PA 3.5: End of a Tail

Chapter XX Part IV

The pressure in his abdomen ceased as Sparky breathily pleaded with the dalmatian. "I should have- L-Luna told me how Angel made you feel, h-how happy you were with him," the husky could barely talk. His arms were splayed out uselessly alongside the rest of his body as all the energy he had gone towards pushing past the pain.

"I... I saw that happy part of you when we played ball..." he paused to trail his eyes upward, smiling towards Patches, " at the school remember? W-We're friends, Patches, please..."

Patches swallowed some saliva as his beat-up body swayed lightly in the wind. He winced as a gust of cold air bit past his bandages, stinging the gash on his head, the pierced flesh along his arms and legs, and his bruised ribs.

"I don't know what.... Angel said to you, but you brought him back to life. Y-You trusted us, and we hurt you..." Sparky trailed off, whimpering as he continued to fight against the weakening of his pulse and the intensifying of his pain. "I know-" Sparky shuddered, blood welling up in his mouth from a cut on the inside of his cheek as he felt the blood loss ebb away, the adrenaline surging through him. "I know there's a good dog in there... I know you don't want this..! I b-believe in you!

"O-Olive still believes in you..."

"No," Patches denied the words, his lips curled, and eyes became piercing as he grew with fury. "We are not doing this; I am not letting you lie to me again."

Sparky's eyes widened, contorting in anguish and worry as tears formed at the side of his eyes. "P-Patches, I promise, I'm not-"

Sparky sharply groaned in pain as the sudden pressure in his gut intensified. He could see a bulge poking up from his intestines, like the membrane of an egg about to hatch.

"Sparky?" Patches said, beginning to blush as he smiled warmly, trailing his eyes up to meet the husky's face. "Shut your mouth."

The door to the house swung open, and he spared a glance towards Brownie, who was peeking her head out into the gloomy atmosphere. The half-conscious terrier mewling on the dirt by the gate caught her attention first, and she rushed out immediately to meet him, swinging it open and gripping him by his shoulders. "Rover?!" she yelled, then rose her attention up, scanning for any danger and finding it by levelling her gaze at Patches.

Patches warmly smiled back, giving a cute wave and sticking his tongue out just a bit.

"SPARKY!" she screamed in urgency but could only watch as Patches uppercut the wand.

Time froze for a moment as a rattling pain jutted from Sparky's abdomen. He grit his teeth and bulged his eyes as the shape of a fist stretched Sparky's skin from the inside, then bore through it. Sparky's guts exploded open like an overinflated balloon, quickly spurting into the air as the tightly coiled organs impressively unfurled themselves.

Patches simply stared in some reluctant form of appreciation, soon putting on a pleased smile as he vocalized a stuttering, inconfident giggle.

The pain was simply too much to bear, and with the last of his strength, he tensed his body up, feeling the severed muscles try in vain to contract, only splurting out their scarlet contents in the tense effort. He violently grimaced, eyes yelling at the horror of seeing one's own insides. They splattered upward, scattering viscera all across Sparky's body, dotting his and Patches' tittering face with bits of red.

Sparky drew in a sharp breath as his lungs fought their own collapse, and he felt a fizzling in the back of his head as his spine gave up trying to process the awful sensations all across his body. With the last bit of air he had, Sparky let loose a cry-

"ROVER!!!"

-and midway through the scream, the flame faded from his eyes, dulling alongside the rest of his body. Somehow his voice continued on with his friend's name, vocal cords frozen in place as his lungs continued to deflate even after his mind was gone.

Patches watched as Sparky's blue and orange eyes lost their colour, his head sagging downward as the rest of his body was still rested up against the dead oak. His maroon-splattered guts slunk about in the air before Patches released his grip on them, letting them wetly slink onto his lap, coating the dying grass in his ichor. His face was still contorted into a half-scream, and his eyes had addled as the muscles were no longer able to stretch themselves painfully wide.

Patches raised Mitt's wand again, swirling it about in preparation for another teleportation spell. He spared another glance to Brownie as he prepared the cast, dully looking over her petrified expression the moment before she realized he was staring at her, and staggered back in horror at what she had just seen.

Rover was still crawling about on the floor just next to Brownie, covering his head and ears while he shook madly, trying to seal himself off from the screaming.

Patches dulled his eyes at the terrier; it was hard to believe this was the same dog who would scribble his number in school bathrooms, looking for people to play baseball with.

The halfway-ajar door burst open, and just out of range of a lethal bolt came Coco, still dressed in her witching outfit as she had been last time he saw her. Her clothing flapped about as she had only a moment to speak "Brownie?! What's-" before turning her head to where the corgi had it fixated, eyes going wide in terror at the mutilated corpse Patches was standing before. Coco's gaze went mad with a passionate hate that he had only seen Angel possess previously, and struck her wand forward, casting a lethal, unavoidable bolt that seared the air around Sparky's corpse.

In a dim flash of grey, the unamused dalmatian gestured the wand westward. He felt the heat washing over him and his eyes went wide in the moment before he popped from reality, leaving behind the carnage he had sewn for little else but a dim feeling of disappointing guilt.

--- Author's Note

Cert done.

Gonna keep posting 4k a week. Wanna get this thing done soon let's do this.