Dog: II
The Apartment Siege
Previously on DOG: Dog dies by weird sideways lightning, wakes up with a belly full of glowing worms and a new ability to parse language. Back home with his humans, Mick and Jenny, his belly hijacks their landline and warns them that four armed intruders will arrive in three minutes.
CW: graphic violence, gore, home invasion, body horror. The dog is safe.
I’m a thinking, walking dog now.
But what was I before all this?
I used to drift through life like a thing, but that feeling is gone. Now I sense, now I truly understand.
I can step outside myself now, peering at my own thoughts. Before, I had no thoughts to share. My life was led by instincts and emotions, as if nature itself handed me orders instead of letting me choose or act with intention.
The forces of nature still puzzle me, and realising that is a kind of wonder.
Why did the lightning strike me? Why me? Am I special?
Time will tell.
Lately, wild ideas get into my mind, and I find myself forming thoughts into… sentences—that’s what they’re called. How did they suddenly appear?
Why would you say “it’s raining cats and dogs”? Has a dog ever fallen out of the sky?
I try to speak, but only dumb barks escape.
Bark, bark, bark!
How do I know so much? It’s strange.
Still, there are new things to learn, and I’ll discover them.
Maybe the worms inside of me are behind this. I’ll find out.
Right now, my mind is stuck on the butt itch or the frantic rhythm of my own gasping.
Gasp, gasp, gasp.
It’s time to help my humans. I know I’m capable of more. Let me prove how much I care. If I’m more than a dog, now’s the time to show.
When I focus too much on one thing, pressure builds behind my eyes, like it wants to explode into something. Are my eyes dangerous now?
Bzzzt.
SNAP OUT OF IT. There’s no time.
We’re in danger. I can smell it.
I need to cool my body, keep my cool, and all. Keep my inner Stoic, my inner Samurai, so that I’m ready for action.
Let’s go.
***
From somewhere above, the air conditioner squeezed its knob-eyes shut in fear, bracing for the worst. Pipes stiffened, lights flickered. Dog stood alert and courageous, his eyes strangely smoking.
The first attacker slipped in sideways through the bathroom window, moving with the speed of a pro. His mask was made from the bottom side of a mop. There were no holes for eyes, yet he knew where he was heading, driven by some kind of intuition. His weapon was a large red brick on a steel string.
He swung it once against Mick, who served as bait, but Jenny jumped from the side of the kitchen, bringing the hammer down on his temple. The mop-guy fell dead like a tree, his head flattened by an inch, which is the distance of skull temple collapsing to the brain.
Then came two more, shirtless, painted red fellas, from jaw to hip. One had a music player duct-taped to his chest playing a loop of children crying. This was meant to be a shock factor, and the music was disorientingly loud.
Dog took them by surprise from underneath the coffee table in the middle of the room, biting into the first attacker’s ankle, stealing their attention so that Mick could intervene.
Mick, positively surprised by Dog’s wits, smiled broadly. He had a large steak knife prepared, which was an extremely sharp, professional-grade piece. But the knife hesitated. What relaxed the knife was calm chopping, ASMR, and finesse at cutting steaks into beautiful chunks. It was more of an “Oui, chef!” kind of guy, and it loved its full-time job. It didn’t like to be used as an accomplice to crime.
But it lent itself to the task with a fleeting thought: Better to help. Karma and all that.
With the knife finally content, Mick slashed across the guy’s cheek and twisted, carrying the blade until it split the head in two. The intruder’s brain didn’t register his death. He kept stabbing wildly at the air with his sharpened screwdriver, a favourite British thug weapon.
None of the weapons matched what the man on the phone had warned Jenny about: no pistols, no baseball bats, no hatchet guy. Was the caller unreliable, or were the attackers improvising?
There was one last intruder, a red-painted thug swinging a sack of old doorknobs, his weapon of choice.
Seeing him lunging at Mick, Jenny already had a plan. She grabbed his dreadlocks from behind and drove his head into the gas stove, popping it on. The dog howled in approval, tail wagging, thrilled by her idea.
But something was happening to Dog. His eyes had been smoking, but now they began to glow with electric blue light.
In a second, two laser rays exploded from Dog’s eyes. They went diagonally and cut through the red-painted man’s stomach, opening it wide. His guts tumbled out like groceries emptied from a plastic bag, the mass slapping the linoleum with a heavy, wet sound. Splack. All the while, his face was cooking on the gas stove, smelling disturbingly delicious.
Whatever fell, Dog lasered in a puff of steam. The spleen, kidney, and intestines all evaporated, becoming specks of dust. All due to Dog’s laser eyes. The guy was finished, and his lifeless husk slid to the floor, dead.
It was over.
Seeing Dog’s performance, Jenny stroked him in approval behind the ear, which was his favourite spot.
He jumped around happily, proud of his response to the situation, rattling across the floor on his claws, clattering on the linoleum.
They hadn’t been ready for me, he thought with his newfound intelligence and expressiveness. But he could do much more to help, and he knew it. His new self felt like a superpower, and he was a happier dog ever since.
***
Five minutes later, there was almost only silence, except for the hum of room lights and the faint shuffle of suits in the hallway.
There was a knock on the door, and Jenny went to see who was there.
Next, figures masked in medical gear entered in teams. On the suits’ backs blazed the sign: arrows tearing outward from the centre. They were white-gloved, expressionless people—rolling in stretchers. One by one, the mutilated bodies were zipped into thin black corpse bags.
One man with a clipboard asked, without looking up, “Everything alright?” The voice was slightly off, a tad robotic to be frank. He was clearly their lead; only leaders sound robotic. He avoided eye contact, like a coward.
“No,” Jenny said. “They came in and started swinging. We were warned.”
“Mm,” the man replied. “That’s okay. You handled it well.”
He approached Jen for a high five, but she rolled her eyes. He started to wave instead, pretending that this was his intention.
They left with the corpses. The suits had brought something in the carts that erased both stains and smells. The room was left bloodless. Even the air felt scrubbed. Neither Mick nor Jenny had seen anything like that before.
It was over, and the dog wagged his tail to that, like a happy furry friend would. Somewhere inside his belly, the glow worms applauded with huge standing ovations. He hummed and landed at Mick’s feet, warming him up.
They sprawled together on the couch like nothing had happened—Jenny with her bloodied hammer-hand, Mick smelling of sweat and iron, Dog curled between them with an eerie glow still fading from his eyes.
The TV clicked on, showing a late-night sitcom laugh track. They all laughed, even the dog. For a few minutes, the world was ridiculous, but it was theirs.
The air-conditioning unit nudged the temperature up as if exhaling, happy that they all survived this. It knew that now was the time to crank up the heat, to celebrate, and give them a bit of that Hygge cosiness.
Tomorrow, they would leave the city for a stroll in the country, thinking about what might come next. They’d be wrong, of course. Big things were coming.
Next on DOG: Dog tries human things, reads some Nietzsche, and has a wild dream.
Third Eye Horror
© Maciej Sitko, 2025
All rights reserved.
What an excellent fight scene. I am SO INTO the villains and how absurd everything is.