Darling Docile Dexter

There’s something severely wrong with this. I shouldn’t be here. Normal people lounge on their girlfriend’s sofa with the stereo playing 90s rock and drinking beer. I am not normal. I’m not even sure that I qualify as a person. I’m a cleverly disguised monster. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. This sheep wears brightly coloured bowling shirts and lounges on his girlfriend’s sofa with the stereo playing 90s rock and drinking beer.

I don’t like this. What I don’t like most is that I do like it. I’ve learned to like it. The laziness. The close contact. The want to come to her house and pretend to be a normal person.

I can’t be a monster. I have a girlfriend. I’m friendly to the neighbours. I’m friendly to kids. If I thought that saving lost puppies would help me seem less like a monster, then I would, but animals don’t like me. Even young animals seem to sense that I’m not human. There was a time when I thought that maybe it was just cute furry animals that knew this, so I got a turtle. I touched it once, and it decided that it would rather starve to death in its shell before ever letting me touch it again.

Cody wants to get a dog. I think Astor’s indifferent. Poor Rita; she doesn’t know which way to go. She’s trying so hard to make her kids happy. They’ve only recently been able to be happy like they are now, and I don’t want to take that away from them. I like kids. I especially like Rita’s kids. I hate to say it, but I’ve grown rather fond of them.

But I desperately do not want them to get a dog.

“Dogs are messy,” I remind her. “You have to house train them, and they chew on everything.”

Rita sighs as she squeezes herself closer to my chest. I think for her to get any closer to me, it would require radical surgery.

“I know,” she says. “But it’s all he talks about, and I just don’t know how to tell him ‘no.’ He has his heart absolutely set on getting a puppy.”

It’s my turn to sigh now. I have got to talk her out of this. Not just for my sake, but for Cody’s. I still can’t get the image of him stabbing the fish in my boat that afternoon out of my head. He seemed almost gleeful as he did it. If he did get a dog, what would he do to it? I can’t always be around to make sure he behaves like a good person should, but I can at least limit his chances to step out of line.

“What if,” I say, trying to quickly think of a solution, “you make him a deal?”

“A deal?” Rita looks up at me, twisting her shoulder painfully into my ribs. I try not to wince. “What kind of a deal?”

“Well,” I’m still thinking. The boy’s really too small to help out around the house, so his chores are limited. “A’s on his next report card?” I suggest. “Maybe not straight A’s, but most.”

Rita twists even deeper into my ribs, mulling the idea over. “I’d have to make Astor the same deal,” she said. And really, she does. She has to be fair, after all.

“Yeah,” I agree. I don’t even know what Astor wants, since both of the kids are so quiet, but it’s enough for Rita to twist back off of me. I’m positive there’s going to be a bruise there in the morning.

She presses herself back down against my chest, as though trying to burrow into my lungs. I know Rita can handle any big bad mean dog Cody tries to drag home. She’s already tamed her own very own monster. I sigh once more, not at all content in that knowledge and wait for her to fall asleep so I can quietly slip out of her house and return to my own apartment on the other side of town. I can’t prepare for the hunt if I’m caged up all the time.