Sometimes, life is a walk in the park.
The Hound Dog and The Crone
A Short Story by CJ Heck
Last Saturday, I was sitting on a park bench reading, minding my own business and enjoying my day off. Then I saw the strangest thing, and I’d love to share it with you …
As I looked up from my book and glanced across the way, I noticed a portly old woman greedily gumming a straw sticking out of a soda can. It was so reminiscent of a hungry infant suckling at the breast of its mother that I had to smile.
The woman’s corpulent face was older than ancient. Her countless wrinkles had wilted into tiers, like icing spread on a too-warm cake. The eyes were nearly hidden -- two dark asterisks in among the many folds of flesh.
I tried not to notice. I tried even harder not to laugh, I really did, and I didn't actually lose the battle until I saw her dog and what he considered his role to be.
At first, I only saw the woman, but all at once, with a high-speed upward-outward motion, a hulking face popped out between the woman's legs. This was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. The face, framed on both sides and above by a long pink skirt, was nearly engulfed by a myriad of wrinkles of the largest kind. His eyes were like two lumps of coal stuffed deep into a large wad of brown dough. The mouth, a gaping slobbery hole, housed a pink tongue that hung down almost to the bully-boy collar around its neck. Just above the mouth and also poked deep into the brown dough, was what I presumed to be a nose.
The total picture was one of comedic delight -- the stout head above, and its massive and ugly twin below peering out from between the woman's legs. The wrinkled and toothless woman perfectly mirrored the droll caricature of the animal underneath her.
(That's still not when I lost the battle to laughter. Up to this point, I managed to contain myself pretty well).
The old woman finally finished her soda and rose from her bench. She slowly shuffled toward a trash can bolted to a fence post by the edge of the sidewalk. The dog was right behind her. After dropping the soda can into the barrel, she turned her head to the side and with a series of revolting sounds, belched and then hawked up a wad of phlegm -- a loogie of vast proportions -- which she promptly spat onto the sidewalk. Without missing a beat, the dog waddled over to the mess and promptly cleaned it up for her.
I was so busy trying to keep my gag and retch reflexes in check that I missed where the two went after that. When I recovered, I took a quick look.
The old woman was sitting back on the bench, the dog below, its enormous head again neatly framed in the pink folds of cloth and, once more peering out at the world from between her legs. It was that final picture and the improbable role reversal between dog and human that finally eroded all self-control and I drowned in a sea of my own laughter.
My only thought was, thank God I didn't know her ... and I grabbed my book and ran before I peed myself.
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