Time Machine and other stories by Melinda Szymanik

Author:Melinda Szymanik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Cuba Press Ltd

The Man with the Dog Eye

Mr Bletcher couldn’t see very well. He always had to look at you from side on. It was very weird and always made me feel uncomfortable. But he could see dogs without any trouble at all, even if they were standing behind him – and they always were. A big crowd of them.

Kenny said Mr Bletcher had a dog eye: a special eye that’s hidden away inside your head and it can see right through your skull and everything.

Ryan said that Mr Bletcher hypnotised dogs with his dog eye and then they’d follow him back to his place like the rats followed the Pied Piper, and then they became his slaves, stealing things and biting people when he told them to.

Michael thought he lured them home and ate them, but we all said, ‘Naaah.’

Mr Bletcher had long stringy grey hair, and watery eyes. He always wore an old grey-green overcoat tied at the waist with string. His gumboots looked new though. Ryan said they had been Mr Dalton’s and that old black labrador with the mean face had stolen them in the night from beside the Dalton’s back door because Mr Bletcher had told him to.

Anyway, it didn’t matter much. He was some weirdo that we sometimes saw around, and we all stayed away from the house we knew he lived in. Until I got a puppy.

For as long as I could remember, I had been bugging Mum and Dad for a dog.

‘When the house is finished …’

‘When Malia starts school …’

‘When Tatty the cat dies …’

‘When you tidy your room …’

I think they ran out of excuses eventually and that’s when Fang came to live with us. He was only a little dog but, man, was he cute! We picked him up from the breeder when he was eight weeks old. He had black eyes like shiny bright marbles, ears that looked like they might catch the wind and whisk him away, and soft, tufted white fur.

He was so much fun. I never got sick of playing with him although Mum had to keep reminding me to take him for a walk. Sometimes she said I was her other puppy because Fang and I played as if we were the best of friends, growling and chasing each other round the house. When he was old enough he stayed in the backyard during the day when Mum was out working. Every afternoon, when I got home from school, he would run to the gate to greet me, dancing on his hind legs, licking my face, his tail trying to wag his bottom off.

Then, one afternoon, Fang wasn’t there.

I called his name but he didn’t come.

Mum stood at the top of the stairs by the back door with an unhappy look on her face. ‘Fang must’ve slipped under the gate,’ she said.

She was right. He’d dug a little tunnel and squeezed himself through to the other side. He was gone when she got home from work at two.

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