What circle of hell is this? I am sitting under the coffee
table while a demented servant of Satan whirls about snuffling and snapping. I
swiped his nose when he poked it under the table and he made a yelping noise
and backed off. I’m
safe for now, but will he and other minions of Beelzebub return to torment me?
The old man and the old woman have betrayed me. In an act of
treachery that is hard to fathom, they let this slobbering beast into the house
with his hooman disciple.
‘He’s
very well behaved,’ said Disciple. She lied.
I learned that this beast is called, ‘Sit!’ because that is what she keeps shouting at him.
Sit is now clawing at the old man’s leg. I can see the old man is less than pleased. He has
that smile/grimace/BuggerOffYouLittleShit look on his face.
‘He’s
only playing!’ Disciple says brightly.
The old man tries to sound jokey but I can tell he means
every word; jaw is clenched, teeth don’t part. ‘Well, let him play with someone else then.’
Disciple laughs.
The old woman looks worried. She glances at me and then at the
old man’s clawed
trousers.
‘Let
him come into the kitchen with me,’ she says, ‘I think there’s a little bit of
beef in the fridge. Would he like that?’
‘Would
you, boy? Would you? Would you? Yes, you would. Yes, you would. Yes, you would.
Say thank you. Go on, say thank you. Say, thank you,’ says Disciple, in that
talking to a dim child voice.
Sit stares at her, as well he might; she is obviously
completely bonkers. And he is obviously a pouch of meaty chunks short of a box
if he has to have everything repeated three times.
The old woman takes him off to the kitchen, shutting the
door firmly behind her. She returns alone. I’m hoping she has consigned him from whence he came. If the
consigning involved red hot needles and a ramrod, so much the better.
‘I’ve
made a pot of tea and some sandwiches,’ she says, ‘so if you’d like to come
through…’ They all disappear. I stay under the table until I hear the front
door close. I emerge from under the coffee table as the old man and the old woman
come back into the room.
‘Thank
God she’s gone,’ says the old man, flopping onto to the sofa. I climb up beside
him and he absent-mindedly strokes my ears. ‘I don’t know who’s more annoying
that woman or the bloody dog.’
Dog? Was it a dog? I suppose that’s marginally better than a servant of Satan. Only
marginally.
