Phobos

by Marlin Eller

I'm jumpy. I've been pacing the room but now I sit at my writing table and stare at my knife, trusty hunting knife, ever sharp, ever ready. I always clean it and hone it after skinning the prey, but not this time. It's still bloody. Fresh crimson smear's the handle and fills the gutter. I really should clean it but I can’t. Not this time. I can't just wipe it away, there’s too much. Lord, who'd have thought there'd be so much blood?

Phobos pads softly behind me skulking in the shadows, hiding from my view. He senses that something is wrong, knows I'm upset but can't understand. Moments ago I caught his eyes pleading with me to explain, to forgive. I see fear in him, a child’s fear of a parents wrath, the fear that he's done something wrong and doesn't even know what. I should comfort him, and soon too or he'll sulk for weeks. After all, we know it wasn't really his fault now was it?

My thumbprints on the handle are beginning to dry out fading from crisp red to dull brown, crusting over if I don't clean it soon, if I don't clean it right away it may never come clean. Is that I want? Is that why I didn't wash up after cleaning out the catch? Do I want a permanent stain, dried blood caked on to remind me of tonight's catch? To remind me that tonight was different. To remind me that this time the blood was human.

It lies on the table pointing it me, accusing me of the crime. A bloody hand from the grave saying, " that's him, officer, that's the one that killed me." All I have to do is wash it off but I'm afraid. Like Phobos I'm hiding in the shadows, tail between my legs wondering what went wrong, quivering in fear. My God he couldn't have been more than seven years old with a young collie too, probably his first dog, and both of them hang in the locker skinned and cleaned and my knife covered with his blood points at me.

I got my first dog when I was 6, Tuggles, a big damn mutt. What a dog! We played a lot out in the orchard, Dad yelling into us to stay away from the new trees. Yeah, he was a good dog.

When Tug died I got myself a hunting dog, a retriever. Dad, Mitch, and I used to go out together for ducks or does or damn near anything that moved. Later, dad health wasn't so good anymore I went out alone. That's when I found those to wolf Cubs, Phobos and Deimos.

I trained to hunt. Hell, they trained me! They went on instinct. They knew what to do. Those were good times. I remember wants going after a fully grown's tank with those stew. Usually a wolf only preys on diseased and weaker animals but I taught them to go for the big strong game room. You should have seen them go after that buck. Those two came straight out hell.

After dead guy couldn't keep a flaw so I moved along into the city. I didn't have room for more than one animal here and though it broke my heart to split them up, I found Deimos and the others a good home. But I kept Phobos because we understood each other.

Phobos didn't like a call our his or the crowds, so it took him for walks in the evening. We explored the neighborhood together. They tip night while the city was asleep we would treat throughout a weighs passed garbage pin's we would find hole's in fences, built-in buildings, clothes lines in back yards and crawl space is under houses. We work Wyatt, all I sat and those. We were invisible we knew it every street lamp and porch light.

We could wander the whole neighborhood unseen in the cover of those overlapping patches of darkness. We could crowd should silently the side house and watch some other late-night passenger through those desolate streets totally unaware that the shadow concealed a fully grown timber wolf and myself. Sometimes we would shift our positions and follow the person up street. His heart would quicken when he thought he saw the shadows move. He would look into the inky blackness and think he saw two pairs of eye's but then he'd look again and seen nothing. He might increase his pace or whistle, as if either of those could change the fact that one can't see by peering into the darkness. Perhaps his thoughts turned to the time when he was a small child in his dark room and realized that the closet door might conceal some THING! A feeling that became a tingling in the legs and grew into a conviction that some unimaginable horror did indeed lurk within. Perhaps he shuddered in terror and clutched the covers up over his head as if that thin fragment of cloth could render harmless what ever evil was becoming manifest within the confines of that closet. Possibly he summoned to encourage to get out of bed and approach the door and touch the knob, saying over and over that there is nothing inside but clothes, nothing inside but clothes... but feeling his heart throb and pound, knowing that if he turns the knob and flings it open some decayed cadaver will tumble out or some slavering madman who sought asylum in there from the demons that torment him will leap out, eyes afire, brandishing the knife that earned him his reputation.

Maybe several moments passed before the rash act was done and the door flung wide to reveal clothes awash in shadows and cold still air of a tomb.

You see, nothing to fear in the closet except perhaps that hand reaching slowly out from between the sweaters or the glazed eyes peering out from the upper corner.

Making his way back to bed, he returns to the covers and pulls them up snug, for in truth if they can't save him nothing will. No amount of peering into the darkness can bring comfort and allay fears. It can reveal nothing, for the shadows do indeed conceal things, like Phobos and myself.