped to this bed, and I am. So. incredibly hungry.
If you could just loosen these straps then I could just have a bite to eat.