Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul

BOOK TITLE: Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul

AUTHORS: Various

YEAR: 1998

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Animal Shorts

GRADE: B

This book was published in the late 90’s and over two decades later, it has come into my life to comfort me with cute and cuddly animal stories. We all need stories like these during the 2020’s. We need to hear about German Shepherds who not only detect bombs in a war zone, but also comfort the soldiers during times of stress. We crave stories about dogs who repay a doctor’s kindness by protecting him from angry hyenas. Even those who never considered owning a python for a pet will have their hearts melted at the story of one bringing love and joy to a child with muscular dystrophy. Animals of all kinds are welcome into this collection of stories as long as they warm hearts quicker than a bowl of chicken noodle soup. The book should get an A+ just for that alone.

But the reason it gets a B today is because some of these stories have not aged well, which is an unfortunate consequence of publishing media in the 1990’s. There’s a story that glorifies selling baby horses to the circus, which as we know now is not a healthy environment for any animal due to their abusive treatment. Okay, maybe information was limited back then. There’s another story that glorifies pet shops, which we now know where they get their animals from: mills. Again, maybe not a whole lot was known about pet shop practices back in the day. However, there’s one story told by Gilda Radner about her on and off again relationship with Gene Wilder. In response to Gene finally pulling the plug on their relationship, Gilda’s dog eats a bunch of rat poison and suddenly Gene is convinced to return to a marriage he never wanted. This is passed off as cutesy-wutesy, but if this happened in a Jamie McGuire or Anna Todd novel, people would rightfully be upset. The optics aren’t very good here, but it’s not enough for me to judge the book too harshly.

And then there are stories dedicated to saying goodbye to our beloved babies which are heartbreaking in their own way, but the optics are much better by comparison. This is the good kind of pain, where your faith in owning animals is restored despite the deaths. While the writing style of these stories overall could be described as beige prose, they are very effective in making the reader cry as painfully as the characters being presented. I came very close to doing that several times in this section of the book. It can’t all be rainbows and sunshine, even in a book with Chicken Soup in the title. Death is the price of love. It’s something all pet owners will have to come to grips with. These gentle stories will gladly help you along your journey through a difficult time. See? I told you I couldn’t judge the book too harshly.

One more thing I’d like to touch on is how these stories feel complete despite their brevity. Usually with nonfiction writing, anecdotal storytelling is the norm. But in these stories, you’ve got character development, a plot arc, a beginning, a middle, and an end. One example of this is a story about a bitter wheelchair user named Corey, who was permanently paralyzed after a brutal car accident, which left him without a baseball career. But he found new life again when he sought the comfort of animals. In that short space, he went from a whiny jerk to an understanding and empathetic person with a new lease on life. Corey’s story isn’t the only one that does this. There’s another about a grumpy father who becomes less grumpy at the presence of an old dog. This even encourages him to make new friends at church and fully realize his character arc. How cool is that?

There’s something for everybody in this collection of short stories, despite the glaring flaws. Maybe you’re reluctant about adopting a pet and need some convincing. I’m sure this book will do just that for you. Maybe you need to rest easy after an animal-related hardship. Guess what? This book is here for you. Don’t even worry about the Christian overtones if you’re not religious; it doesn’t come off as forceful or heavy-handed. By all means, cuddle up with your favorite creature and read until it’s over. I give this collection of sweetness a B grade. Not bad at all! In fact, you’ll love it to pieces!

Gorgon Death Bitch

The clock on Steve Jones’s dashboard struck midnight while the rain pounded on his windshield like hammers. He clutched the steering wheel with a monstrous grip knowing what was waiting for him beyond that apartment door. He could faintly hear Kathryn Marsh’s radio blasting the coincidental tune “The Thunder Rolls” by All That Remains. How funny would it be if those lyrics about a cheating husband influenced her rage when Steve walked through the door? The last time he sniffed around, there wasn’t a trace of cologne because there was no other woman. But still…

Steve took one last swig of his Jack Daniels and let out an ogre burp before exiting the car for what would be the longest walk of his life. It was only one flight of stairs, but with the alcohol turning his brain into mush, he might as well have been walking on an endless treadmill. He limped up each individual step while maintaining a chokehold on the railing. He dared not peek down to know just how high off the ground he was. Instead he fixed his short brown hair and brushed off his gray hoodie and black jeans before slipping his key in the door and walking through the gates of hell.

“Where the fuck have you been?” belted Kathryn as she sprawled across the couch in her pink fleece robe while her King Charles puppy licked her hands. “Do you have any goddamn clue what time it is? Jesus, you smell like a brewery!”

“Kathryn, now’s not the time for this dramatic crap. I’ve had a long day and all I want to do is get in bed and forget all about it,” begged Steve while holding his hands up defensively.

He stumbled towards the bedroom slowly and lazily when Kathryn shoved the puppy off of her chest and leaped up to block her boyfriend’s path with her arms akimbo. “I’ve been waiting for you all day long. We were supposed to have dinner together and then go see a movie.” She took in the scent of booze with a scowl and said, “You obviously had other plans.”

“You know what?” slurred Steve. “I did have other plans. Plans that didn’t involve coming home to you every night and getting chewed out for stupid shit! Ever since we got engaged, it’s been the same: fighting, fighting, and more fucking fighting! So excuse me if I don’t feel like hanging out with a crazy chick who wants to keep me on a leash!”

Kathryn shoved Steve and sent him careening backwards. He would have landed on his ass if he didn’t have a firm grip on the back of the couch. Towering over him, she snapped, “We never do anything together anymore! I have to keep you on a short leash because I can’t trust you to be there for me! We’re supposed to get married soon and now you’re going to ruin it for us by drinking yourself to death! I’m sick of this shit, Steve!”

Amidst rapid-fire dog barking, Steve pulled himself to his feet, but not without tripping forward and almost landing face first into Kathryn’s chest. “Kitty-Kat, just shut the fuck up before you make my headache worse than it already is.”

Kathryn slapped Steve across the face and sent him rolling onto the couch. “How can you talk to me that way?!” she angrily sobbed. “The Steve I know would never have said that to anyone, let alone his own fiancé! You’ve changed! You’ve fucking changed! You can either check into rehab or I’ll drop this wedding like a bad habit!” When the dog continued to voice his opinion, his owner shouted, “Shut up, you stupid dog!” and earned a whine and a crouch from the little pooch.

Steve’s burning fury caused him to grab one of the couch pillows and thrash everything in sight with it, whether it be the coffee table, the TV, or Kathryn herself. He threw the soft weapon to the ground and shouted, “That’s it! I’ve had it with you! You want to end this relationship?! You want to throw it all away over stupid shit?! You got it! Good riddance! I’d be better off jacking it to internet porn than spending another night in the sack with you, you gorgon death bitch!”

Kathryn’s cheeks flushed into a brighter shade of pink than her bathrobe. Tears poured from her eyes with more intensity than the weather outside. “The Thunder Rolls” meant more to her now than it did when she was waiting for Steve to come home. She curled up into a ball on the floor and dampened her knees with sorrowful liquids. Steve wouldn’t be deterred by such a “pitiful” display as he crossed his arms and stood over her like a giant terrorizing villagers. He wasn’t staggering anymore despite the strong scent of alcohol blowing around the house like disgusting perfume.

“How could you?” Kathryn whimpered. “Why would you say that to me? Don’t you love me anymore? Does our marriage mean nothing to you?” Even with the biblical flood of tears, Steve hadn’t moved an inch. It was only when poisonous snakes grew from her scalp that he slowly staggered backwards and fell on his ass.

Now it was Steve’s turn to shed tears of misery and fear. “What the hell?” he asked as the dog’s barking picked up steam yet again.

The snakes in Kathryn’s hair slithered, spit venom, and chewed at the air. Her skin whitened to a pale shade of marble. When she nipped up and roared to the sky, neon red lights shot from her eyes and turned every fly whirling above her into little pebbles. Their corpses rolled across the ground like a game of craps. Steve had already turned around and covered his head so that he didn’t have to look into her eyes. Her demonic voice, on the other hand, was as clear as day. “You want a gorgon death bitch?! I’ll give you one, you little shit! You’re going to put a ring on me whether you want to or not!”

The shivering and cowering Steve opened his eyes ever so slightly to see Kathryn’s shadow creeping up on him. The snakes in her hair all made a lung for him and he rolled out of the way just in time. “Come on, Stevie-Boy!” the gorgon taunted. “I thought you liked putting poison in your body! You do enough of it at the bar, so why not here at home?”

The snakes lunged at him again and one of them managed to snag the back of his hoodie. Steve screamed in almighty terror as he ran behind the couch, leaving a piece of his clothing behind for the snakes to snack on. He tried to run towards the bedroom, but his drunken stupor made athleticism close to impossible. He tripped to the ground and crawled across the carpet like a soldier trying to avoid barbed wire. His heart thundered at a million beats per minute. Sweat and tears rained off of him like a dam after an earthquake. His body trembled and his bladder unleashed another rainstorm upon the ground. He even managed to feel pity for the barking dog behind him.

“I’m sorry, Kathryn! I’m so sorry! Just leave me the fuck alone!” Steve pleaded through a swamp of tears.

He felt a sharp presence clutch the back of his hair and yank him up to his knees. Those same claws mockingly massaged his shoulders while Kathryn whispered sweet nothings in his ears, her cacophony complimented by hissing snakes. “Oh, Steve. You’re so cute when you’re shaking in terror. I knew there was a reason my family loved you so much. They kept pushing me to marry you and now we can be happy together at last! Just you and me, nobody else! No beer, no drugs, no shitty music, just a lifetime of sweet symphonies! Doesn’t that sound like paradise, my darling?”

Even with his mind racing beyond the galaxy itself, Steve could make out the sound of the little puppy gnawing on Kathryn’s ankle, to which the gorgon growled and unleashed her savage stone stare upon the little guy. Steve and Kathryn yelled, “No!” together, which would be the only thing they had in common at this point in the argument.

Steve slowly turned his blistered face to see Kathryn on her knees cradling her stone statue puppy and sobbing once again. “Why?” she blubbered. “Why do I keep doing this to the ones I love? I didn’t mean to, damn it! I just want a happy life! I just want a husband and a puppy-duppy! Is that too much to ask for?”

With his eyebrows furrowed like lightning bolts, the thunder flashed in Steve’s eyes as he saw his opportunity to end this madness. He leapt to his feet, yanked the stone dog out of Kathryn’s hands, and before she could turn around, he smashed the petrified animal over her head multiple times. She screamed in bloody agony while her snakes hissed and nibbled at Steve’s arms and hands. He didn’t give a fuck about the poison or the blood.

A flash of red burned across his retinas as he smashed Kathryn’s head over and over again. The blood splatters and dead snakes were giving him a funny feeling in his wet pants. His eyes bulged and so did his underwear. He laughed like a psychopath as he bathed in the sweet venom of his now dying fiancé. It felt as warm and relaxing to his aching body as a Jacuzzi. He hammered her again and again until the stone dog spilt in two and Kathryn’s head was a pool of shattered bones and splattered brains. For the first time in this relationship, Steve could breathe easy, but he did so with a deep, raspy throat.

His moment of sweet nirvana was interrupted by the sound of his apartment door being kicked down and police officers yelling, “What the hell?!”

Steve’s bulging eyes and psychotic demeanor faded into soberness when he peeked up at the cops. His heart sank to his feet when he saw that Kathryn’s gorgon appearance was no more and the puppy’s stone body was a bloody heap. Beyond the rancid smell of blood and guts, Steve could still identify the alcohol on his own breath and clothes. Goddamn, that was some strong booze.

The officers at the door gazed at Steve with horrified shock and arms akimbo. All Steve could do was shrug his shoulders and say, “It’s not what it looks like.”

Necrocosm

***NECROCOSM***

This will be the first of many journal entries where I come up with an idea for a setting and hopefully a short story, D&D campaign, or novel will snowball from there. What are we kicking off with? The Necrocosm, of course. People who read my poetry will remember a heavy metal song called Necrocosm which basically described the audience at WWE Fast Lane 2015. Even though there was excitement and action going on in the ring, the Tennessee audience acted bored out of their minds. Therefore, they’re living in a necrocosm, or a death world (because they’re a dead audience). It seemed like an apt description to me.

The suffix “cosm” in the Greek language means “world”. I know this because I used to spend my time surfing You Tube for Clerks videos and in one of them, Randal says to Dante, “This is a life of convenience for you and any attempt to change it would shatter the pathetic microcosm you’ve fashioned for yourself.” I looked up the word microcosm on dictionary.com and it was defined as a “little world”, micro meaning “little” and cosm meaning “world”.

So then I thought, what other Greek prefixes could we pair up with the suffix cosm? I’ve done this exercise plenty of times with the suffix “mancer” and thus we have short stories like The Aeromancer (wind wizard), The Hydromancer (water wizard), and The Cryomancer (ice wizard). Let’s see what we can do with the word “cosm”. A pyrocosm would be a world of fire and can actually be an alternative word for the sun. A cryocosm would be a world of ice and that’s basically what Pluto is. A thermocosm would be a world of heat and Mercury would qualify since it’s the closest planet to the sun.

So what could we do with a necrocosm, or a world of death? Lots of things, actually. Some would say the earth in the year 2016 would qualify as a necrocosm since a lot of mass shootings and celebrity deaths took place. Some would say heaven and hell are necrocosms since according to Christianity, that’s where dead people go. Maybe the word necrocosm could apply to graveyards, funeral homes, and morgues.

Those are all valid interpretations, but what if I took it a step further? What if there was a planet in our solar system governed by an alien race of zombies? It doesn’t even have to be a structured government. It could be anarchy with zombies rising from the dirt to feast on trespassers. Maybe it could be an autocracy with an evil necromancer governing everything so that one day he can use his minions to conquer other worlds. Maybe it’s just one big farm where souls of the dead are kept and harvested. I’ve often thought of the possibilities of entire planets being used as seals for demons and undead creatures. Once that seal is broken, all bets are off, motherfuckers. Keegan Day from “Occupy Wrestling” never thought of this shit. Or did he? Hmm.

Okay, so we’ve got this world of reanimated dead bodies. What we need now is a reason for an adventurer to go there. Surely, traveling to such a violent and savage place would be a suicide mission. There must be something or someone of value on this necrocosm that would be worth wading through an army of dead bodies. A villain to fight, a prisoner to rescue, an artifact to steal, these are all good reasons to risk life and limb for a journey to that planet. If you know how to build tension, you can pull off this storyline and be successful at it.

So how about it, ladies and gentlemen? If this became a D&D campaign, would your character have the cajones to venture onto such a planet with the lingering fear of having his flesh and organs gnawed on? Would you have the solid steel spine to read through a novel that went behind fierce enemy lines like the war zone the necrocosm is? Could I possibly fit an entire world’s worth of action and drama into one short story? So many possibilities, so little time. Hell, if somebody else wants to expand upon this idea and do something with it, I’m not against it as long as you remember where you got this juicy creative fuel from. The table of opportunity has been set, people. What are you going to do?

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

It’s a brand new week and a brand new prompt has been put into place. Apparently, this suggestion was from many years ago when a former admin named Mike Ragland first posted it in the prompt ideas forum. The theme is Crumbling Well (that definitely has Mike’s fingerprints all over it), so my story this week will be called “The Ophidiomancer” (more Greek wordplay, for sure). It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

Shaun Goldberg, Sheep Mask-Wearing Giant

Carlos Pierre, Psychotic Snake Handler

PROMPT CONFORMITY: Carlos keeps his poisonous snakes in a crumbling well in the middle of the field.

SYNOPSIS: Shaun is a thirty-year-old man child who recently escaped from his abusive mother and is wandering the plains like a mindless zombie. He stumbles upon Carlos and his followers in the middle of a snakebite ritual. Carlos offers to heal Shaun’s soul with a “test of faith”, but when the snake bites the man child, he goes berserk and starts throwing the followers around. Carlos tries to get out of dodge, but he keeps stumbling and rolling.

FUN FACT: For all of you WWE fans out there (both old school and new), these two main characters are based off of actual wrestlers that worked with the company. Shaun Goldberg is likened to Erick Rowan and Carlos Pierre has similarities to Jake “The Snake” Roberts. They come from two completely different eras of wrestling and bring their own form of creepiness to the table. Since a match between Rowan and Roberts won’t actually take place due to Roberts’ old age, this short story is the next best thing.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Elizabeth Wilson has been knocked out of the park and now it’s time for someone new. That someone is Desilu McCourt, the Amazonian hammer swinger from “Occupy Wrestling”. You know the one. She’s the ogre chick who nearly snapped Debra Winter’s spine in half before Mitch McLeod came to the rescue. I’ve done a drawing of Desilu in the past, but I don’t think very highly of it, so I’m going to attempt her again. Wish me luck!

***MOVIE REVIEWS***

The last time I did a movie review, it was for Zootopia and that was many months ago. I don’t do movie reviews very often, but that’s only because I can count the number of visits to the theater I’ve made this year on one hand. I don’t plan on doing a review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, because I’m still afraid of pissing off people who haven’t seen it yet with plot spoilers. That leaves me with two items on this short task list: the 2016 version of Ghostbusters and a little known documentary called Lucha Mexico. Ghost hunting and masked wrestling: such a delightful combination. Both movies will receive passing grades (four stars). It’s all a matter of putting the words and debating points together in a clean and crisp manner.

***BOOK REVIEW***

As most of you know, I’ve been doing some beta reading for my wonderful author friends Andy Peloquin and Marie Krepps. Their deadlines for publication are drawing near, so you can expect book reviews for them around those times. The first one to come up will be of Marie Krepps’ teen romance novel “What Money Can’t Buy”. It’s being published on August 11^th, the same day as my Slipknot X Marilyn Manson concert. We both have things to be excited for!

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“School uniforms: bad theory! It’s the idea that if kids wear uniforms to school it’ll help maintain order. Don’t these schools do enough damage trying to get these kids to think alike? Now they’re going to get them to look alike too? And it’s not a new idea. I once saw it in old newsreels from the 1930’s, though it was a little hard to understand because the narration was in German!”

-George Carlin-

Medusa

VERSE 1
The eyes of Medusa turn you to stone
Chilling your skin right down to the bone
For all of your sins, it’s too late to atone
The palace gates are your brand new home

CHORUS
Snakes for hair, ice for a heart
Demonic flesh for body parts
Look at her face, it’s time to embrace
Your final fate in this human race

VERSE 2
The fangs of Medusa chew through your throat
Spilling your blood and guts in the acidic moat
The tongue of Medusa says her goodbyes
As she glares at you with those devilish eyes

CHORUS
Snakes for hair, ice for a heart
Demonic flesh for body parts
Look at her face, it’s time to embrace
Your final fate in this human race

HOOK
She’s the twenty-first century heartbreaker
She’ll lead you straight to the undertaker
Into the hands of your own damn creator
How much will it take for you to hate her?

VERSE 3
The soul of Medusa is empty and frozen
She is the one that you’ve clearly chosen
Seduced into a life of poverty and hell
You don’t have the urge to kiss and tell

EXTENDED CHORUS
Snakes for hair, ice for a heart
Demonic flesh for body parts
Look at her face, it’s time to embrace
Your final fate in this human race
The underworld gods are laughing
The hellhounds’ claws are slashing
Was any of this lust worth it in the end?
Be sure to give her your regards to send