It all started when I woke up this morning. At first, things seemed pretty much the same as always. I got up, fed my two basset bounds, Cooper and Alice, and read the news. The typical chaos – everyone angry at everyone else, same old, same old. One article that stuck out was a meteor struck a motel over in Nerbly County. But that was about it. Another boring day.
After I ate a bowl of Bland-Os Cereal, it was time to take my hounds for their walk. It’s summer, that just nice enough part, where the mornings are warm and sunny, but not overbearing. Cooper and Alice bounded out of the house with their big ears flapping away as they sniffed at the warm morning breeze. We stepped out into the warm light and I waved at the postal carrier, who was having an early start. We made it down my driveway, and I saw my neighbor, Henry, just about to walk his pug, Hans.
“Good Moring!” he said.
I waved. “Morning Henry! Morning Hans.” As usual, Han’s curly little tail wagged, and he ran up to my dogs and they all started sniffing each other. Henry and I talked about weather and the sports, you know, the typical small talk and what such. Then something happened I wasn’t expecting.
Cooper and Alice at first seemed to sniff Han’s little wrinkly Pug face, but then it looked more like a whisper into Han’s Pug ears. Afterwards, Hans just stared at me. Was he judging me? Was he angry?
Henry joked, “Looks like they were telling secrets, huh? How cute! “
Yeah, how cute? My hounds then looked back at me stoically. What the hell?
Okay, maybe you should know something. A while back, Henry had to go out of town for a couple of weeks for a work assignment, and asked me to house-sit. He boarded Hans, so all I had to do was look after his house. So I maybe turned his house into an ‘unofficial’ Air B&B and charged people to stay over there. So what? It’s not like anyone stole anything, I don’t think. I checked. Nothing seemed damaged by the time he got back. No harm, no foul, right?
But the way Hans looked at me. Well, that gave me goose-bumps. But he’s a dog, right? I love dogs, but they’re … dogs. Right?
Cooper, Alice, and I finished our morning walk. Back at home, I poured some coffee and fired up my work laptop when my phone rang. I picked it up and an angry dog barked on the other line. Then my best friend, Todd, picked up the phone.
“Hey Doug, sorry about that. I must’ve accidentally pocket dialed you or something. Then Toby went nuts and started barking into the phone, like pissed off at you about something! Ha! Down boy! Down! Like you’re not my best and most trusted friend! Anyway, I gotta go. Ginny and I are going to another ultrasound appointment! I’m so excited to be a dad! Hey Ginny! Wanna talk to Doug?”
I heard Ginny say “Uhhh… ummm… no… no….” in the background.
“Later Doug! I love you, man!” And the phone line clicked. Why was his dog barking at me? I’ve never… Oh no. This is not good. Okay, maybe you should know something. Todd had been working late a lot recently, because he and Ginny are saving up for a house. And one evening he was working late and Ginny and I were hanging out, having some drinks and… well, yeah.
Again, Cooper and Alice look over at me. Their droopy basset eyes showed disapproval? I shot back “Yeah. Like you’re both so perfect! I’ve seen you humping the throw pillows!” What is going on?
I spent the rest of the morning with my head in my work, trying to forget the weird stuff going on. Plus, I had a report that needed a wet signature from my boss, Charlene. Normally we email and scan and back and forth. But she had the day off and said she was going to be in my part of town anyway and could just swing by and sign off on the report real quick.
She texted me around two in the afternoon, saying she’d be over soon, so I prepared the paperwork. A little while later, the doorbell rang, and I told Charlene to come on in. She came in along with her dog, Sammy, a black and tan german shepherd. Charlene said ‘hi’ to Cooper and Alice first, because of course, and then me. “Thanks for getting this report together. Were you able to find those missing funds?” she asked.
“Ummm. Nope. It’s a mystery, but I’ll keep looking.” Okay, maybe you should know something. For some reason, the company couldn’t figure out where money was missing. I’m making sure they never see where the money went.
Charlene looked over the report and asked, “Say, is that a new car in your driveway?”
“Oh, yeah. “
Charlene kept looking at the report. “It looks luxurious.”
“Oh, got a great deal on it. A real… steal.” I could feel my fingernails trembling.
As Charlene looked over the report, Cooper and Alice put their muzzles up to the german shepherds’ pointed ears. “Get away! Bad Dogs!” I yelped and pulled them away. I took my dogs into my bedroom and shut the door.
Charlene startled and asked me what was wrong.
“Sorry. They need to go into the other room. They came down with the… the rabies… but they’ll be better in a couple of days. Fluids and rest and what such.”
Charlene gave me an odd look, signed the report, and left. This was getting too close.
For the rest of the afternoon, something was rolling around in my mind and I couldn’t figure it out, and I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I finally gave up for the afternoon and took a quick nap, which turned into a long nap. I woke up around six to someone knocking at my door. Normally Cooper and Alice would bark if someone knocked on the door, but this time they just calmly stood by the door, as if expecting what was about to happen. I answered, still in a post sleep fog.
It was my neighbor, Henry, again. “Hey Doug, sorry to bother you, but I found this and thought maybe you might know something about it.” He handed me a piece of paper. Apparently, someone who had stayed at the “makeshift B&B” printed out an invoice and accidentally left it behind. Those idiots!
I asked Henry where he found it.
“After we talked this morning, Hans was acting all weird. He kept going around the house, over and over, sniffing for something. I thought maybe a mouse or something got into the house, but just a while ago, he brought me this invoice in his mouth. Weird, huh?”
I nodded my head. “Yup. Sure is weird. Why are you showing it to me?”
Henry’s voice deepened, and he said, “Well, it has your name on it as proprietor. And it looks like a false B&B stay, at my address, while I was out of town – and you were house-sitting.”
“Oh, you know these jokesters,” I said, scrambling to come up with something. I tried to hand the invoice back to him, but he wouldn’t take it.
“Nope. You keep it. That’s a copy. I have the original and I’ve sent copies to, well, they will be in touch. You’ll find out soon enough.” Henry stormed off.
I closed the door and showed the invoice to Cooper and Alice. “Did you do this? Did you narc on me?” My basset hounds gave me an unfazed expression, which is typical for a basset, but they were especially unfazed.
Then my phone rang. It was from my best friend Todd again. I really wasn’t in the mood to talk, but since he and Ginny had that ultrasound appointment. I thought it might be urgent, and I picked up. “Hi Todd. How did the appointment go?”
“Good news. Ginny and the baby are both healthy and everything looks good on the ultrasound. The clinic also did some lab work.”
“Oh really? Everything okay?” I asked as my tongue thickened.
“Yeah. Everything is fine, but, well, I was just thinking about, a long time ago, you told me about how you have a very rare, kinda weird blood type.”
I sat down. “Oh. Yeah. Very few people have it…”
Todd’s voice deepened. “Uh-huh. Turns out the lab work showed that same very rare, kinda weird blood type.”
“Wow! That’s crazy! What are the odds?” I tried laughing it off.
Todd’s lack of laughter smacked through the phone line. “Yup. What are the odds?” and he hung up.
Shit! I moved to the couch and sat and stared at the wall for a long time. I tried looking out the window, but across the street Henry was facing my house and giving me the finger. So I closed the curtains, went to the kitchen, and poured myself a drink. Cooper and Alice followed me to the kitchen. Then gave me their “snack time” sad eyes. “Oh, don’t you even. If you two narcs think you are getting a snack from me, forget it.” If I didn’t know better, I swear they both rolled their eyes before lumbering their pudgy, wrinkled legs back to the living room.
I went back and flopped down on the couch. Maybe I needed to just sit with all this for a while. Maybe little TV to take my mind off things. I turned the TV on to the evening news.
Our local news was just starting. “This is Evening News at Six in the Evening and I’m Brad Wafflestone. We start off with an announcement from the Civil Fraud Investigation Bureau. It is concluding its months-long investigation into a local company and will soon file charges.”
Uh-oh. I slugged some more of my drink as Brad Wafflestone continued. “What makes this extra interesting is the agent that found the evidence wasn’t a person, but a dog.”
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled at my TV.
Wafflestone grinned and continued, “Chopper the police dog had barked at a box of evidence and agents decided to give the documents a second look. They then found previously overlooked evidence of …”
“Oh, come on!” I clicked off the TV and threw the remote across the room. I looked over at my dogs and was about to yell at them when they began glowing a bright white light. When the glow wore off, they were sitting inside a little silver rocket ship and wore little silver space suits. Their fish bowl like helmets had special cut outs for their floppy ears. They looked at me through a little window with a little window box garden with flowers.
Cooper Spoke first through his little helmet. “Doug of Earth. I am commander Zarg-Zarg. The Meteor strike in Nerbly County reopened the portal vortex anomaly that allows basset hounds to travel back and forth to our home planet of Bassetopia. But before returning, we are duty bound to set wrongs right. And, although we love you with all our little doggy hearts, and appreciate how well you have cared for us, face it, you’ve been a bad human. Bad boy. “
Alice spoke next. “I have kept my Earth name of Alice. Doctor Alice of Basset Exploration Medicine. Doug of Earth, this isn’t punishment so much as an opportunity for you to learn and do better. Learn from this Doug of Earth. Learn from this and be a good boy while we’re gone.”
The little window box garden receded into the rocket and the rocket window closed. The little rocket ship fired straight up. A large black hole with spinning milk bone shaped dust clouds opened up on the ceiling and the ship passed right through.
The portal closed. Leaving silence. Well, silence, and two steaming piles of ‘parting gifts’ from Cooper and Alice. Aww, man.