PA 3.5: End of a Tail

Chapter XXVIII Part IV

Before he could hoist himself up, something happened, a flurry of motion and the pattering of feet heavy against the mud. The right side of his neck felt warm, and he was slumped against the floor now- fallen just inside the shallow grave near the window. Everything was a blur, as if he had just passed out.

Had he slipped? Confused, he battered away the darkness ebbing itself in at the corner of his vision and tried to sit up, but a weight on his legs kept him down. In his next breath, he was drowning- some fluid stuck itself in his throat, keeping him from inhaling. Instinctively he coughed it out, and from his prone position, bewilderment froze him as the substance became evident.

'Is that... blood?'

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!" Dell screamed at the top of her faulty lungs, the sound being drowned out by the crashing of rain. "I DID EVERYTHING FOR YOU!"

She ripped the knife from his neck, her stomach churning at the feeling of chunky wetness scraping against the blade. As the redness poured from the side, and she sat there straddling his groin, a pang of immense guilt wracked her being. 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!' it screamed, desperately trying to pull her from her course, but anger flowed like adrenaline through her arms, almost involuntarily sending them careening back towards him.

Ichor seeped past his fluffy coat, sinking into his white uniform collar and into his beautiful golden fur. He had tried keeping the blade away with a paw in the brief moment he realized he was under attack, but unable to look at Dell, his lazy flail hadn't saved him. "I HATE YOU!" she yelled, stabbing him deeper towards the jugular, making him gurgle and twitch.

Cujo kicked at the floor, drawing gouges of muck and trying to kick his assailant off of his hip. He would've screamed were it not for the blood in his throat, a look of sheer terror raised itself over his features before his eyes shuddered and fell dark. The previous sparkling hazel in his eyes washed away with the drizzle of rain that would hit them, soaking away the colour until it was nothing but the dirt they were surrounded by.

She wasn't sure at what point she had landed on her back, but she remembered the handle zapping her paw. She could feel the electricity dancing throughout her body, frying her heart with its leaps and bounds. She needed to get up, to move, but her body was stuck staring at the hole in the ground.

His beautiful shining hair and ears were now flopped upward, draped over the top of his head. Pupils were as wide as they could be, spilling over with their inky blackness into Dell's vision. The knife still stuck out like an unnatural appendage; something about it was wrong, she felt, it shouldn't be in there like that.

No.

What had she done.

"Cujo?" she spoke, the name reverberating within the hole bored in her chest. "I'm- I'm sorry, I-"

The rain picked up, mixing in with her emotions and concealing them. Wide-eyed, she grabbed his body by the shoulders, then hoisted him out of the shallow grave. Pine needles stabbed into her feet, and muck caked her body as she gouged lines out of the earth with her flailing. She couldn't tell what she was doing anymore, only that it felt like some force had possessed her- some instinct born from the days previous had puppeted her body, forcing her to begin dragging his body away from the house and cover Cujo's neck with his clothes. Just as she grew conscious, the body shocked her with its cold, sending her off-balance and onto the floor.

There, she cowered, darkness engulfing her vision over and over again as she kneeled over his corpse. She was in the thicket now, past the gate and far enough away from the house that the front door was barely visible past the treeline. She spared a glance around, looking for someone who could somehow help, then returned to Cujo.

The cold his body radiated was awful- the true essence of what it would feel like to defile a corpse, or to disturb a spirit. Her eyes wandered over the blur that was his bloodied white t-shirt, muttering something in her mind. She was so disoriented, so confused, so angry at herself. The urge to make up for her deed was so intense, she willingly wrapped her wet paw pads over the cold handle, before a thought gave her pause.

"He's not gone," she told herself, "I can bring him back. I can bring him back."

She let go of the blade, blowing on her digits afterward in an attempt to rid them of the sparks of horror and excitement she was still feeling. She had always idolized the aesthetic of death in a way. She had imagined herself or the people around her in graves after they would have passed from old age. She imagined they'd look peaceful, fulfilled; Cujo was anything but.

His fur had become like dead grass, a mockery of the previously lush maine he had always sported. Lifelessly, each hair fluttered about in the wind, rebellious against the rain which weighed it down. His poor face was dull, mouth dry and cheeks wet with the squelch of her deed. She touched her paw to his head, moving the stiffening thing so she could stare into his eyes, then flinched and let go the moment they had stared back. There was no bounce to his body, no liveliness that had given his massive ears their cute appeal, or his expressions their personality. He was taxidermied- a facsimile of what once was, and uncanny in its lack of energy.

Pretending he was asleep did nothing for her burgeoning mind, netiher did her attempts to get herself to wrap her arms around him and tell him things would be okay. She was so desperately afraid of him now, more than she had been when he was alive.

She heard a strong sound of something sliding open. Her heart smashed against her chest against the prospect of being discovered. She looked up to see Coco with her wand bared, poking her head out of the living room window, looking around- presumably for her.

Dell remained still, staring with her sullen yellow eyes into Coco's matching ones. For a moment, she thought she was caught, but the cat looked past her and then around once more before aggressively cursing and slamming the window shut.

Possessed by ambition, Dell gripped Cujo's shoulders, then began dragging him away.