Tuesday 26 March 2013

Yorkie


The tiny Yorkshire Terrier stood by it's food bowl at one end of the kitchen as the old woman busied herself at the other. It was way past his feeding time, and he was letting out little yelps and whines in the hope of reminding her, but she ignored him.

She strode about the kitchen, lifting lids off great pans and plunging her face into billows of steam which condensed in melancholy rivulets that ran down the gloss-painted walls.

She brought down a massive cleaver onto lumps of meat, causing nearby crockery to jump and jingle with each fall of the blade. The dog inched his bowl a little closer with his nose, then looked up imploringly at her once again.

Eventually, it wandered disconsolately through the open door and out into the kitchen garden, where it stopped to urinate onto a Spring Cabbage. Half way through, it caught a faint but fascinating scent which emanated from the far end of the vast lawn, and it lowered it's leg slowly as it took it in.

It moved toward the gate in the walled vegetable garden, then - pausing on the threshold - lifted it's head and began sniffing in earnest. There it was again.

Soon, it was trotting across the lawn toward the edge of the woods, and the closer it got, the stronger the scent became. The dog entered the wood and began sweeping around in figures of eight amongst the vegetation - for now, instead of following a thin, linear trail, it was homing in on the rich miasma of scent that surrounded the object, and to it's powerful little nostrils, the scent spelt 'edible'.

It did not use it's eyes until the last moment, when - almost accidentally - it stumbled upon the source of the smell, and even then it did not use them for long before it picked it up and made it's way back to the kitchen.

When he returned, the old woman seemed in an even worse state of mind than before, so he settled down in his basket and began to enjoy his long-overdue meal.

Vaguely aware of the dog's return in her bleared peripheral vision, the woman also remembered that it needed to be fed, so she opened the door of one of the wall-cupboards, and ran her tearful eyes over rows of tinned dog-food before selecting one and opening it. She blew her nose into one corner of her gingham pinafore, then walked toward the dog basket with the tin in one hand and a fork in the other.

As she bent down to decant some meat into the dog's bowl, the shock of what she saw caused her to drop the fork onto the tiled floor with a metallic clatter.

One tiny shoe was lying near the bowl, and various articles of miniature clothing were strewn around the area, all of them torn and bloodied.

The little dog was lying in it's basket, toying with something between it's paws which made small cracking noises as it contentedly chewed on it.

There could be no help for the old gardener now, she thought.

27 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. You have no heart (or you're just 100% man).

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  2. Sorry but I can't read another word until I protest the word 'feint'. I know you are probably planting them for me to grumble about ...I know you have tripped me up only recently ... But fuck it is distracting.
    Aghh. Faint. FFS!

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    1. My mistake - all these years I have been using the wrong spelling, thinking that the other definition was to pass out. I will correct it now. (humbly, this time...)

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    2. I remember now - writing paper with very light lines on it was called 'Feint Ruled' when I was a kid, I'm sure of it. I blame the ill-educated stationers. (Back me up someone!)

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    3. Well, we were sort of both right:

      Feint:

      This is a rare noun which means ‘a misleading movement designed to draw defensive action away from an intended objective or target’ or any ‘pretence intended to mislead’.

      This is also a verb which means ‘to make a feint’ (as in the noun above).

      As a noun, it also means ‘the finest line used in printing ruled paper’ and is a variant of ‘faint’.

      (Future Perfect)

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    4. Thanks, but I'll try and use modern spelling in the future. I tend to prefer the Samuel Johnson dictionary, but I am 200 years out of date.

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  3. A good read but a little disconcerting........ ........very James Herbert

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  4. My Dad had a book called ' Not At Night Omnibus ', a collection of 35 short, horror stories that I used to pinch from his bookshelf and read into the night. I have it now and this story reminds me of many of the stories in that book. They were really creepy especially one called 'The Copper Bowl ' by George Fielding Eliot,,,,, they were all very macabre. XXXX

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    Replies
    1. Sounds like the sort of book I would have liked as a child.

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  5. Ah...fond memories of Tom Stephenson indulging a tiny yorkie that I happened to be looking after. I had assumed he'd be too dignified and too tall to want to have anything to do with it.

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    1. I love them - unlike the macho Cro.

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    2. Hang on, I've just read between the lines - did/do I know you? Also, how do I follow your blog? There seems to be no way to. Send me an email?

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    3. Wasn't a small, long-haired Daschund?

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  6. I shall never again eat a Spring cabbage. Creepy though.

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    Replies
    1. Always take the outer leaves off first - or is that 'leafs'? You never know with these stationers.

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  7. I'd be careful eating foods prepared by old women. This one blew her nose into her pinafore!

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    1. A bit like not ever eating spring cabbage again.

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  8. Mr EM always stamps on Yorkies when he comes across them. Thinks they're rats. Think he's right.

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    Replies
    1. Ah, you're on the Salisbury Sauce again - I know the signs. Either that or you are worse than I had suspected, even sober.

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    2. Mr EM sounds like my sort of guy!

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    3. Do you remember the mad Marianne G.? She used to go out at night hunting miniature poodles with the same cut-throat razor she once put to my neck. And she wondered why I didn't want to sleep with her.

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