As Tim Coleman laid half asleep in bed on a rainy afternoon,
he kept wondering why his girlfriend Jade Quinn had “One More Light” by Linkin
Park playing on repeat before she left for work in the morning. She wasn’t her
usual peppy self. No smiles. No kisses. Not even a hug. Just cold, empty eyes
as she left Tim in charge of dogsitting duty. The pouring rain coupled with the
dour mood made him curl up against his pillow even more. A pillow was no
substitute for Jade, however. He would have settled for Millie crawling up
under the blankets. But then…
Something assaulted Tim’s nose like a wrecking ball to the
face and had just about as much knockout power. He pulled his nostrils under
the blanket, but he could still smell that rancid, god-awful odor coming from
the living room. “Oh no…no, no, no…please tell me she didn’t do it…no…no…NO!”
He threw the blankets off of him and stomped out to the
living room wearing just his athletic shorts. The harder he stomped, the more
rage pumped through his ogre-like body. The odor set his nostrils nearly ablaze
as he tried to suppress the urge to vomit. And then he made it to the living
room and saw that Jade’s hardwood floors had become a battlefield of landmines.
Gigantic, steaming brown landmines with the general herself laying on the
ground in guilt. Millie the salt n’ pepper colored Labrador
mooed like a cow before unleashing a cloud of toxic gas from her already putrid
bunghole.
“Goddamn it, Millie! You stupid fucking goddamn dog!”
shouted Tim from the top of his lungs. “I am so sick and tired of cleaning up
your fucking messes! You goddamn dog!” Fury and venom poured from the fat man’s
lips with every swearing scream. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you stupid
dog!” Though he would never go through on such a threat, Millie wouldn’t have
known as she guiltily tucked her head.
Tim stomped to the bathroom and fetched the necessary
cleaning supplies for a job this disgusting: paper towels, a mop, and a bucket
he filled with soapy water. In between retrieving these necessary items, he
kept on roaring like the pissed off lion he was. “You goddamn dog! Quit
shitting all over the fucking floor, asshole!”
His first course of action was to scoop up all of the dog
turds with god knows how many paper towels before flushing them down the toilet
separately. Every time he bent over, the odor triggered his gag reflex to where
he wanted to vomit himself inside out. While that would be an instant relief to
his aching and tired body, it would also mean more messes to clean up. “Goddamn
stupid ass fucking dog!” he screamed.
After flushing the turds down the drain, he sat on the
toilet seat for a while and wiped the sweat from his body, which poured like
the rainy weather outside. Tim took several deep breaths not only to recover
his lost energy, but also in a vain attempt to calm himself down. “Stupid
dog…stupid goddamn dog!” he screamed, completely destroying his ambitions of
nirvana.
Step two of this ultimate cleaning job was to mop the floors
as vigorously as he could. A few strokes in and he was already sucking wind.
Wind, by the way, that was broken by a sixteen-year-old dog huddling in the
corner. “Stupid dog!” Tim screamed again as he scrubbed the wooden floor. No
matter how hard he mopped, the air thickened like he was in a burning building.
At this point he was genuinely surprised the smoke alarm didn’t go off during
this job. “You stupid motherfucking dog! Quit making me clean up after you, you
little shithead!”
Once he was certain the shit was completely cleaned up off
the floor, he death-marched to the bathroom to flush the mop water down the
toilet. His head ached worse than if he had been beaten with hammers. His heart
pounded as if a Mortal Kombat character was trying to rip it out. His lower
back flared with pain like he had taken a body slam over a pile of razorblades.
Tim sat on the toilet and sucked some more wind, confident that his job was
finally over.
He had recovered a modicum of his energy before he put the
cleaning supplies back in the bathroom closet. Slowly and languidly, he waddled
out to the living room and took care not to slip on the wet surface. The only
wet surface he had to deal with it that moment was the one on Jade Quinn’s
horrified face, an intensification of what she felt when she left for work this
morning.
There she was in her business skirt, high heels, and
wrinkled dress shirt. She dropped her purse by her feet and stared down Tim’s
guilty soul with wetness in her eyes. Her lips quivered as she tried to form a
sentence. “T…Tim…did I just…hear you…yelling at Millie?” No response, only a
saggy frown to match his guilt. “Answer me!” she cried.
Tim’s own face quivered as he too tried to muster up the
words he needed. “Jade, I’m sorry. She…she shit all over the floor and…I
panicked…I would never do anything to hurt Millie, you know that, right?”
Pointing her manicured finger at Tim, Jade fought back the
rest of her tears in vain as she mumbled, “You…would never…hurt Millie?”
Silence hung between the two lovers like a yawning, fiery chasm. “You just did,
you insensitive asshole!” Jade dropped to her knees and held her long blond
hair in her hands, emptying her eyes of emotional fluids. Millie slowly edged
towards her and got a scratch behind the ears from her one true master.
Tim gingerly approached his girlfriend and knelt down to put
his massive hand on her shoulder. Jade swatted him away instantly. “Don’t touch
me!” she sobbed. “You’ve done enough damage today!” She hugged Millie around
her neck and cried into her salt and pepper fur. “I’m sorry, baby girl. I’m
sorry he yelled at you like that.”
Tim stood back up not knowing what else to say. Apologizing
didn’t work. Explaining his actions didn’t work. Not even a gentle touch of the
shoulder could bring his girlfriend out of her sorrowful abyss. He knew he
fucked up badly and could do nothing but sit on the leather couch with his
pudgy face in his hands.
“You can’t sit there anymore, Tim,” blubbered Jade. “Not
after what you did. This was supposed to be Millie’s special day. I was going
to take her to the park and get her ice cream after I got off work. And now…all
she’s going to remember is you yelling at her…How could you, Tim?”
“Wha…What do you mean all she’s going to remember? Is that
why you played that Linkin
Park song this morning?
Jade, you can tell me what’s going on.”
Wiping away tears even though they wouldn’t stop coming,
Jade lifted her face from her hug with the dog and said, “Millie has stomach
cancer. That’s why she’s been going to the bathroom on the floor a lot. And you
react to this mild inconvenience by yelling those awful things at her?!”
Tim didn’t notice it when he was cleaning, but now that he
thought about it, there were small traces of red in Millie’s stool. The guilt
choked him up like a noose around the neck. His eyes grew sore, but he did a
better job of hiding his sadness than his girlfriend. Even during this dark
time he was too proud to fall apart in front of her. But he couldn’t help it.
One tear rolled down his cheek while many more cascaded from Jade’s eyes.
“You know, Jade…there’s no reason…why we can’t still get
Millie ice cream.” His voice trembled as he etched out those words.
“Yes, there is!” shouted Jade as she stood back up. “She’ll
just shit all over the floor and you’ll scream like a little child again as you
clean it up! The only reason why you’re sorry is because you got caught! You
don’t care about my dog! You don’t care about my emotions! In fact, get your
fat ass off my couch and get dressed! I don’t want you here anymore!”
Tim didn’t get up. He sat there and let another tear roll
down his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jade.”
“No, you’re not!” cried Jade as she grabbed Tim’s arm and
tried in vain to jerk him to a standing position. When he wouldn’t budge, she
just crumpled to a pile on the floor and cried some more, prompting Millie to
lick her face dry.
“Jade…if you give me the keys to your car…I will go to the
supermarket and buy vanilla ice cream for Millie. She loves vanilla, right?”
“Go to hell, Tim!”
“Listen to me!” urged Tim as he cupped Jade’s shoulders in
his hands. “If you still want me gone from here, I’ll go. But please let me get
the ice cream for Millie. She deserves that much. Right, old lady?” Tim petted
Millie’s head and talked cutely to her about what a good dog she was, even
planting a kiss on her wet nose. Millie returned a puppy kiss for his efforts.
Tim then held Jade’s hand in his own and begged, “Please…let
me get the ice cream. You can even come with me if you want and we’ll listen to
One More Light for as long as you want. I love that song too. And Millie can
come ride with us. She can stick her head out the window and…”
“Tim, enough,” said Jade while a holding a hand in front of
her boyfriend. She wiped away a tear and sniffed snot up her nose. “I know what
you’re trying to do and it won’t work. She’s just going to shit in the car
again and you’ll go on another yelling spree. If anybody’s going to get the ice
cream, it’s me.”
With that said, Jade and Millie walked out of the house
together for a ride in the car while Tim sat on the couch in his shorts sulking
it up. A few tears escaped his eyes and he didn’t bother to wipe them away. It
was over. It was all over. Not just for him, but for Millie as well. The puppy
kiss didn’t even feel like true forgiveness. Knowing his hands were unclean (in
more ways than one), Tim Coleman pulled himself off the couch and trudged back
to the bedroom, presumably to get his things and go.
And then…he walked past the kitchen and saw something
magnetized to the refrigerator door. He pulled down a familiar sheet of glossy
paper and studied it for a while before making his final attempt at goodwill
towards Jade and Millie. Wasting no more time, he picked up the phone and
dialed a number on the sheet of paper. A few rings later, he was patched in.
“Thank you for choosing Pizza Hut. How can I help you
tonight?”
“Yes, I’d like an extra large meat lover’s pizza with
stuffed crust.” Tim couldn’t contain his sorrow over the phone and it was
noticeable.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“Not really. But I’m sure my dog will be happy to see you
once you get here with that pizza.”
