PA 3.5: End of a Tail

Chapter I Part II

"Hey! It's... you!" a peppy, lightly accented voice shouted from behind Patches, giving him a few precious moments to collect his thoughts and appear presentable. With a sniffle and wiping his gray eyes of their tears, Patches turned about and began to look over the spry golden retriever in front of him. "Are you alright?" the golden retriever asked. The retriever's eyes were wide with excitement, and his tail was wagging like mad.

The dog looked like he was ready to start running laps, and he had clearly never trimmed his fur- Patches could hear the woosh of his tail meters away. Beyond that, his ears almost reached down to his shoulders, leading down to a dirtied red bandana adorning his neck, splattered with blood.

Patches instinctively reached for his maroon tie, gripping the golden star clip at the knot and adjusting it. "Ugh... people." The golden retriever was one of the many dogs raised by Patches' actions and had been putrefying in the forest alongside other zombies unable to fit the cut for the communal day. Now, of course, the dog was healed entirely by Bapawmet and seemed to remember nothing of the days prior.

"Boy," the lone golden began, placing his paws at his hips and smiling, "I thought for a good while I wasn't gonna find anyone in these woods I'm just- really glad that's not the case! Hehe," the dog exhaled, excitement fading ever-so-slightly when he noticed the frown of his conversation partner.

The dalmatian thought to spit at the dog, but he just didn't have the willpower. His chin sunk into his chest as he grumbled to himself. "Oh not one of you..."

"One of-?" the dog queried, tilting his head and ignoring the flop of his ears onto his shoulders.

Patches tried to exposit confidence, but the events just a few minutes prior had shredded his usual debonair. "... Am I not familiar at all?" he dusted off his pants.

"Um..." The plainly dressed dog squinted, avoiding Patches' unsettlingly calm gaze. Great, he was stuttering now, sweat beading on his forehead and his smirk breaking. "Eh- em- you... well, as I said, you do seem familiar, but, now that you mention it..." he scratched at one of his fat ears.

Patches shrugged. "And do you remember why you're in this forest?"

"Uh..." His expression failed to change, but he looked at Patches confidently while he answered. "I think I was running from a ghost?"

"Of course you don't, why would anyone?" He licked the blood pooling between his gums. "You don't remember me tugging you out of Infurno, or healing you, you're just some ex-undead nobody here to bother me.

The dog raised an ear alongside an eyebrow. "Undead?" he chittered.

"Are you even listening to me?" the dalmatian scoffed.

"What? What do you even mean! I have no idea what you're talking about, and-" Blah blah blah.

Patches darted into his paws for a murder weapon, his dedicated wand-carrying pocket currently indisposed. He hissed, "Shit! Where the hell did-"

The golden retriever barked aloud, "Hey, are you listening?"

"Oh Dog, that's right! I had it in my paw, and-"

"Hey!?"

Patches turned his attention back to the interrupting dog. "Not one of you is going to let me go without hounding me with questions, are you?" He snarled.

"Look! I don't want any trouble," the dog said, putting up his paws in surrender, "I'm just really confused, I can't remember how I got here..." he huffed, "and I don't even know what you said- I just- I just need to go home, something's clearly not right." The dog shook his head curtly, placing a paw on it to express how overwhelmed he felt.

"Oh of course you're going to go back to your damned parents- Listen;" Patches closed in on the slightly shorter but far fluffier dog, who took a step back in surprise. "You're going to go back to Hachiko, find a red dog named Olive, and tell them..." An empty threat, that's all the words would be. Just be honest, Patches. "And tell them that..." he couldn't say it, not with how easily the words came to mind.

The dull stare coming from the lone retriever pursed Patches' lips, 

"Tell them that I... I want to meet with them, just them, and just... talk." He turned his head away from the retriever, wiping the evening sun out of his watering eyes.

"... Sure, I can do that for you, but let's just get back to the school first, okay? You and me," the dog said, gesturing towards Patches and then himself. "Or uh... You and I." He showed Patches his canines with a goofy smile.

Patches closed both of his eyes now; one of them was welded shut from the trickle of blood earlier and hurt slightly as he pried it. "Forget it. You'll probably screw up somehow."

"Nonono, I can do that for you. I just want to know if you're alright first; you're bleeding and... I'm not sure if you hurt your head or not, but we can head to the nurse's office and help get that taken care of," the retriever said, making a 'simmer down' gesture with his paws.

The dog looked like he was about to respond to the silence, but Patches cut him off, "Look, just get out of here. Forget what I said about going to the school, enjoy the rest of your day," Patches sassed, waving around a paw.

The dog looked at him disapprovingly, then shook his head and gestured with a paw. "Are you sure you're fine? I don't want to end up leaving you here if it might get you hurt." The dog's body language betrayed his words- letting Patches know just how nervous and awkward the dog felt around him.

Patches smiled eerily at him. "Yes, I'm just fine. Now leave me alone before you regret it, mutt." He didn't wait for a response, turning on his heel and walking deeper into the woods. It took a moment before he heard the crunching of foliage underfoot the golden retriever.

It didn't take long for Patches to see the next set of dogs, or the next. With each passing soul that spotted him, Patches felt the weight of their glares pressing onto his shoulders more and more. He could hear their voices whispering about how strange the dalmatian looked, with red trickling down his forehead. It reminded him of his old thoughts, those things he knew were right, but Angel had made such convincing lies, and now... Now everyone was a liar, a traitor. They had all wronged him in some way.

His fits of anger quickly coalesced and congealed. Another small group of students saw him walking in the opposite direction they were, this time a set of 13-year-old pups with a single junior to wrangle them together. They looked so small, so horrible.

"Is he okay?" one of them muttered.

"Maybe we should ask for directions..."

"He looks mad,"

The junior sheparded "Just leave that guy be."

Patches growled to himself, then snapped towards the group of far younger students just a couple dozen meters away. "What? You bastards want something from me?!" he shouted.

The junior stepped forward, a Bernese from the looks of it, with an imposing stature that was befitting of a role model. "Hey, lay off! They're, like, grade 9's!"

"And if you want them to graduate, you'll keep their mouths shut!" he yelled back, eyes twitching with unfurling rage.

Both the parties broke away from one another with scowls and curses. Patches cursed himself for losing his temper so quickly, but it felt as if nothing mattered at the moment. He was just so damned angry at the world, to the point where he would randomly scream at a bunch of freshmen scared out of their wits in the middle of cat territory.

'What is wrong with me?' was his singular thought as exhaustion began to hit him again. He could barely think straight, and each tree he passed seemed like it was the same one over and over again. He was approaching the dead trees of Kemono Woods and knew he couldn't walk for much longer as the sun flew past its apex, deeper into the evening.