Max Booth III - We Need to Do Something

“Touch it,” Bobby says. “Here, let me show you.” He grabs my hand and guides it through the crack. I feel fur, wet lips, an eager tongue. It whines again. Its nose is cold and snotty. I can’t believe it’s really a dog.

“What is it?” Mom asks somewhere behind us.

“It’s a dog,” I tell them, and for the first time since everything happened, I feel a real sense of hope. If a dog can be here, then anything can. A dog means we aren’t alone. A dog means we haven’t been completely abandoned. A dog means we’re going to be okay.

“How did it get here?” Mom asks, voice closer now.

“Well, if the tree cut through the roof, then it definitely collapsed a wall or two,” Dad says. “I’m surprised we haven’t encountered more wildlife by now, to be honest.”

“Do you think it’s Spot?” Bobby asks.

No one says anything. Despite the darkness, I can feel all three of us looking at each other, unsure how to respond.

“I think it’s Spot,” he says again, more confident now.

Weirdly enough, the dog seems to react to the name. It gets more excited, starts licking our hands with an added sense of hunger. Little sharp teeth lightly scrape against me, but not hard enough to puncture skin. Thick layers of slobber web between my fingers and it’s so gross but I can’t pull away, because what if I never get another chance to pet a dog? The thought is too depressing to entertain. I can’t allow this dog to get away. Not right now when we need it the most.

“Spot, is that you, boy?” Bobby says. “It is, isn’t it? Everybody said you were buried in the back yard but that isn’t true, you just ran away, right? You just ran away, and now you’ve come back to save us. Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?”

“ I’m a good boy, ” the dog says from the other side of the door, only it’s not a dog at all, not with a voice like that.

In the darkness, everybody loses their shit, including me.

The thing on the other side lets out a deep, guttural laugh, then grabs my wrist tight, preventing me from retreating back into the bathroom. Its tongue runs up and down the back of my hand, then it starts sucking on my fingers, making loud wet disgusting noises that I’ll never unhear for the rest of my life.

“ I’m a good boy, ” it croaks, “ I’m a good boy, me, me, me, I’m a good boy, yum yum yum yum…”

I’m screaming so hard it hurts my chest and still the thing won’t release my wrist. Bobby’s no longer next to me. Did the stranger drag him through the crack? Oh god. Where the fuck is Bobby? No. Bobby’s crying somewhere behind me. Hands wrap around my shoulders. My dad. He’s dragging me away from the door, shouting, “Let my daughter go, you motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you, goddammit it!” and the threats are only making the thing on the other side laugh louder.

Laughing with my fingers in its mouth.

Sucking hard.

Its teeth press down tougher against my skin and I realize it’s going to bite my goddamn fingers off.

Bite them off and swallow them up.

Yum yum yum yum.

“No!” I scream, and instead of pulling back I push forward, fishing around its mouth like a haunted house gimmick. Then I have its tongue in my grasp and I squeeze and pull and it’s like I’m wrangling a violent, mutated worm and I don’t let go until something snaps and I collapse back against my dad and the thing on the other side of the door lets out an inhuman squeal.

We hear its footsteps, much louder now, as it flees from my parents’ bedroom, scrambling up the tree and back into the night.

I can’t stop crying as my dad holds me tight and promises he’ll protect me, that nothing bad will happen to me with him here, and for a second I actually believe him.

Then I remember I’m still holding the thing’s tongue in my hand, and I freak out all over again.

We don’t open the door again until the sun rises. None of us have slept a second since the “dog” incident. Dad peeks through the door opening, searching for the intruder, but whatever confronted us last night is long gone now.

At least, we assume.

A part of me wonders if it’s still nearby, waiting.

Watching.

Smelling.

On the other hand, I did claim its tongue, so its likelihood of survival seems slim at this point. We threw it in the sink last night, and that’s where we find it now. A pink lump of shriveled muscle. Several hours ago, it had molested my fingers. Now it was dead. I killed it. I won. That… that thing tried eating me and failed.

“Do you think it was a man?” I ask Dad, who’s bent over the sink, inspecting the tongue.

He nods without glancing back. “Some fuckin’ creep. He comes back, I’ll break his goddamn skull.”

“You think he’s coming back?” Mom asks. “Don’t most things die with their tongue ripped out?”

“What do I look like, Dee, some fuckin’ doctor?”

“No. I’m just saying. I think that’s a thing people know. Your tongue gets ripped out, that means you end up bleeding to death.”

“Well, let’s hope so.”

“I see the blood,” Bobby says, sitting next to the door with his face pressed against the opening. I stand over him and follow where he’s pointing. A trail of blood leads from the door toward the tree, then vanishes.

The same blood that still stains my fingernails, despite how hard I scrub them.

“What are we going to do with it?” Mom asks, nodding toward the sink.

“I don’t know,” Dad says. “I was just wondering the same thing.” He reaches down and pokes it, then recoils with disgust. “Flush it?”

Mom shakes her head. “If it clogs… no, that could backfire on us.”

“I guess I could just… throw it outside?”

“No,” I whisper, wondering if I’m actually going to say what I’m thinking, wondering what kind of lunatic would even think something like this. “We can’t throw it away.”

Dad and Mom give me a look.

“If we don’t eat something soon,” I tell them, “we’re going to die.”

Dad laughs. “Mel, you’re one sick fuck.”

But Mom fails to find the humor. “No. Wait. She’s right.”

He glares at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Tongues are edible. People eat them all the time. Cow tongues, usually.”

“I’m not eating this pervert’s tongue.”

“We have to, Dad,” I say, stepping toward the sink, suddenly feeling territorial about the tongue. I’m the one who retrieved it, after all. I nudge Dad out of the way and pick it up for everybody to see. A hunter boasting over her big catch.

Is that what I am? A hunter?

A hunter of tongues.

If it keeps us alive, then I’ll hunt as many tongues as I can find.

“We have to at least try, right?” I ask. Yesterday, if someone had tried making me eat a severed tongue, I would have vomited in their face.

Mom holds out her hand and I lay the tongue in her palm, paranoid it’s going to flop out of our grasp like a fish on dry land. She takes it back to the sink and begins running water over it. “We have to make sure it’s clean,” she says over the sound of the faucet. “There’s no telling what kind of… diseases… that man might have had.”

“Mom,” Bobby says from the floor, shockingly quiet through this whole conversation, “do I have to eat the tongue, too?”

“Yes, baby,” she says, “we all have to.”

“Well, that’s really gross.”

“Would you rather have a mushroom?” I ask him.

And he gags. “Ugh. No.”

“Then shut up.”

Teasing Bobby about mushrooms is a great hobby of mine. He’s never had one in his life, but he’ll swear up and down they’re the most disgusting things in the world.