Brian Tapper, for whom this story is about, was not a good man. I need to make that abundantly clear as you read through these lines. He was destitute of moral character, inclined to shortchange people, and desirable as a lover to no one. So emotionally unstable was he that this situation may have been entirely his own fault, as you will soon read.
Downtown was not the safest place to be. Brian had been told this over and over again by his mother while growing up, and now he found the calf of his right leg firmly entrenched in the mouth of a large dog. The pain was minimal at first, and produced only a slight gasp of surprise from him. The damned thing wasn’t biting down, was only holding him back and preventing him from crossing the road.
“Let go, pup,” he said to the dog with fur coloured like rum. It snarled at him in response. He reached down to pry it off his leg but the wide, white eyes of the dog saw his incoming fingers and squeezed.
Hard.
Brian Tapper, of 607 Fernhaven Road, just down the street from the house he grew up in, screamed. It cut through the usual traffic noises at East Harrow and Douglas. When he was finished he balled his hands up into fists before scanning the other people in the double-wide sidewalk and looking for some sympathy in their eyes. They avoided his gaze. All of them.
What would they say to him smacking this dog? Would he become known as the town’s resident dog-hitter, a person infamous for beating up helpless puppies? Would they catch him on video, would he make the news?
Brian Tapper, of Tapper’s Emporium of Fine Used Furniture, a man who had once cornered his crush at a college party and begged her to have sex with him, cursed the dog. He attempted to pull his leg away and the dog followed with its mouth, then squeezed the flesh of his limb harder, piercing the skin. Brian seethed, feeling a rivulet of blood running from the wound into his sock. He pushed the dog’s head away but it let loose a deep, rumbling growl.
“Get the hell off me,” he said to the dog through gritted teeth. “Help me,” he pleaded, looking up for the people that had been passing him by. They averted their gazes, ignored him, hastened their steps as they fled the scene. Some ducked into nearby stores while others crossed the street to continue their journey in a way they could safely ignore him and the dog. The street was empty aside from the cars honking on the busy road next to him, desperately trying to push through the traffic. A garbage truck roared past him when the light changed, its diesel engine crushing his eardrums.
And the dog squeezed harder.
Brian had decided that this dog must get off him. If the world wasn’t going to offer any help to him he could use any means to remove it, including killing it, if necessary. He hauled back a single fist and slammed it with all his might into the spine of the dog.
The dog did not seem to notice.
It barely moved.
Brian pounded at it again and again, trying to get some release from the hound or at least an indication that it had noticed him trying to hurt it. Nothing, not even a flinch or a whimper. Just the ever-present crushing of his calf muscle and skin, that warm line running down his leg now flowing freely.
In one of his throes of pain he spotted it: leaning against a nearby newspaper rack was a slim, iron bar. Perfect. He reached for it, finding he was just a foot shy of getting to it. If he wanted the bar he would need to get down on his knees to reach it. Supposing the thing didn’t lunge for his throat when he did that, he would soon be out of this miserable mess. No dog could stand up to being repeatedly whacked with an iron bar and having its ribs broken.
So Brian Tapper, whom had smashed the front window of his highschool english teacher’s house with a similar bar in the eleventh grade, got down on the ground and stretched himself out for it. The cool metal feel of it entered his hand and he used the bar as a cane to push himself back up.
“You’re done for now,” he muttered, and swung the bar down onto the dog with all his strength.
The dog didn't yelp, didn't bark, didn't even look up to see what had hit it. It just clamped down harder. A jolt of pain shot up his leg, worse than before, traveling all the way into his shoulders. Brian screamed. In his writhing pain he caught the gaze of an old woman peering out at him from a hair salon, watching his predicament with an unfeeling coolness. When she saw that he had spotted her she drew the blinds of her shop and vanished from view.
Brian, who had once smashed an entire nest of prenatal goose eggs he found in the park as a boy, drew upon all his fury and rage and hit the dog over and over with the bar. It was a flurry of movement, a cascade of rapid hits as the bar bounced off the creature’ ribs and spine. He hit it on the head, the neck, the legs the back and the hindquarters.
He stopped, breathing hard over the dog, waiting for it to make the next move.
This time, when it squeezed tighter, there was a disgusting 'crunch' as it bit through something more structural than skin. Brian wailed, screamed, and clawed at his leg above the dog's head. He plead wildly with the pedestrians and drivers nearby, begging them for help. A cabbie who had pulled up to gawk at him sped away when Brian turned his sights on him. He stuck the bar into the jaws of the monster and attempted to pry it loose, but to no success.
He collapsed to the ground, his right leg belonging to the dog, not him.
No one was coming to help.
No one would save him.
Brian Tapper would die like this.
Look at what this dog has done to me, Brian thought bitterly, laying on the sidewalk at the intersection of East Harrow and Douglas, the legs of his fellow city-goers stepping around him and the dog. Tears squeezed from his eyes, ran down his cheeks and darkened the sidewalk. Brian, whom had only cried once in his life, when his sick, old grandfather had perished by his own hand, was disgusted. He was utterly exhausted from fruitlessly attacking the dog while the world only watched. He figured he might pass out here, right here on the sidewalk, and wake up several days later to the dog still biting him.
The pain was beyond simple earthly pain, now, transcending into more of a structure in his life. He had always had the dog on his leg. He had always been in pain. He had always been bleeding into his sock.
With nothing left, Brian Tapper, who had always denied he could feel love for any living creature, gave up.
And the dog released.
Brian curled into a ball on his side, daring to let his right hand drift down to the wound, to feel the torn jeans there, the sticky wetness underneath, and the ragged flesh of his calf muscle. He rolled onto his back and sat up, feeling sparkles of pain as he did.
The dog was nowhere in sight.
A bright flash on the horizon lifted his attention to the sky. Just outside of town, beyond his perception, something very large had exploded. He could only watch as a mushroom cloud rose into the sky, towering over any building or hill, blocking out the morning sun as it grew.
The blast that followed, shattering windows and sending debris flying as it rushed down the street toward him, brought no pain to him.
A man like Brian Tapper deserves none of your sympathy. He is a cretin and a monster that produced more pain and anxiety than any dog bite ever has. Allow this predicament not to cloud your judgement of him.