My Dog's Face

For the last few months my dog has been making weird faces at me just as I turn to face him, a sickly, confused expression only within my peripherals. Well yesterday I recorded him, and he's biting the air with my back turned, teeth snarled and face twisted. I turn back and he stops, looking at me with that odd expression as if he were about to vomit.

One day he would just stare, staring at me as I did things, in still silence, watching me as if I were a treat being wiggled in front of him. His brown golden flaked eyes following my every move, the mirrors I set up around the house showed me his twisted, gnarling, empty bites at my back, every day, all day long.

Well today he attacked me, I knew it was coming, but I didn’t want to believe the puppy I got five years ago could ever hurt me. He got the back of my head, and I screamed…but before my voice left my lips, someone elses’ did too.

My dog immediately let me go, just as startled of the raspy voice as I was, and I shakily looked to my wound, thinking I’m hearing things, that must have been my voice. But as I pull my hair back to examine the damage in the mirror, a deformed face lay behind my auburn locks. Stray long singular hairs remain as they cascade down the lumps and ridges of a wrinkled scowl. The eyes are empty sockets, skin pulled over tightly, leaving it blind with a mouthed gorge of gnashing teeth, chomping and mumbling angry gibberish. I begin to shake as I look at it in the mirror, in utter disbelief and horror. Reaching back, I feel the back of my head, the skin is tough and bristled like a mans 5 o'clock shadow, I linger for a moment, feeling hot breath on my hand. I come to close and it bites me, hard. Between my yelps of pain it manages a dry and broken cackle, chomping endlessly as my blood drips from its jagged bone-teeth. A nose sticks out from it, cooked and scaly, broken and bloody from being thrashed around from the earlier attack, and I can feel my blood trickle down the back of my neck as it drips out of it's nasty gnawing mouth.

Unable to contain my emotions, I collapse against my kitchen cabinet sobbing hot tears, my dog licks them away from my face whining as if he were a lost puppy. During the struggle my kitchen was turned upside down, and I notice the knocked over knife block beside me. My sweet boy whines again, and licks my wounded hand. The hand bitten by a mouth of jumbled, broken teeth.

Upon grabbing the largest knife, I begin to slice.

I slice, and slice-wet squishing and warmth of blood- almost a stronger feeling than the pain, it was like it wasn't apart of me, as if I wasn’t slicing off the back of my head. The hollow, feral screams of my unknown companion fades away after a handful of vigorous slicing. Instead of pain, it was nearly pleasure, as if pulling a bad tooth, or popping a pimple. As I went, my sweet boy sits in my lap, licking my face as I go. A sticky, wet PLOP lands beside me, and immediately his brown golden speckled eyes return back to the loving glance he has always gave.

Any good treat recommendations?