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smackenzieIt was raining when Marya woke up, and for a few minutes she just lay in bed and listened to it. How very normal it sounded. Oscar twitched at the foot of the bed, probably dreaming about chasing cats or calling up some ancestral memory of riding on an old firetruck. When Marya was little, her dad told her that dalmatians became traditional firehouse dogs because they were sometimes born deaf, which really came in handy when one of your purposes in life was to ride in the front seat of a firetruck, right in front of the huge warning bell that the trucks used to have. Marya always felt bad for the dogs, not being able to hear.
And then she got Oscar, or rather her girlfriend at the time foisted him off on her - Milly, who dated Marya for five months, and wanted to move in with her on a Monday and then wanted to break up the following Tuesday. Milly made Marya's head spin, and not in a good way. She was cute but extremely flaky and indecisive and passive aggressive, and Marya was never sure why Milly had gotten a dog in the first place. Actually Marya was never sure why Milly wanted to go out with her either. Milly was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person, she didn't particularly like the little music clubs Marya's band at the time would play in, she played golf, and she hated Indian food. And she didn't know what to do with a friendly but not very smart deaf dog.
So Marya got him and proceeded to talk to him like he could hear her, and to spoil him rotten for six months. He slept on the bed, he ate chicken, he got let in and out as often as he wanted, whether he needed to pee or not, and even though he couldn't hear her, Marya told him repeatedly that he was a pretty boy. Not always a good dog, but a very pretty one. Even if his eyes were two different colors.
Sometimes she wondered if Milly had given her Oscar because he was uneven. Milly was big on symmetry.
Well, it didn't matter now. Milly was three years gone and hopefully happily compulsive wherever she was. She and Marya hadn't talked since the breakup. It hadn't been any worse a breakup than any other, but they didn't really have that much in common and there wasn't a reason for them to keep in touch. They were kind of like each other's summer flings, if summer lasted five months, and at the end of it Marya got to keep the dog.
Now she rolled out of bed and grinned when that dog woke up immediately and jumped off the bed after her.
"You wanna go out in the rain?" she asked him. In answer, he ran into the kitchen to stand by the back door. Marya shuffled after him and let him out. She peered into the back yard while he did his business. It was raining pretty hard, but at least it wasn't thundering. Oscar did his thing as quickly as possible and bounded inside, shook himself all over, got Marya wet, and sat patiently by his bowl. Marya went after him with the towel she kept by the back door, for wiping down wet dog and wet dog feet. She didn't want him catching dog pneumonia or tracking muddy prints all over her house.
Oscar submitted patiently to being rubbed down, but after Marya had only dried two feet he barked to let her know that he was done now, thanks, she could feed him any time, and he was hungry. She just laughed. It was nice to know that some things never changed.
She changed his water, scooped some food into his bowl, and stuck her head in the freezer. Still cold. The clock on the stove wasn't blinking, so she could only assume the electricity had stayed on all night. She could cook the chicken and pork chops and sausage that she'd taken out of the freezer last night. There were still two French bread pizzas and about a third of a bag of frozen corn in the freezer, but she could make the pizzas for breakfast and the corn wasn't going to spoil right away.
Oscar as expected was more interested in her breakfast than his own, even after he'd eaten his breakfast, but Marya put him off by pointing out that if he behaved himself now, he might get some chicken later, and chicken was much better than a frozen French bread pizza. She wished not for the first time that it was possible to teach dogs sign language.
After breakfast she got dressed, booted up her laptop, and was actually surprised to find out that she couldn't get online. She'd always gotten a really strong wireless signal - and before that, a really good plugged-in signal - but now she couldn't connect. She turned on the TV, found a station with picture. So that worked. She picked up the phone, which was dead, and then tried her cell phone, which worked. Weird. She called Cassandra.
Someone who wasn't Cass answered the phone.
"Uh, hi?" Marya said. "Who's this?"
"Who's this?" demanded the person who wasn't Cass.
"This is Marya. Cass' ex-girlfriend. Who are you and why are you answering her phone?"
"Spike. She's in the shower."
"Oh. Ok. Uh... can you ask her to call me back when she gets out?"
"Sure."
"Ok, thanks. Bye." She hung up. "So that's Spike," she said to Oscar. He didn't seen particularly interested. "I don't think I'm impressed. I still don't remember her, though."
She went back into the kitchen, turned on the oven to preheat it for the chicken breasts, and turned on the kitchen radio. It took ten minutes to find a station that wasn't full of static, but that station was broadcasting PSAs and some music and some news. The news wasn't any different from the news Marya had heard yesterday, but it was nice to hear an actual person reading it. The DJ mentioned that some places were much harder hit than others, in terms of people missing, and suggested that his listeners start keeping track.
"Keeping track of what?" Marya asked the radio. "How? I don't know how many people disappeared in India or pretty much anywhere."
Her cell phone rang to distract her. It was Cass.
"Spike said you called?" she said.
"Yeah. I think I lost my wireless, and my landline is out. Do you have cable at all?"
"I can't get online either. I couldn't yesterday. We're still only getting one TV channel. There's nothing really on, though."
Cass sounded calmer than she had yesterday. Maybe having Spike there was good for her. Marya didn't care that she hadn't liked the girl.
"Spike heard from her cousin," Cass went on. "He lives in Vegas. He said he didn't think the city was really empty, and he's driving out here."
"What does that mean, not really empty?"
"Empty of people but not empty. I don't know - he sounded kind of wigged out. I think he saw a ghost. Have you seen a ghost?"
"Of course not." Marya didn't believe in ghosts. "Did you?"
"I haven't, no. That doesn't mean I won't. Oh shut up," she said to someone on her end, probably Spike. "Spike's laughing at me."
"Did your electricity go out yesterday?"
"No."
"Mine did. I don't think for very long, though. I'm cooking everything in the freezer just in case."
"I don't have anything in the freezer. Remember how I cook?"
Which was to say, Cass didn't. She could boil water for pasta and she could scramble an egg, but anything more complicated than that and she wanted to order out, go out, or make someone else cook. Left to her own devices, she'd eat a lot of cereal, a lot of scrambled eggs, and a lot of pizza and Chinese takout.
"You might want to stock up, just in case," Marya suggested. "Get stuff in cans, anyway. What have you been eating?"
"Spaghetti. Spike went out last night and got food. We're ok. Are you ok?"
"I'm making chicken, so yeah. I'm good, Oscar's good, I still can't get a hold of my dad." She didn't tell Cass that her grandma had gone missing. She didn't want Cass' sympathy and she really didn't want to talk about it. "My house still has power, the plumbing's working, I'm doing pretty good for the end of the world."
"That's not funny, Marya."
"Do you hear me laughing?" Oscar barked. "Well, Oscar is." He barked again. "What?" she asked him. "I fed you. You can have some chicken when it's fully cooked."
"Are you giving the dog people food?"
"Yeah. It's better than giving the people dog food."
"Are you sure you're ok?"
"Isn't that what I said? I'm fine. I really only called to see if you had any internet and if your phone was working, and obviously it is. I'm going to fry my pork chops while my chicken is baking and - what, Oscar, what?" Because he'd started barking again. "Cass? I gotta go. The dog's going nuts."
"I'll talk to you later. I'm glad you're still around."
"i'm glad you are. Bye." She hung up. Oscar barked at her and then barked at the back door. "Is someone outside?" she asked him. "Something? One of the Cujos?"
He went and stood by the door, and then he started to growl.
"Shit," Marya said. She was glad she always locked the back door when she was home, even though there was a fence around the yard and people didn't normally wander into yards with fences. But in the remote chance that someone got into the yard, they still couldn't get into the house, or at least they couldn't without some serious effort.
Marya edged over to the stove, where the frying pan was sitting in preparation for being heated up and frying pork chops. She grabbed the handle. Oscar growled at the door again.
Something was definitely out there. Oscar didn't normally growl at people.
Marya edged back over towards the door and peeked out the window. It was hard to see through the rain, but she thought there might be a cat out there. She wondered whose it was and why was Oscar so vocal about it? He liked cats. He liked chasing them. Although on second look, the creature in her back yard didn't look much like a house cat - it was bigger, for one thing, and hairier. Shaggy, like its winter coat was growing in. It was just nosing around the grass, not doing anything particularly threatening, but there was something weird and off about it.
Marya shivered and pulled Oscar away from the door. "Leave it," she told him, jerking once on his collar to get the point across. He could be stubborn but she was no lightweight, and if he was going to dig in his heels, so was she.
"It's a cat," she went on. "You like cats." But it wasn't just a cat. She didn't know what it was, but she knew it wasn't just a cat. "Oscar. Come on." She kept pulling back on his collar to get him to come away from the door, because she knew he couldn't hear her even if she always acted as if he could. "Ok, ok, stay there. But I'm not going to let you out."
She peered out the window again. The thing that wasn't a cat had sat down on the grass, in the rain, and was now apparently cleaning its paw. Something about it still seemed off, as much as it was acting like a normal cat.
But Marya didn't have time to stand there and watch it. She could ignore Oscar as long as he didn't try to get out, and since the door was locked and he didn't have the opposable thumbs necessary to unlock it, he wasn't going anywhere. She figured she'd finish cooking her chicken breasts, she'd fry her pork chops, she'd think about whether or not to cook the sausage now or wait, and she'd let the not-cat outside do its own thing for a while.
And in the meantime Oscar could just stand there and growl. He was friendly to every single person he ever met, whether that person was dangerous to Marya or not, so why should she think he'd be able to determine whether or not some creature outside was bad news?
Except he'd never growled at anything before. That alone was a big deal.
Ok, no, she couldn't think about it right now. She couldn't DO anything about it right now. She'd deal with her half-cooked, thawed-out meat first. And then, well, she didn't know. She'd try to chase the thing off or something. She wasn't going to sic Oscar on it, that was for sure.
words: 2175
total words: 10,845
And then she got Oscar, or rather her girlfriend at the time foisted him off on her - Milly, who dated Marya for five months, and wanted to move in with her on a Monday and then wanted to break up the following Tuesday. Milly made Marya's head spin, and not in a good way. She was cute but extremely flaky and indecisive and passive aggressive, and Marya was never sure why Milly had gotten a dog in the first place. Actually Marya was never sure why Milly wanted to go out with her either. Milly was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person, she didn't particularly like the little music clubs Marya's band at the time would play in, she played golf, and she hated Indian food. And she didn't know what to do with a friendly but not very smart deaf dog.
So Marya got him and proceeded to talk to him like he could hear her, and to spoil him rotten for six months. He slept on the bed, he ate chicken, he got let in and out as often as he wanted, whether he needed to pee or not, and even though he couldn't hear her, Marya told him repeatedly that he was a pretty boy. Not always a good dog, but a very pretty one. Even if his eyes were two different colors.
Sometimes she wondered if Milly had given her Oscar because he was uneven. Milly was big on symmetry.
Well, it didn't matter now. Milly was three years gone and hopefully happily compulsive wherever she was. She and Marya hadn't talked since the breakup. It hadn't been any worse a breakup than any other, but they didn't really have that much in common and there wasn't a reason for them to keep in touch. They were kind of like each other's summer flings, if summer lasted five months, and at the end of it Marya got to keep the dog.
Now she rolled out of bed and grinned when that dog woke up immediately and jumped off the bed after her.
"You wanna go out in the rain?" she asked him. In answer, he ran into the kitchen to stand by the back door. Marya shuffled after him and let him out. She peered into the back yard while he did his business. It was raining pretty hard, but at least it wasn't thundering. Oscar did his thing as quickly as possible and bounded inside, shook himself all over, got Marya wet, and sat patiently by his bowl. Marya went after him with the towel she kept by the back door, for wiping down wet dog and wet dog feet. She didn't want him catching dog pneumonia or tracking muddy prints all over her house.
Oscar submitted patiently to being rubbed down, but after Marya had only dried two feet he barked to let her know that he was done now, thanks, she could feed him any time, and he was hungry. She just laughed. It was nice to know that some things never changed.
She changed his water, scooped some food into his bowl, and stuck her head in the freezer. Still cold. The clock on the stove wasn't blinking, so she could only assume the electricity had stayed on all night. She could cook the chicken and pork chops and sausage that she'd taken out of the freezer last night. There were still two French bread pizzas and about a third of a bag of frozen corn in the freezer, but she could make the pizzas for breakfast and the corn wasn't going to spoil right away.
Oscar as expected was more interested in her breakfast than his own, even after he'd eaten his breakfast, but Marya put him off by pointing out that if he behaved himself now, he might get some chicken later, and chicken was much better than a frozen French bread pizza. She wished not for the first time that it was possible to teach dogs sign language.
After breakfast she got dressed, booted up her laptop, and was actually surprised to find out that she couldn't get online. She'd always gotten a really strong wireless signal - and before that, a really good plugged-in signal - but now she couldn't connect. She turned on the TV, found a station with picture. So that worked. She picked up the phone, which was dead, and then tried her cell phone, which worked. Weird. She called Cassandra.
Someone who wasn't Cass answered the phone.
"Uh, hi?" Marya said. "Who's this?"
"Who's this?" demanded the person who wasn't Cass.
"This is Marya. Cass' ex-girlfriend. Who are you and why are you answering her phone?"
"Spike. She's in the shower."
"Oh. Ok. Uh... can you ask her to call me back when she gets out?"
"Sure."
"Ok, thanks. Bye." She hung up. "So that's Spike," she said to Oscar. He didn't seen particularly interested. "I don't think I'm impressed. I still don't remember her, though."
She went back into the kitchen, turned on the oven to preheat it for the chicken breasts, and turned on the kitchen radio. It took ten minutes to find a station that wasn't full of static, but that station was broadcasting PSAs and some music and some news. The news wasn't any different from the news Marya had heard yesterday, but it was nice to hear an actual person reading it. The DJ mentioned that some places were much harder hit than others, in terms of people missing, and suggested that his listeners start keeping track.
"Keeping track of what?" Marya asked the radio. "How? I don't know how many people disappeared in India or pretty much anywhere."
Her cell phone rang to distract her. It was Cass.
"Spike said you called?" she said.
"Yeah. I think I lost my wireless, and my landline is out. Do you have cable at all?"
"I can't get online either. I couldn't yesterday. We're still only getting one TV channel. There's nothing really on, though."
Cass sounded calmer than she had yesterday. Maybe having Spike there was good for her. Marya didn't care that she hadn't liked the girl.
"Spike heard from her cousin," Cass went on. "He lives in Vegas. He said he didn't think the city was really empty, and he's driving out here."
"What does that mean, not really empty?"
"Empty of people but not empty. I don't know - he sounded kind of wigged out. I think he saw a ghost. Have you seen a ghost?"
"Of course not." Marya didn't believe in ghosts. "Did you?"
"I haven't, no. That doesn't mean I won't. Oh shut up," she said to someone on her end, probably Spike. "Spike's laughing at me."
"Did your electricity go out yesterday?"
"No."
"Mine did. I don't think for very long, though. I'm cooking everything in the freezer just in case."
"I don't have anything in the freezer. Remember how I cook?"
Which was to say, Cass didn't. She could boil water for pasta and she could scramble an egg, but anything more complicated than that and she wanted to order out, go out, or make someone else cook. Left to her own devices, she'd eat a lot of cereal, a lot of scrambled eggs, and a lot of pizza and Chinese takout.
"You might want to stock up, just in case," Marya suggested. "Get stuff in cans, anyway. What have you been eating?"
"Spaghetti. Spike went out last night and got food. We're ok. Are you ok?"
"I'm making chicken, so yeah. I'm good, Oscar's good, I still can't get a hold of my dad." She didn't tell Cass that her grandma had gone missing. She didn't want Cass' sympathy and she really didn't want to talk about it. "My house still has power, the plumbing's working, I'm doing pretty good for the end of the world."
"That's not funny, Marya."
"Do you hear me laughing?" Oscar barked. "Well, Oscar is." He barked again. "What?" she asked him. "I fed you. You can have some chicken when it's fully cooked."
"Are you giving the dog people food?"
"Yeah. It's better than giving the people dog food."
"Are you sure you're ok?"
"Isn't that what I said? I'm fine. I really only called to see if you had any internet and if your phone was working, and obviously it is. I'm going to fry my pork chops while my chicken is baking and - what, Oscar, what?" Because he'd started barking again. "Cass? I gotta go. The dog's going nuts."
"I'll talk to you later. I'm glad you're still around."
"i'm glad you are. Bye." She hung up. Oscar barked at her and then barked at the back door. "Is someone outside?" she asked him. "Something? One of the Cujos?"
He went and stood by the door, and then he started to growl.
"Shit," Marya said. She was glad she always locked the back door when she was home, even though there was a fence around the yard and people didn't normally wander into yards with fences. But in the remote chance that someone got into the yard, they still couldn't get into the house, or at least they couldn't without some serious effort.
Marya edged over to the stove, where the frying pan was sitting in preparation for being heated up and frying pork chops. She grabbed the handle. Oscar growled at the door again.
Something was definitely out there. Oscar didn't normally growl at people.
Marya edged back over towards the door and peeked out the window. It was hard to see through the rain, but she thought there might be a cat out there. She wondered whose it was and why was Oscar so vocal about it? He liked cats. He liked chasing them. Although on second look, the creature in her back yard didn't look much like a house cat - it was bigger, for one thing, and hairier. Shaggy, like its winter coat was growing in. It was just nosing around the grass, not doing anything particularly threatening, but there was something weird and off about it.
Marya shivered and pulled Oscar away from the door. "Leave it," she told him, jerking once on his collar to get the point across. He could be stubborn but she was no lightweight, and if he was going to dig in his heels, so was she.
"It's a cat," she went on. "You like cats." But it wasn't just a cat. She didn't know what it was, but she knew it wasn't just a cat. "Oscar. Come on." She kept pulling back on his collar to get him to come away from the door, because she knew he couldn't hear her even if she always acted as if he could. "Ok, ok, stay there. But I'm not going to let you out."
She peered out the window again. The thing that wasn't a cat had sat down on the grass, in the rain, and was now apparently cleaning its paw. Something about it still seemed off, as much as it was acting like a normal cat.
But Marya didn't have time to stand there and watch it. She could ignore Oscar as long as he didn't try to get out, and since the door was locked and he didn't have the opposable thumbs necessary to unlock it, he wasn't going anywhere. She figured she'd finish cooking her chicken breasts, she'd fry her pork chops, she'd think about whether or not to cook the sausage now or wait, and she'd let the not-cat outside do its own thing for a while.
And in the meantime Oscar could just stand there and growl. He was friendly to every single person he ever met, whether that person was dangerous to Marya or not, so why should she think he'd be able to determine whether or not some creature outside was bad news?
Except he'd never growled at anything before. That alone was a big deal.
Ok, no, she couldn't think about it right now. She couldn't DO anything about it right now. She'd deal with her half-cooked, thawed-out meat first. And then, well, she didn't know. She'd try to chase the thing off or something. She wasn't going to sic Oscar on it, that was for sure.
words: 2175
total words: 10,845
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Date: 2007-11-15 03:55 pm (UTC)