Johnithan Kellerman – Bad Love

The gate was closed. It had been hours since the timed lights had shut off. I could hear the waterfall. Peering over the fence, I caught a glimpse of moonstreaked wetness as my eyes started to accommodate.

I looked back at the dog.

Still as a rock.

“Did you hear something?”

Head cock.

“Probably a cat or a possum, pal. Or maybe a coyote, which might be a little too much for you, no offense.”

Head cock. Pant. He pawed the ground.

“Listen, I appreciate your watchfulness, but can we go back up now?”

He stared at me. Yawned. Gave a low growl.

“I’m bushed, too,” I said, and headed for the stairs. He did nothing until I’d gotten all the way up, then raced up with a swiftness that belied his bulk.

“No more interruptions, okay?”

He wagged his stub cheerfully, jumped on the bed, and sprawled across Robin’s side.

Too exhausted to argue, I left him there.

He was snoring long before I was.

Wednesday morning I assessed my life: crank letters and calls, but I could handle that if it didn’t accelerate. And my true love returning from the wilds of Oakland. A balance I could live with. The dog licking my face belonged in the plus column, too, I supposed. When I let him out, he disappeared again and stayed out.

This time he’d gotten closer to the gate, stopping only a couple of feet from the latch. I pushed it open and he took another step.

Then he stopped, stout body angling forward.

His little frog face was tilted upward at me. Something had caused it to screw up, the eyes narrowing to slits.

I anthropomorphized it as conflict-struggling to get over his water phobia. Canine self-help hampered by the life-saving trainin some devoted owner had given him.

9

He growled and jutted his head toward the gate.

Looking angry.

Wrong guess? Something near the pond bothering him?

The growls grew louder, I looked over the fence and saw it.

One of my koi-a red and white kohaku, the largest and prettiest of the surviving babies-was lying on the moss near the water’s edge.

A jumper. Damn.

Sometimes it happened. Or maybe a cat or coyote had gotten in. And that’s what he’d heard. ..

But the body didn’t look torn up.

I opened the gate and went in. The bulldog stepped up to the gatepost and waited as I kneeled to inspect the fish.

It had been torn. But no four-legged predator had done it.

Something was sticking out of its mouth-a twig, thin, stiff, a single shriveled red leaf still attached.

A branch from the dwarf maple I’d planted last winter.

I glanced over at the tree, saw where the bough had been cut off, the wound oxidized almost black.

Clean cut. Hours old. A knife.

I forced my eyes back to the carp.

The branch had been jammed down its gullet and forced down through its body, like a spit. It exited near the anus, through a ragged hole, ripping through beautiful skin and letting loose a rush of entrails and blood that stained the moss cream-gray and rusty brown.

I filled with anger and disgust. Other details began to leap out at me, painful as spattering grease.

A spray of scales littering the moss.

Indentations that might have been footprints.

I took a closer look at them. To my untrained eye, they remained characterless gouges.

Leaves beneath the maple, where the branch had been sheared.

The fish’s dead eyes stared up at me.

The dog was growling.

I joined in and we did a duet.

I dug a grave for the fish. The sky was Alpine clear, and the beauty of the morning was a mockery of my task.

I thought of another beautiful sky-Katarina de Bosch’s slide show.

Azure heavens draping her father’s wheelchaired form.

Good lovelbad love.

Definitely more than just a sick joke now.

Flies were divebombing the koi’s torn corpse. I nudged the body into the hole and shoveled dirt over it as the bulldog watched.

“Should have taken you more seriously last night.”

He cocked his head and blinked, brown eyes gentle.

The dirt over the grave was a small umber disc that I tamped with my foot. After taking one last look, I dragged myself up to the house.

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