I like to go out late at night and walk along the railroad tracks, especially on a full moon night. I like the way the metal surface of the tracks reflects the moonlight. It reminds me of the lights on the floor in a movie theatre leading you down the aisle and to your seat. It’s an invitation to something mystical and otherworldly. I would always venture out around midnight just to avoid the noise of people and traffic. I wanted no sound other than what the lonely night had to offer- no noise pollution from people and their trivial musings.
One Saturday I got out a little later than usual and I was well rewarded for my tardiness. An hour or so before it had been raining and even though some clouds were still lingering, they had dispersed entirely from the area of the moon, leaving an aura of blue mist. I walked along the tracks for about thirty minutes lost in thought. I was thinking about what I would do after graduation. I wanted to move downtown and immerse myself in the good life. I wanted to taste the sins of the city.
As I got to the railroad bridge that crosses over Mill Creek, I noticed a lump in the middle of the tracks. It was noticeable to me because I walked these tracks every weekend. It was my escape. I knew every detail and this was out of place. This was something different in my path. I reached in my backpack and got out my flashlight. I didn’t want to ruin the ambiance with man-made light but I had to fix whatever was intruding upon my favorite scene in life. I walked further towards the alien object and as I got nearer, I turned on my flashlight. Staring back at me was the shallow still eyes of a severed poodle head.
The expression on the poodle’s face- if that’s even possible- seemed to be one of anger and surprise. It was clean cut. There was nothing hanging out from the bottom of the animal’s neck. The eyes were still intact and the fur white as snow, although with a little splatter of blood. I didn’t mind the blood. It added to the story. This dog was on a railroad bridge, in the middle, with no place to go and a metal monster of death came roaring towards it with no compassion. All the dog could do was run towards the other side, but it could only run so fast. It couldn’t run at its best because of the surface of the tracks and the train was oh so much faster. Everything had conspired against it to insure its quick and easy demise. There was no chance of fighting back.
I was amazed at the condition of the head and how clean the severance had been. It was almost artistic. The track always gives, but its gifts are sloppy and without any craft. They are explosions of entrails and fur, never as surgically precise as this find. To me this was a rare occurrence. The train had killed with a sense of artistic expression. There was no way I was not keeping this. I grabbed the poodle head and put it in my empty backpack. I was a collector, but I hardly brought anything home because what I usually found was destroyed beyond all recognition. This was an omen. This was a gift.
I got home and went straight to my room. My parents were asleep and never bothered me about my late-night outings. Frankly, they are scared of me. I get angry and violent when they question me. I am capable of uncontrollable outbursts.
I pulled the poodle head out of my backpack and stared at it for a while. I looked deep into the poodle’s eyes and wondered if I could get a glimpse of the fear that the dog had endured at the final seconds of its life. I was so thankful for the lucky find. I brushed the hair and cleaned off some of the blood but not all of it. I wanted it authentic to a point but presentable to my mind as the perfect kill- one with as little mistakes as possible. When I had finished, I put it on my bookshelf in a prominent place to display all its finer details.
I had begun to worry about decay and how long my poodle head would actually last. I thought of ways to preserve it but I felt like it would ruin it somehow. Should I periodically freeze it? The answer was not forthcoming and I despaired. Then I thought that it was a waste of time and immoral to try and preserve something that was meant to rot. Rotting was nature’s way of erasing the soul. Why was I interfering with that? Then I hit on an idea. I would try to create more severed heads. I would abduct a neighbor’s dog and tie it to the tracks and see what the train would create for me. That was natural art and the correct way to go about accepting whatever gifts death wanted to give me.
A week had passed and the dog I had abducted was tied to the tracks of the railroad bridge. It was a smaller breed and I would have liked something a little fiercer like a pit bull or a German Shepard but that opportunity did not present itself. I had to go with what was easier. I was a rookie at stealing dogs and did not want to get hurt. The dog was compliant enough though. I had put a bowl of all kinds of treats in front of him but the dog did whimper every now and then. Even if this would be a perfect kill, it was not the best set-up. I began to doubt my plan and started thinking of all the things that could go wrong. The most pressing issue on my mind was what if the dog was hit by the train, it’s body would probably be tossed over the bridge. The poodle kill was a lucky occurrence, one not bound to happen again. I decided to move the dog on further down the tracks.
I walked about twenty yards from the dog and laid down in the grass somewhat removed from the tracks, but still able to watch the mayhem. I wished like Hell I knew the train schedule. This was absolutely boring and I hated just waiting around. I grew weary and fell asleep.
I felt a chill creep over my body and I slowly began to awaken. It was morning and I had slept through the night. I could hear a crow cawing and a songbird singing. It was a mesh of notes alien to the ear. It was a song that was eerie, sad, and happy all at once. The birds shouldn’t have been in unison but somehow, they were and it irritated me so much that I immediately opened my eyes in frustration as if an alarming clock had been banging in my ears. My heart starting thumping with a fierce rhythm, a thumping hard against my breastplate. I froze with fear and admiration.
Crouching next to the dog was an elderly nude woman or at least her skin had the appearance of being of some advanced years. She had long stringy black hair. She was extremely skinny and her arms were longer than normal. I could not see her face, only the back of her head. She was weaving like a cobra ready to strike and the dog was not moving. It was if the dog was hypnotized and frozen in place. I began to realize how white and pale her skin was and how her movements were odder than I had first realized. It was as if she was doing a dance. My curiosity outweighed my fear. I had to see her face and so I decided to move in closer.
I crawled on my hands and knees hoping that whatever she was doing would take a while and I would have an opportunity to find a good hiding place nearby. She started to make a low humming sound and for some strange reason I noticed the crow and songbird again. The three seemed to be working together to make the dog feel calm and relaxed. A thought ran through my head that it wasn’t the train that had killed the poodle but this woman, or beast, or whatever she was had done it. I stopped because I saw her slowly lift her arm. She had to have had at least six or seven fingers all equipped with sharp curving fingernails. She was about to strike. It was heart-wrenching but magnificent as well. I had to watch the kill. I should have laid down flat but I didn’t because I wanted a better view. All the sudden the crow just went mad and began cawing and howling. It flew down from the trees and right in front of her face. She turned and looked and caught sight of me. The dog yelped and pulled away from the leash, snapping his collar. It ran through the field and escaped through the woods. At that point the woman turned back towards the dog and howled with anger. The dog had escaped. She turned back and looked at me in a menacing manner, ready to pounce and punish me for losing her quarry.
I did not get a good glimpse of her faced but what I had seen was actually pleasing to the eye. Although her body was old and decrepit, her face looked young and appealing. I felt both repulsed and attracted to her. I turned and ran as fast as I could. I don’t remember looking back. I just knew that she was out to kill me. I felt fairly confident that I had enough of a head start to be able to outrun her to the road that crossed the tracks. Yet, I was wrong. I was knocked to the ground from behind, the side of my face pressed hard into the dew-covered grass. I felt her naked scaly feet on my back and started screaming. She grunted in disapproval. I felt her crouch down and then she sunk her sharp teeth into my shoulder. It felt like she had several rows of teeth, like a shark and the pain was unbearable. Within seconds though I could feel a warm thick liquid moving from her mouth and into my veins. It must have been some kind of narcotic, because I felt great and warm all over. I began to feel happy and light. I was in a better place mentally and then I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in a basement with a dirt floor. Above me was a fluorescent light fixture with a greenish glow. I could feel that something had been tied around my mouth to keep me from yelling. My feet were handcuffed to the legs of a chair, but what I noticed more than anything was the pain in my hands. I looked down and saw that my hands were clasped as if in prayer, with nails driven through each finger to make sure I could never free up my hands. My index finger of my right hand was nailed to the index finger of my left hand, and the same for every other finger. I still had my pants and shoes on but she had stripped me of my shirt and I could smell alcohol, as if I had been sterilized for some archaic surgery.
I heard the upstairs door open and I could see two sets of feet coming down the stairs to my left. I saw her bare feet and the work boots of a large man. She was still nude and walking crouched over. She looked even skinnier now than she had when I saw her at the tracks. The man had a beard and wore a flannel shirt and jeans. He was dirty and smelled awful. He smelled like fish and roadkill. As they walked towards me, I noticed her face again. She was exceptionally beautiful in the face, until she smiled. Not all of her teeth were sharp but only several on the bottom and they were blackened and different from the rest of her teeth, which were normal and white. Her eyes had very small pupils and were bespeckled with purple spots. In her hands, she was holding my severed poodle head.
She held up the poodle head and motioned towards it with her eyes. I could not talk so she looked to the man and he walked over and took the gag out of my mouth. She motioned again. I had no idea what she wanted so I just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind.
“Poodle.”
She looked satisfied at this and smiled again. She let loose of the head with her right hand and patted her breast and said, “I am Poodle.” Her voice was metallic and low. I had no clue what she meant. She pointed at me and then I thought she was wanting to know my name.
“My name is Rodney.”
She nodded no and said, “You are Poodle.”
The man then walked over behind me and grabbed me by the elbows and forced my hands over my head. As soon as my hands were over my head, she lunged at me and opened her mouth wide and bit into my stomach right over the top of my navel. At this point it didn’t feel like just a few sharp teeth but like a million. More and more were puncturing my skin and hooking underneath so I could not escape her jaws. I struggled against her and fell to the ground. She fell to the ground with me, latched on like a string of fishing hooks. I could not escape. The pain was unbearable and I thought I was going to pass out but then I got that feeling again. I felt good and I fell into a dream. I dreamed I was with a beautiful brunette and her name was Poodle. I felt the man lower my arms to rest my hands on her back. He then dragged her and me up against the basement wall.
I don’t know how long I had been out but when I woke up my hands were free from the nails and neatly bandaged. I look down to see that she was still attached to me but her body looked like it had been drained of all its fluids. Her head had swollen somewhat but her body had shriveled away to a gross dehydrated husk. I stood up easily as her weight was now negligible and I noticed that some of her fingers started to dissipate and fall to the floor as dust. I was disgusted and tried to push her head down off of me but she sunk her teeth deeper into my skin and as she did that my hands slipped down to her shoulders. They felt like dried up leaves and as the force from my attempted escape followed through her whole body snapped from her neck and fell to the floor. The belly underneath must have busted because I could see some organs and fluid leak from underneath the body. The smell was putrid and I vomited all over the half-mummified headless body.
I ran upstairs and turned the door knob. It was unlocked. I pushed opened the door and sitting in the living room was the man watching an old console type television. He turned to me and smiled. He began to walk over to me and I was about to run but he held out his hands as if to tell me not to worry, that he was there to help. He grabbed a cover and wrapped it around me, making sure that the head was hidden. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a soda. He gave me the soda and walked me to the front door and waved goodbye.
When I got home that night my parents didn’t say anything. I imagined I had been gone a while but they were too scared to say anything. I got to my room and locked the door. Took off the sheet and laid in bed. At that point I felt the teeth in my stomach shrink and the grip loosen. The head fell to the floor. I rolled over and looked down to see a severed head smiling and satisfied but dead and lifeless. The purple bespeckled eyes staring at me with hate and love. I wondered what this meant and what was in the future. I guess I’ll find out. I picked up the head and put it in a prominent place on the shelf.